Very sad to see the development of EQN come to a stop. I personally had no interest in the game mainly because of the artistic approach they were taking so I wasn't following it at all, but very sad to see it fail for all those who did place their hopes and dreams (and money) into it, as well as all the people who were putting effort and time into developing it.
Rachael
I lurked throughout the dev process, watching the workshops and updates slowly shrink away. I think they underestimated the gameplay limits of their combat skill decisions. More importantly, I think the game was canned because of the voxel engine and all the data that had to be transfered. Steve probably knew this awhile ago, but gave it an honest effort anyway.
As little faith as I had in EQNext actually coming to fruition, it really is quite sad. It's obviously been cancelled for a while now, it was just a matter of time before it was officially announced. I wish the best for the team that put the work into it. Dave Georgeson really seemed so enthusiastic towards the game. I honestly think Columbus just had zero interest in taking the risk and they were content with the current EQ games. I mean.. it's a billion dollar investment company, it's something they could have easily funded. But with most big companies like that, they would rather just trim the fat and be profitable in the short term, rather than take risk. I really had zero interest in the game and hopefully this will funnel more EQ fans into Pantheon.
I was and still am playing Landmark. After last weeks announcement that all changed. DBG is a trainwreck. There is no reward without risk but this was poorly exicuted and I personally will not touch another DBG game. Hard lessons and seriously was saddened to see it shot down.
So on a good note we are here and things have a brite future.
Ox
Well I pulled my support for DBG. I was pretty hot about the news and the way it was delivered. There was a ton of hype on the Landmark side and then this sidewinder hits.
It was a really bad sign when Dave and the oters were let go and then followed by the silence that got worse. Very dis-honest practices and now its complete chaos in that community.
All I can is I am glad this game has now gotten off the ground.
I am excited about Pantheon. In fact more so than I was about EQN. There is a bright side to all of this.
Ox
Amsai said: I saw this coming. Hell who didnt. It still seems kind of ridiculous considering all the time invested by EQ devs. This game wasnt on my radar at all but this isntna good sign for Daybreak. I came here to post abouy it because all the sudden social media was blowing up on my phone lol. You should read some of the comments...... brutal.
Sounds like the proverbial dog...chased the car, caught it but didn't know what to do with it once caught. Should have kept their old devs...etc. But I presume this is all about making money for the shareholders, so I guess EQ et al will continue to roll in another 20 expansions, that change the game entirely from what it was at the start. I am currently playing Eq, finding it much too easy in comparison to the good old days. Soon as VR announces testing I am out of there.
I have so many thoughts on this particular subject right now that it's hard to organize them into one coherent reply. There are many, many reasons this ended up not working... in some ways there were positives to what they were risking, in some ways (especially in hindsight) it was a terrible miscalculation. But above all, I just can't help but feel sad for the MMORPG genre at the moment. There is no way that this can be spun as a positive for the genre, especially in the short run. There is no way that this is a positive for players who enjoy a game with high production values and capital investment. It would be very, very hard for anyone to see significant MMORPG development as a good decision these days, and that's going to hurt us for a long time. If Blizzard and the EverQuest franchise both failed to get their most recent projects off the ground, it looks dim for everyone.
Pantheon becomes the only reasonable hope we have at this point -- and as much as I support the ideas and the team behind the game, that tells us what an incredible longshot this genre has become, and how far it has fallen from the post EverQuest, WoW launch days when EQII, Vanguard and many, many others were in development. It has been a long, slow, steady decline from that point, and the genre desperately needs someone to achieve blockbuster success again to make continued investment worthwhile.
It sucks as a fan to feel like a generation of gamers have moved on from the genre.
Sad to see it happen, not really surprised by it though. Landmark to become a full game and released, so many people predicted that. Would rather see Lankmark shut down and sell the IP to a company that will do something worth while with it.
Minecraft: Landmark ;)
Zandil said:Sad to see it happen, not really surprised by it though. Landmark to become a full game and released, so many people predicted that. Would rather see Lankmark shut down and sell the IP to a company that will do something worth while with it.
