Daybreak Games recently emerged from their bunkers and rented out a presentation hall at Comic-Con 2024 in San Diego to highlight some of their top intellectual properties in the video game realm. The presentation was titled: Revolutionizing Legends: The Evolution of Iconic Online Games. The person in charge of each studio talked about the legacy of the games: The Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, DC Universe Online, Magic: The Gathering Online, and the EverQuest Franchise.
These MMORPGs are antiquated by today’s industry standards. EverQuest and The Lord of the Rings Online are in their twilight phase and are being voraciously milked by Daybreak and Enad Global 7 for every ounce of cash they can squeeze out of these two old cows. Every year, the vulture capitalists at EG7 manage to lay off more people at these studios without replacing them, so fewer developers are expected to do more work.
Just this week, Enad Global 7 CEO Ji Ham gleefully announced the following:
During the period and in July, the group implemented comprehensive cost-saving and business optimization efforts to improve performance. The total expected annual cost-savings from the efforts amount to SEK 103 million. The largest adjustments were made to the underperforming business units to achieve profitability. As a result of these efforts, the downward pressure on the group’s margins will be reduced going forward.
As you can see, EG7 is concerned only with delivering as much profit to shareholders as possible with the least amount of effort expended. To this day, EG7 has not created one original video game or intellectual property on their own. All they do is purchase existing studios and IPs.
How is it that Ji Ham who runs an international video game conglomerate and knows jack squat about what makes a good video game?
Has Ji Ham published any books about video game design?
Has Jim Ham given any speeches about video game design?
The answer is NO.
Ji Ham is an investment banker and nothing more. He doesn’t have a creative bone in his body. This is why he’s incapable of producing a great video game, let alone a good one. He’s not a trailblazer; he’s a trendchaser.
Another Nothingburger Presentation by Darkpaw Studio Head Jennifer Chan
Chan’s recent EverQuest presentation sounds like every other presentation she’s made: she rambles on about the storied history of EverQuest. The problem is that Chan and the current EQ dev team were not participants in that history. This is like a person claiming they served in the military when they did not. This is the equivalent of stolen valor.
Chan makes EverQuest sound like it has a vibrant community, but nothing could be further from the truth. The EverQuest community is old, cranky, and unwelcoming to new players.
Jennifer extolls the virtue of live invasions and events that truly made Norrath more of a living and breathing virtual world. Yet none of these things are permitted in EverQuest anymore, as current volunteer guides have no authority to conduct invasions. All of these live events transpired between 1999-2001. So to imply that EverQuest has a robust social gathering place where people meet in-game and out-of-game is extremely irresponsible and misleading. The EverQuest Guide Program has been emasculated and is a shadow of its former self.
Chan proudly extols the virtues of EQ fan gatherings like Fanfaire but fails to mention that the last Fanfaire was held 10 years ago in Las Vegas. Not one official event open to the entire community has taken place since Daybreak Games and Enad Global 7 purchased the EverQuest franchise, except the FippyFest gathering, which cost thousands of dollars per ticket and was held in a small theater.
If Daybreak Games cared about their players and the health of the franchise they would be holding a Fanfaire every year. Build it and they will come. Don’t build it, and they sure as hell will not come.
Chan’s Abysmal Leadership
When Jennifer Chan assumed the mantle of Studio Head back in 2020, she introduced herself and promised to get to know the EverQuest community. In that time, she has not made one direct post on the official EverQuest forums. She has made no effort to get to know the players in the community.
There is nothing that Chan has done or said that leads me to believe she has a clue about what constitutes exceptional fantasy MMORPG design.
At this point, we do not know if Chan even plays EverQuest or cares about EverQuest. I have it on good authority that most of the development team does not play EQ. To them, it’s just a job. Watch the FippyFest live EverQuest question and answer panel, and you can see how little passion exists in the current aging dev team. They are intellectually and creatively constipated. Their lack of enthusiasm is shamefully obvious.
These old barnacles will never leave Darkpaw and they’ll have to carry them out feet first.
Chan’s pattern of deceit does not fool real EverQuest enthusiasts. We all know she’s an imposter who cares more about the LGBTQ community than she does the EverQuest community. She was one of the first DEI hires at Sony Online Entertainment back in 2010. John Smedley, who for some strange reason is fixated on the concerns of the LGBTQ community, hired her, so he got 3 protected groups for the price of one.
