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! (more…)