Category Archives: EverQuest II

Thoughts on the Coming EverQuest II Anashti Sul Time Locked Expansion Server

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In this “Year of Darkpaw” and all things Norrath, I haven’t spent much time writing about EverQuest II, the younger sibling of the EverQuest duo.  But it is part of the year with its 20th anniversary landing in November.

As part of the celebration on the EQII side of the house, there has been a planned special server on the roadmap since the start of the year, with June as a launch target.  We got a bit more info about the server in the April Producer’s Letter, which said it was going to take us back to 2006.

Anashti Sul – We’ll get to her in a bit

And while just being told that doesn’t feel like much, it is actually kind of a big statement.  Also, you might note, 2006 isn’t “20 years ago” so they are jumping ahead a bit in the life of the game.  As I noted at the time on the post over at Massively OP, 2006 means no going back to the original crafting and some of the other ideas that did not pan out very well at launch.

I am sure there are still a few purists out there who will bemoan the fact that we won’t be going back to four level combines to produce finished items and having to get crafting materials from two or three other professions to get anything done.  Having lived through it, I know the highs and the lows of that system.  In the end though, the reason cooking was so popular was you didn’t need to depend on anybody else.  As like as not trying to go back to that with the current client would be prohibitively expensive… and for a very short term benefit.

This server will unlock expansions fast enough that the first two years out of a 20 year progression will go by fast and we’d be to the current crafting system in no time.  So best not to bother if it is going away in any case.

As Bhagpuss said at one point, we’re going back to the era when Scott Hartsman was directing the show and the game went from trying to have a split personality that both acknowledged the old game and pretended it had nothing to do with it as it tried to forge a completely independent lore path.  But with the 2006 Echoes of Faydwer expansion the game got back on board and embraced its Norrath identity and sought to build on it, returning to old locations time and again.

And it was good.  Echoes of Faydwer was a big freaking deal, a welcome change in direction for the game that helped it find its place in the SOE ecosystem and probably got some early players to come back and commit to it.  This blog is just old enough that I was writing about Echoes of Faydwer at launch.

Echoes of Faydwer

See, just that little tidbit of information got me going on about it as a choice even though we hadn’t been told anything about the server rules itself.  But last week we got some actual meat, including the server name, Anashti Sul, which hearkens back to the Desert of Flames, the first EQII expansion… that is her picture up at the top of the post… and one of those that sought to blaze a new trail on the lore front.

So what have we been told?  Here is what we have so far:

  • There will be no spell research.
  • Krono will not be able to be consumed, traded, or sold on an Origins server.
  • There will be a 6-week Beta to ensure we cover a wide breadth of testing.
  • Attributes have restored secondary functionality, agility will help avoid melee attacks, intelligence will increase ability potency, strength will increase melee damage, and wisdom will grant extra resistance.
  • All bosses will be original stat/buff packages.
  • No weight. It could not be restored.
  • Unlocks have not been decided yet, however we do have new forums, and we will be able to poll and discuss unlocks before we launch.
  • No holiday events.
  • There will be a marketplace, but it will be very limited.
  • It will not be free trade.
  • This server is on its own design depot.
    • This is the first time for this type of separation for EverQuest II.
    • It cannot be affected by Live design updates, and vice versa.
    • Code and Art are still across all server types, for a variety of reasons. For example, connections to external or shared resources such as Database, Authentication, etc. have completely changed over the years.
  • Freeport and Qeynos are back to old school, in both appearance and functionality.
    • Livable neighborhoods, and their quests, are back! With the scope of the changes, these will need a lot of testing.
  • No persistent instances.
  • No tradeskill subcombines.
    • The current build is right after subcombines for crafting were removed.

That this is an “origins” server, a new type of special server, seems to say that the team is committing to the special nostalgia server concept more so than previously.  It is quartered off in its own “design depot” so likely doesn’t have to get updates in lock step with the live servers.

That means that they can go back to some old stuff.  Yes, we had the Isle of Refuge previously, but now we’re going to get original, old school Qeynos and Freeport, complete with the racial neighborhood ghettos… though I still feel that barbarians and dwarves got the short end of the stick being lumped together in one generic area while gnomes got a sprocket theme park.

No free trade, so there will be bind on pickup items from bosses, no holiday events, which would probably break with the older version of the cities, and a limited marketplace, which is the Darkpaw term for the cash shop.  I will be interested to see what is in that cash shop.

Krono, the Norrathian PLEX substitute, won’t be available on the server either.  You will have to grind mobs for you copper like everybody else.

Which reminds me, did mobs drop coins by 2006?  At launch SOE was extremely paranoid about the economy and inflation so mobs dropped no coins, only things that you might sell to a vendor later.  Will we start past that?

It is interesting that they couldn’t restore item (and coin) weight to the game.  But, like the old crafting system, it has ceased to be relevant by 2006.  Every time a new expansion lands everybody got big stat increases from gear, so strength stopped being much of a gate.  I was carrying around storage crates at one point, something that would drag your mobility down to nearly nil at launch, by the time Kunark hit in EQII.  It became something that merely punished low level players without being at all a limit at level cap, so I am not sad to see it is being left out.

The one thing left out is what the expansion unlock cadence will be.  I am sure it will move lickety split when compared to WoW progression servers, which are four and a half years in and only three expansions have dropped.  But will they move too fast?  It is a hard balance.

It all sounds interesting.  I am just not sure at this point whether it will be something I can commit to.  The game was solo friendly by 2006… another thing about 2004 is that beyond a certain point overland zones were balanced around group play… but it could also be pretty grindy.  I might find some time to peek in and look at the old versions on Qeynos and Freeport.

Related:

Tickets Available Today for EverQuest Fippy Fest 2024

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Fippy Fest is coming!

Celebrating the Year of Darkpaw

Wait, what is Fippy Fest?

On Saturday, June 15th 2024, Enad Global 7… erm… Daybreak… no, not quite right… Darkpaw Games, the Enad Global 7 studio under the Daybreak Games… and I snicker every time I say that aloud as it sounds like “they break games” when I do… which is responsible for the two EverQuest titles, is holding a live online event to celebrate EverQuest, EverQuest II, which is part of the Year of Darkpaw events for the respective 25th and 20th anniversaries of the two titles this year.

Sorry, I may have gotten carried away and that last sentence somehow became a paragraph.

Sure, Blizzard can woo away Holly Longdale and borrow heavily from the EverQuest nostalgia playbook, but two can play at that game!

So Darkpaw is going to have an online Fanfest come June, their own version of BlizzConline I suppose, called Fippy Fest.

From the sound of it general access will be free and you will be able to watch the panels and such, but if you opt-in for paid access you will be able to aske questions live during the event as well as getting in-game items to commemorate the event.

