A new Everquest MMO game, which we’ll call Everquest 3 from here on out for simplicity, is currently in the ‘ideation phase’. The news came from Enad Global 7’s 2023 Capital Markets Day, where EG7 CEO Ji Ham outlined the company’s plans for its biggest franchises.
Everquest 3 was singled out by Ham as the most important intellectual property owned by Enad Global 7. The executive also reminded everyone that the first installment ushered in the golden age of MMORPG, and was a major inspiration for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.
This new game is still far off. According to the plan outlined to investors, the start of the planned $30 million investment is scheduled for 2025, with a 2028 target launch date. Of course, these dates are extremely tentative. It is also unclear whether the game is already in some form of pre-production; if not, a three-year development span for an MMORPG seems extremely optimistic.
Interestingly, Ham referenced Elden Ring in relation to Everquest 3. He claimed to be a major fan of FromSoftware’s approach, adding that they showed hardcore can be mainstream with the over 20 million units sold by Elden Ring. Everquest was originally pretty hardcore as far as MMO go, so one of the objectives is to ‘stay true to the original experience’ with the new game.
Of course, fans of the fantasy MMO franchise have been burned hard before. A decade ago, Daybreak (now owned by EG7) unveiled Everquest Next, a next-generation MMORPG featuring both the standard quest-based design and a worldbuilding tool called Landmark. The latter even entered beta testing, with Founders and Explorers getting access to the beta phase.
Unfortunately, the development on Everquest Next was eventually stopped in March 2016, as the developers claimed they could not make it fun.
Beyond Everquest 3, EG7 is also working on a new H1Z1 sandbox survival franchise entry. This project is in the concept phase and should enter pre-production in the first half of 2024 for a targeted 2026 launch.
Lastly, EG7 also owns Piranha Games, which has licensed MechWarrior from Microsoft. A new small-scale co-op multiplayer DLC is being planned for a 2027 launch; note that this clearly isn’t MechWarrior 5: Clans, due to debut in 2024, but another game in that vein.
