This is pretty good news!
https://www.everquest.com/news/project-1999-daybreak
If you’ve ever looked for people playing EverQuest on Twitch, you’ll often find fans playing on the Project 1999 servers (often referred to as just P99) and engaging with other members of the community via their Twitch chat. Project 1999 is a fan-based, not-for-profit, classic EverQuest emulation project.
The guys running Project 1999 are passionate fans of EverQuest and our work, and we’re fans of what they’ve been able to accomplish with support from the player community. So, we’d like to bring you the following announcement from the P99 crew:
“It’s been an exciting year for Project 1999 and we have some exciting news we’ve been really anxious to share with all of you. As some of you may be aware, in the past there has been both confusion and concern over the status of Project 1999. We have recently entered into a written agreement with Daybreak Game Company LLC that formally recognizes Project 1999 as a fan based, not-for-profit, classic EverQuest emulation project. The agreement establishes the guidelines that we as a project must follow, but it will allow to us continue to update the game without risk of legal repercussions. As a show of good faith to support the efforts of Daybreak Games, we have decided to reschedule our expansion release as to not conflict with the upcoming new progression server being released in the coming weeks. We would like to personally thank all the folks at Daybreak and acknowledge how awesome it is for a company to work with and embrace the creations of their fans. This is really something that’s unique in the gaming industry.”
To read the rest of the post, please visit the P99 forums.
We’re proud that the EverQuest community is one of the most passionate and engaged groups of players in the gaming world. We’re glad we were able to reach an agreement with the team behind the fan-based, not-for-profit emulation project as they continue to share their love of EQ with many.
Its sort of funny how this came about actually. Daybreak didn't want P99 to open velious around the same time frame as their progression server. Its good that they have a more official relationship with Daybreak, but you know a lot of people are going to be upset about pushing content back once again.
Yeah exactly, it would be interesting to see what the agreement was in full out of curiosity, I would hazard a guess that it would just be that EQ has right of way for updates/releases and not to hinder that, not to release at the same time or make any money from the project.
This makes me really happy - the folks at p1999 do a wonderful job. i would like to see the terms of the agreement however - it has me a little worried.
I have also played P99 prior to Kunark release (on P99) during 1 or 2 years.
I am not surprised that Daybreak sought a kind of agreement with them.
One must consider that P99 has over 50 000 members and around 10 000 active players.
As this happens on only 1.5 servers (the red is much smaller than the blue) I am pretty sure that the P99 population is much larger than the one of the largest populated EQ Live Server.
I also played on EQ Progression Fippy server for about 1 year - it was Madness :) Queue for log in, thousands of players, groups everywhere.
It would have ressuscitated the real experience from 1999 but unfortunately EQ progression servers use the rules from Live and most regrettably the "revamped" hideous Freeport, Oasis, Commons etc.
So you can easily see the economical impact on Daybreak - even if EQ is now F2P, the progression servers still need a monthly fee (isn't that a sign of success ?).
So if you take 10$/month and 2 progression servers, then the question whether 10 000 people will play P99 or EQ Progression at the launch is Worth 100 000 $/month or a bit more than a million in a year. Not something to be neglected.
Among others it also shows that the value of the Customer basis created by a few volunteers working for free on P99 is Worth several millions $.
A nice success :)
Btw in a post about marketing here, I have used the P99 and EQ Progression data to estimate the core of the target group for Pantheon at anywhere between 50 000 - 100 000. More than 100 000 if the concept appeared to appeal also to a part of very Young players that have never been in contact with this kind of concept but are MMO players.
So the existence and success of P99 and EQ Progression is a proof that the Pantheon target really exists and that there is economical room for an MMO with Pantheon's philosophy even if such an MMO doesn't currently exist on the market and didn't exist for quite a long time.
Actually for some 10 years.
I think this is pretty great for them and maybe even (just maybe) for mmos in general. I wish more mmos would allow emulation for game states that no longer exist. At least if they have no plan to offer that experience themselves.
Now, the terms could be a problem but as long as they're reasonable (agreements for non-profit, possibly non-conflicting launch schedule, etc.) it is a small price to pay for the security.