But wait, there’s more.

For a few special individuals there will be tickets available to attend the event in person down in San Diego.  The number of tickets available for those wanting to attend live hasn’t been declared, the company has only said the following:

We are keeping the in-person event small and intimate as we delve back into the realm of in-person events.

This might be the first in-person Fanfest-like event since the end of the SOE days.  It has been at least a decade.  (There was some other “fans invited” event at their offices a few years back, but it felt a little more ad hoc.)

Depending how small they are keeping the in-person side of things, these tickets might be more exclusive than any BlizzCon ticket.

Anyway, tickets go on sale at 6pm Pacific time today.  No pricing has been announced yet.

In addition to Fippy Fest, Darkpaw has announced that they will be attending Pax East in March as well.  They are getting out there to celebrate the Year of Darkpaw.

Here is the link to purchase tickets:

Sticker shock warning.  Digital tickets come in a variety of flavors with different rewards:

  • Fan – $50
  • Booster – $100
  • Patron – $150
  • VIP – $250

You do have to pick whether or not you want rewards for EverQuest or EverQuest II.

But if you want to attend in person the ticket will run you $1,500. over at Everbrite.

How badly do you want to go to this event?

Get the fuck out of here.  I mean, the digital event prices seem a bit steep, even if they are somewhat volentary.  You are paying to be able to ask questions live and for some in-game items.  But the price for in person… you really have to love Norrath if you’re going to put out that amount.

But, I am sure someone will pay it.

Related links, each title featuring its own item rewards:

Getting into the EverQuest II 2024 Roadmap

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Well, I dug into the EverQuest 2024 roadmap a bit previously, so I suppose I should give its younger sibling its due as well.  I was going to do this the same week as I did EQ and then things happened and now suddenly we’re in the middle of February.  How does this happen?  Also, happy Mardi Gras!

EQ and EQII Celebrating in 2024

I am not sure how to process an EQ/EQII image that doesn’t include Firiona Vie and Antonia Bayle.

EverQuest II will be celebrating its own big milestone come November when, just a couple weeks ahead of World of Warcraft, it will turn 20 years old.  So the EQII roadmap is also a celebratory exercise, or should be.

EverQuest II 2024 Roadmap

As with the EverQuest 2024 roadmap, it is a little dense on the text front, making it difficult to read even if you click on and expand that image to full size.

But Daybreak has a forum post that breaks it out into a more accessible format.  I am going to work from that.

I am also going to do what I did with the EverQuest roadmap, which is filter out all the recurring monthly swag store, give away, sound track, forum question, and like entries that are somewhat apart from playing the game itself.

The one exception is raid unlocks that come with the monthly Masquerades of Divinity anniversary events.  Those feel like in-game content.

So what does 2024 look like?

January:

February:

  • Aether Wroughtlands: The Delves [Raid] unlocked
  • Erollisi Day event returns
  • Varsoon unlocks The Shadow Odyssey Mid-Content
    • The Emperor’s Athenaeum, Kurn’s Tower, Munzok’s Material Bastion, Ward of Elements, Miragul’s Planar Shard, Shard of Love

March:

  • Chronoportal Phenomenon event returns
  • HAPPY 25th ANNIVERSARY EVERQUEST!
  • Brewday Festival event returns
  • Beast’r Eggstravaganza event returns
  • Game Update 125 Beta opens
  • DirectX 11 API Port on Test Server

April:

  • Bristlebane Day event returns
  • Game Update 125 launches
  • Varsoon unlocks Sentinel’s Fate

May:

  • DirectX 11 API Port launches
  • New TLE Server Beta opens
    • This is not a TLE, like Varsoon, this will be a different experience. We will be announcing more details soon
  • Patches of Pride event returns

June:

  • Summer Jubilee’s Tinkerfest event returns
  • Summer Jubilee’s Scorched Sky event returns
  • New TLE Server launches
  • Varsoon unlocks Sentinel’s Fate Mid-Content
    • The Icy Keep: Retribution, Underfoot Depths, Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum

July:

  • nothing

August:

  • Extra Life incentives announcement
  • Summer Jubilee’s Oceansfull Festival event returns
  • Game Update 126 Beta opens
  • Game Update 126 launches
  • Expansion Prelude begins
  • Varsoon unlocks Destiny of Velious

September:

  • New Panda, Panda, Panda content

October:

  • EverQuest II’s 21st expansion beta + Pre-Order opens
  • Nights of the Dead event returns

November:

  • Heroes’ Festival event returns
  • HAPPY 20th ANNIVERSARY EVERQUEST II
  • Extra Life Game Day
  • EverQuest II’s 21st expansion launches

December:

  • Frostfell event returns

As with EverQuest, that is not a bad year.  But is it a special year?

The major technical update will be the move to DirectX 11.  There will be a new special rules server rolled out in June.  I am sure there will be some special events on the anniversary itself, and there are the monthly cosmetic things that can be earned as part of the Year of Darkpaw.

But otherwise the year is kind of normal.  We get the usual series of holiday events, there is the big game update, and then the annual expansion.  I suppose it says something good about the game that all of that is “normal” and not extraordinary.

Anyway, we shall see if Daybreak has anything else to add on top of what they have on the roadmap.

Dire Predictions in the Face of the Horror that will be 2024

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For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

–Hosea 8:7

Welcome to the new year.  It is going to suck.  2024 is going to be a grim year.  If we accept that up front, we’ll be better prepared to meet things head on.

2024 banner courtesy of our daughter

I mean sure, everything LOOKS good right now.  The stock market has hit record highs, gas prices are way down, and the unemployment rate is as low as it has ever been in my lifetime.  US troops aren’t fighting on the ground on foreign soil for the first time in decades.  Hell, inflation has been tamed to the extent that the Federal Reserve says it will be lowering interest rates.  Those are all ingredients for a happy new year.

Except, of course, it is a presidential election year.  Those are bad even when both candidates aren’t too old and when one of them didn’t attempt a coup the last time around.  And this time the coup guy is promising a dictatorship if he wins.  You’d think that would make this election an easy choice… but no.  So it is going to be grim campaign, and even if the wannabe dictator loses he won’t go quietly.  It will be non-stop whining from him and his followers until he dies.

And that is just our own problem.  The rest of the world is still on fire, with Russia in Ukraine, China bullying anybody within IRBM range, and the eternal mess that is Palestine and Israel having flared up into a full armed conflict again.

Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.

