Landmark

Updated Roadmap

During Closed Beta

Caves & Static Water (lakes and oceans)

These features are very likely to be introduced on the same day. Why? This change will overhaul the continents themselves pretty drastically. This will cause a claim wipe to occur…BUT…that won't be much of a problem for you, the players.

We'll auto-template everything on your claim at the time of the wipe and return all resources to you. You'll be able to just log on, make a new claim, and place your stuff back into the world with very little fuss.

However, this change will bring the following elements into the game:

-Caves: Many tiers of depth below ground for you to dig through and explore. Caves will become hot spots for monster and treasure as those other elements get added in later.

-All continents become T1-T5. Resources will no longer be divided between islands. All islands will have all resources. It's just that many of those resources will be buried far below ground.

-Static water (oceans and lakes): This is visual initially, adding tons of variety to the appearance of the world.

-Dynamic Water
This is the water that everyone's waiting for so that you can start playing with fluid dynamics in your creations. It's coming. But it's also some pretty hairy R&D, so it'll take a while still.

-Quality of Life Improvements

-Groups will get a private chat channel.

-Groups will be able to see each other on the map.
You'll be able to paste a map location into chat so that other players can see it as a waypoint if they click on the chat link.

-Key configs: Yes, you need to be able to customize your key mappings.

-Mini-map to aid navigation while traveling.

-Chat 2.0: An overhaul on the chat pane interface to make it more intuitive.
World and macroverse info on the Map interface.

Socialization

-Twitch integration will occur very soon.

-Guilds: Bigger than a friends list, but essentially fulfilling the same role on a bigger scale. But now with a cool title and a few other perks.

-Player Studio: You can finally submit your templates to the Player Studio (part of the overall Marketplace). This means that your creativity and work on your claims can be turned into real cash…if other players will buy your creations. This system is extremely interesting and will merit its own document soon because it’s heavy on socialization elements. It’s going to be fun.

-SOEMote: You knew it was coming! We’re adding this in now because Landmark is a beautiful stage for the folks that like to roleplay or machinma. SOEmote will be hugely useful for them. (And don’t forget the voice shifting tech so you don’t have to sound like you on VoiP!)

-New Naming mechanism with account handle: Now you can be any name you want. No longer do we require unique names for your character. (No name reservations!)

-Voice over Internet : Yes, many folks use Teamspeak servers (or whatever is the flavor of the month). But not everyone has a server to join, and we’ve found that forcing people to use external voice servers often fragments the community severely. So that’s getting added also. Delayed until early Closed Beta. Shifted because other priorities were shuffled higher on the list.

-Ley Lines & Movement
Think of these as mini-hubs on the Islands. They let you micro-jump between ley line positions, and then explore the area from that hub. (You still have to go to the main hub to transfer between islands and worlds.) There are several advantages to this, not all related to ease of travel. (For example: Real estate around these micro-hubs is more desirable, adding yet another type of claim to seek out.)

NOTE: Ley Line use will require in-game coin or resources.

-New movement methods: Methods of gliding, flying, etc. will be added to the game via items that you can craft and find.

Risk & Danger

-Health: Yup…you'll be able to die soon. But you can increase your health by finding increase items while adventuring through the world.

-Death Penalty: Yes, death will have teeth. Try not to die.

-Graveyards and Reviving: When you die, you’ll need a place to respawn unless you Revive.

-BASIC combat: This is the first of many steps that will lead us to the eventual combat style we want. This first step is extremely basic as we prototype systems. But things will try to kill you.

-Item-based (not class-based) abilities and progression. (Example: Make a bow. Now you can shoot arrows. Imbue it with fire. Now you can shoot fire arrows.)

-Armor and Buffs.

-Player versus Player combat, in addition to Player versus Environment.

Other New Systems

-Crafting 2.0 : This includes whole new sets of systems, like Imbuing, Upgrading, Salvaging, and Refinement.

-Journal: There’s a lot to keep track of in this game. All the crafting choices, your resources, and we’re going to be adding a lot more achievements (see below). When we do that, you need a mechanism to keep it all straight and to help you organize what *you* want to do. The Journal is a cool interface designed to let you do just that.

-Achievements: Achievements are the “quest-like” equivalent within Landmark. There’s a ton of things to collect and do in the world, and the achievements system allows you to be recognized for that effort, as well as hinting at what you can do to become more powerful or capable.

-Treasure Chests: This is a generic term to represent loot and surprises that you can find as you explore through the caves system below ground.
Unlocking recipes: Right now, all recipes are available at crafting tables as soon as you make them. When this system goes into the game, you’ll need to find those recipes before you can make them at the crafting tables.

Everything after Open Beta Launch

Landmark is an MMO. Therefore it is never done. We'll be developing and refining it for many, many years.

But there are also MANY things still to come for Landmark after we go Open Beta.

Remember, our motto is that "everything we can do, you can do". So as we continue to develop tools for EverQuest Next, we'll be bringing those elements into Landmark as well!

Things to look forward to on that front include:

-AI editors and monster creators
-Dungeon mastering tools, like scenario layout and story arcs.
-An interaction system allowing you to hook up behaviors and physics on the creations you've made.
-PvP rules creation systems
-And a lot more

All of these features will be delivered as "fun to use" features…not complicated scripting languages. Just consider what the folks in Alpha did to push our building tools to their limits. Now imagine what you can do with all this other power we're sending your way.

It's going to be amazing.

In Summary

Hopefully, this Blueprint has helped set your expectations as to what you can expect to see in the game during Closed Beta, as well as giving you an overview of what the game will become so that your suggestions can be more in tune with what we’re planning already.

Once again, THANK YOU for participating in these early stages of the game, and thank you for your opinions. This process has been amazing to us (the dev team) already and we think it’s going to grow into something even better as time goes on! Please let us know what you think on the forums!

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