SOE Becomes Daybreak / Russian shutdown
- Thread starter Laerazi_sl
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Sure, OK.. I'll bite.
The reason I asked the question, is because rather than sit in my office and pretend I know everything, I chose to go ASK people what they think, so I'd actually know. It's called research. The WORST kind of people in any business are the ones who pat themselves on the back, and pretend they know it all. I'm secure in myself enough to know I don't know everything, and go ask people what they think. Even if I (we) choose to do something different, at least I've asked and gotten feedback.
Oh.. and bite me.
Good news. Granted, he's worked on EQN's Combat System which, in its current iteration, sucks, but he's also been behind some pretty interesting design choices with itemization which, while not mentioned frequently as a major system of EQN, is going to be one of the more revolutionary pieces. He's a keeper.
Also confirmed:
Steve George, Producer of H1Z1 is IN. He must have had a small salary in comparison to Dave G. or Steve Danuser, because he's not very talented. Surprised they kept him. Almost as surprised as keeping Pentapod.
I know they were already about to focus on EQN but given all the shit that happened it's not too hard to see them going into open beta and letting Landmark pretty much rot.
That thing was never staged for the success Dave dreamed of. I wonder how much of a distraction it's been and how much it has worked against EQN? I'm sure it was intended to be a financial boost but it has a pretty tiny crowd that follows it and open beta isn't going to do much to boost it. Now their stuck maintaining an ugly duckling.
Good to see Eli is still on board and it seems like most of the core of the development side is still in tact. I'm a softy with all this, I hate seeing people lose their jobs.
That thing was never staged for the success Dave dreamed of. I wonder how much of a distraction it's been and how much it has worked against EQN? I'm sure it was intended to be a financial boost but it has a pretty tiny crowd that follows it and open beta isn't going to do much to boost it. Now their stuck maintaining an ugly duckling.
Good to see Eli is still on board and it seems like most of the core of the development side is still in tact. I'm a softy with all this, I hate seeing people lose their jobs.
Jysin
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Kudos to you for the honest reply.
I still find it shocking you get the title of "Assistant Lead Designer of EverQuest" and NOT know this beforehand.
I am hearing from a friend that they are cutting infrastructure people like the network and server guys also.....
Don't they usually cut the "creative" types first and then reevaluate in a while before cutting the services guys?
Don't they usually cut the "creative" types first and then reevaluate in a while before cutting the services guys?
Great post. I agree with everything you said. Frankly, I still think Landmark was a really good idea, even if it will never have a fraction of the popularity of Minecraft (or H1Z1 or EQ1 for that matter.) A lot of the issues that have plagued Landmark were going to take a lot of development time to fix for EQN anyway (performance issues in a voxel-based engine being chief among them, but also things like water, animations, and NPC pathing AI) and the vast, vast majority of the art is going to be used in Next. And frankly, the fact that they now have a small but dedicated playerbase of builders who are taking on major asset creation workstreams that the developers will be able to use is going to be enormously beneficial.
I'd guess - conservatively - that the "Qeynos Workshop" they're currently doing is going to speed up the development of a huge cityscape tremendously - since the developers at Daybreak can take modular pieces players have created and use them in a variety of ways.
We'll see how it shakes out.
Nope. Investment types like these hack and slash everyone and anyone. It's all about the numbers game. This isn't a gaming company or insider, but a group focused on return on investment and lowering costs as fast as possible.
Depends. Usually it's handled first by looking at role redundancies and seeing areas where, say, two people are handling a single job. Then, for project based work, looking at projects that are near completion (this is what I believed happened with Danuser, since most of the lore documentation is already written). Then, it's usually support staff that don't immediately impact the development of a product (e.g. community teams, PR, executive assistants, etc.).
Imagine that network/server guys being cut are considered role redundancies - e.g. two people handling a job, usually in silos from each other, that could actually be done by a single person (even if it means more work.)
Also, a massive project like EQNext/landmark is too high a risk to get a reasonable return, consider EQnext dead.
Jimbolini
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So what the hell is left? There has to be something they want to launch, otherwise why buy it?
Frankly, Convo, I don't see it. Not sure I understand your argument here - please help me to see it. What specific aspects of Landmark's development do you believe have held up EQN? The only things I can think of would be the User Interface, the Sci Fi props and materials, and potentially parts of the crafting system. Everything else seems like it would have needed to happen anyway regardless of Landmark's existence.
EQNext isn't dead. The hype is still very real, especially among those who are less informed than the posters on Rerolled. The EQNext excitement and H1Z1 are the only things making Daybreak a worthy investment at this point.
I would speculate that they will most likely sell off IP's to get a return, not launch something. If Daybreak survives in some incarnation it will probably shift to a market the investor deems profitable. That"s entirely up to them, probably mobile apps/games or something. Doom and gloom I know, on the SOE/Daybreak forums people are clamoring for Landmark refunds now. To the suits that is most likely the final nail in the coffin for Landmark/Next.
Convo
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Eql was a test bed for EQN in some aspects. EQN was essentially waiting on EQL to shape it. the resources were put on EQL instead of EQN. It definitely slowed up EQN release. There was a team working on each. Not to mention them waiting for EQL open beta before they ramped up EQN work.