-Tom Lehrer, quoting a friend

That means the need for distraction from a possible national disaster will be stronger than ever.  Will it be a good year for video games as we trod the wind swept precipice of doom?  The grimness of the prospect of 2024 has put me in a bit of a mood, so I am going to trot out what is probably the most dire set of predictions I have done so far.  But they will be video game predictions (mostly), so the stakes are low.  There is, of course, a long history of this sort of thing here:

I wrote most of these the day I scored my 2023 predictions and, while I updated a couple due to news that came out later… the whole WoW Roadmap made me shift some dates… others I left “as is” even when contrary news landed because the news isn’t always right and things happen.

Also, I will inject my usual reminder that predictions are not wishes.  I don’t WANT bad things to happen, but I live in a world where far too few good things happen.  I am a product of my environment.

1 – Microsoft Buyers Remorse

Everything with Microsoft and XBox was rainbows and lollipops at BlizzCon but, having closed the deal, now MSFT is going to need to deal with the reality.  And the reality is that they are going to behave like every other large game studio has been and lay a bunch of people off.  Microsoft has already severely trimmed some of its other companies, like LinkedIn, so it will be Blizz next.  Granted, there was always going to be some redundancy trimmed, but MSFT will got further and will axe a couple hundred people working on active Blizz projects in 2024

2 – Activision Settlement Woes

Activision Blizzard may have settled with the state of California over harassment and discrimination charges, but they still have a laundry list of changes they have promised to make… and they’ll drag their feet on that until the state has to come after them again.  California will need to get in there in order to force compliance with the agreed upon terms before the end of 2024.

3 – The War Within Launch Date

I am going to put my money on September 9/10 as the world-wide release date for The War Within, and as I usually do, the accounting for points will be minus two for every week off I am.

4 – The War Within Reception

Fair to middling.  Hopes of that the start of this three parter will bestir the fan base and drive people back to retail will… if not fall flat, will be a repeat of Dragonflight.  Shadowland killed off retail for too many people and WoW Classic was there to catch them.  Retail WoW is a foreign country to many now.  It won’t fail or anything, but it will be akin to what we just saw where the launch will generate no “best ever!” press release and they will be giving out free weekends and discounted pricing within a month.

5 – Cataclysm Classic Launch Date

I am going to put my money on July  15/16 as the world-wide release date for Cataclysm Classic and, as above, the accounting for points will be minus two for every week off I am.

6 – Pandamonium

I don’t think Cataclysm Classic will be the disaster some think it will be, but I also don’t think it is going to hold player attention for as long as Wrath Classic managed.  Blizz will announce Mists of Pandaria Classic at BlizzCon and the implication will be that Cata Classic will last less than a year all told.

7 – Season of Discovery Rug Pull

Blizz will get to the end of the vanilla content with Season of Discovery and announce that they will be shutting off the servers because it is over.  This will annoy players who were invested in the whole thing or who were still holding out hope for Classic Plus.  As with Season of Mastery, when Blizzard uses the word “season” they mean “temporary.”

8 – Diablo IV Expansion

We will get the expected content update in Q2 2024, with May 23/24 being the world wide launch date.  The usual “off by weeks” rule above applies.

9 – Blizz and the Unnamed Survival Title

It will remain unnamed and unremarked upon in 2024.  Nothing to see here.

10 – World of Warcraft Celebrates 20 Years

World of Warcraft will hit its 20 year anniversary in November.  As such, I am going to throw out a few bullet points, worth five points each, should they come to pass.

  • Physical 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition
  • Digital 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition
  • In-game Achievement for Logging in During the Anniversary
  • Mount Gift in Retail WoW
  • Pet Gift in WoW Classic
  • BlizzCon is dominated by WoW… more that usual
  • A New flavor of WoW Classic is announced

That is a possible 35 points in play.

11 – The Year of EverQuest

The Norrath titles, EverQuest and EverQuest II, are turning 25 and 20 respectively in 2024.  As such, Daybreak will have some big  plans or some such.  No doubt the EverQuest II anniversary will be overshadowed by WoW, but it will still be a thing.  As above, I am going to throw out some bullet points that are worth five points each should they come to pass.

  • Nostalgia themed expansions visiting old locations and old raid bosses for both titles
  • Fresh start servers for classic content for both titles
  • A special rules server that isn’t just classic content for EverQuest
  • A special rules server for EQII that includes a goals/achievements race for prizes
  • Special 20th and 25th anniversary items in the physical gear store
  • An in-person event for fans at the Daybreak HQ in San Diego

That is a possible 30 points in play.

12 – Daybreak Un-Announcements

Last year we got low key announcements that there were H1Z1 and EverQuest titles in the offing.  My guess is that Daybreak is going to walk one of those back, either removing it from their plans entirely or pushing back any previously planned dates by at least two years.  And you know what, I am going to demand double points if they do it for both.  How do you like them apples?

13 – LOTRO No Closer to 4K Support

Meanwhile, over at the Standing Stone group at Daybreak, they are going to potter merrily along with content updates and cash shop items and they are not going to do one thing to further the cause of 4K video support for the game.  After seven years of “we’ll get to it” I view this as a gimme, a free ten points, and I dare SSG to prove me wrong!

14 – Consoles for Some but not All

In 2024 DC Universe Online will become a native PlayStation 5 application… and PlanetSide 2 will not.  Oh, and it goes without saying that the idea of LOTRO on consoles will never be mentioned again by Daybreak/EG7… but I said it anyway!  I’ll even give myself NEGATIVE ten points it LOTRO on consoles is mentioned in any way save for announcing it won’t happen.  That should offset #12.

15 – EVE Online Expansion Dreams

CCP, having tasted success from three Faction Warfare expansions in a row will roll the dice on that again for its mid-year expansion, but that will fail to keep the proverbial summer slump from hitting the way Viridian prevented it.

16 – EVE Vanguard Launch Date

I don’t know when it will officially be live, but it won’t be in 2024.  There will be more live tests and some form of early access, but it will still be in the gray zone between testing and a live launch come the end of the year.  I am going to give myself half credit it it does fully launch in 2024, but not until November and eight points if it lands in December.

17 – EVE Galaxy Conquest’s Fate

The new mobile title announced at Fanfest, EVE Galaxy Conquest, will launch then fade so fast in the sea of mobile titles out there that the promise of a PC version will never come to pass.  That will be a shame, because EVE Online has an older demographic that would really dig into a strategic, 4x PC title set in New Eden.  Half credit if it doesn’t launch at all in 2024.

18 – EVE War for New Eden

The EVE Online board game.  I feel this was announced prematurely.  There was no benefit from breaking that news before Fanfest unless the Kickstarter was ready to go.  And given the dearth of information available so far, I am going to predict that the Kickstarter won’t go live before June 1st and if you pledge to get a copy it won’t arrive in time for Christmas.

