
Russell Shanks, the president of Daybreak Games, has announced that the company has cancelled Everquest Next.
Recently, in an open letter addressed to the fan community, Russel Shanks, the president of Daybreak Games announced that the company discontinued working on Everquest: Next, the sequel of the beloved MMO franchise. Daybreak Games cancelled sequel to Everquest saying that it will fail to entertain the gamers.
As all good things come to an end, so has Everquest a beloved fantasy massive multiplayer online RPG, which managed to raise the bar in the MMO genre.
Russel Shanks, the president of Everquest’s father company, Daybreak Games, said that the developing team has stopped working on a project.
Everquest: Next, the sequel to the Everquest franchise was announced more than three years ago, and everyone waited patiently to see what the gaming studio had in store for them. Moreover, the gamers had another reason to expect the EQ’s sequel, due to the fact that Daybreak Games announced that the MMO will feature the Landmark engine.
Why is landmark so unique? Well, think more along the lines of Hearthstone, one of Skyrim’s expansion pack. Once the expansion was installed, the players had the possibility of constructing their own houses or palaces using materials scattered throughout the world or bought from legit shops.
Still, the expansion had a couple of limitations, meaning that the player could construct only a couple of building.
On the other hand, Landmark, the voxel-based gaming engine, would have allowed players to harvest their building material which they could’ve used to construct majestic and elaborate structures.
Well, that would’ve been a great perk for an MMO game, considering the fact that there are little MMOs out there who offer similar freedom of movement to the players.
Fortunately, Daybreak Games declared that the Landmark project will launch as scheduled but separately from the Everquest project.
As far as the EQ: Next is concerned, the gaming studio was pretty vague. According to Shanks’s letter, one of the main reason why the studio chose to discontinue working on the project was that the bar was raised too high.
Shanks told his fans that the studio didn’t want to release only a sequel to the beloved game set in the worlds of Norrath. They’ve wanted something new, refreshing, unique if you will, a game that had what it takes to revolutionize the whole genre.
In his closing remarks, the president of Daybreak Games said that the idea of a sequel didn’t sound so appealing after three years of works and that a gaming company has to face the possibility of cancellation one day or the other.
Still, Shanks told in the same letter that the company is still committed to improving EQ 1 and EQ 2 and that the Landmark engine will launch as planned.
Photo credits:youtube