SOE Live 2012: Smedley says EQNext is the 'largest sandbox-style MMO ever designed'
As we reported last night, Sony Online Entertainment dropped a few hints regarding the future of the EverQuest franchise at its annual SOE Live convention in Las Vegas. Though CEO John Smedley's keynote address focused mainly on the firm's non-EQ portfolio, the EQNext tidbit was a doozy.
I have to be honest with you. We have completely blown up the design of EverQuest Next. For the last year and a half we have been working on something we are not ready to show. Why did we blow up the design? The design was evolutionary. It was EverQuest III. It was something that was slightly better than what had come before it. It was slightly better.
What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox-style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you've never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn't want more kill 10 rats quests. We didn't want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they're delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.
Smedley went on to mention that veteran EQ devs Dave Georgeson and Terry Michaels are spearheading the project, and he promised that it would be playable at next year's SOE Live event.