19 – Project Awakening

It won’t ship in 2024, but we will get a preview and it will be a weakly revamped version of EVE Online that puts all in game items on the blockchain and will feature a new currency that a16z will own.  The only people who will be excited by this are people invested in blockchain because this will be entirely about that technology and not at all about game play. (Which is the perennial fault of all of these crypto projects.  Also, play to earn is a garbage idea and will never succeed in the long term, being a completely untenable economic idea.)

20 – Camelot Unhinged

It is always an easy one, predicting that Camelot Unchained won’t ship.  It has been good for almost a decade. (Beta 1 access, promised for February 2015, still not a thing.)  So let’s dial that up a notch.  Not only will it not ship in 2024, it also won’t be available for any sort of general access beta for backers (staged, one weekend, events don’t count), and Marc Jacobs is going to announce a THIRD title his team is working on.

21 – Starved Citizen

Chris Roberts will stumble this year, announcing something that will end up being a step too far for all but his most die hard adherents.  Second and third quarter revenues will fall short by year over year measures.  But then he’ll announce some crazy new feature at CitizenCon… zero G sex or a psychedelic asteroid mining colony option or maybe actual in game psychedelics… and things will recover in the fourth quarter.  Depending heavily on The Nosy Gamer to keep me honest on this one with his reporting.

22 – Pantheon Something Something Something

Visionary Realms will make a huge mistake and ship something this year.  I say “mistake” because they have managed to survive on selling vision… hey, it is literally in their name… but when the rubber finally hits the road… oh my.  It might only be early access to Pantheon, but it will be generally available and the reaction will be muted and panic will set in at the company as they find out that nostalgia has problems interacting with reality.

23 – Random Shot at Ubisoft

Just because I’ve set some personal record for grudges against a company when it comes to Ubisoft… a record achieved largely by them renewing my ire pretty much annually.  So Ubisoft will do something in 2024 that will enrage players/fans/gamers or whoever and I will renew my vow to never buy another game from them again.  Also, water will be wet and the sun will continue to rise in the east.

24 – Metaversary Stories

In the smoking remains of the metaverse hype of 2022, here is how the few remaining contenders will fare in 2024.  Each bullet point is worth 5 points.

  • Meta Horizon Worlds will shut down
  • Decentraland will shut down
  • Playable Worlds will not deliver any tangible content for end users
  • VentureBeat will continue to act like the metaverse is still a thing to be achieved
  • There will continue to be no coherent definition of “metaverse” that isn’t so general that you could claim the internet already is the metaverse. (I expect this to be a gimme, but we’ll see)

25 points total in play here.

25 – Virtual Banality

Virtual Reality will remain a niche market, giving lie to all those optimistic growth charts of the last dozen years, with sales of VR hardware actually declining in 2024.

26 – Pokemon Go to the Moon!

Pokemon Go will release an update that will increase the level cap to 60, with the experience point gap between 59 and 60 being ONE BILLION.  This will be the classic blunder of hurting all the normies… I friend online so many casual players on community days that are mid-30s to low-40s… because a tiny percentage of the player base hit 50 too quickly.

27 – Destination Steam

The following Blizzard titles will end up on Steam in 2024.  Five points per correct guess.

  • Diablo II Resurrected
  • Diablo Immortal
  • StarCraft
  • StarCraft II
  • World of Warcraft

25 points in play here.

28 – Destination XBox

The following Blizzard titles will end up in the XBox PC store… not necessarily on Game Pass, but available for purchase or subscription through Microsoft’s XBox store front for your PC.

  • World of Warcraft
  • Diablo IV
  • Diablo Immortal
  • Diablo II Resurrected
  • StarCraft
  • StarCraft II

30 points in play here.

29 – Pax Dei

Pax Dei will end up reneging on their “no NPCs” plan once they get into early access… so I guess part of this prediction is that they will get to early access this year… because somebody will recall how hard CCP had to work to bootstrap a player economy into existence even with NPCs as part of their plan.  Their player run sandbox idea will shamble along until they do this.

30 – Tarislandia

While some members of the gaming press have been falling all over themselves to dismiss Tarisland a WoW clone, even idiotically suggesting it somehow sprang fully formed into existence when WoW lost its partner in China… those diabolical Chinese planned it this way all along… when it finally ships this year… there is part of the prediction… people will change their tune and will declare it is more of a Lost Ark clone… or anything besides being the cheap copy of WoW that it was so aggressively painted as in the press.

31 – Just Won’t Ship

As the heading says, these titles won’t ship in 2024.  For purposes of this prediction, remaining in alpha or beta means the ship metric was not met, but I am going to say that paid early access counts as shipping, because screw anybody who tries to take money AND deflect issues.  This is five points per bullet point.

  • ArcheAge II
  • Bitcraft
  • Blue Protocol
  • Chrono Odyssey
  • Dune: Awakening
  • Eternal Tombs
  • Havenworld
  • Path of Exile II
  • Reign of Giulds
  • Squadron 42
  • Soulframe

I really dug into the news of expected releases fill out that list, and would be happy to be wrong… but you know I’m going to be mostly right here.  I mean, half of these are barely a gleam in the milkman’s eye at this point.  Also, I put Squadron 42 in there because there is no way that will ship before 2028… if ever.  Feature complete my ass.

Anyway, a big 55 points at stake here.

Bonus Predictions

These are the crazy fringe guesses that have no basis in reality, but I get 10 additional points if one of them actually comes to pass.

  • Richard “Lord British” Garriott will announce that his blockchain shambles of a project will be driven by AI, because that buzzword is still active and must remain active until he jumps on the bandwagon, which is always the sign that the gold rush is over and we need to move on.
  • That third title that City State Entertainment announces in 2024 will be blockchain driven because Mark Jacobs will have been offered a wad of money, the way CCP has, to make a title using the technology.  It will be the final sell out and he will never ship another game in his lifetime.
  • Peter Molyneux’s Project MOAT will be announced as a blockchain, AI driven, multiverse vision… if it isn’t all that already.  I cannot be bothered to check.  I have just seen a few headlines, which is more than it deserves.  This almost seems like a gimme at this point in his career.  I am hoping Conner at MMO Fallout will keep me honest here.
  • Somebody will notice that CCP’s promise that its skill point packs are “once per account” is meaningless when they just change up the packs every month or so, meaning that there is effectively no limit over time.  I will deduct zero points if I am the source of this discovery.  I am allowed to set fires too!
  • I feel like I could do a whole Twitter predictions post, but I am going to just predict that Elon is going to loudly threaten bankruptcy by the end of 2024 to keep creditors at bay.  Muskovites have been smug about him having those foolish enough to finance the deal by the balls following the old saw about “Borrow a thousand dollars and the bank owns, borrow a billion dollars and you own the bank,” but Musk put up Tesla stock as collateral and if he isn’t making his payments they can declare default and take the stock.  Musk won’t like that, and bankruptcy won’t stop it in the long term, but the mention of bankruptcy will introduce delay and chaos, which is all he’ll want out of it.  He won’t actually declare bankruptcy since he is convinced that would make his penis shrink further.

