Darkpaw Games is an MMORPG studio that never ceases to amaze me with its brazen ineptitude and callous contempt for its long-suffering fans. Darkpaw was created in 2020 for the sole purpose of focusing only on the EverQuest franchise. Since they are only two incarnations of EQ presently alive, they should be pulling out all the stops for the 25th anniversary of EverQuest released in 1999.
Instead of a robust and celebratory year of exciting fan events, we get an uninspired Year of Darkpaw with the same old lame monthly events recycled from previous years. We’ll get more garish PRIDE pets that celebrate sodomy and other sexual fetishes. EQ players who play on live servers will get a special floating tower in Oasis; TLP players will get jack squat.
On the subject of TLP servers, two new ones will be available in May. There’s no word on what the rulesets will be. You can be sure that players will not be consulted because the insular producer and the barnacled devs left on the design team know best.
Here’s a graphic of the development roadmap. Notice how it is padded with meaningless text like a high schooler trying to reach the word requirement of an English literature essay. See if you can detect any substance in the word salad because I cannot:
They should be calling it, the Year of EverQuest, not the Year of Darkpaw which reeks of arrogance and hubris. The name “Darkpaw” means nothing to me or the video game world because this new studio has yet to prove itself worthy of having an entire year named after it. It’s like teenagers creating a cool name for a rock band. Cool names mean nothing if you don’t have the music to back it up.
Most EQ players realize that these roadmaps are smoke and mirrors. So the question remains: why are they doing this? It’s probably to give Enad Global 7 and their investors the appearance that they are doing something worthwhile.
Under Ji Ham’s watch, developers are leaving Darkpaw like rats leaving a ship before leaving port. They can’t keep good talent. It’s a creatively constipated studio permeated with the stench of death. New hires, can’t wait to get out of the EverQuest old age home and hospice and work for real studios.
At least half of the people in this studio photo are no longer with Darkpaw:
The fact that Enad Global 7 and Daybreak Games could not see fit to authorize some money to hold an official EverQuest meetup is shocking and shameful. One of the biggest EQ fanboys named Fading made a rare plea in one of his latest videos that he felt that Darkpaw absolutely needed to have a special event for this once-in-a-lifetime occasion. I have the YouTube video queued here where he begs Darkpaw to do something big:
If they won’t heed Fading, you know they won’t listen to anyone.
In a recent investor presentation, even Enad Global 7 acting CEO Ji Ham admitted that “we should invest in the 25th anniversary of EverQuest” What happened Ji, did you get cold feet?
Why did you break yet another promise?
Ji Ham is no stranger to breaking promises. He told everyone that he would revamp The Lord of the Rings Online, but then reneged on his promise when Amazon’s Rings of Power flopped.
The buck stops with Enad Global 7 CEO Ji Ham. He could fix Darpaw if he wanted. He could allocate resources to EverQuest but he chooses not to. He could fire the entire team of overpaid mediocre losers at Darkpaw but he does nothing.
A Warning To Enad Global 7 Investors
Those who invest in Enad Global 7 need to know that this company are soulless trend chasers looking to make a quick buck. They know nothing about video games. They are bereft of vision and creativity. They are rapacious carpetbaggers that mercilessly bite the hand that feeds. They despise their players and censor their opinions. They are bereft of empathy. They have no understanding of what it takes to make great fantasy virtual worlds. They are not leaders in their field nor are they risk-takers. They don’t even have the decency to play the games they make. They are the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the video game industry.
It is precisely because of all these inadequacies and shortcomings, that they lack the conditions that inspire the innovation required to produce award-winning games. They are like bodysnatchers that skulk around hospitals waiting for games to die so they can sell their body parts to the highest bidder.
You should know that their players and the video game world despise EG 7 and all of the studios under their paper umbrella. You are investing in a global company that is the laughing stock of the industry. Don’t tell your children that you invested in Enad Global 7, as they will lose all respect for you and may never talk to you again.
