On Friday Sony Online Entertainment surprised its fans by announcing the early launch of the alpha test for EverQuest Next Landmark, the all-mining, all-crafting aspect of the next-generation fantasy MMO. I entered that alpha test, and I tore a hole in the world.
Landmark is where EverQuest Next players get to explore, gather materials and create. It’s been likened to Minecraft on many occasions, but that’s only because this is pretty much Minecraft with pretty graphics and personal plots. Players stake their claim and then set upon the world of Norrath with pick and axe, gathering materials needed to craft whatever it is their heart desires.
The alpha test was announced on Friday. The announcement was followed by a live stream, during which EverQuest director of development Dave Georgeson wore this hat.
The live stream ended without the alpha launch, so fans waited and read Twitter for several hours. Finally the servers went live, and players scrambled to claim prime plots. By the time I got in, 8AM the next morning, most of the prime spots seemed gone, but some rapid mouse clicking scored me a lovely desert mountaintop to play with.
And then the game went down for most of the day. On Sunday it returned with massive queues (a new server should open up tonight), and I didn’t get back online until this morning.
Here is my tale of travel and building, of ripping a hole in the ground with my bare hands and clawing out the fruit of the earth. Of getting lost. Of standing dramatically. This is 10 minutes in EverQuest Next Landmark.
So far, so good. For my next trick, I’m going to try building some things. Wish me luck!
Comments
8 responses to “Watch Us Play 11 Minutes Of EverQuest Next Landmark”
god i love the art direction in this game already. I need to give this a go !
I love these kinds of games, but how does this game compare in terms of building and survival difficulty to Wurm Online?
(I am not able to check the video right now, but looking at the picture, it appears to be much simpler.)
Can I get clarification on something?
Players can pay upwards of +$100AU to play the alpha version of a game which will be ‘free to play’ when finally released?
That and buying into the alpha gives you nothing towards the final free to play version (except a flag or something)?
I was umming and arring about buying into the alpha for a few months and I was literally about to click the buy button when I say on the bottom of the page it was going to be free to play.
Now Im really not so sure. It needs to be a god damn fantastic game for me to pay over $100 to play an alpha.
Is it any good? Really?
Well you do get a bunch of in-game items, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they give out something sneaky to the founders, for helping and putting up with a lot of the alpha jitters. Look, at the end of the day people need to understand that if you buy into alpha, you are becoming a tester – and you can have as much impact on sculpting the game as you want. Don’t bother coming in thinking that you’ll just get to play a game early, it’s really not worth the hassle.
People have been losing their items, their claims, everything they’ve built (some haven’t). Founder packages can be viewed as a money grab for impatient people, and they are in a way – but they wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a market. There are quite a lot of people already in alpha, and the server are jammed packed with claims. There is a lot of running around and resource gathering – but the founder pack does give you a pretty good pick/axe and some boosts. Plus some fancy looking outfits.
As mentioned by @rethilgore, the game has a great art direction, and I’m actually quite surprised at how well the character models look, and most of the mechanics are pretty good too. I never played minecraft, don’t intend to either – but I can see now how addictive building things can be, and having you own claim or ‘plot’ really adds to that sense of entitlement/ownership.
Right now people aren’t happy with the plot sizes, but again due to this being alpha, anything is really open for discussion. If you are able to play knowing that this is alpha and includes the following:
– bugs
– disconnections
– some rough mechanics
– game isn’t anywhere complete
– game now = resource gathering + running + traversing between shards (to gather different tier resources + running + building + losing built stuff + pretty visuals = join the fun.
PS. The dev’s have been really open about development and any problems etc they have faced. They are super keen to get player feedback and enhance the game.
It is a money grab. For one, its not like they’re a small group of indi developers needing support. Its Sony!
And two, its going to be free to play, so they’re asking people to pay to ‘test’ a alpha version.
I was all for this until just today. Now I’m all disheartened.
Right now Im watching a live stream on Twitch of Boogie (the fat yelling gamer guy on YouTube) digging straight down. Hes been at it for about 20 minutes so far.
1000 viewers watching him dig straight down.
Other players have built a tomb on the surface over his hole, lol.
He just said hes been digging straight down for an hour! lol
The housing system looks similar to Wildstar, so it looks like i’m gonna have a f2p Wildstar option :).