Maybe I am overthinking things or just being paranoid.Follow

I am starting to think that Daybreak bought Sony Entertainment just the shutdown EverQuest first they shut down EverQuest Next and now they've shut down Landmark.

Edited, Jan 6th 2017 1:04am by jamesbartonjr007

I played Landmark in alpha and beta. Was a really cool game. I built a large pyramid which I called my home for a while. I hate to hear they are closing it down.

Daybreak Games just isn't as flexible as they used to be when they had a big corporation like Sony to bail them out of hard times. Now they have an investment firm running the show so that flexibility is out the window.

It sucks for those who were die hard fans and people who worked on Landmark but hopefully they at least spread out the Landmark team out into Daybreak. I'd had to see any of them lose their jobs. I know they had some of the best of the best working on Landmark. Maybe we can get Sklug working on EQ again!

DBG will probably be the company that eventually "shuts down" EQ, assuming they still even own it at the end, but I can't imagine they bought EQ for the sole purpose of shutting it down. This isn't like when a company buys a factory, shuts it down and moves all the equipment overseas. A game company's only assets are THE GAME, the employees who work there, and some hardware. You can hire employees without buying their employer and you can buy hardware anywhere. DBG bought EQ for the intellectual property rights in the games. That's my thinking.

I am mildly impressed with some of the changes they've made. For example, they've sneakily introduced more micro-transactions into the game. For example, consider the zone-wide rares in EK. These darn items are super-over-powered, even compared to most raid drops and they're tradeable. And boy are they being traded. From what I see, the average asking price is 10-25 kronos. Even at game values, this is between $100-250 PER ITEM. Jeepers, that's a lot of money for ONE pixelated electronic do-dad! Those kronos have to originate with DBG so that's what I mean about micro-transactions. A 25-krono sale at some point generated, what, over $400 in sales to DBG. Heck, at these prices I'd call them not-so-micro-transactions.

For years I've advocated a non-raiding path for group and solo players to acquire raid-quality gear. Well, they introduced it: basically they can just buy their way to raid-quality gear! That would not have been MY choice. I always advocated long intricate quests, or complex and difficult tradeskill work. But at least nowadays non-raiders can sport the best gear in the game---and even sell it or trade it when they get tired of it!

And the new expansion is NOT bad. I was disappointed with the beta, because some of the wide open zones I visited were really desolate with very few mobs. They looked barren. But they've beefed up the mob count, while retaining that Kunark atmosphere of huge outdoor zones with mobs widely spread out. The dungeons are really pretty cool and while I haven't had time to play much, the planting of nameds and named drops seems well designed. The quests and progression paths look interesting, albeit very reminiscent of recent previous expansions. EK is too small, for sure. It should have had more zones. But considering they're still adding entire expansions to a very old game... well that's a real good sign they didn't buy EQ to shut it down.

I think you will see DBG introduce more and more options to drain more real life cash out of players. That does seem to be a major part of their design strategy.

Edited, Jan 9th 2017 7:15am by Sippin