14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Sony Online Entertainment announces that it is working on EverQuest Next, a new MMO which is set to redefine the genre and to allow players themselves to create content alongside the studio.
The company says that the new game has been in the works since 2009 and that it currently has no clear launch date.
John Smedley, the president of SOE, states, “With EverQuest Next, we’re going back to our roots — a space we defined with the EverQuest legacy — and ushering in a new era of MMOs: The Emergent Era.”
He adds, “we’re creating a living world that players are part of and empowering them to produce new content alongside the development team. What does the future hold for EverQuest Next and Sony Online Entertainment? It’s in the players’ hands, and we like it that way.”
EverQuest Next will introduce multi-classing, allowing gamers to create a character that perfectly fits their style of play.
The MMO has no levels, but the team plans to offer 40 professions to choose from on launch and each of them will be linked to unique skills and weapons.
All the environments in EverQuest Next will be destructible, and players will have to interact and manipulate the game world in order to finish quests and defeat powerful enemies.
The SOE game will have 10,000 years of lore to explore and will give gamers options to travel to the heavens and the depths of the earth.
Some of the changes made to the world of EverQuest will be permanent, made mainly via large player-powered wars and epic quest chains that will take place over entire months.
The AI of the non-player characters will have its own aims and preferences in EverQuest Next and it will learn from the MMO how to better work with or against the player.