A lot of things will be demystified about EverQuest Next on August 2nd, 2013 at SOE Live, but one of those things won’t be the game’s name. That was done today on Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson‘s twitter. When asked if EverQuest Next is the working title, or the official title for the game, Georgeson replied:

@Filthy_Heathen its official. “EverQuest Next”!

— David Georgeson (@DaveGeorgeson) June 18, 2013

One thing we still haven’t seen is — the game’s logo. The one above is a mockup I did over a year ago.

How do you get media companies drooling over your next hot MMO property?
Simple! Show it to them when everyone else (even employees at your own company) can’t!

If you read our transcript of the EverQuest “What’s Next” Show, then you already know that Donovan Duncan, VP of Marketing for Curse, admitted that he is “One of the only people in the world who have seen EverQuest Next”.

With today’s MMORPG.com E3 2013 Awards, Bill Murph has confessed that he is also “in the loop”:

Say what? You thought this one wasn’t at E3? Well, really… it wasn’t in any official capacity. But we were treated to an early look at what SOE has planned for the game’s unveiling in August and we were quite simply blown away by every little detail we saw. This is going to sound like a cop-out, but we can’t say why we are choosing EQN as our Best of Show because we’ve been sworn to secrecy until the big debut in August. What we can say is that we saw grand plans for the world’s largest sandbox and it was more than enough to stand head and shoulders above any game we saw at E3. When Sony pulls back the curtain later this summer, you will not be disappointed.

EverQuest Next is this year’s E3 Best of Show, and in just a couple months you’ll all understand why. We promise.

EQNWire.com won’t be getting any sneak previews, but we’ll be right there along with you when EverQuest Next is unveiled for the first time to the public at 11:00am August 2nd at Planet Hollywood Hotel in Las Vegas!

EQ2Wire is Live Blogging the EverQuest “What’s Next” Show at E3. In attendance at the show will be Dave Georgeson, Executive Producer, Terry Michaels, and Omeed Dariani, Brand Manager.

If you are near a PC or have Twitch installed on your phone or tablet, you can watch the SOE Livecast @ E3 now. Otherwise, stay tuned for the live blog!

From Curse (who are also a sponsor of SOE Live):

With SOE Live coming up in a couple short months, we want to know what EQ and EQ II mean to you, personally.

With such a long, rich history for the legendary MMORPGs, players worldwide have forged alliances and relationships with guilds and friends, both smacked down and lost horribly to bosses, explored countless miles of terrain in-game, and were a part of epic GM events that have been remembered and retold fondly ever since.

Do you have memories that make you feel warm and fuzzy? We want you to record a 30 second to 3 minute video telling a story about your EverQuest experience. Make it live-action, or from in-game footage. Serious or light-hearted. Tear-jerking or downright silly. It’s all up to you, we just want to know how the game has affected you over EQ and EQ II’s long lives. Surprise us with your creativity!

Continue reading at Curse.com…

Visit EverQuestNext.com

Visit EverQuestNext.com

We’ve always understood EverQuest Next to be the code name for what would eventually be the 6th game in the EverQuest franchise, yet it looks like maybe it will become the official name for the game. One wonders if the name EverQuest Next or EQNext have become such a recognized name that it would be difficult to change it now?

A site which has borne fruit in past years for unearthing the name of past EverQuest II expansions, we first look to the US Patent and Trademark Office:

EVERQUEST NEXT

IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game software and video game software; providing downloadable multi player, role playing, real time computer and video game software via an online website for entertainment purposes

Filing Date: April 23, 2013

Owner: (APPLICANT) Sony Online Entertainment LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DELAWARE 8928 Terman Court San Diego CALIFORNIA 92121

and now these two domain records, updated recently:

Both sites are set to SonyOnline.net nameservers, and more interestingly, EverQuestNext.com currently shows a SOE Maintenance message.

EverQuest Next is expected to be a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG of a sandbox (do what you want) rather than theme park (run from quest hub to quest hub) design, integrating some of the best elements of Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest, EverQuest II, as well as original ideas. Player-made content is a cornerstone of the upcoming game, with the already popular Player Studio concept, and StoryBricks quest/dungeon scripting tools being just the beginning.

You may question whether a toolbar-heavy game like EverQuest is well-suited to a console game, especially one that’s cross-platform. Over the years, many compromises have been made to shoehorn traditional MMOs into a control scheme that works on a console. Final Fantasy XIV particularly suffered for this. Yet there has already been a console version of EverQuest in the much-loved EverQuest Online Adventures which was made exclusively for the PlayStation 2.

