Category: Previews

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Everquest is coming with its third installment. Everquest Next (Landmark). Even though they seem to be the same game, they are two different games that belong to each other. On Friday I wrote about Everquest Next, so today I write about Everquest Next Landmark.

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Everquest Next Landmark is a sandbox game/application that can be used to create your own adventures. The game is seperate from the Everquest Next game, but it contains the same tools as the developers have/had when they were building EQNext.

This means you will be able to craft a beautiful environment for your quest/storyline through the in game, you can craft the quest around it with the questing tool and use various scripting tools to script events and monster spawns.

Whether your design will be used or not in the official Everquest Next game depends on how creative and innovative your new feature. New and innovative designs (whether that are complete adventures or simply buildings or objects) will be chosen by the developers to implement in the main MMO.

Questionable though, how your own creative design ‘copyrights’ will be handled.

So basicly you can play here your own stories after editing your experiences.

You will need to gather materials to build them that way, so gather enough stone for stone patterns etc. You can change (paint) objects to another material later using the paint tool, as long as you have the required resources for it.

With the ability to creatively and interactively create things in this game, we can expect:

– jumping puzzles
– full stories with quests and events
– and most likely: easy way outs on loot… if such thing as loot is implemented.
– and much more..

as designs by players.
In Everquest Next Landmark, you have a set of actions (Select, delete, heal, smooth, paint, and line) and you have materials (patterns) and objects (props).

Note that the objects (props) can be designed as well using the props editor.

Select, delete, heal and smooth are the tools everybody will have at start, while other more advanced functions will be unlockable and acquireable during gameplay.

With ‘select’ you select the objects or areas, with ‘delete’ you delete the current selection, with ‘heal’ you restore it to a previous point (UNDO button) and with ‘smooth’ you can smooth out any rough edges.

Advanced functionality can be earned:

Paint – to apply material to the selected area, to redo your wooden house with diamond;
Line tool – This is for angles and inclines. You can make beveled areas etc. Very effective tool, but needs to be earned.

The flight tool – this also needs to be earned. In the basic form you are bound to the ground and have to walk around your house to build it. In flight mode you can fly around your creations on various heights.

Most materials need to be earned through gathering.

Props can either be purchased, built by your prop editor or bought through the ingame marketplace where other players offer their creations. These creations can be acquired by buying them using an ingame currency. This currency can be exchanged for real money, meaning that you could basicly earn money from the 3D creation of various items / props in this game. You can figure, that the tools for making props are more advanced than the creation of buildings, although to make things really look good you can expect to put a lot of time into this game.

For being able to build and make things, you have to be having your own plot of land. Outside the plot you are very limited as to what you can do. Inside your plot you can design everything. The engine is voxelbased but you can also place objects and things of nature. You can basicly change the environment from a flat piece of land towards a mountain with trees and a waterfall.

Be creative about this!

The plot area you choose / buy, decides on what materials, props and landscape will be available to you.

You can build in public and in realtime, everybody inside Landmark can see you building things up. If you feel like you have to test out something quickly or if you want to hide certain techniques from others to learn from, there is an option to instance your building process and to not show anyone what you are working with.

Griefing could happen, but only if you allow others to change things inside your plot. It’s a better idea to only allow trusted friends to build in your plot.3084[/img]

I am really looking forward already, for this game alone I would want to play it. If we can get our hands on an alpha or beta, we will surely be seeing more of this game soon on this website!

Here’s two video’s to explain it all.

Introduction video Landmark

Building a house

Game on!

Steven

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Sony has had two preceding Everquest games. Now Everquest 3 is coming, but in a totally different setup. You perhaps have already heard about Everquest Next and Everquest Next Landmark. They are however not the same thing. Landmark is based upon and has a providing role for Everquest Next.[/intro]

This first article is about Everquest Next, Sunday’s article will be about Everquest Next Landmark.