The central problem with the EverQuest franchise is that it has no foreseeable future. EverQuest was released in 1999 and EverQuest 2 was released in 2005. Both MMORPGs are antiquated and are not attracting new players. Without new players, the EQ franchise will die as players die in real life. That is the tragic truth.
It’s’ worth noting that the biggest MMORPG franchise in the world, World of Warcraft, is still successful because it kept updating its technology and enhanced graphics over the years. Sony Online Entertainment did not do this and instead irresponsibly skimmed the profits from the top and sabotaged the future of the IP.
Chan could have mentioned something about the future of the EverQuest franchise, but instead, she talked about the predictable release of new expansions for both EQ1 and EQ2. The previous Darkpaw presentation at PAX in Boston was the template for her presentation and was another scripted walk down memory lane with nothing new except new excuses and lots of stolen valor.
To my knowledge, there was no Q&A after the event, which is very odd as most panels at Comic-Con allow the fans to ask questions.
Conclusion
The ultimate purpose of the Daybreak Comic-Con panel is bewildering since most of these games are not interested in attracting new players. The only rational explanation is that they are trying to make these games appear more profitable and successful than they currently are. The reason for that might be that they are thinking of selling these IPs. If that is true, then it would be welcome news, as I do not believe Enad Global 7 has the talent nor the passion to be proper stewards of the EverQuest franchise.
As the studio head of Darkpaw Games, Chan should be leading by example, but she does not. The current EverQuest dev team follows her poor example, has completely checked out of EverQuest, and has only contempt for the players who pay their salaries. It was revealed at Fippyfest that most of them work from home now. They no longer engage with their players on the forums and on Discord. My sources tell me that they don’t even talk to the members of their hand-picked Community Resource Council.
Jen Chan and her ever-dwindling development team are like a bunch of undertakers working at a funeral home. They are making the corpse of EverQuest look as attractive as possible for the benefit of the mourners. But to no avail, as the franchise is dead as a doornail thanks to years of shameful neglect and a willful failure to reinvest back into the IP.
Perhaps an even better analogy is that the EQ franchise is like the cult classic film Weekend at Bernies. How long can Ji Ham and Jen Chan carry around this rotting corpse before the world knows it’s dead?
Enad Global 7, Darkpaw Games, and Darkpaw Gamers are the laughing stock of the industry. Thanks to incompetent upper management, lower than industry standard salaries, and no track record of success, they can’t keep good talent, and they can’t attract good talent. These people are in no position to create a new EverQuest MMORPG that will be a serious competitor to what’s available on the market. At this juncture, selling the EQ IP to a serious studio is the smartest thing they could do.
–Wolfshead
You are absolutely right. Enad Global 7 was started by a Swedish con man (who left after hyping a “new engine and mana from heaven” for Lord of the Rings and selling his shares, yeah, Robin Flodin even sounded great to you and me both, remember?) as a work for hire consultancy studio… and there it is.
They bought franchises, but devoid of talent. EverQuest is now run by Mrs. Chan, who is doing nothing but nice talking the aging wreck the franchise has become.
The whole portfolio of Enad Global 7 is speculative, they bought franchises with a name, they never ever had even the slightest connection to talent in the industry or a real plan.
It is a disaster for every franchise they own.
The whole Swedish company seems now more than half Chinese, but this is normal, Malmö has more muslim Swedes than silly big blonde guys and gals by now, after all. SCNR.
Addendum. Enad Global 7, Tolkien Estate, etc… we live in an age of inept stewardship. There is a “King” to return in a way who could save these and other franchises: The King of kings, the Lord of lords. The whole entangled mess of deranged values these days must be removed and replaced with real virtues and values. Even people who mock god or deny him should be able to see this by thinking rationally about it.
Just recently, I found out the second season of the Rings of Power has started airing and I went on IMDB to check its scores, all were above 7. I remembered that people were saying about the first season that Amazon manipulated the overall score so it doesn’t drop below 6.9 so it looks good despite how dissatisfied with it people were, so it made me think that the same happened again.
I just looked at the thumbnail of every episode and I tried really hard to see the Middle Earth/Tolkien “magic” in it, but couldn’t. The actors just look like low budget picks, everything looks dull, like some kind of fan movie, more like fan fiction on a low budget. Even if I pretend I never disliked it and try to find reasons to like it as if seeing it for the first time, I just can’t. Something inside me, like a gut feeling, just doesn’t allow me to like it, because it would be a massive waste.
The Rings of Power season 2 will be another disaster. Anything Hollywood touches now turns to shit.