Come the Accounting

Those are my predictions for 2024.  That is a possible total 450 points, plus a potential 50 bonus points for wild ass guesses, for a grand total of 550 points should I be correct on everything… which I almost certainly will not be.  (Somebody check my math, I did that all in my head and… well.. you’ve got some insight into what is going on in there if you’re read this far.)

Once again I must say, as I always do, that predictions are not wishes.  These are things I think could happen, not necessarily things I would want to happen.  This is more to stimulate ideas in my head than anything else.  But if you’re still mad I said something, go ahead at let me have it.  I remain staunch in my statement that being proven wrong on these is no sin.

As for measurements, I usually start off trying to write “SMART” predictions (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), but then I get half way into the list and I start writing vague, subjective, or difficult to measure items that cause me problems at the end of the year. 

I mean, I don’t even know what UbiSoft could do to piss me off, but I suspect they will do something.  But can I prove it pissed me off in some objective way?  No, you’ll just have to trust me. 

I do try to grade myself in a fairly strict manner.  I think my history shows that I don’t try to go the old Gevlon route of twisting every prediction to find some loophole in order to claim I was actually 100% correct.  I am old and have long since found peace (and humor) in being wrong.

Everything, however, is time bound.  If it doesn’t happen by December 15th I was wrong and get no points.

So we’ll see how this all turns out on December 15th.  The week before that I’ll probably be scrambling to find out if, for example, any of those titles shipped.

Meanwhile, others out there predicting:

EverQuest II Launches the Ballads of Zimara Expansion

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We are in the midst of the Daybreak MMO expansion season.  We saw the LOTRO Corsairs of Umbar expansion go live earlier this month and the EverQuest Laurion’s Song expansion will be coming up soon, but today it is the turn of EverQuest II which is launching the Ballads of Zimara expansion today.

This is the 20th EverQuest II expansion (not counting adventure packs sold separately) since the game’s launch in November of 2004.

Ballads of Zimara

From the expansion page:

Following several calamitous impact events near shoreside communities on Norrath, involving magic-steeped stone and steel careening into the land and sea below, Norrath’s exceptional adventurers and artisans find themselves swept up in a raging struggle for survival in the skies far above! Splendor Sky Aerie, the hooluk’s secluded nest lands within the Overrealm, are under threat by a mysterious force, bringing discord to the once idyllic community of wise aviaks.

Securing peace for them will mean venturing where few have ever dared – Zimara Breadth, within the deteriorating Plane of Sky! Here, the legendary Djinn Sovereign struggles to keep his empire from physically being lost to unknowable planar forces, while those who would oppose him are crushed through violence, destruction, and enslavement carried out by his ruthless army, an army made up of djinn of all sorts, including something never seen before.

These metallic djinns may just hold the clue to his downfall though, when the figure tied to their creation within the Aether Wroughtlands is revealed to be a captive, held deep within Vaashkaani, Alcazar of Zimara. The opulent palace is both throne and dungeon!

But is freeing the captive in our future? Can the Djinn Sovereign be defeated? And what of his vast army of maedjinn? The answers are found within the Ballads of Zimara!

There is also a launch trailer for those who would rather watch than read.

The new expansion features a mix of the usual things long term fans of the game have come to expect.

  • Adventure level cap increase to 130
    • New signature adventure quests
    • New adventure quests
  • Tradeskill level cap increase to 130
    • New signature tradeskill quests
  • New achievements
  • New collections
  • New Heroic Zones
  • New Raid Zones
  • New lands
    • Splendor Sky Aerie
    • Zimara Breadth
    • Aether Wroughtlands
    • Vaashkaani, Alcazar of Zimara

You are able to purchase the expansion in the usual array of editions.

  • Standard Edition – $35
  • Collector’s Edition – $70
  • Premium Edition – $140
  • Family and Friends – $250

The standard edition, while it leaves out a lot of the extras, is generally worth the price to play through the new content.  I have felt pretty good about the cost to play just to do the signature quest lines for tradeskills and adventure levels in the past.

Enad Global 7 Q3 2023 Financial Show LOTRO, PlanetSide 2, and My Singing Monsters in Decline

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When last I wrote about Enad Global 7 it was a discussion of their Capital Markets Day presentation in Stockholm back in September that, among other things, suggested that a new EverQuest title might be in the cards… for 2028.

Enad Global 7

That naturally made more than a few nerds very happy and I speculated about what a new “hardcore” EverQuest… and a revived H1Z1 Just Survive, which was also on the agenda… might look like.  The fact that LOTRO would not be getting its remaster was less favorable news as it strongly suggests that the talk of a console version has been set aside and it leaves the LOTRO dev team still unable to address how bad the game looks on 4K monitors.  I suspect we will get that new version of EverQuest before LOTRO supports 4K by any reasonable definition.

Now we get to see how EG7 did over the summer as their Q3 2023 financials landed on their investor relations page.

Overall EG7 put in a decent performance over what is often a slower period for some companies, the long summer run up to the Q4 expansions.

EG7 Q3 2023 – Overall Earnings – Slide 8

The quarterly earnings took a dip in Q2 and did not bounce back to Q1 levels in Q3, but were still significantly higher than a year ago.  The LTM view, which stands for “Last Twelve Months” which shows the previous 12 months revenue from then end date of each quarter (a metric used to, depending upon your point of view, either normalize and show consistent revenue numbers or to hide a bad quarter now and then) shows a stately progression of increasing numbers over the last five quarters.

All of those numbers are in Swedish Krona.  The exchange rate with the US Dollar is a little less than 10 Krona to the Dollar, so you can just move a decimal place to approximate the dollar amount of these numbers.  So 517 million Krona is bout 51 million US Dollars.

What doesn’t get captured in the presentation anywhere is that a lot of this growth has come on the back of Big Blue Bubble’s My Singing Monsters title, which back in Q4 2022 saw explosive growth due to it trending on social media.

That… uh… bubble has been shrinking some every quarter since.  The presentation cover that, along with some softness in a couple of the Daybreak titles.

