Daybreak Cancels EverQuest Next - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 March 2016 / 4,399 Views
Daybreak president Russ Shanks has announced the developer has cancelled EverQuest Next. The game was first announced in 2013 when it was apart of Sony as Sony Online Entertainment.
"I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next," said Shanks.
"For the past 20 years EverQuest has been a labor of love. What started as a deep passion of ours, as game creators, grew into a much larger passion shared by you, millions of players and Daybreakers alike. Watching EverQuest’s ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It’s shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products. When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn’t aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary.
"For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Nextwould not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.
"The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak.EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts. EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong. Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished."
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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People thinking Sony selling these would be good are now seeing why that's not true.
Planetside 2 seems to be going strong since 2012, though Sony also sold off their VAIO side since that wasn't doing well under their wing along with cutting off SOE. Them having to cut off those two sides wasn't really a good thing in the first place so anything that happens outside of those decisions isn't going to make things better for Sony since they let those two go. Trying to say "they knew they were bad and this proves the result" is different from another company holding them but at the same time Sony not being able to turn the ship around for either side, that doesn't really make them any better in this situation, it just means two holders couldn't make a right.
i'm not saying it was better or worse for sony. i'm saying for gamers it's not going to do them any favours now that these are no longer owned by sony. because the new people will not tolerate loses and projects like this can easily be canned. people celebrated sony "losing" SOE. I don't think it was a good thing.
Even if they were still owned by Sony, it still never did them any solid favours because it was one of those sectors that they definitely had to cut off or face losing money on an area that cost them just to keep it going, either way the end result as it stands now would be the same, it happened with a holding company, it would have happened with Sony. The HC bought them in the hopes they would shape up, they didn't despite just being given the money and as a result said money was wasted to them and so they cancelled it. I didn't celebrate Sony getting rid of SOE, I saw it as a business decision because it was one of those sectors they were not doing so great with that others were.
Yeah that's how I seen it. Just shows you, all those celebrating the sale thinking it would bring big improvements were wrong. The studio has is to blame not the owners. Past or present.
That sucks, but I guess its not worth launching a boring MMO. MS has tons of money and they clearly cancelled Fable Legends because the game wasnt good.
This is disappointing but not unexpected. I don't believe a modern MMO can be made by a small company any more. At least not on the scale of EQ or EQ2.
Although expected ever since they left Sony, I had high hopes since the Norrath storyline is by far the best out of any mmo, so there was alot of material. Hell, Luclin alone has more content than alot of mmo out there.
I think everyone has been seeing this coming for a while. Losing Daybreak, SOE being sold to an investment firm, the top development team members leaving the company. Since they dissolved Story Bricks, it was clear EQNext wasn't going to happen as they had originally intended. Still kind of a shame to see it happen.
I wouldn't mind them using the assets for another foray into single player console games, though. A Skyrim/Dragon Age/Amalur style single player game set in Norrath could be fun.