Minecraft: Landmark ;)
I have to agree there. Did think the Player Studio was a great idea, depending how they ran it etc. But I bought the Landmark game, (back in beta) tried it out a few times...didn't like it and never went back.
I was pretty excited for EQ Next up until the SOE Live and they showed the gameplay... It just looked like another remake of all the other modern MMO's out there. It was never going to be the game that brought all the original EQ Fans back to.
I played Landmark for a bit, even went to the SoE live reveal of EQNext. I was pretty jazzed about the concept. However, while there, I was completely turned off by the "Disney" look of the characters.
So..... I still hung in there and played Landmark. There were many issues with Landmark and I feel it was released WAY too soon to be playable, even for Alpha. EQNext was never talked about again really. It was all about Landmark and EQNext just kind of faded into the darkness after all the layoffs...
To be honest, I think it was an engine issue... To me, it just seemed too resource intensive for what they wanted to accomplish. No expert, just how it "felt" on the journey and everything I interpreted along the way.
Pyye said:To be honest, I think it was an engine issue... To me, it just seemed too resource intensive for what they wanted to accomplish. No expert, just how it "felt" on the journey and everything I interpreted along the way.
Exactly what I think and said above. Watching the EQN post-mortem Morning Brew on Youtube (fanshow that talks about Lanmark and streams content) pretty much summed up the details of and likely problems with the voxel engine. This was of course compounded by level of detail and seamless world problems....and that it wasn't "fun."
A lot more factors in to the ending of EQN then they tell us. I mean come on it wasn`t fun ? really ?
The visions they had with the voxel engine and the game dynamics is to technical and draining for the servers and home pcs to handle at this point of time. voxels graphic cards are just becoming a thing.
Voxels were developed for the medical industry in the first place until some genius saw other potentials for it.
Alot of people will argue that the tech is there from voxel farm and i do not deny that, but what no one is saying is that voxelfarm is a engine and he is not trying to make an mmo out of it. What he shows us that the tech can do is based off his servers but when you factor in game developer engines skinning, voxel destruction going on around you everywhere you look, lod issueing, caves system changing every odd amount of hours and on and on...our tech cannot handle that at this point of time let alone the bandwidth. 5 or 10 years down the road this will be very real of that i am sure
Landmark is a mess right now and they are pushing a release to make up for damages. The changes alone to landmark warrant my logic view. claim size being shortend in height and only ground placement, cave system only being surface caves and one underground cave. The systems cannot handle this vision they had and it makes me sad but hopeful that one day someone will.
I have been playing landmark since alpha and still am but i cannot see a bright future for landmark or daybreak and i dont want to sound mean but they just have shown they never learn they keep on making the same mistakes over and over again.
Landmarks release is a major scam its no where near ready that warrants a release but the pressure from columbus nova has finally reached their door they are tredding on very thin ice. do they deserve it? I would have to say yes!
Is it sad ? Yes it is
But i am glad they tried to do something diffrent and revolutionary and i have hopes for thech in the future. Just like the Team is doing here with Pantheon it takes alot of balls to risk everything and its companys like this that i have alot of respect for.
If anyone is intrested in what we think really happened to Daybreak and EQN should check out our Final WFBNews Network Show. This is a long show but it goes into a lot of detail.
Yarnila said:If anyone is intrested in what we think really happened to Daybreak and EQN should check out our Final WFBNews Network Show. This is a long show but it goes into a lot of detail.
I am glad you guys put that out there. It is a real mess now and now we got absolutely a watered down cash spong for DBG.
Ox
This made me sad as well, I too hated the art direction, but understood why they went the cartoony route. But really I am more saddened by what is probably the death of a great franchise. EQ1 was what started it all and EQ2 wasn't a bad game but it lacked the soul that EQ1 had. But I really don't see a future for the franchise now that SOE is dead and Daybreak is focusing on other games. Even if they do revive the EQ franchise it won't be what any of us remember. It's sad.