For those keeping up with the game’s development, the cancellation might not come as a particularly large surprise. Everquest Next was first announced in 2010, and details about the game had been scarce in the five year interval between the start of its development to the date of its cancellation. There was little concrete information about the game to feel confident about, and Daybreak Games had been so quiet about its development that it was easy to forget Everquest Next was even being made at all.
Despite the fact that the Everquest Next project ultimately failed, it was not due to a lack of ambition from its developers. Daybreak Games had big plans for the MMORPG genre, as the studio aimed for Everquest Next to be the first MMO with Oculus Rift support among other innovative features like mobs leaving their initial spawning locations if players started farming them too much.
Daybreak Games had also planned for Everquest Next to use a free-to-play model, and advocated strongly for others considering developing MMO games to do the same. Daybreak president Russell Shanks wrote that, while he believes the studio had created some incredible and innovative features within their internal build of Everquest Next, “unfortunately, as [Daybreak] put together the pieces, [Daybreak] found that it wasn’t fun.”
While it would have been nice for gamers to have the chance to decide how entertaining Everquest Next was themselves, Daybreak deserves some respect for scrapping a game the studio felt ultimately didn’t live up to its standards. Still, MMORPG fans have been dealt yet another blow to their hopes of a true World of Warcraft successor, just a year and a half after Blizzard announced the cancellation of its Titan MMO project.
What do you think of the announcement of Everquest Next’s cancellation? Do you think there will ever be a true successor to World of Warcraft, or has the era of the MMORPG begun to come to a close? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Daybreak Games Official Website (via Games Radar)
