EverQuest Next Cancelled Because it "Wasn't Fun": Landmark Goes B2P

By Michael Byrne, Editor-in-Chief March 11, 2016

In what comes as either no surprise at all or as the biggest surprise of 2016 so far (depending on your thoughts for the last year,) Daybreak Game Company ended speculation today when their President, Russell Shanks, officially announced that EverQuest Next, the highly touted upcoming EverQuest based MMORPG, has had development cancelled.

In the official announcement, Shanks states that "In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun."

Obviously there has to be more to the situation than that as "not being fun" is something the team would likely have determined quite some time ago.

What the announcement does not say is what this means for the long term on the Landmark front, if any of the existing EverQuest Next assets will be moved over into another project, or if we'll even see a "next installment" of the long running popular franchise.

Landmark was mentioned by Holly Longdale, Executive Producer on EQ and EQII and now Executive Producer on Landmark, on the forums where she not only announced that Landmark will launch this spring but will also be sold for $9.99 rather than go in a free-to-play direction.

"The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak. EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts. EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong. Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished," concluded Shanks.

Are you surprised by the news or did you believe as I did that the end of "Next" was foretold quite some time ago? Let us know in the comments below!

Got a news tip? Contact us directly here!

In this article: Everquest Next, daybreak game company.

About the Author

Michael Byrne, Editor-in-Chief
Mike “Magicman” Byrne has been a part of the MMOBomb family for years and serves as the site’s current Editor-in-Chief. His love for MMOs and gaming in general has led him to covering games for numerous websites including Gamebreaker TV and XIV Nation where he proudly displays his fanboy flag for FFXIV:ARR.

detestt 5 years ago

Get Rekt Gamebreak

Player1 5 years ago

Everyone already knew that NeverQuest: Never had been walking on the fail path a long time ago, forever beta games aren't meant to be released, and if they do, those few games will be there to suffer from poor optimization, mass glitches, endless bugs and so on till they get shut down, it just the way the mmo world works man

Jooq 5 years ago

We all knew that it's gonna happen. And screw Landmark -.- Daybreak - retarded company. bet they stopped development long ago.

Dio 5 years ago

Time to put your money into a better computer to run black desert.

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IDGAF 5 years ago

DAYBREAK = THE WORST COMPANY ON THE WORLD. I hope they go Bankrupt soon... maybe we should all boykott them. Dont buy shit from them we need to stand together and destroy the evil called DAYBREAK. Stop play there games. We need to ruin them they are subhumans.

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Urs00 5 years ago

yeah, right, after years of development a PUBLISHER won't launch a game because it is "boring"... who would even do that? especially a company controlled by investors

if it was actually just boring, they would do like black desert, make it b2p, sell a bunch of copies just with the hype and let the game die

there is only one reason to do this, to use the assets and probably the codes to make a cheap knock-off for quick money, maybe a mobile or a moba...

Deathloche 5 years ago

What the hell is going on over they with Daybreak? They are almost just as bad as Trion Worlds.

Old EQ Player 5 years ago

Henceforth shall now forever be known as "Everquest: Never".

This is truly unfortunate, but I saw this coming since SoE was sold off.

mmm 5 years ago

Should have just released a broken game and milked the sh!t out of it.

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SqueezyTime 5 years ago

Not surprising. It was painfully obvious that Everquest Next was going absolutely nowhere. Hopefully the assets will be put to good use; though, given Daybreak's current track record, I won't hold my breath.