EverQuest Next could have been the MMO to make me love MMOs. I didn't have a World of Warcraft phase or a City of Heroes phase, or even much of an Ultima Online phase, so these big multiplayer worlds have always been a bit of a mystery to me. The idea of existing alongside hundreds of other people is exciting, but I'm more interested in world simulation and AI than I am in fetch quests and emote spamming. Next looked like it'd bring adaptive AI and emergent storytelling into the massively multiplayer arena, and I was very excited about it. And then it was cancelled.
And now, after a prolonged beta launch and briefer full release, precursor title EverQuest Landmark [official site] is closing down.
]]>Light a candle for the genre, it's basically done. Oh, it'll keep ticking along, of course. This month we've seen Black Desert Online, there's others on the way, and there'll always be some audience for both the mostly Korean-born clickers and the occasional new idea. Personally I'm hoping for City of Titans to scratch that superhero itch that Champions Online sure as heck can't, and for Shroud of the Avatar to bring back some of that Ultima magic. (Take a shot.) But as a genre to actively watch for cool stuff? Stick a fork in it. Sony- sorry, Daybreak was pretty much the last great hope of breathing life into it in any form remotely close to how Everquest did it back in the day, never mind giving it back the cultural clout from World of Warcraft's heyday.
]]>EverQuest Next was one of the more interesting MMORPG ideas I've seen in a fair while. I dug the idea of introducing a touch of Minecraft with a world built in collaboration with fans, and destructible terrain letting players carve paths and find hidden places sounded more interesting than many MMO worlds. But... it's off. Developers Daybreak Game Company, the studio formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment, have cancelled the MMORPG. The problem, Daybreak say, is that it simply wasn't fun. They do plan to finish its world-building Early Access spin-off Landmark [official site] up a bit, though.
]]>You can now join Landmark for just £14. Sony's Minecraft-esque adjunct to EverQuest Next has lowered the barrier of entry into the closed beta so even a frugal Scottish freelancer can stroll in. I've spent the weekend wandering the worlds, admiring what's being built and testing the tools.
I am currently not dead, but if I died and you were to look through my search history and Twitter account, you'd probably think Landmark was the killer. I've only been able to play it with passive-aggressive search engine queries and complaining on Twitter. There is no game here. Not yet, anyway. Landmark, has a bright future, but it's also a honest-to-glob alpha, and probably one of the earliest games I've ever bought from a major company. Here's what I've typed into Google and Twitter, and here's what those searches say about the state of the game.
]]>I always did think that EverQuest Next Landmark was kind of a clunky name. And, true story, I know plenty of people in the gaming industry - devs and journos alike - who don't understand that it's an entirely separate experience from EverQuest Next proper. So I suppose it only makes sense that SOE's decided to shave it down into to a more prim and proper "Landmark" and leave it at that. It's still the same massively ambitious world building tool/game, however, and you can now buy into its rocky yet rollicking closed beta.
]]>As we recently reported, EverQuest Next Landmark's paid alpha is officially up and running, and we'll bring you streaming video and impressions of it soon. But first, I'd like to tell the story of an EQNL adventure that you probably won't be able to have, despite the MMO/space-age imagination engine's formidable voxel-powered flexibility. I have seen the very limits of Landmark's evergreen realms, tunneled to its deepest depths (and then well below them) and built an even giant-er ice cream in its skies. It was astounding fun - not necessarily more so than regular Landmark, but in a different sort of way. The only problem? I wasn't playing by the rules.
]]>I have played EverQuest Next Landmark, and lo, it was akin to using Photoshop to birth worlds from my finger (and brain) tips. Also, a giant ice cream cone. For all of SOE's boasting, there's actually some awe-worthy power in the toolset, and that's not even all there is to the game. Landmark is a universe of exploration, combat, and survival that will constantly expand as players build onto it. From a standpoint of scope and ambition, vanilla EverQuest Next pretty much pales in comparison. If you still don't understand exactly why (SOE did a horrendous job of explaining it early on), there's a fairly substantial video below that ought to help.
]]>My proudest Minecraft creation was a shack on top of a mountain. It had a single room, a bed, a chest and one glass wall that looked out across the world as far as the draw distance could see. It was a terrible little box but it was my terrible little box. I look at some of the architectural wonders and recreations that people make and I think to myself, 'that is incredibly impressive and it is also something that I will never ever have the patience to do'. The same is true of the EverQuest Next Landmark video below. A piece of concept art is recreated in the game, the whole thing shown in time lapse. I want to walk around a world and see things like this but I'll be in my shack, with a telescope, watching the ants at work.
]]>EverQuest Next sounds marvelous. Maybe, finally, it will be the fountain of youthful innovation that this creaky, stuck-in-its-ways genre so desperately needs. A lot of jaded players are pinning their hopes on it, so fingers crossed. Here's the thing, though: SOE's EverQuest Next is actually only a very small part of the bigger picture. EverQuest Next: Landmark is the game that SOE thinks should *really* have everybody talking. It's a tool that, in theory, will allow anyone to construct their own MMO world. EverQuest, SOE hopes, is done being a single game. Instead, it's destined to become a player-generated universe, a rainbow sea of crisscrossing themes, settings, and goals. I spoke with director of development David Georgeson about specifics of things like classes, emergent AI, and combat, as well as trolling and why SOE is actually happy that player created content could entirely overshadow their own. It's all below.
