It seems that after a decade of development effort (2006-2016), including four separate reboots, all financed largely by the success of EverQuest and EverQuest II, which had been increasingly strangled for resources, development on EverQuest Next has once and for all been cancelled. This comes as little shock to us at EQ2Wire as there has been almost nothing revealed about the game since the smoke-and-mirrors PvP presentation at SOE Live 2014. Further, all discussion of EverQuest Next had been banned from the official EQN forums for almost a year now (as RadarX pointed out to me, it’s now allowed with the game’s cancellation). A game in active, transparent development would not see these two things happen.
From Daybreak Games President Russell Shanks:
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 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.
Yours truly,
Russell Shanks
President, Daybreak Games
MMORPG has been granted an interview with Russell Shanks which you can read here.
Meanwhile, Landmark will officially launch as a live game in Spring 2016 according to EverQuest, EverQuest II, and now Landmark Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the Landmark forums:
To Our Loyal Landmark Community,
You read the title right: Landmark is LAUNCHING this spring and I’m thrilled to be on this adventure with you!