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Sigil was most likely the one that pushed the release. If you read the press release that announced that Sigil and SOE were going to work together, the following excerpt sticks out:

So SOE is only on the hook for operational and promotional costs, NOT development costs. The costs of operations and promotion are static, it's the cost of development that can drag on. The more polished the game is, the better the launch, the more money SOE would make per dollar invested. It's simple business.

From that, you have to assume that Sigil pushed for launch, not SOE. I can understand why, they have been paying a fair number of (expensive) developers without any revenue on the books. They probably need to see some money coming in to show their investors that they are worth continued funding.

What most people don't realize, and what Sony hopes they don't realize until it's too late (e.g. already bought EQ2 retail box, and signed up for a few months, and maybe even got hooked on the shitty game) - is that the guys who built EQ1 are not building EQ2. Your SWG references are pefect, because in terms of development/release/gameplay talent, EQ2 has more in common with SWG than EQ1.

Designing a really good MMORPG is a very hard thing, and there's a very small pool of talent who can really do it right. They (Verant, Sony) has the right guys doing the right stuff when EQ1 was built. The EQ2 team is not the same guys.

Incidentally, some of those magically talented guys that brought EQ1 into this world are currently working on a new games at http://www.sigilgames.com

Their new game is promising, if nothing else because of the guys behind it, but it's considerably behind the schedule of games like WoW and EQ2.

Actually "the ones who created the original crack addiction" are now all working on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes over at Sigil Games

Very unlikely the unannounced title will disappear.

They're talking about Sigil's game. The original creator of EverQuest and a bunch of people that worked on EQ created a company to create a MMORPG due probably around 2006.

The company is called Sigil Games Online and is made up of the creative minds that designed the original Everquest. Sigil has hired up a lot of the Everquest talent, (which may account for the odd ball expansions that have been released. ie PoP, LoY, GoD, and Luclin). Also, Sigil has only hired experienced people. Expect a good game out of these people. They are MUD players, Pen and Paper Players and people who suffered the problems of the original MMoRPGs. They also have ears directly connected to the online community and they listen to what people like and dislike.

For some serious, insightful discussion on how to create good MMO(RP)G's. Pitfalls to avoid, what players like, what players think they like but should actually be avoided etc etc, Sigil Games has a very good community. Visit their forums here!

(These are the guys who made the original EverQuest, for the most part)

For some serious, insightful discussion on how to create good MMO(RP)G's. Pitfalls to avoid, what players like, what players think they like but should actually be avoided etc etc, Sigil Games has a very good community. Visit their forums here!

(These are the guys who made the original EverQuest, for the most part)

In truth, sony pours TONS of money into Everquest. Their bandwidth alone is huge. Add onto that that they have a full development team for dealing with the implimented game, (the live team: fixes bugs, etc), and then another whole development team that builds expansions and such to add content. They are contuiously changing the core code of the game, (such to add features not implimented in the original game such as 2 new user interfaces since the game was released).

They have 50ish servers compromising, (from what I understand), of roughly 30 computers per server, which means for every patch they are possibly updating around 1500. (Though it should be noted that I doubt they patch every computer every patch.) Also, these servers are located in both the United States and in Europe. And they are expected to have minor patches done in 2 hours, major patches, (for things such as expansions), done in 8. And no loss of any amount of data, (such as what character has which items), is tollerated in any way. Because of this their network administration must be near flawless.

Now lets look at what we have down the pipe. We have games that are being thrown together by people who come from single player games instead of MUDs and D&D. We have people who design games with out the backing of the enormious companies it takes to supply the capital required for a 4 to 5 year development cycle, implimentation of the enormious amount of hardware, the marketting, and the payroll for the support staff. We have people who don't realize that they must either be perfect at what they do, (see blizzard), or tap a previously untapped nitch, (Star Wars Galaxies) of MMoG potential. It would be wise that they make sure that the nitch exists and that the model for advancement in the game actually holds water first though (The Sims: Online).

In the end, we will have many companies that put 2/3rds of the work and money into making the games all competing with each other for a very small populace of people who are not already commited to as many games as they can afford time wise and monitarily. Most of them will die out, just like the dot-com bust.

But many games will pervail. Star Wars Galaxies will likely be as big, if not bigger than Everquest. Worlds of Warcraft shows amazing promise. Horizons seems to be a crowd favorite. And whatever product is being build by Sigil will be one of the leading contenders. (For those who don't know, the company is run by the people who made the decisions about Everquests form and is funded by microsoft. They also have recruited alot of the senior staff that had previously worked for the Everquest team.)

But with the majority of the market for Online RPGs and D&D type worlds already accounted for through Everquest, (or soon to be picked up by the above mentioned games), Developers better have a spot for their game to fit and they better do a DAMN good job of designing it, populating it, and supporting it if they plan on recouping their losses.

Like Blizzard and Diablo, pretty much the entire original design team of the game has already left, and this version will be designed and balanced by the people that did such an excellent job on the last two expansions.

Background : The newest expansion was released in December last year. The two big selling points, the special Trade Zone, and the new user interface *still* haven't been added to the game after 5 months, yet they have already announced the next expansion due this December, along with EQ2, EQ for Playstation and the special $40/month "Legends" servers.

The entire live development team was layed off, leaving zones from the expansion before that one still screwed up - the "Plane of Mischief" and "Sleepers Tomb" which have been written off by Verant and won't have any further resources devoted to them, despite long and detailed archives of what is wrong with then

Apart from the Interface and the Bazaar zone, high end guilds are finding that the content in this game is designed for you to spend 2 months equipping 80+ members of your guild with special weapons so you can attack one mob to get one item, which you then use to spend 2 months getting 10 more components to get a key so you can enter the *NEXT* zone, where the cycle will begin again.

Meanwhile, the people who wrote EQ1 have formed their own company and are busy hiring all the talent from Verant, who never signed non-compete clauses.

So Verant is left with under-talented artists who (due to contracts sorted out at the peak of their success) are on $80,000 - $120,000 /year to produce third rate high-poly models that bog down the highest end system any time you get more then 5 of them on the screen.

Meanwhile, their design team is designing encounters that need *70 to 90* people to work in precise co-ordination for 30 minutes, and then act suprised when people start complaining.

To top all this off, they announced that any existing customer from EQ1 who wants to join EQ2 will have to start all over from scratch, and the end result of this is a widespread "Well, when EQ2 comes out, I guess I can finally quit and get this damn monkey off my back"

The sad thing is, they'll probably still sell about 200,000 copies.