Sony hints at EverQuest 3 on PS3
Read between the lines.
Sony Online Entertainment has hinted to Eurogamer that EverQuest 3 will be released for PS3.
"We've publicly announced that we have another EverQuest game in development," SOE president John Smedley told us.
Will it come to console?
"Can't comment on that," he said, and then added: "All I can say is we are a Sony company, and we are very, very proud of the work we've done on DC Universe Online, which is multi-platform; and we are very, very proud of the work we have done on The Agency, which is multi-platform."
In other words: read between the lines.
EverQuest Next, as the project is currently known, was announced in August 2010. Sony Online has talked of the game as a "reboot" and will cull class numbers, present a new art style and ensure the game can be played on rubbish laptops as well as a beefy desktop PCs.
But EverQuest Next won't be the first EverQuest game to arrive on PlayStation hardware. EverQuest Online Adventures, released 2003, boldly attempted to shoe-horn the famous MMO IP onto PlayStation 2.
Clearly that didn't deter Sony Online Entertainment which, after a quiet period, begins a flurry of PC and PS3 releases starting today with DC Universe Online.
That's a superhero MMO. Join that with The Agency, a modern day action game; Planetside Next, a sci-fi shooter; Free Realms, a casual fantasy game; and the only glaring omission is a traditional orcs and elves virtual world - hence EverQuest Next/3.
EverQuest, if you really don't know, is one of the founding fathers of the MMO genre. Ultima Online may have brought the genre to everybody's attention, but EverQuest was the first popular 3D fantasy world - the likes of which we see with better graphics today.
EverQuest II, released 2004, suffered at the hands of World of Warcraft. Nevertheless, there's a loyal following and the servers are populated and active today.