When EverQuest Next was first teased in 2009, the vibe from SOE was: all their games going forward would be both PC and PS3 games. At the time, the future of the then-overpriced difficult-to-develop PlayStation 3 was not assured, and so pressure to align with business strategies was not a shock. But now here we are 4 years later, and it’s been an unknown whether EQNext would grace a console at all.

Then came news for the Planetside 2 and DC Universe Online communities announcing that their games would be re-released on the PS4 (although PS2′s online communities will likely be segregated between PS3 and PS4, DCUO’s will straddle both systems). With this news, the possibility of EverQuest Next could be a simultaneous console and desktop release is back to the forefront of player’s minds.

Sony Online Entertainment is at E3 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Most of the news is about Planetside 2, Dragon’s Prophet, and DCUO, but we’ve noticed another event on the schedule which could prove interesting.

EverQuest Franchise Takes a Look Back and Forward

The EverQuest franchise will be looking at its rich development history of EverQuest and EverQuest II and will be discussing what’s coming up for the franchise as a whole. Make sure you tune in to the livestream featuring Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson for more details. Also, if you’re at E3, you can visit our My EQ Story booth to share your favorite memories of your time in Norrath!

For more information, click here to go to www.everquest.com or www.everquest2.com!

June 12 @ 3:30PM – 4:30PM

EverQuest “What’s Next” Show

Time to talk about the EQ Franchise

Dave Georgeson,  Terry Michaels, Omeed Dariani

We will stay tuned and report anything of interest!

From SOE President John Smedley‘s twitter:

very excited to show EQN at SOE Live twitter.com/j_smedley/stat…

— John Smedley (@j_smedley) June 6, 2013

It looks like Emily “Domino” Taylor has returned to the Sony Online Entertainment fold after the successful launch of Defiance for Trion Worlds. She is now a Producer on the EQNext team. For those who may not know Domino, she contributed substantially to Crafting and Housing in EverQuest II, specifically the addition of Epic, Heritage, and Signature quests for crafters.

From her Linkedin page:

Producer
Sony Online Entertainment

Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Computer Games industry

May 2013 – Present

Following the launch of Defiance, I rejoined the SOE team to work as a Producer on EQNext. Very excited to be back with a fantastic team on a really exciting game. Look for more information about the game in August!

her Twitter:

Well, guess the cat is out of the bag now. =)linkedin.com/in/pentapod/

— Domino (@pentapod) May 21, 2013

her Facebook:

For those who haven’t heard already: last month I resigned from Trion, and accepted a producer role on SOE’s upcoming project EQNext. I’m super excited about the project, and very touched and grateful that so many people seem so happy to welcome me back. I had no idea so many people even knew who I was, let alone would have so many kind words. ♥ I can’t wait to help make this game amazing!

From the SOE Live website:

SOE Live Exclusive: Get a First Look at EverQuest Next!

On Friday, August 2nd, attendees at SOE Live will witness the unveiling of the highly anticipated EverQuest Next! Be among the first to see game features and development plans during a keynote address by Director of Development Dave Georgeson and members of the EverQuest Next team. Following the keynote, SOE Live passholders will be able to ask questions and learn more in-depth information from the developers during a number of panels.

Whether you’re a long-time EverQuest enthusiast or just curious about the next big thing in gaming, don’t miss this exciting chance to get your first look at EverQuest Next. SOE Live is the only place for all the insider information, so register today!

as per the SOE Live schedule, Friday’s keynote is scheduled for 11:00am:

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Keynote Address

More details to be announced. You won’t want to miss this!

Celebrity Ballroom

SOE Live Early Bird Registration ends May 22nd and rises from $129.00 for the weekend to $149.00. NOTE: Anyone who registered in the past few days and was charged $149.00 will be refunded the difference.

In case there are any doubts about just how big a deal EQNext will be at SOE Live, if you haven’t already read it, Linda “Brasse” Carlson‘s SOE Live blog leaves no doubt on the subject:

This year, it’s all about EQ Next. The Dev team is madly writing code, making art, and preparing to reveal a ton of news about this long-anticipated game world. While we will do our best to livestream or record the keynote and panels, there is nothing that beats being there, in person, to get the breaking news and then ask your very own questions.

Player Panels were so popular that there was no doubt they’d make a comeback:

Keep an eye on the SOE Live schedule as we fill it out. May is the month for panels – dev has been asked to submit their sessions already, and in a week or two, we’ll open our call for player panel submissions!

After the jump, the remainder of her comments, plus beefcake!

From out of left field, here is an announcement not from Sony Online Entertainment, but from a third party who are working hard on tools that will be used in EverQuest Next. A tip of the hat to ZAM who got this news first.

From an e-mail blast by Storybricks:

Hello world,

We just wanted to share another update this month. (Nothing for a while and then two updates in a month, this feels like Lithe and Whacking Day rolled into one!) But we really did not want to wait another week for this exciting news.