For Big Blue Bubble they highlighted:

  • Another great quarter
  • MSM trending down as expected
  • Still 157% higher Net Revenues than 3Q22

While for Daybreak the highlights were:

  • Softer than expected results YTD
    • About 15% lower YTD Net Revenue compared to last year
  • DCUO and LOTRO have performed under expectations
    • Already on going efforts to stabilize and reverse trends
    • DCUO ready for the latest gen consoles shortly
    • LOTRO expansion just released with solid performance
  • EQ and MTGO with solid performance
    • Exciting plans for EQ and EQ2’s 25 th and 20 th anniversary in 2024

They have some mitigating news to offset the lower than expected revenue, and there is certainly some evidence that expansions do boost revenue for titles like LOTRO, something I explored previously, but that boost is nowhere as much as I thought it might be.  Subscription dollars, which mean bringing people into the game and keeping them engaged, is really expansions deliver.

Gross revenue for Daybreak titles with expansions marked

I would really like to be able to dig into the details of how subscription dollars are measured or allocated because there is just a single subscription for some of those titles (DCUO, EQ, EQ2, and PS2) while the others have independent revenue streams (LOTRO, DDO, and MTGO).

Anyway, so Daybreak and BBB declined some in revenue in Q3

Daybreak and BBB revenue charts – page 9

Interestingly, the difference between the two is how margins behaved with this minor decline.  Daybreak, running resource heavy live service titles saw margins move down with revenue.  There is clearly a level of overhead below which margins go negative.

Meanwhile, BBB’s earnings, and thus margins, actually went up even though revenue went down.  That is a nice gig if you can get it.

Those numbers are further emphasized by the contribution chart that was on the top of the same page of the presentation as the revenue chart above.

Studio Contributions – page 9

Overall, the quarterly earnings were up a bit from Q2, but still down from the two quarters before that, though for explicable reasons.  And Q4 is here where the company reasonably expects there to be a boost in revenues to to expansions and updates.

Not so bad.

However, there is one message in the middle of all of this that I find mildly disturbing.

Back in May I posted about a capital management group doing what capital management groups do, demanding that the company give as much profit back to investors no matter the long term cost to the company.

At the Capital Markets Day in Stockholm I mentioned at the top of the post it was mentioned that EG7 was looking to commit as much as half of their net profit to satisfying the wolves of Wall Street, whose constant demands for more have ruined more than a few otherwise viable companies.  (For example, Hertz’s bankruptcy during the pandemic was largely due to them funneling most of their profits into stock buy-backs to satiate demands from Wall Street.)

That vow is repeated in the interim report in the comments from still-just-acting CEO Ji Ham.

In addition to the investment plans in our long-term growth, we also communicated a shareholder capital return program. Subject to shareholder approval, the size of the capital return program is expected to be up to 50% of net profit annually. It will consist of a combination of dividends and/or share buyback. Based on the full year 2023 profit expectations, the estimated amount to be distributed in 2024 is approximately SEK 100 million, of which a minimum of SEK 40 million will be distributed as dividends.

I am not in any way suggesting that a company should not pay dividends or otherwise reward shareholders when the company is doing well, though stock buy back programs to satisfy institutional investors are an attempt to simulate the “forever growing” market ideal that can push off reality for only so long.  That is a hangover from the first dotcom era when companies essentially promised infinite stock price growth in lieu of dividends.  Now tech companies pay dividends yet still have to keep the stock price climbing.

I am not even going to complain about how this directly enriches Ji Ham and the other board members.  That ship sailed in the back half of the 80s when it was decided CEOs shouldn’t get a big salary, but should be compensated with stock so that the company’s performance would enrich them.  That was the start of the now obscene pay gap between blood sucking leeches like Bobby Kotick, who arguably contributed nothing to the profits of Activision Blizzard in the last 15 years, yet was compensated more than the annual value of exports for many smaller nations (see what playing Tradle every day does), and the employees.

I am, however, going to point out how the employees who do the actual work, who make the whole operation viable, get no benefit from any of this.  We have seen companies like Activision Blizzard invoke the family metaphor while treating the workers like replaceable cogs in the machine, to be discarded the moment doing so might support the stock price.

And, of course, it is the employees who bear the brunt when companies become more focused on the stock price, when the company gives away too much when times are good, failing to ensure the company has the resources to weather a downturn.

Anyway, I am not going to turn this into the Communist Manifesto or a call for revolution.  This is just my reflection on the state of Silicon Valley and Wall Street after 40 years of in person experience.

We’ll have to see how the stock buy backs and dividends impact EG7’s plans to ship some new products.  Certainly Daybreak’s record of exactly ZERO new products since it took over from Sony Online Entertainment is not encouraging.

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The Crisis of the Shattering Nineteen Years Later

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EverQuest II hit another anniversary late last week.  It was the 19th anniversary of the launch of the game.  The story of the game was that the lands of Norrath had been broken by a massive event, either a shattering or a cataclysm, which left behind it the then bipolar world split between Freeport and Queynos.  Since then “cataclysm” has gotten a bad name in the genre so I suppose we’ll stick with the shattering.

I sometimes wait a few days to chime in on the anniversary because our guild didn’t jump in until the second batch of servers launched on November 13, 2004 and it took us a day to get things together to form our guild, Knights of the Cataclysm.

Our day one guild on Crushbone

As usual I will bring out my first screen shot from the game way back when.

My earliest screen shot of EQ2 – Nov. 14, 2004

Most years when I have a mind to bring up the anniversary I have a topic I want to explore, if only briefly, about the game, how it has changed over the years, or how I have changed since way back in 2004.  The collection so far.

This year is a little different I suppose in that the last time I played the game, which was back during the Visions of Vetrovia expansion, I ended up hitting something of a wall in being able to wrap up the signature quest line content, which I generally consider to be the baseline effort for an EQII expansion to get my money’s worth out of the content.  If I cannot get that done even after working on gearing up myself, my mount, and my familiar, all of which bring a good deal of power to a character, maybe I am kind of done with the game.

And so I have not returned to EQII in any serious way since then.

Now, that was back in early 2022, so only one expansion back, though it will be two expansions back inside of a month, and I have taken longer breaks from the game before and the Daybreak team has always been pretty good about making sure there is a way to slide back into the content if you want to return.  There is always that crate of gear upgrades waiting for you and the start of every expansion.

I continue to write about the game, keeping an eye on it the way I do a number of titles I am not playing currently, including its siblings EverQuest and Lord of the Rings Online.

But 19 years is a long time.  As I noted in the post at the 17 year mark, that comes with a lot of baggage, both in game and in how I feel about the game.  I can probably got back and read through the 792 previous posts on the blog that had enough to do with the game that I marked them with the EverQuest II category and write… or re-write… a history of my time with the game and the different eras of my interactions with it.

But I am also feeling a bit tired of EverQuest II.  And not just EverQuest II, but any number of titles I’ve watched and returned to multiple times over the years, usually in search of what made them important to me at the time.  That search is often unsuccessful, or successful only in achieving a glimpse of what once tied me to the game.

