EQ Next = Canceled but Landmark = Launching
And just like that, my dreams of playing a super cartoony Ratonga in EQN is gone. Sad day.
You’ve probably heard this news from other places. If you’ve been following the whole ordeal of Daybreak for a while, this is probably surprising-but-not-surprising.
I invested in Landmark’s Alpha. I knew things weren’t going well for a while. I knew the moment that they dropped the blueprint for Landmark and communication trickled down to near nothing compared to what it was before. The writing was on the wall for all of us, but there was that tiny bit of hope that EQN might survive.
Alas, not.
Interestingly enough, while Daybreak announced the death of EQN today, it also announced the official “launch” of Landmark. I know they have a big patch coming out soon, but honestly, the game does not feel finished enough for a launch. There was so much from the vision and blueprint that has never seen the light of day. The game is no where near optimized for play, IMHO.
Oh, and it’s also now $9.99 – not free to play like we were told it would be. Sounds familiar.
And now that Landmark folks are no longer building for EQN as we were told we were… I wonder if motivation will fall off even more for the few talented builders who remain. I know they are going to wipe our plots and lock down the size of claims we can have. It’s honestly going to take quite a bit for me to rouse myself to get back in there and find another claim.
I’ve been logging in about once a month to hold on to the island that I claimed. But since I’m going to lose it anyway, I might just let it all go.
To me, it really feels like they said, “Well, EQN is dead. Let’s just boot Landmark out the door with a few new features as a ‘finished’ product so we don’t have two failures on our hands.”