After several months of working together with Sony Online, we can finally reveal that we are collaborating on EverQuest Next. EQN is “the biggest sandbox ever designed” and we are extremely happy to be working on the most innovative MMORPG under development.

We’re now less than 4 months out from the big unveil of EverQuest Next and the top secret team are hard at work building the mysterious prototype we’ll all be drooling over at SOE Live. This month’s SOE Employee Spotlight is on Rosie Rappaport, Art Director for EverQuest Next. While few legumes are spilled in her interview, you get a sense of the fevered pace as the team races towards two distinct finish lines — demoing something at SOE Live, and releasing an actual playable game.

Right now we are working hard to finalize a strong style, which makes giving feedback easier and easier. Working on a prototype is very different than other stages of game development and it takes a special mind set. It’s like trying to find a specific location with only a compass – and no map. You might know generally which direction to go, but you don’t know exactly how to get there. On a prototype team, it’s more important than ever to stay positive and optimistic because it’s nerve wracking for the artists. And above all, it’s critical to always be moving forward.

Prototyping game demos is a tough needle to thread as other game developers have found out. Sometimes, what works well on the small scale of a game demo or glitzy trailer doesn’t hold together when scaled up. Gaming history is littered with examples of companies that spent an inordinate amount of time building splashy demos intended to attract attention and media buzz at trade shows such as E3, but then stumbled in the delivery of the actual game. SOE has better self-discipline than that, but the temptation to polish and refine the EQNext August 1st reveal — whether it’s a playable demo, starting area, or something else — will be irresistible. The MMO market is getting crowded and SOE has the unenviable task of capturing the attention of players and the press, while holding some of its cards close so competitors don’t simply clone ideas, all while keeping players thirsty for details over the long haul of the estimated 16-20 months until we enter some kind of Beta cycle.

Read the SOE Employee Spotlight: Rosie Rappaport

Just in case there hasn’t been enough EQNext information to absorb, here’s another video! Garrett Fuller of MMORPG.com interviews Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson about EverQuest Next.

Summary

Before Georgeson got involved, the team had been working for about a year on an evolutionary game, rather than something totally new. The team was shuffled around, and they sat down and made lists of the best and worst things of MMOs and a few killer ideas of things that people would say “They’re doing WHAT?” They started drafting AAA talent and assembled a core team of 25-30 people and put together “Holy Grail” ideas of what they could do.

Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson‘s participated in a panel of game developers talking about the Future of MMORPGs at PAX East 2013. Below, EQ2Wire provides an exclusive transcript of his comments as they relate to EQNext! Thanks to MMORPG.com who recorded and have posted a video of this panel.

[4:20-5:00] – August 1st Reveal!
He reveals that the EverQuest Next reveal will be August 1st.

[13:20-15:05] – Sandboxing
Georgeson mentions his work on Tribes 2 and the original Planetside and his overall interest in Sandbox games. It is no surprise that EQNext will be a Sandbox game as Smedley has said as much on several occasions.
“The thing about a Sandbox game is that the players can do anything they want to, and go in any path that they want to….This type of aspect has never been seriously pushed in an MMO — letting people be completely freeform and be able to do the things that they want to do.” He then talked about Google Glass and other wireless interfaces other than a keyboard and mouse which could be investigated for future games.

Artist’s mockup of EQNext’s logo

On Monday, Karen Bryan of Massively has published a great interview with Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, Director of Development for the EverQuest Franchise about the future of online gaming, and specifically EQNext. The big reveal of the 3rd 4th 5th 6th game in the EverQuest franchise will take place on August 1st at this year’s SOE Live 2013 event in Las Vegas.

Below, we include some excerpts from the interview.

We began with a discussion about what the future looks like and how EQ Next plays into that future. Georgeson said he feels that SOE is already tipping its hand somewhat with what it’s added to EQ andEverQuest II. What the studio is essentially doing is making the game more open to players, with features like Player Studio and multiple free-to-play revisions. When the players can participate along with the developers in creating the game, the developers can continue making professional content, like the upcoming blueprint feature* in EQII. There are many ideas being pushed along the way, and those ideas are “seriously on steroids with EQ Next,” as he put it, but that won’t be revealed until August at SOE Live.

[After joining the EQ2 team] he focused his efforts on getting the game into the press more, partially through increased marketing but also by releasing things like Dungeon Maker and SOEmote. While some watchers questioned whether these were things the game needed, his answer was yes because it gave the game global press and kept the game became “alive” in people’s minds. As a result, the game’s numbers are stronger than they have been in years.

I recommend watching this video in High Definition (choose 720p or 1080p from the Gear menu) and in Full Screen.