There are a lot of titles in the side bar of the blog under the heading “The Games I Watch” that I feel like I ought not to bother returning to, that there is no going home anymore for those titles.

Of course, I am also in the midst of a four year run with WoW Classic, where I have indeed found a lot of what I enjoyed back in the day.  That has been a great experience.  But even that has had its effect.  The more I enjoy WoW Classic the less enthusiastic I am for anything regarding retail WoW.  It is cool that they might be going to an expansion more often than every two years, but I am not so sure I care right now.

So I am in a bit of a crisis of interest.  I am having one of those moments where I feel like I need a clean sweep of older titles that I feel like I simply won’t ever play again, and EverQuest II is on that list.

Of course, so is EverQuest, a title that to which I have a strong emotional attachment but which, now nearly 25 years down the road, has become an impenetrable and alien destination.

The problem is, for both of those titles as well as others, is that they cater strongly to the active player base, as well they might, and while they offer level boost to get you closer to the current content, once there the games are so complex from the accumulation of years of changes and updates and new mechanics and systems, the complexity is well beyond my ability to engage with.

Meanwhile, my usual tactic of just starting at level 1 and learning as I go has been thwarted by the often stale or outdated nature of initial content, the level curve which is somehow both too fast and not fast enough, and the huge gap between opening levels and where the latest expansion is.  I will started out and then end up running out of interest long before I have gotten very far.

So I look at EverQuest II hitting 19… and EverQuest approaching 25… and wonder if it is time to let go.

Of course, I feel that way today.  Who knows how I will feel next week, next month, or next year.  This blog is, if nothing else, a record of my changing opinions about various titles.  I can run hot and cold like the shower at a cheap motel.  Currently the temp for a bunch of titles is on the cold side.

That doesn’t mean I will cease to cover the games.  I’ll want to say something about EverQuest turning 25 this coming March and EverQuest II hitting 20 a year from now.  But I have moved to feeling much more outside of those titles, and a few more.

Expansions Coming for EverQuest, EverQuest II, and LOTRO

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Something of a Friday bullet points post on Thursday with an expansion theme as we have had all sorts of updates on that front from Daybreak.

We’ll go from oldest to youngest title.  Or newest announcement to oldest.  Pick your sorting option so long as it goes in the order below.  All I know is that all the links are at the end of the post.

  • EverQuest – Laurion’s Song

EverQuest will be launching its 30th expansion this winter with Laurion’s Song.

Laurion’s Song

Laurion’s Song is not yet up for pre-order, so you still have some time to purchase last year’s Night of Shadows expansion at a discount.  That means, until the pre-orders show up, we just know what was in the Producer’s Letter, which includes reference to all the usual ingreadients of an EQ expansion… new zones, new raids, new missions, and a new feature called “Alternate Personas” that lets you swap classes.   I’ll have to read the full details when they arrive.

We do know that they will be raising the level cap to 125… and that pre-orders will be available next week on October 10th.

  • EverQuest II – Ballads of Zimara

Keeping with the musical theme, EverQuest II has announced its 20th expansion, which will be Ballads of Zimara.

Ballads of Zimara

As with the EQ expansion, many of the familiar ingredients… new lands, new quests, new raids, upgraded trade skills… as well as a level cap increase, bring it to 130.

Ballads of Zimara is currently available for pre-order and comes in the now traditional four tiers offered by Daybreak.

  • Standard Edition – $35
  • Collector’s Edition – $70
  • Premium Edition – $140
  • Family and Friends – $250

As always, that family and friends price seems a bit crazy, it does come with a series of in-game tradable items, including a full copy of the expansion.  So you’re buying the expansion more than once with that plan.  And, if nobody was buying that version Daybreak wouldn’t be offering it up again this year.

  • LOTRO – Corsairs of Umbar

And Lord of the Rings Online has its own expansion coming up, the Corsairs of Umbar.  Though that was announced previously, it is now up for pre-order on the LOTRO site.

Corsairs of Umbar

The expansion includes a level cap increase from 140 to 150 and the new Mariner class.  And, naturally, there will be new areas to explore, including the tropical city of Umbar.  I mean, they have palm trees on the splash screen!

The expansion is available for pre-order with the following options available.

  • Standard Edition – $40
  • Collector’s Edition – $80
  • Ultimate Fan Edition – $130

And, while you will have to wait for the expansion to drop on November 1st, you will get access to the new Mariner class right away, so you can start leveling up and learning how to play the Mariner.

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Daybreak Relative Game Revenues in 2023

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Once more into that video, this time to explore one single chart.  I am not obsessed, I swear.  It was just one of those moments where we got a lot more data than we usually get from game studios, and there was a lot to unpack so I decided to spread it out across a few posts.

Another tip for the video: It seems to default to 360p for me, but you can turn it up to a much sharper resolution to get a nice, crisp look at the visuals.  And one of them is this chart, which comes up just after the 30 minute mark in the video.

The blog is going to squish that down to 600px wide, but you can click on it to see it at about double that resolution.

Monthly gross revenue by title

Why do I want to look at this chart?  Well, there is a general interest aspect to it, just to look at how the various titles in the Daybreak stable of games contribute towards their overall revenue.

There are not a lot of surprises in that.  We had a detailed report with percentages back in December of 2020 when Enad Global 7 was proposing to purchase Daybreak.  That gave as an uncharacteristic look into the revenue of the company.  You should go read through that post if it is the sort of thing that interests you.  But we got some break outs for 2020 revenue through September 30th.

Page 16 – Revenue and Earnings compared YTD through Sep. 30 2020

This pair of charts was one of the more illuminating.  What that showed was DC Universe Online was far and away the largest gross revenue generator.

But the surprise bit was that, even with DCUO that far out in front for gross revenue, EverQuest still delivered slightly more net revenue.  EBITDA is “earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization” and was/is a bit of a BS metric introduced after the tech Y2K tech bubble to make companies look better by showing profits BEFORE taking those other items into consideration.  In the US the SEC makes companies reconcile that against actual net profits if they use it in an earnings statement.

But for our purposes, for the purposes of comparing the profitability of individual titles at Daybreak, it is useful metric for determining the raw net revenue.

Net revenue is what you get after you take out all the costs of getting to the first number.  In the case of DCUO, they have to pay for using the IP as well as having to share out cash shop revenue with Steam and the console platforms, who are taking as much as a 30% bite out of whatever users spend on the game.

EverQuest, meanwhile, is a home grown IP, so no payments on that front, and while it is on Steam, so there is a Valve tax on some transactions, most players deal directly with the company.  So EverQuest gets to keep a lot more of that gross revenue, enough to make it the profit champion despite starting out at barely half of DCUO’s number.

