Sony Online Entertainment’s EverQuest Next was billed as “the largest sandbox MMO ever designed“ but sadly, it will never be seen by gamers- at least not in the way we first thought. SOE has now decided to scrap the original design for the 3rd installment of EverQuest. As a long time EQ fan, I was interested in hearing more about the reasons for this and how the game design would move forward. Massively talks to John Smedley about it: Massively: Let’s start with EQ Next. When did you make the call to scrap everything? What was it that made you choose to do so? John Smedley: A year and a half ago, we made that decision. I didn’t get to cover this in the keynote, so I should mention it here. The engine and underlying technology has not changed. A lot of the guts and infrastructure are staying the same. What we’re…