Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley took the stage at the studio's annual SOE Live convention to talk about the scope of EverQuest Next, the working title of the next MMO in the EverQuest franchise. As part of a "blowing up" of the preliminary concept images and sketches released last year, Smedley claimed Next will be the "largest sandbox MMO" created to date, according to EQ2 Wire .

"What we're building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest," Smedley said. "It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed with the same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you've never seen before and the MMO world has never seen before.

"We didn't want more 'kill 10 rats' quests. We didn't want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they're delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game."

Smedley also promised a playable build by next year's convention for fans to try out and mentioned the involvement of previous EverQuest designers Dave Georgeson and Terry Michaels in Next's formation.