Daybreak’s Holly Longdale raised a lot of eyebrows a month ago when she announced she was departing the Darkpaw Games sub-unit and leaving behind the EverQuest and EverQuest II franchise, which she’d helmed for many years. It was particularly surprising given that she’d spent the better part of the last year hinting at a future game in the franchise. Darkpaw was also just a few weeks public at that point too.
At the time, all Longdale said was that she was exiting Daybreak for a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that [she] owe[s] to all the players and developers of EverQuest and EverQuest II.” That led MMO gamers to speculate on her destination; everywhere from Amazon to Playable Worlds.
But they were all wrong, as today we know where she’s gone: Blizzard. Her Linkedin page now says she’s working at a Principal Game Producer at Blizzard. “Recently joined Blizzard to focus on World of Warcraft Classic,” the page says.
Darkpaw and EverQuest were left in the apparently capable hands of Jennifer Chan, who’s already put out a player address and a big patch for EQII as of yesterday.