Likewise, EQ’s gross revenue number is comparable to LOTRO’s, but it delivers double the Middle-earth titles profit.

This is, in part, why the oldest game in Daybreak’s stable is still important and still gets a lot of attention and still gets updates and expansions on a regular basis.

And I am going to assert that profitability is the more important of the two measurements.  Having a lot of revenue is always a good thing.  You’re nowhere without it.  But if you have to spend more than you’re making to get it, then there is a problem.

Roblox, for example, made $2.2 billion in revenue in 2022.  That is a pretty huge revenue stream.  That is probably about double World of Warcraft’s best year, and WoW was no slouch at its peak (or now, frankly).  But Roblox LOST money in 2022.  They had to spend more keeping the game going and fighting legal battles and all sorts of other things.  Roblox is basically in a business where it is selling dollar bills for 99 cents.  That is a gross simplification, but it gets to the point of what their problem is.  It is not something make up with volume, as they pitch used to go.

Anyway, what has all that got to do with the chart from the video?

Well, that chart includes all of 2020, so we have the January through September numbers to look at and compare with revenue since then.

Jan through Sep 2020

That segment of the chart is summed up in the Bookings by Game pie chart from that old post.  Those are pre-EG7 numbers… and I am kind of curious why they included them, but there they are… which also happened to be the peak of the Covid video game bonanza, when everybody was stuck at home and those of us without a desire to make sourdough starter or re-watch Tiger King, were playing all sorts of online games.  Animal Crossing: New Horizons has to have been one of the most well timed video game releases ever.

You can see most everything in the Daybreak portfolio got a bump in March/April of 2020, though it didn’t stick for everything.  PlanetSide 2 continued to have a problem holding players.

That period of time has been our lens into which titles are important to Daybreak.  The thing is, Covid… well, it didn’t go away, but we pretty much decided to pretend it did, so its influence waned on the video game industry as things went back to what was probably more the normal course of events.  So the last twelve months of that chart look somewhat different.

May 2022 through June 2023

DCUO and EQ run a lot closer in the gross revenue department… and DCUO seems somewhat more volatile than EQ over the longer term.

Which isn’t to say that EQ doesn’t have its peaks.  but I can explain a lot of those.  One of the things I did with that chart was mark it up to show where paid expansions came out for EQ, EQ2, and LOTRO, just to see if they were boosting revenue to the extent I thought they were.

Gross revenue for Daybreak titles with expansions marked

I did also start trying to mark DCUO “episodes,” the name for its content updates.  And while a few clearly boosted revenue, some had little impact, and none of them are expansions that need to be purchased, so they are not exactly the same.

But for the other three titles you can clearly see they get revenue bumps with expansions.  They just are not nearly as big as I expected.  And for EQ especially you can see other bumps in revenue that are likely related to special server launches and the previous expansion going on sale for half price two months before the new one launches.

Which is interesting as it highlights the importance of EQ… once again, the oldest title in Daybreak’s stable and the one that will be celebrating its 25th launch anniversary in just under six months…  when it comes to Daybreak’s revenue.  It is both cheap to operate and remarkably stable.  It has some peaks and valleys, but few changes one would characterize as dramatic.

It… and LOTRO as well…  seem to be doing very well as titles catering to their installed base.  As I wrote in a post earlier this week, I can understand why EG7 is reluctant to spend a bunch of money on a remaster of LOTRO.  As a fairly stable title when it comes to revenue, it seems unlikely that such a big project would pay off in the long run.

I expect that so long as those titles… and all of their remaining titles really… stay steady, that they won’t be going anywhere.  They do seem to know something about the stewardship of aging games.

Now what about this new EverQuest title they mentioned as a possibility?  Well, that is at least one more post I am going to get out of this video.

My Singing Monsters Continues to Dominate Enad Global 7 Revenue in Q1 2023

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The Enad Global 7 financials dropped last week and, as was the case in Q4 2022, Big Blue Bubble’s title My Singing Monsters was the big draw for the company.

Enad Global 7

The investor’s report for Q1 2023 said the following about My Singing Monsters:

MSM delivered elevated performance throughout the quarter. As of the end of Q1, MSM had amassed 8.5 billion hashtags, 268 million video views, and 1.9 million followers on TikTok, continuing to expand its fanbase.

I still am unsure how the game, which has been around since 2012, took off late last year or if the social media coverage was the trigger or just an effect of the suddenly popularity.

So once again, Daybreak is relegated to second place in earnings when it comes to the EG7 games business segment.

Q1 2023 – Games segment revenue

It isn’t that Daybreak is failing to deliver.  Its titles remain as solid as ever.  It is just that My Singing Monsters has lit up and is suddenly way more popular than it has ever been over the last decade.

Daybreak remains solid while BBB was suddenly more than 4x expected

And BBB’s income has a lot higher margins, even before the big jump in sales, which probably reflects the difference in effort to support essentially one mobile/PC title versus running, supporting, and creating new content for half a dozen MMOs.

EG7 cautions that it may not stay that way, but says that it expects that its baseline performance will remain elevated going forward.  My Singing Monsters is one key brands that the company owns, the list of which was given as:

  • EverQuest, considered to be one of the three most iconic fantasy MMO brands in the world together with World of Warcraft and Ultima Online.
  • H1Z1, the very first battle royale game that was credited as one of the inspirations for Fortnite, with over 40 million life-to-date (LTD) registrations.
  • My Singing Monsters, which has over 135 million (LTD) registrations on mobile and PC, reaching top 10 in over 100 countries in the App Store games category and the No. 1 spot in more than 15 countries 10 years after its release.

I am still not sure how they can put H1Z1 on that list with a straight face.  They are doing nothing with it, have announced no plans to do anything with it, and appear to be just waiting for some sort of magic to happen.   I supposed lightning striking My Singing Monsters gives them hope.

Aside from the caution about My Singing Monsters, when it came to Daybreak the report mostly emphasized the EverQuest 24th anniversary, the DC Universe Online 12th anniversary, and next year’s 25th and 20th anniversaries for EverQuest and EverQuest II respectively.

Mention of other Daybreak titles was limited to pointing out that some of them represented strong licensed IP opportunities.  Lord of the Rings Online, specifically, received no special mention.  The timing of the earnings release put it before Amazon’s announcement that they are working on a Middle-earth MMO of their own once more, so there was no expectation that we would hear anything about that.  It may, however, get some notice with the Q2 2023 results.

Overall it was a positive report.  It opened with record earnings.  Also the company reports it remains debt free, has cash on hand, and is focused on long term profitability.  The joys of being a modest sized public company registered in Sweden I suppose, because if some Wall Street investment group was running the show they would be demanding stock buy backs and stripping it for quick cash boosts without thought towards the long term.

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