Conclusion
EverQuest is one of the most profitable games in Enad Global 7’s portfolio. EverQuest players have paid their dues, they have paid more than their fair share. EQ players have been subsidizing EQ2 and other Daybreak Games for years now. Their loyal fans deserve far more than the few stale crumbs that they’ve been getting from the likes of Sony Online Entertainment’s John Smedley and Kelly Flock, all the way up to Daybreak’s Ji Ham and Jason Epstein.
Any business that fails to reinvest a significant percentage of their profits back into their company for research and development to create new products and grow their business, is playing Russian Roulette with a chamber half full of bullets. Eventually, they will fail and they will do it sooner rather than later. This is Enad Global 7’s cynical strategy and the hapless players that play their games are the collateral damage.
It’s hard to believe that we have a company of investment bankers who don’t seem to understand that reinvesting profits back into their studios is an accepted best business practice.
To think that even on the once-in-a-lifetime rare occasion of the 25th anniversary of EverQuest, it’s still business as usual at Darkpaw Games is beyond appalling. It signals to the world that they lack the basic decency to do the right thing by their players. It’s insulting and disrespectful. The level of greed and the lack of reciprocity at Enad Global 7 knows no bounds.
It is disgraceful that the very same studio that bends over backward to chronically pander to LGBTQ people, has no time or resources to spend on the players that pay their salaries. I’ve read testimonials by anonymous former employees at Daybreak that claim that management and the development team laugh at the unswerving loyalty of their players. These rapacious ghouls see their players as gullible fools. It’s all a big joke to them. Darkpaw Games is so utterly vile and corrupt that it should be broken up and scattered into a thousand pieces and thrown like ashes into the sea.
–Wolfshead
/pizza
(way ahead of its time)
I am feeling so sorry for you and other longtime EQ fans. But this seems to be the fate of long running MMORPGs, a maintenance crew takes over and they are often awful.
Ultima Online seems to have fared better, it was released 1997 and had its anniversary already. They began a beta test for a seasonal shard called New Legacy, but beta testing only began in late 2023. I haven’t looked into the game for ages, I returned for a short look long after I quit but it didn’t age nicely.
Oh, how much I loved debating how a skill based progress system is better than a level based one… but EQ style won, WoW or EQ/WoW’s MMO system became synonymous with MMORPG for a while and still are for the majority of games.
The Golden Age of MMO gaming seems over. EQ and WoW influenced culture and turned many non gamers into gamers. The focus seems to have shifted on other genres by now.
What is right now the hype? I don’t know, looking at current top seller Palworld, uuuh… what is that? I don’t like looks.
Cherish the memory of EverQuest. Remember what it started. But I am afraid few might remember or even know lessons learned from it. I am really looking forward to the next big MMO-ish thing. But there seems to be nothing in the making.
Palworld looks childish. There’s no way I’m going play it. Gamers have become so infantilized now.
The EverQuest franchise is done. If they can’t even bother to have a proper 25th-anniversary event, there’s no way they will fund a new EQ MMORPG.
I have my final EQ article almost done. I’m finally washing my hands of this dumpster fire of a studio.
I feel like renouncing the world and living in a cloistered monastery. That’s how disgusted I am with popular culture.
P.S. I’m sick and tired of these Swedish companies swooping in and purchasing popular IPs, video game companies and music catalogs too. Enad Global 7, Embracer Group, Epidemic, and I’m sure there are many more of these parasites. I’m starting to hate the Swedes.
TL;DR: I just don’t understand all the hype around the new trash games that have been releasing in the past 6-7 years.
To me Palworld, along with all other “survival” games look like “games about nothing”. They use the “survival” genre as an excuse to release unfinished games without any content, that only have crafting into them.
I always use this as an example – imagine if Vanilla WoW was released today, it only had the world as it is – Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, none of the cities, towns or other settlements, no NPCs, no dungeons, raids or PvP, just your character, mobs, resources (including trees) and that’s the entire game.
