Another notch on Smed’s belt-o-failure has been added. Too bad no one in 2013 could have possibly predicted this…
And so continues the story of the one-hit-wonder that was/is SOE, now with awkward bastard child Landmark hanging in the wind. Classic SOE though to say “no no, Landmark is fine”. Lies even from the grave, it’s almost respectable how little self-worth or pride that studio has.
Hardcore Casual 
Your prediction appears to be wrong. You have to ship an AAA title to qualify as a disaster, no?
I’d say a game getting shut down because it wasn’t fun is a disaster, isn’t it?
Dying a quiet death without ever seeing the light of day or taking a nickel of early access cash… the usual SOE/Daybreak routine… seems a fair distance from “next big AAA disaster.”
Wait so now we are giving points for not collecting money for a game that was never released… actually that’s fair, and indeed very rare in SOE-land.
The project is still very much a disaster considering sunk cost vs return (zero), in addition to all those SOE people since 2013 saying how great it was shaping up and blablabla.
Hah! Nice “Heads I win/Tails you lose!” setup there. A disaster would have been them shipping it anyway because of the sunk costs. Them shelving an non-viable project is likely the smart move. Or are you claiming otherwise?
So, yeah, we’re giving points for not making things worse or wasting even more money or tarnishing their reputation even further. That is the way things work in the real world.
The 2013 post is based on what they showed/said, and with that info, I called the game an upcoming disaster. It being cancelled because it wasn’t fun is confirmation of that. Was the parkour not fun? Maybe. Was the weap/skill thing as unfun as in GW2? Likely. Was the general “SOE games are terrible” aspect in play? Easy money says yes.
So sure, give them a +1 for not going the H1Z1 route and releasing garbage to grab some cash, but that doesn’t change the fact that EQN is a failure, and likely failed in part because what was presented in 2013 wasn’t fun, as they said.
Failed project, yes. In a world where things like Tabula Rasa have gone live… not so much a disaster in my book. In my book “disaster” has to have bigger consequences. Again, reputations suffer for shipping shit, not stopping shit before it ships.
SOE would need a reputation beyond “We made EQ1 in 99, and trash every since!” for that to matter. Spending tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to produce something that not even SOE-standards allows for a release is a disaster.
Disaster etymologically means “bad star”. In interstellar terms, traveling a fair distance leaves you pretty much where you started. This a good metaphor to understand why your argument fails. A fair distance from a disaster is just a slightly less bad disaster.
Context matters too. Shelving a new idea that doesn’t work is a setback. A struggling studio shelving an expensive sequel to a hit game is a disaster
Are you sure they did it because it was the right decision? I think it’s likely that it was done because the new owner didn’t want to pay for further development of what they had done at Sony.
In terms of disaster I think it’s pretty high up there considering they sold landmark as part of the EQ next dream. Imagine being one of those people who got the lifetime thing they had for landmark, sitting there having build stuff for a game which now won’t release.
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