[kaffis]

While it's certainly an interesting theory, I see no reason not to take Smed at his word and read his words plainly for an equally compelling theory.

Namely, that Forgelight is an engine that was *developed internally* (note that this is a fundamentally different statement from "a proprietary engine that we acquired exclusive rights to by buying the code/team that made it") for use on future MMO projects (like, you know, EQ Next, which is what was first shown on Forgelight).

Also, it's not a surprise that Planetside 2 development switched mid-stream from an old engine (the actual Planetside 1 engine) to this new engine. That switch corresponded with the decision to refocus development efforts and resources on the Planetside and EverQuest properties. Since the EQ team were already working on the engine for EverQuest (which supports Smed's other statements that Forgelight is an engine designed from the start for use in MMOs, again, fundamentally a different statement from this Project Offset, which was, apparently, being made by the team that created it for an FPS), refocusing resources from other projects onto Planetside meant taking it from a simple reskinning of PS1 (including probably some updates to netcode and gameplay, but primarily sounded like it was simply revisiting the old models to improve the polycounts and texture sizes to look better on newer hardware that could handle it) to rewriting the game from scratch for the engine that the EQ team had made.

In other words, it's an interesting theory, but it's all circumstantial and doesn't create a more convincing or reasonable explanation than what we've already been told about Forgelight. And believing what we've already been told means not having to suspect Smed et al. of lying to us for no reason.