EverQuest Next was cancelled last month almost as an afterthought in a blog post by Daybreak president Russell Shanks, to the surprise of no-one. What is surprising is the strange malaise that led to it, and the hopeful solution.
When announced circa 2012 EQN was presented as the next thing in MMOs. It was to be a resurrection of the golden days of slow burn gameplay, meaningful community, deep and expansive world making, and genuine long-term challenge.
But it became clear fairly early on that SOE had lost their way. While the initial idea had been a return to a style of game more like Everquest – an experience that had been lost in a post-WoW free-to-play world – the game quickly devolved into a mash of ambitious hyperbolic ideas, none of which bore much resemblance to the original world of Norrath.
Then director of development Dave Georgeson told Gamasutra in 2013 the devs “hated” traditional MMO mechanics, were removing classic class distinctions, and were intent on creating an “emergent AI system” that did away with the linear nature of MMO gameplay. In other words, they were going to make a game that was actually very different to the one first intended.
Much the same thing had happened with the first sequel, EverQuest 2, which shipped as an open world MMO that was neither open world (almost every single area was instanced), nor truly MMO (combat was locked so that no-one else could hinder or help you once an encounter began). Years of passionate forum discussion during development and leading up to completion ended in essentially the world’s first anti-MMO.
Disregarding this instructive precedence, the enthusiastically launched “return” removed everything that made the original fun, and was in the end cancelled with a shrug for “not being fun”. It was an ironic and inevitable outcome.
EverQuest. Proof that game is never skin deep.
If you missed out on the game changing revelation that was EverQuest, it is going to be difficult to understand the interest with which a modern update was anticipated. For many of us, classic EQ is not only unsurpassed almost 20 years later, but unequalled. The idea of it being revisited in modern tech was, quite honestly, giddying.
So when the world building engine designed to create the game’s assets began taking all development effort away from the actual game, it was a little perplexing. Then the engine became a pseudo-game in its own right. Finally, in an almost comical reversal, it replaced the game it was built to serve.
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The result was that the successor to one of the best games ever made was usurped by a Disney and WoW styled Minecraft clone. The promised return to an epic, expansive, immersive, mechanically deep wonder of challenging, mature high fantasy MMOing was superseded by what is essentially a tech demo.
Beauty and the Beast called…
The thing is, all that Daybreak Games – formerly SOE – had to do was put the tracing paper over EverQuest and reconstruct it in modern tech. Carefully, and with thoughtful compromise between authenticity and improvement, the old world could have been brought back to glorious life in a next generation engine. Even if it was precisely the same, with all the same dimensions, mechanics, and content, it was a sure thing. Everything that worked was already there, tried, tested, and true.
There is a literal army of gamers waiting for that exact game; a significant niche market gravy train that has been waiting patiently (and increasing in spending power) for almost two decades to throw solid money at whomever would step up and do the job. Fan art has been painstakingly produced showing the potential of the idea. A large sub-culture of gamers continues to play EverQuest in its original form on the Project1999 emulation server, holding to the hope that sometime, somewhere, someone is going to get it right again.
Project1999 – It’s Better Than It Looks
The truth is EQN didn’t have to be EverQuest. It didn’t even have to be like EverQuest. It just had to be what EverQuest was. What’s perplexing is that no-one seems to see the long-standing gap in the market to which EQN appealed, and no-one is listening to the underserved niche of core gamers stranded there.
I say no-one, but that isn’t quite true. Someone is listening, and to add more irony to the issue, that someone is EverQuest’s original creator.
Brad McQuaid is legend amongst old school MMO gamers. As the creator of Everquest and then the troubled and almost-great Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, he never really has to do anything else. His place in history is assured. The problem is that no-one else is doing it, and being a gamer himself if he wants to play the game he wants to play, he’s going to have to make it himself. Again. And so he is.
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen may be a metaphor for than just the mythology of McQuaid’s latest MMO. A Kickstarter for the game officially failed, but with dogged persistence he and a small dedicated team have been grinding away and are now on the verge of serious funding after a solid showing at GDC this year.
The game itself promises to be what EQN could have been. It’s a deep, atmospheric, challenging romp through a high fantasy experience made by people who get it. I and many others are hoping it stays true to that vision, and that the team making it resist the temptation to “push the genre forward” so far they stumble over themselves in the same manner EQN did.