]]>When I was but a wee young'un, I played the original EverQuest until I felt more lizard person than socially confused middle-schooler, until I could fearlessly face down even the most mildly irritated of dogs because they weren't Sand Giants. If you had asked me back then, "Gee Nathan, where do you think this series will end up in 13 or so years," I would've been way off the (land) mark. And then I would've said something stupid and obnoxious and I would totally understand if you just hauled off and punched teenage me in the mouth. He had it coming. Point being, EverQuest Next: Landmark is more hyper-advanced Minecraft evolution than massively multiplayer role-playing game, but it's a foundation on which we'll be able to build infinite MMO worlds, quests, storylines, and dreams. SOE's EQN is just a single twinkling star in its gigantic galaxy. So of course, I used it to build a giant ice cream cone.
]]>I knew roughly what SOE had planned for their new EverQuest game, but I was still surprised by how different it was when Adam broke the cardinal rule of Vegas by telling us about it. The first part, Landmark, is a free-to-play sandbox game built from voxels in which players can dig and build and design the world around them.
The latest developer diary walks you through the different materials and tools that make that world.
]]>Mighty Questers of Early Access, in search of the door into EverQuest Next Landmark, do not falter. You are nearly there. You've captured the breath of the Dragon of What, held steady as you traversed the lands of Really? EverQuest? If You Say So, and ascended the peak of Is It Out, Yet?. There is one more step on the road, a perilous place known as the Sign Ups Of Beta. There you must complete the final challenge, the Perilous Form Of Smedley: tell it your life story to pass the Gates of Hype and into the Lands Of Hooray! Details are below.
]]>Forthcoming MMO genre-shaker Everquest Next, and it's building sub-game/precursor Landmark, have been fleshed out in a little more detail over at Seattle mega-con, PAX, thanks to the machinations of PC Gamer. You can examine the videos from this reveal with your own Eye Of Sauron, below. The first shows some movement through the world of next, and the second shows a little bit more of what we can expect from Landmark's sandboxian engine.
If all this is greek to you, then have a look at Adam's feature, which first revealed the new game.
]]>Talking to the monsters just isn't enough any more, things must be more complex. Gamers the world over cry-out for not only deeper interaction with their digital worlds but the ability to terraform them as well. Thus when earlier this month Sony Online Entertainment shocked the world by revealing Everquest Next might actually be relevant to the wider gaming community, its world-building utility Landmark was yet another pleasant surprise. Gamescom's provided a platform to preach a little more information regarding the project and it's just past this oddly destructible barrier.
]]>Until very recently, if I'd walked up to someone and asked them if they were excited about the new EverQuest game, any positive response would have seen the authorities rush in. The Pod Person would then be gassed and caged, the area evacuated and nuked, and humanity would feel just a little bit more vulnerable. Even now, when I look in the mirror and someone excited about EverQuest Next is staring back, I flinch a little bit. Am I a Pod Pearson? SOE's work in revitalising their MMO as a world that I want to explore and smash is baffling. To be honest, I thought Adam was playing an elaborate prank, but the video of SOE's live reveal is proof that they're onto something.
]]>Yesterday, Sony Online Entertainment significantly altered my entire outlook on the next twelve months of gaming. When I sat down, along with a small gathering of journalists invited to see the reveal of Everquest Next, I wasn’t expecting to have my line of thinking about MMORPGs to fundamentally shift, but that’s precisely what happened. From being a game in a genre that I have only the occasional interest in, Next immediately became one of the most fascinating and exciting games on the horizon.
And that’s just the half of it.
]]>Along with the first full reveal of the hugely exciting Everquest Next, Sonly Online Entertainment announced another title, Everquest Landmark. Quite how they've kept its existence a secret I don't know. If I'd been working on it, self-trumpet blower that I am, I'd have been shouting about it from the rooftops. To be released later this year, preceding Next, it's a construction and exploration game drawn from the same vein as Minecraft. It's also the entire toolset used to build worlds and assets for Everquest Next.
]]>I'm beginning to think gaming industry people don't actually know what the word "dead" means. Back in my day, it was a pretty final thing - oftentimes even considered fatal. Now, though, if something doesn't have all eyes on it, it's apparently dead and gone forever. Just ask adventure games and, oh right, that whole "entirety of PC gaming" thing. And now, with the era of WoW's incomparable dominion drawing to a close, MMOs seem to be getting the same treatment. But that's a knee-jerk reaction. Nothing's six feet under just yet. The writing is, however, on the wall, and its message is quite clear: change or lose your audience to boredom's creeping clutches. But how? Well, if you ask SOE president John Smedley, it's time to stop railroading players and start letting them live their virtual lives as they see fit. I know because I did, er, ask him. I also asked him about replicating the success of EVE Online, PlanetSide 2's eventual planet-based metagame, EverQuest Next's new incredibly player-driven reboot, and tons more.
]]>Bad, sad times hit Sony Online Entertainment last week, with the revelation that the MMO division is closing three studios, laying off a third of its staff and summarily executing planned spy game The Agency. This all sucks - hope everyone affected finds safe harbour very soon.
So what does this mean for the game we've waited our whole lives* for, the sequel to massively multiplayer manshoot Planetside?
]]>EQ's Fan Faire event in Las Vegas has had a big reveal: the working title for the next Everquest title is... Everquest Next. Which is exciting, I suppose, because it means that there really is another Everquest game in the works. EQWire totally blogged the panel in which the new game was mentioned, and although details remain fairly scant, it seems that Everquest Next will be more like the original game, and with a lovely PvP focus for people who like the fantasy mega-biff.
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