The obvious thing that this was going to die was when they hyped storybricks at soe live 2014 just to get rid of them six months later. The excuse that daybreak gave us about handling emergent AI on their own was laughable but that didn't stop people from believing it was true.
I like how they talk about launching landmark in spring like its a positive thing when in reality its them making the last implementations before they ditch it for good.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I am surprised it took this long to cancel. It was always going to be a buggy mess with hideous lag problems. Every one of their 'innovations' was going to add millions of extra database records and consume massive amounts of clock cycles. They all would have had to play nicely together in a way that would have made testing a truly massive undertaking.
Only Blizzard has enough cash reserves to pull off an exercise this complex, Sony has so much red ink they were never going to fund it sufficiently and Columbus Nova is far to pragmatic an organization to sink that much cash in a project without any guarantee of success.
I wasn't really interested in EQN but it had potential especially for EQ fans so seeing anything good finally happen would've been better news than this.
I want to see those who "knew" it was going on fine behind the scenes , posted fervently in defense of Daybreak Games , to pull up a seat.
heh I can think of a few posters who should be eating crow. Surprisingly the one who I thought would be all up in this thread is oddly absent.
As for me I wasn't shocked in the least bit. This game has been dead to me for a while now so I was just wondering why they wouldn't say it was getting shit canned.
As soon as SOE was acquired by DBG, you knew it was coming. They didn't have the guts or integrity to come right out and say it though, so they just waited until people lost interest in the game.
Once a company "goes dark" in terms of releasing new information it's almost always a good indication things aren't going well and more bad news is soon forthcoming.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I'm not beyond shock, just sad. I'm not going to pretend like I seen it coming, because you never know. However, after the buy out and name change I could smell something rotten was on the horizon.
More than anything I see this as the final nail in the coffin for hope that we'd ever see a re-kindling of what Everquest once was. Now I can only hope that Pantheon ends up being as good I hope it will be.
I'm neither surprised nor disappointed, but I do feel sorry for those looking forward to the game and those who lost their jobs. My greatest hope is that Pantheon will revitalize the genre for gamers like me, because the revamped EQN was not going to. I was much more intrigued by the original EQN concept.
The writing was on the wall for awhile. They should have never made Landmark. It was nothing but a distraction and a waste of time.
The announcement of Landmark was the first sign that they were no longer fully committed to finishing EQN, yes. It was an interesting experiment though.
Smedley's big problem is, and always has been, that he wants to make a big, big hit in the kiddies' market - the demographic between about 6-12. He sees, quite rightly, that there is no MMO for children. That's why the games he commissioned and also bought in to SOE are either simple-minded or horrifically dumbed down, and so they die, either quickly or slowly but they inevitably die.
The problem is, and he never seems to get it, that while kids love playing games, they theymselves cannot afford to play either subscription games or games with a payshop. And their parents, who mostly don't want their kids spending hours on PC anyway, are really loathe to paying out ten or fifteen bucks a month just so their kids can continue playing. The people who play MMOS are - or were - late teens to early thirties; young adults without family commitment still with disposable incomes and time to spare.
The moment I say screenshots and clips for EQN I knew it was going to fail - the cartoonish character models were, for me, the clue. 'He's making a cartoon game for damn Second Graders'. To me they symbolised instantly the problem:
If the avatars were cartoons, then they couldn't be customised; if they can't be customised, then the game is obviously going to be quite simple across all its mechanisms; if the game is going to be just a simple toyland game then it has nothing for me, the older gamer; and if it has nothing for the older gamer, it will inevitably die.
Comments
I like how they talk about launching landmark in spring like its a positive thing when in reality its them making the last implementations before they ditch it for good.
Only Blizzard has enough cash reserves to pull off an exercise this complex, Sony has so much red ink they were never going to fund it sufficiently and Columbus Nova is far to pragmatic an organization to sink that much cash in a project without any guarantee of success.
It takes one to know one.
heh I can think of a few posters who should be eating crow. Surprisingly the one who I thought would be all up in this thread is oddly absent.
As for me I wasn't shocked in the least bit. This game has been dead to me for a while now so I was just wondering why they wouldn't say it was getting shit canned.
The fact that DBG took this long to announce it shows you their character.
Is DBG an empty shell ?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
i guess many us dont care anymore its why not surprise
More than anything I see this as the final nail in the coffin for hope that we'd ever see a re-kindling of what Everquest once was. Now I can only hope that Pantheon ends up being as good I hope it will be.
It takes one to know one.
I'll go out on a limb here and say EQ and EQ2 will both be gone inside of 3 years.
His name is a stinking word.
The problem is, and he never seems to get it, that while kids love playing games, they theymselves cannot afford to play either subscription games or games with a payshop. And their parents, who mostly don't want their kids spending hours on PC anyway, are really loathe to paying out ten or fifteen bucks a month just so their kids can continue playing. The people who play MMOS are - or were - late teens to early thirties; young adults without family commitment still with disposable incomes and time to spare.
The moment I say screenshots and clips for EQN I knew it was going to fail - the cartoonish character models were, for me, the clue. 'He's making a cartoon game for damn Second Graders'. To me they symbolised instantly the problem:
If the avatars were cartoons, then they couldn't be customised; if they can't be customised, then the game is obviously going to be quite simple across all its mechanisms; if the game is going to be just a simple toyland game then it has nothing for me, the older gamer; and if it has nothing for the older gamer, it will inevitably die.