No, we’re not changing our name to PS2Wire. In fact, the audiences for Planetside 2 and the next EverQuest could not be any different, however they do have at least one thing in common: Both games are being built upon SOE’s homegrown ForgeLight engine.

Anyone wanting to scout as much information as possible about EQNext really should be ogling videos of Planetside 2, as they undoubtedly serve as a window into the type of graphics and multiplayer gaming we might expect! As you watch the video above, imagine epic battles in Antonica, Velious, the Sinking Sands, and so on (but without the laser rifles).

In a “we hope he’s just trolling or talking about one isolated server” tweet, SOE President John Smedley teased this about EQNext:

We like permadeath for EQN

— John Smedley (@j_smedley) March 6, 2013

It’s one thing for a heavily PvP Combat-based game to have Permadeath. It is quite another for a game where characters are developed over years, have houses and guild halls full of collected riches and rewards, epic quests, and raid zones that are designed to kill players through combat mechanics. For such a game, the concept of Permadeath is nothing short of repugnant.

UPDATE from John Smedley:

In case people did not catch the sarcasm I was kidding about EQN having permadeath — John Smedley (@j_smedley) March 7, 2013

I already did my part to debunk the idea that an MMO the size of EverQuest would go from planning to release inside 3 years, but in a tweet that we missed last week — Linda “Brasse” Carlson mirrored my comments:

@khayotix Highly unlikely that EQN will launch in 2013. Smed said we’d have “something,” but that could be one of a million facets.

— Brasse (@Brasse) February 7, 2013

News of the new dates and venue for SOE Live 2013 leaked due to a file being pushed early by the SOE Web Team, but now we have an official Press Release from SOE:

SAN DIEGO – Feb. 6, 2013 – Sony Online Entertainment, LLC (SOE) today announced that its annual community fan event, SOE Live, will take place at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino inLas Vegas on Aug. 1 – Aug. 4, 2013. An annual SOE-sponsored event, SOE Live is set to be the ultimate gathering for the SOE community, and provides players an opportunity to celebrate their favorite free-to-play SOE games, including: DC Universe^™ Online, Dragon’s Prophet™, EverQuest®,EverQuest® II, Free Realms^®, PlanetSide^®2, PoxNora^®, Star Wars^®: Clone Wars Adventures™, Vanguard^® Saga of Heroes, and a first look at the next game in the EverQuest franchise.

SOE is also playing up the first glance at EQNext with this banner image:

The Press Release continues after the jump…

SOE President John Smedley has been granting interviews to any and every gaming website about Planetside 2, Free-to-Play, and the upcoming EverQuest Next, and today, Gamasutra landed some rather interesting quotes to be sure. First off, the article leads off with a subject line not entirely substantiated by Smed’s comments: “MMO devs will lose the fight against content churn, says SOE’s Smedley”

The article leads with:

“Sometimes you make a decision and you’re like ‘Oh God, let’s buckle in and hope everything goes well.’ That’s how it was with free-to-play,” he says. “Now we look back and wonder ‘How did we ever survive before this?’ Living in a world where retailers control your software was horrible.”

Then the titular quote:

“In my opinion, the days when companies can make content [generation] the number one strategy, in the kinds of games we make, are over, because we can’t win the war. Star Wars [The Old Republic] proved that. Players bought it, loved it and they played the game. Then they left.”

This Monday, SOE President John Smedley teased Twitter with a reaction shot of SOE employees checking out his presentation of the latest incarnation of EQNext:

Eq and eq2 team members seeing EQN for the first time twitter.com/j_smedley/stat…

— John Smedley (@j_smedley) December 11, 2012

From Massively:

There’s been a never-ending news stream this weekend at SOE Live, and underlying all the announcements has been a single theme: a fundamental shift towards emergent gameplay. We had the chance to talk to SOE President John Smedley about that philosophical change and how it fits in to current and upcoming titles. He spoke about the growing popularity of MMOs as viewing entertainment and how it’s caught on in PlanetSide 2. And while he wouldn’t go into details about EQ Next, he did give some exciting hints about what players will get to experience with this third EverQuest title. Read on for a look at the future of SOE!

From JobMonkey Jobs:

Position: Senior Gameplay Engineer – EverQuest Next
Location: San Diego, CA

We’re hard at work creating the next EverQuest, but this isn’t just another version of the same old MMO model. We’re questioning all assumptions and re-architecting the ideas of what an MMO is and how it should be played. Evolutionary design is not what we’re shooting for here. You have never seen nor played an MMO anything like the one we’re building now, and we want you to help us craft it.

SOE has been pushing boundaries for many years, from the original EverQuest, to Star Wars Galaxies, to Planetside, figuring out what works and doesn’t work, and we’ve never been a company to just clone and hone.