Enad Global 7 and Vague Promises of a New EverQuest Title… Maybe in 2028?

Put down 2028 as the next date for a possible new EverQuest MMORPG title.

EverQuest – Since 1999

Though maybe don’t write that in indelible ink, as even in yesterday’s Capital Markets Day presentation in Stockholm, EG7 Acting CEO Ji Ham said that he probably should have made that date blurry on the slide because it is way out in the future… there were several “ifs” in his statements… but they think they can manage it.

But let’s dial back to where this even came from.

There was a three hour presentation… breaks included… by Ji Ham yesterday to talk about EG7’s long term plans.  It was live streamed and is now up on YouTube if you want to get into all the gory details about how past plans came to fruition, high level goals, and a lot of financial related talk, not all of which I am sure I buy into.  But every such pitch is tainted by over optimism.

There is, however, a lot to unpack in that video and I have only skimmed through it once and pulled out the following tidbits.  I still need to go back and give a couple sections a closer listen, especially the Q&A session at the end.  I certainly didn’t hear anything about a console version of LOTRO, for example.  But I always figured that was never more than a tease in any case.

There are some build ups during the presentation, looks into what their plans are in general for both first and third party IP titles.

The future milestone for EG7 releases

You can see Cold Iron on that chart, a one time possible acquisition for Daybreak, a deal which then never got mentioned again with the acquisition Daybreak by EG7.  But that never really got any news until Cold Iron shipped Alien’s Fireteam Elite with a different publisher, which led to a whole what is going on here investigation.

Well, Cold Iron is back working with EG7.  Daybreak will publish their next title and Toadman will do some development for hire in support of the new title, a deal that gets covered in the first 20 minutes of the video.  And the whole story about around Cold Iron is even stranger than we thought.

The Cold Iron data sheet

Along with the history part we got a glimpse of the monthly gross revenue trend lines for all of Daybreak’s titles. (You can find this at the 30 minute mark of the video.)

Monthly Gross Revenue

The bars in the back are the total consolidated gross revenue for all titles combined, and should be compared against the scale on the right, while the lines are for each game and are aligned to the scale on the left of the chart.

There was also quite a bit of talk about planned revenue and the need to support that with how the company plans to get there, along with some history about how the company ended up with their current line up, including a side tale about the SOE acquisition and how their success with that has made him confident with his feel for the games market.

Broad strategy for EG7

But when it gets down to it, they have a nice chart for what they consider first party titles.

First party game plans

For H1Z1 he said specifically that they are not reviving the battle royale concept, that they are looking to do a sandbox survival style of game, with a box price less than AAA titles, cosmetic in-game purchases, and DLC to round out the revenue model.  I don’t know if they remember that they shut down the sandbox survival side of the franchise back in 2018.  But now they’re buying into it again, with development to start next year.

I’m going to skip over Mechwarrior because that doesn’t do anything for me and get straight to what I started out wanting to write about, the next possible EverQuest title.

Ji Ham says that they consider EverQuest to be their most important IP, that it helped usher in the MMORPG era, and that even WoW was based on EQ (which Blizz did acknowledge directly at BlizzCon one year).  But what are they going to make with a $30 million budget?

Sure, it says massively multiplayer… so maybe box plus a premium subscription option plus cosmetics plus expansions/DLC is the path, just like the original.

But then Ji Ham goes into a comparison with Elden Ring around the 2 hour 18 minute mark. (Ji Ham said he has 200 hours in on Elden Ring at this point, which surprised me.  But I was surprised when I found out Smed played EVE Online, so my cynicism about gaming company leadership is pretty deep.)

I mean, I get part of the comparison.  Elden Ring’s financial success while still being a super difficult title has given Daybreak the green light to embrace hardcore over accessibility, to get back to the early essence of the franchise, which I am sure will make some people cheer.

But they still have to make something that offers a compelling game play experience.  Being difficult is not enough… and picking a $30 million budget for the next EQ because that is how much Elden Ring costs… what can I say? [Edit: And, as noted in the comments, I am not even sure how Ji Ham came up with that number for Elden Ring.]

However, the whole thing is still in the ideation phase and given that we’ve been through a couple of rounds of ideas for a new entry in the EverQuest franchise, it is tough to get too invested in something where a few people are currently trying to develop a concept with an eye towards maybe starting development in 2025 and maybe shipping sometime around 2028… though probably later than that, given past experiences in the genre.

So we’ll have to wait and see, but at least it is on the agenda.

But before we start getting too optimistic, elsewhere EG7 was announcing plans to appease shareholders.  We saw demands back in May from investor Alta Fox for more money in the form of dividends and stock buy backs.  So this got slipped into the mix on the press page:

Together with new financial targets the Board of Directors are proposing a shareholder capital return program. That includes dividend and a stock buyback program, aiming to start the program in the beginning of 2024. The shareholder capital return program is subject to approval from Extra General Meeting of the shareholders to be scheduled for Q4.

The details elsewhere indicate that half of company net revenue will be used to appease shareholders through dividends and stock buy backs.  That doesn’t sound bad on its surface maybe, but profits are what a company uses to invest back into making things like new titles.

Does that plan leave them enough space to get to a new EverQuest title?  They haven’t managed it as Daybreak or EG7 so far without this sort of earmark on profits, so it makes me a little dubious on the whole thing.

Still, I am interested to see the reaction.  Even hinting that they might be making a Marvel based MMORPG got them no end of press.  How much attention with the suggestion of a new EverQuest title garner?

Related:

• EG7 – Mid-term financial Targets
• Market Screener – Enad Global 7 presents new financial targets and strategic direction
• Massively OP – EG7 tells investors it wants to develop a new EverQuest MMORPG
• Inventory Full – EverQuest 3 – What, This Again?!
• Massively OP – DCUO’s volatility, EverQuest’s stability, Cold Iron’s new game, LOTRO’s canceled remaster
• WCCFTech – Everquest 3 Tentatively Imagined as a Hardcore MMO Due in 2028