Sony Online Entertainment remains the juggernaut in the MMO industry, with more than ten titles currently on the market, with more on the way this coming year. Already released is DC Universe Online, based on the popular comic books characters and worlds. Aside from DCU, SOE has three titles that are on their way, two of which should be released by the end of the year.
First in line is expected to come in March, the sequel to Planetside codenamed Planetside Next. The next incarnation is anticipated to take the large scale battles of Planetside, and make them even bigger. As John Smedley stated in an interview with Eurogamer:
“And we haven’t announced a release date for it but you can expect it… We’re looking at late first-quarter, early second-quarter [2011].”
Next up, The Agency, expected to launch late this year. The Agency may be smaller in scale than Planetside (expected to be mostly instanced with social lobbies), but Smedley has big hopes for the game post-release, and is allowing the team to take as long as they need to make sure the game is up to snuff.
“One thing that we’ve learned over our company’s history is that it takes time to make great games. And we’re not trying to make cookie-cutter MMOs. There’s some stuff coming out in the next two or three months, MMO-wise, and a lot of it is generic copycats of other games. That’s not what we want to do. We want to make new experiences for people. So The Agency is a new kind of MMO so we want to make sure it’s as good as it can be.”
Third in line is Everquest Next. Although not slated to release for a good while, Everquest Next is expected to take the world of Norrath and turn it on its head. The number of classes and races is confirmed to be reduced, less than Everquest II and likely more around the numbers in Everquest. With a new art style, new lands to travel, and no doubt tons of lore to become accustomed to, Everquest Next may also be heading onto the Playstation 3 to saddle up with Sony’s increasing number of MMOs slated for release on the console.
MMO Fallout 
That date of late first quarter or early second quarter has to be for the announcement of the actual release date, or an official announcement of the game. The dolts at EuroGamer must have screwed that up or failed to follow that up since they were too busy fawning over Smed in their so-called interview.
SOE cannot possibly have Planet Side Next in the hopper and ready to go right this minute, which would have to be the case. If it is, they have totally blown the whole concept of marketing… which I guess wouldn’t be totally unheard of.
But I would put money on there being no Planet Side Next this year. And, frankly, after all this time, a bet against The Agency for 2011 seems pretty safe too.
I completely agree,
Writing release date articles are a bit of comedic relief for me among the “real” news like Frogster leaking accounts and Interplay/Bethesda competing to prove who can out-crazy the other in court.
Generally I don’t write articles about release dates, I just silently update the Calendar page (below) and maybe tweet about it, but otherwise they are just PR articles, and that’s not what this website is about. On the other hand, I wanted to talk about Sony’s over-saturated portfolio, so talking about releases this year just fit in. I do have a separate piece I am working on with more detail for that.
https://mmofallout.com/calendar/
“With a new art style, new lands to travel, and no doubt tons of lore to become accustomed to, Everquest Next …”
If all that is true then it hardly even sounds like an EverQuest game. I’m particularly afraid that “new art style” means anime style character models and WOW type armor. EQ2 started defaulting to the alternate models that had been developed for the Asian market and overblown armor styles started creeping in awhile ago. Spell effects also went more towards superhero game effects, along with crazy light effects for combat moves. I still enjoy EQ2 despite these things I don’t like, but it sounds like EQNext might be an even bigger dose of those elements. Thanks for the advance warning on this.
Hello,
I apologize for the late approval of your comment, I’ve been out all week without Internet access and i am actually posting this from my iPad at the Philadelphia airport. If the concept art we’ve seen is anything to go off of, Everquest Next is likely to look closer to WoW than its predecessors. Of course a lot changes so we will have to wait until in game screenshots come out.
Cheers,
“Closer to WOW” wouldn’t surprise me. In addition to the WOW type armor additions to EQ2, they went and “Wowified” the spells not too long ago. In fact, not only spells, but they added silly (IMO) magical effects to combat arts. I did watch a battle on the Lavastorm beach last night taking down a huge statuesque god-like mob and the combined spell effects were more entertaining than I thought they would be, but individually some of the spell effects are so literal as to be annoying. On the other hand, I really enjoyed having my melee characters in semi-realistic armor and nice character combat animations rather then a lot of magical special effects for combat moves. I played and enjoyed WOW, and I prefer WOW art to the FF type style. However, I prefer the original EQ and EQ2 style. I was hoping for the same art style but with higher resolution and more added details. Oh well! I guess I’m out of step with their target market.
I really hope Eq Next will also be available on the pc. That is my concern. And I also hope their new art style is not cartoony as well….I remember when eq2 came out and it was known for being eye candy. But a great game too! They need to incorporate that; top notch graphics.