The sandbox game Landmark is closing, and with it, all remnants of Everquest Next will disappear. The project was once supposed to revolutionize the MMORPG genre, but now it ends unspectacularly.
“The world will not end with a bang, but with a whimper,” says a poem by T.S. Eliot, and so, as announced, Landmark ended yesterday after hopes for the game and what it stood for had faded away some time ago – with a quiet, creeping death.
The sandbox MMO Landmark did not last a year before the lights went out. With Landmark, the dream of Everquest Next also comes to an end. This MMORPG of the “next generation” with destructible landscapes and dynamic AI was once envisioned as a kind of “toolbox” and “playable alpha test”. However, after development on Everquest Next was halted, Landmark no longer had a real future either.
Everquest Next simply never came together, it was said, it wasn’t fun to play. There may have also been financial reasons. After all, the team shifted from Sony, a corporation that could afford a prestige project, to a group of investors. The numbers no longer added up. Everquest Next was considered too ambitious, too bold.
Although Landmark was still launched as a game, it probably never had a fair chance. After all, what is the use of a toolbox if you’ll never really play with the results?
The US site Massively Overpowered covered the final moments of Landmark with a stream.
Most importantly, MO also compiled tweets from former developers, most of whom are no longer with the company, some for a long time. Some of the laid-off developers had already said in between: “We could have made it if they had just given us more time.” Even now, the tone is full of regret, but also the feeling that something great has ended and failed, although it should have gone differently.
The former president of SOE, John Smedley, speaks of a tragedy. EQ Next could have been so glorious. They could have achieved it. Smedley speaks of a waste.
The mind behind EQ Next, David Georgeson, quotes Shakespeare’s Hamlet for farewell.
Eric Smith, a former producer at SOE, says he is sad to see the team’s and fans’ work wasted.
Read more about the announced end of Everquest Next here:
Landmark is being shut down – spin-off of Everquest Next lasts less than a year
There is hope that the ideas of Everquest Next will live on in other games. A hot candidate here is Ashes of Creation, a studio with former SOE employees.
Ashes of Creation sounds like Everquest Next – You shape the world
