EQ Next Landmark Claims

SOE released a lot of great information about EverQuest Next Landmark yesterday via a live stream.  My favorite part though was watching Darrin.  I had fun captioning him throughout the video.  In the beginning: “God I need a beer.”  A few minutes in: “They are still talking.  Yep.  still talking.”  Fifteen minutes in: “Do you think I can just have one beer?”

Okay, all joking aside, I really am excited to play Landmark now.  The more I hear the more it sounds like it’s shaping up to be exactly the type of go-to game I can play on and off or all in one sitting for a very long time.  Gathering resources, avoiding dangers, claiming land, exploring a world, building whatever I want… that’s what I need right now!

A few of the things shown during the video have already started to create debate on the forums.  The biggest one is Claim Size.  The general consensus is that it’s going to be too small.  I disagree.  Landmark is going to be F2P which already means finding a spot to build is going to be somewhat of a challenge.  Make the plots too big and suddenly it becomes insane.  They are also going to want to make money on this somehow, and I think the cash shop is going to come into play.  I have a feeling the vertical height (100m) will be expanded by the end of alpha.

My biggest question for them was whether or not we would be able to make claims on behalf of a guild.  My group in particular likes to build together and we’re hoping we can somehow earn/buy/whatever a claim for all of us.  I think they avoided the question altogether since it was asked 3000 times in chat.

Around 16:52 is where you should start watching if you want to skip all of the chatter in the beginning about the community event and general tomfoolery.

[Update: Video removed.  Will add again when they post a new one.]

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, I took notes on everything that matters.  Read on!

• You are going to have to earn a claim flag (not hard)
• 70m below, 100m above, 70m wide (for now, may be balanced).
• Don’t worry about being griefed above/below. You own the rights to building on the land but someone can mine below.
• There is upkeep on your claim. Recurring cost. Fail to pay it and you lose your claim but you get your stuff back.
• You can make multiple claims but they get much more expensive the more you have.
• Claims you make can be made right next to each other to expand the area you’re building in
• Can use ‘tags’ to tag your property as a ‘castle’ or a ‘western’ and people can use tags to help them find your stuff.
• Can rate other people’s claims
• Can set the name and description of your claim
• Can give people permissions to build and share
• Can create interactive things on your claim that people can use even if they aren’t granted permissions (Crafting stations)
• Each claim will have a number of chests to store the things you’ll build with and there will be an upgrade path to increase storage.
• When you place things in chests you’ll need to go back to those chests
• Claim ownership can be transferred and even sold
• There will be buffer space between other people’s claims (yours can be side by side)
• You can mine on any server and bring resource with you to another server. Traveling to other servers is done in-game.
• If the world is wiped (not character wipes) your work will be packaged up. Mentioned between Alpha/beta
• There will be a map showing claims with navigational aids
• You will be able to fast travel to your claim once you have progressed enough but this game is about exploration and the continents are big enough that you’ll have to wander around.
• What stops someone from making 100 accounts and claiming 100 plots? Answer: “I promise you, you won’t be able to manage the upkeep on 100 accounts.”
• There will be danger in the world and combat but not in alpha. It will be added.

They ended the video with an extra special surprise.  Looks like the dangers in Landmark are going to be extremely cool!