SOE purchased and becomes Daybreak Game Company

Yes, pretty much. EQ is a mob grinding game. I’ve been playing again, and I love it again. I really really like the fact that the classes have such distinct roles in this game. Every other mmo on the planet has moved towards ‘everyone can do everything’, and the classes all feel like very minor variations of the same. EQ classes have such great personality, and interaction in a group.

Playing a bard or a chanter in EQ, is just an experience you can’t get anywhere else. Bard alone is worth the price of admission, at least for me.

I’ve been 3 boxing and trying various combos of classes, which I find endlessly entertaining. I don’t know if I could sit in front of one character at this point, unless I was doing something intensive like raiding, but for every day tooling around the world, boxing is an absolute hoot. I will be severely sad when they shut this game down.

I think EQ2 is in more danger, actually. At the least it needs a server consolidation. On my EQ1 server, /who all <class> was always cut off. The same query on Eq2 always yielded a handful of results.

I spent a few hours digging around the necro forums and the like and have a better idea of what I’m doing now. I went to the Old Bloodfields zone at 85, but all the mobs were grey to me. I’m not sure I was in the correct area.

Your confusion may be that there are two zones similarly named - Bloodfields and Old Bloodfields. The former you get to by going to place where the Omens of War expansion took place (have the Priest of Discord dude in PoK teleport you there), the latter you get to through the Plane of Time (have the Herald dude teleport you there). I gather there was an entire expansion a while back whilst I wasn’t playing that essentially just cloned a bunch of zones and bumped the mob levels.

John Smedley has left Daybreak. He was previously “on hiatus” but Daybreak has confirmed that he’s not coming back.

Meanwhile, Smedly has teased that he’s starting a new company. Name to be revealed.

Must have just finished out his six month non-compete?

Next stop, Kickstarter?

Vision, Inc.

Smedley Online Entertainment

Smedley sounds like something obscene I’d need to look up on UrbanDictionary after seeing people 10 years my junior slinging it around in a twitter slap-fight.

The Legends of Norrath EverQuest based trading card game is shutting down.

https://www.legendsofnorrath.com/community.vm?Id=legends-of-norrath-closure-notification-2016

I played this a lot at release, but disliked everything about the game other than the actual matches themselves. The inventory UI and card trading system was a huge chore and detracted from the experience enough that I stopped playing after the first two expansions, but ever since Hearthstone took over the world and showed us how CCGs could be done right in video game form, I’ve been a little resentful that a proper classic EQ themed CCG would never have anything near the popularity or success as the juggernaut that is Hearthstone.

Daybreak is also shutting down the original PlanetSide.

Wow, was that still going? I know it had some sort of small revival when PS2 was new, but I just thought it was a temporary promotional thing.

Played the hell out of PS2 over the years. Don’t play it anymore though due to low population during my hours of play. Never took to the first one though, was too deep into EQ during its hey day.

DAYBREAK SAYS IT HAS ‘NO AFFILIATION’ WITH COLUMBUS NOVA, THE COMPANY SAID TO HAVE BOUGHT IT IN 2015 (AND WHOSE ASSETS ARE NOW BEING FROZEN)

A chain of business connections could have a real and dire impact on Daybreak Games Company following the freezing of company assets by the U.S. government.

On April 6th, the U.S. Department of the Treasury targeted several Russian oligarchs and froze their assets due to “destabilizing activities” by these figures (including suspected interference in the 2016 U.S. election). One of the oligarchs so punished was Viktor Vekselberg, who owns the Renova Group conglomerate and its subsidiary, Columbus Nova.

Columbus Nova, you may recall, is the parent company of Daybreak Games. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control has given Renova and other Russian companies until June 5th to “wind down operations, contracts, or other agreements” involving these figures.

Between $1.5 and $2 billion assets from Vekselberg have been frozen as the result of these sanctions. It is unclear if any of Columbus Nova’s assets are part of this. Renova isn’t commenting on the situation, but EverQuest II players and other Daybreak Games users are starting to legitimately worry about the future of their games as this information has come to life.

Daybreak issued to Massively OP the following statement stating that it is not in fact owned by Columbus Nova, which should lift more than a few eyebrows

More at the link.

Basically, Daybreak is currently claiming they weren’t purchased by Columbus Nova in 2015 and that the original press releases, and initial tweets by John Smedley, were mistakes that are now being corrected. They distancing themselves from the asset freezes. More info in the latter half of article.

Interestingly, the Daybreak Studios Wikipedia entry was edited on April 5th by a user who also had several edits to the Columbus Nova page reverted. He changed it to say Daybreak was sold to Jason Epstein, one of the Columbus Nova managing directors, rather than Columbus Nova holdings.

It looks like Columbus Nova is trying to protect itself from the sanctions.

Yea, it’s fishy.

I feel bad that my 19 year old EQ1 characters are probably all going to die.

Crazy. I quit EQ after 19 years about 3 months ago. No regrets. Sad to see what has become of the game tho. I miss the Fan Fests most of all =(

I haven’t played the game seriously in several years, but my wife and I parked all of our characters in various places fondly memorable to us, and it’s just sort of cool to know they’re still in there adventuring together.

I do log in once a year or so just to run around for nostalgia’s sake, which is easy thanks to the free-to-play transition a few years ago, but I don’t do anything besides mundane stuff like Freeport to Qeynos runs or something for the memories.

This is straight up crazy. I had no idea there was even Russian involvement in Daybreak.

There likely isn’t, a holding company that owns tons of companies bought Daybreak as an investment and they happened to be owned by a Russian oligarch.

Wow. Thats freaky. Good luck to all my old colleagues.