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https://www.daybreakgames.com/news/daybreak-president-community-letter-everquest-next-2016

To Our Daybreak Community,

I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next.

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 Next would 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.

Yours truly,

Russell Shanks
President, Daybreak Games

I am absolutely shocked to hear this.  I'm sure no one could have seen this coming.   :oh_i_see:

I was hopeful, but while not too surprised about it being canceled, more disappointed. It does make me wonder how they're going forward with Landmark now though, as they've been talking about a lot of new tools and changes.

Guess that's also why the building competitions never continued past last November.

Edit: Oh, apparently Landmark is launching this spring (https://forums.daybreakgames.com/landmark/index.php?threads/landmark-launching-spring-2016.56141/).

Shocker.

The continued feature creep of Landmark made Next redundant. What was originally a community-sourced building and content tool became the game it was going to supply.

I am gobsmacked.  Not because it's canceled, but because I thought it got canceled ages ago.  Maybe I was having a premonition or something.  Srsly.  I haven't heard a thing about this game for ages and ages.

In related news, Russell Shanks is a pretty funny name.

Is Landmark still a thing?

It's actually getting "launched" I think.

Thank god Everquest is dead. Now we can gather all the neckbeards around Pantheon (which is actually showing live play testing on twitch tonight) and trap them all in one basement and leave them there.

 :heartbreak:

I really was sold on the high level concept at the announcement. I knew this game was put on life support after Sony dropped them as a studio so them finally admitting they couldn't find the money to make this game doesn't shock me. It's still disappointing.

Ah cool. I loved it for two months. Great creation tools. A lot of potential. Then they turned it into a game and I went back to Minecraft.

I hated the art style of EQN, so good riddance.

Isn't that like, first time ever a MMO launch was stopped over such a concern :why_so_serious:

Count me in the disappointed camp. I liked the direction they were going with the class videos they released ages ago and was hoping against hope that they'd just quietly chug along for however long it took.

I think a lot of people expected this after SOE became daybreak. I'm surprised it took this long to be honest.

I wasnt expecting a cancellation, I was expecting them to instead produce a scaled down EQN.  Something less ambitious as it were.

Honestly, I just always assumed Landmark would kill it; after it was realized the two didn't play nice. 

I am irrationally disappointed by this news.

Me too, that presentation had me hyped.

Presentation was all lies and bullshit.

Video game companies have become very good at putting together early videos and presentations that have essentially nothing to do with where they are and what they are working on.

I thought it was already cancelled. I thought Landmark was cancelled too, actually.

Admittedly, I stopped screwing around with Landmark a long time back.

This.

Same for me.

I think this is the problem - is there demand in the market for a 'better' version of Minecraft that hasn't already been met by other imitators?

It looks like Sony may have played well to get some money for SOE and spin it off before they had to cancel these projects themselves.

While it is true many games should have been stopped because they were not fun, I have to wonder if Daybreak capable of really evaluating what is fun. The two games they are going forward with, Landmark and H1Z1 (in both forms), are just not my type of fun.

Daybreak is just the name Columbus Nova gave to the assets it bought from Sony. The only issue for them is whether they'll make more money on balance by making further investment in developing their products or by ending investment now and just monetising what they already have as best they can (by declaring Landmark ready to release and selling the game for $9.99, which is what they're doing).

I'm not knocking them for that but the idea that they tried out the game and decided it wasn't fun is laughable. If EQ Next was in a state where it was possible to sell boxes then they'd be moving forward with that and hyping it to the moon, however shit it was. i know the EQ franchise his detractors as well as fans, but the name and the hype would mean EQ next would be guaranteed players for a couple of months at least - buying boxes or spending cash in a cash shop - unless it really was was spectacularly, remarkably terrible. They could could probably make a fortune selling early access packs before anyone had any real idea what the game was like.

If they're scrapping EQ Next now, it means the game is in a state where it just can't be released as a working game, without putting in further Investment. If they had anything that could be released, they wouldn't hold back just because it's not fun.

I figured this would happen as soon as SOE got sold off.  Kind of surprised it took this long, really.  I was a little hopeful for EQ Next back when it was first announced, if only because I thought, 'sounds a little pie in the sky, kinda like original Horizons, but SOE might have the resources and the talent to pull it off' but after Sony dropped them I was pretty sure it was going into the ground.

Yes. Would be nice to have a better engine (not java), better graphics and physics, etc. But voxels so far have been pretty messy, and the big problem is the 40 gazillion MC mods and counting. Also, the scalability from my 970 high res textures and shaders and 150 mods down to the kids playing on potatoes in the library. Cave Johnson here.

I also agree with Palmer's assessment of the situation.

If they are genuinely worried about damaging the value of the Everquest brand, I can see them cancelling. They might even rebrand Landmark as some sort of Everquest derivative to assist with marketing and recognition.

is there like a long german word for 'the strange feeling of temporal misplacement when you hear a game has just announced its cancellation but you were sure it was cancelled long ago' like verwirrendestornierungangst or something

Deja vu an Schadenfreude?

If you ask nicely, I am sure one of the native speakers can derive it for you since pretty much any concept can have a ridiculously long compound word for it in German.

Degavuanschadenfreudeung?

Spielabgesagtüberraschungwirklichabeichdachte.

Was the preorder pack stuff just for landmark? Or was there some combined bit?

It was just for Landmark, although there was a suggestion that you'd also get some tiny advantage in EQ Next such as unlocking a character class (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/952/feature/7730/The-Adventurer-Comes-to-Landmark.html). But you only bought in to Landmark and not EQ Next.

Of course, Landmark itself was initially advertised as a chance to contribute to building EQ Next.

(http://i.imgur.com/FHFk6zM.png)