During the presentation that SOE gave at the Gamescom about EverQuest Next (HERE you can find our article about EverQuest Next) we were also given more information about the recently unveiled EverQuest Next Landmark. Although at first glance the game seems just a build tool for Everquest Next, is a game in its own right that simply works with tandem with EverQuest Next, and both titles offer a completely different game type.

The creation of EverQuest Next Landmark came about with the world of EQ Next based on voxels, and the creation of new tools to manipulate these voxels, so SOE decided to put these tools along with assets and concept art into the hands of the players, to give them the opportunity to physically build parts of EverQuest Next. The depth of these tools has not yet been unveiled, but it appears that it is an adjustable voxel brush for detail work where you can smooth and deform vertices in real time to create the forms that you want in all kinds of environments and mountains.

Landmark is, essentially, a Minecraft type world building game where persistent worlds are procedurally generated and making each one unique. Players can join these worlds and control their own private plots of land to create monumental buildings and all kinds of environments, players can even bind multiple plots and build alongside their friends and guilds huge towns or cities. An interesting feature of the game is that you can record videos of your projects with a time lapse recording tool and upload them so others can see how the projects progresses.

The worlds themselves are open for anyone to explore them, but there are still discussions about the idea of private servers as seen in the likes of Minecraft, but it seems they do like the idea of it being more social so players can watch a world evolve. When we asked them about that thought of offshoot communities forming on these servers, that prefer to play in their own worlds rather than play the game itself, Dave Georgeson, Director of development at SOE, simply smiled and said “They’re different games and will offer different things to different players, some might never set foot in EverQuest Next and always stay in Landmark and that’s okay with us, as long as people are happy playing one of them then we’re happy”.

The game will also have a leader board feature where you can search for constructions, which creators can tag, so the community can find them easily (e.g. tagging a build with “castle”, “ogre den”, “fire pit” and the like) and filter with ease. In addition players can sell their creations on the market known as LandMarks, large and impressive areas in the world that can act as social hubs and contain wizard towers which can be used transport yourself between worlds.  As well as its Landmarks is to build outdoor spaces, players will also have access to the Player Studio where they can also create items such as armors and weapons, and sell them to other players for real money and get a shared piece of the revenue. Players can filter and follow specific creators to see when they add something new to their store.

Landmark also contains several MMO-centric features, even from character creation that will begin with the "adventurer" class (which once rises to a certain level you can bring to your EverQuest Next account to be taken up as an unlocked multi-class skill). Travel through worlds in various types of mounts, seek out new resources, improve your construction tools through workshops that you can build by yourself, build enhanced workshops with a group, or search for legendary workshops hidden away in the world

And if buildings things for fun or for money is not enough, players will have access to the continents of Norrath, where you will find the true locations of the EverQuest Next, and where you can build in certain locations, then the community can vote which builds they like more, and the best will be imported into the game, with which you can contribute your bit to the world of EverQuest Next. Quite a legacy!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 29th, 2013 at 3:37 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.