Who in their right mind would want to play something as bare-bones as that? I think it goes deeper – if people knew it was a version of Vanilla WoW with 90% of its content cut, then they won’t play it… unless they are hopeless enough to do mental gymnastics and believe that the rest of the content will actually come out one day if the game is popular enough and enough people financially support it.
Otherwise, I have no explanation why people would play those games. Either they are completely uneducated on what content the game offers or they are fine just buying and playing every crafting simulator that releases.
I don’t even know when this fad for “survival” games even started – it’s like they popped out of the blue, the first time I saw them, I tried them, never understood where the boring ends and the fun begins, signed them off as boring early alphas with no content or goal whatsoever, but now the same boring early alphas with no content or goal whatsoever are enjoying great success and popularity.
And I don’t know, are other people stupid for liking them? Am I stupid for not liking them? I also don’t like the new direction online shooter games are taking with Battle Royale (already a dying fad) and Extraction, I prefer traditional simple shooters like the old Counter-Strike and Call of Duty with Bomb Defusal/Search & Destroy and Team Death Match game modes.
And for the same reason I like traditional RPGs like the old Diablo and The Elder Scrolls – where games were complete from the day they release, with story, world, content and everything – not releasing in perpetual Early Alpha state with no content and tons of bugs, but still asking full price.
Either me and my tastes in games have become outdated or there is something very wrong with the gaming industry and the majority of people are just too stupid and ignorant to understand it and by supporting trash games like this, they are fueling the fire, which is why gaming has been becoming dumber and dumber as the years pass.
I can’t say I’m looking forward for any new game nowadays. I was kind of interested in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but then I saw the character creation where they removed Male and Female genders from the game and replaced them with either “presets” or “body type 1 and body type 2”. Now this is my new criteria if I’m even going to touch a game or not. If it follows the new agenda to “remove genders”, then I won’t play it. I’m only interested in Avowed and The Wayward Realms, but if they don’t have genders, I won’t even feel bad for not playing.
Right now, on the few occasions I play games, I just enjoy playing some old games and soon as I got over my frustration with new games (or movies or TV series), I was able to enjoy the old ones even more.
Sweden developed into something weird under its feminist government over time. Decades ago already I knew a Swedish guy who became a Community Manager for Massive Entertainment, which later got bought by Ubisoft. They were so much ahead with wokification…!
Massive Entertainment is known mostly for The Division and now the Avatar game and an upcoming Star Wars game that might be a bit influenced by Ghost Recon Wildlands, which was actually good… but I am hoping too much.
My take on Massive is that: They make good games with good to great graphics, in the end they always make the same game and always fall ultimately just that bit short of a good game. Think of the upcoming Star Wars game and how The Division was welcomed and people flocked to it, only to abandon it and The Division 2 rather quickly. The whole of Sweden seems to be full corporate EA style but making even more mediocre games.
Sweden, UK, France, Germany are competing on the highway to hell. Rapes and gang rapes and murder at schools increasing in frequency. My family has an exit plan if things become too bad. And hopefully we jump ship in time.
Despite a coordinated media attack led by the government on the opposition, Germany has now a chance to gain ~65% majority for two major conservative parties. The problem is that 35% of that belong to the right wing AfD that the government constantly wants to demonize as Nazis. Short explanation, no, the majority aren’t Nazis, but there are definitely quite some old school Nazis in the party nevertheless.
We might soon have new era conservative in some parts Nazis saving Jews form muslim migrants. Yeah. Really.
@Allwynd try Expeditions Rome, the key is for sale right now and I like it a lot! Single player tactics with story campaign.
@AnonEntit,
I’ve played some Expeditions Conquistador, which has turn-based battles on a hex grid like Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Is it similar? I like those gamers oriented around older designs that are not trying to impress players with graphics or fancy catchphrases that are popular for 1 week.
Yes, same maker but it is their third Expeditions game and much, much better. Better UI and mich more refined.