EverQuest Next is the latest offering from Sony Online, with news reports saying that the MMORPG will be a reboot of the franchise, offering better monster intelligence, destructible environments, user-created content, and a more robust crafting system. A beta sign up was recently set up for the game.
Sony just launched a beta sign up for the game this week, and the final game is slated release sometime in 2014, but a Minecraft-like game called EverQuest Next Landmark will be released in the winter. It’s a different game, but it offers a sandbox world that allows players to build buildings, objects, and other content. If the objects and structures are quality enough, Sony might use them in the final game next year.
“Today, many MMOs fail because players consume content faster than developers can create it. With EverQuest Next, we’re creating a living world that players are part of and empowering them to produce new content alongside the development team. What does the future hold forEverQuest Next and Sony Online Entertainment? It’s in the players’ hands, and we like it that way,” SOE president John Smedley told CinemaBlend.com.
Sony Online Entertainment Director of Design David Georgeson told IGN that EverQuest Next will break the mold of traditional MMORPGs.
“What we need to deliver with EverQuest Next is something really original, so what we did was tear it down to the bedrock,” Georgeson told the website. “We pick what we liked, what we didn’t like, and we came up with a list of holy grails that we as designers had always wanted to do, but never had the time or the intestinal fortitude to try before.”
He acknowledges that the original EverQuest, which came out in 1998, essentially laid the foundation for how MMORPGs are today, but he said that something new is needed to revive a now-stagnant genre.
The gameplay also dynamically changes based on characters’ actions.
“Every day is different from the previous or next one,” Smedley told the Wall Street Journal. “If I come in today and you come in tomorrow, the game is going to be different.”
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