Everquest Next is a MMORPG sandbox in a fantasy setting. This is the main game, with the quests, the NPC’s the world with its own storyline, the cities, kings, gods and what not more. It’s a game where you can play the role you want. Want to be a plate wearing rogue performing healing magic? Want to be a battle mage with good armour and some sword usage? You can! You start the game with a certain ‘class’ and can add more classes through playing the game. Ofcourse, it’s very early in the development and therefore we can only tell you what Sony has been telling us right now. Things are subject to change!

So you can play the role you want, be or combine the classes you want to have and wear the stuff that looks good on you with the best stats available.

Things have to have a meaning in EverQuest Next – that ‘weaponskin’ of a special sword can only be obtained through the defeat of that mighty dragon.

Basicly we are talking about a type of weapon and armour skinning or transmuting, although they were talking at Sony about a weapon or armour family. Meaning anything inside the family will look the same, but have different stats. This will make sure that you won’t have the best items that make you look like a clown in the same time.

The armour families will be race based. Better items ofcourse need to be found or acquired through the content.

Another important feature in Everquest Next will be the full destructibility of environment and buildings — Everything in EverQuest Next can be destroyed. Destroy the ground beneath your enemy’s feet to make them loose their footing — or crush them under an avalanche you created. The possibilities are endless!

We wonder what this will mean to how the world will look like after a while… everything destroyed or will there be limits as to how much you can destroy, how much power this will cost etc (?!).

Everquest Next will be a MMORPG and it will have sandbox elements. It will have the usual classes, races, crafting, dungeon running, monster slaying, mounts, waypoints, death penalties etc. etc.

Death penalties won’t be about permanent death, but will have some sort of (hefty) penalty from which you will have to recover. They however want to prevent people ending up in the vicious circle of getting defeated by a monster, running around with a penalty and making even less chance of defeating the monster that killed them the first time.
Also they are thinking about a viable solution for being able to survive as a solo player.

There will be mounts in the game and there will be a fast travel network. They want us to have fun moving around in the game. The world should feel big, while you should still be able to join your friends in a manageable time (quickly).

There will be therefore fast travel implemented, but for that you will have to discover the various ‘waypoints’ before you can make use of it.

They also have talked about guilds. In most MMO’s people have/play alternative characters because they want to try out a different class, race or different role (crafting and muling versus raiding and pve/pvp).

Because of the more flexible character design, it is less likely that people will have a great amount of alternative characters (unless you are a roleplayer ofcourse).

In Everquest Next they see guilds as a channel. Every guild is like a profession or class or race. You have your main guild with the raiding or questing etc, but you are also member and in the chat channel of the weapon smithing guild and also in the Warrior’s guild channel. These channels can be active all on the same time.

As for being online / friends system. You will be able to add friends on a per-user basis or a per-character basis. This means that you can stay hidden for those you want to stay hidden for when you are playing on an alternative character.

The Everquest Next world will have a dynamic design. Weather will change continuously and realisticly. You can change the world around you by destroying or creating. Everything players do in the game will directly or indirectly affect how the storyline develops or the environment around you changes. Kings come to power, kings die, kingdoms and cities rise or fall, NPC’s appear or disappear, even GODS might change.

Everquest Next will contain both contested and non-contested content. We aren’t really talking about PvP here, but about whether a dungeon is open to the whole public, or whether you get monsters and dungeons privately and instanced to yourself / your group.

There will be PvP in the game and pvp will be in contested content, but it won’t be free-for-all everywhere.

The dynamic changing world is also formed by the monster AI implemented. They are making use of a so-called A Life + script engine. It is based upon the self sustaining form of monsters. Monsters will no longer spawn on one location only and camping is therefore useless. Monsters will move around in the world while the rest of the world also changes. Spawn points will change all the time and monsters will roam the area in group or alone. Expect smarter monsters and smarter combat.

The events that will make the decission of whether a city will fall or whether you will have an alliance with Orcs, will depend on the outcome of the so-called ‘Rallying Course’. It’s a system like a public quest system but than on steroids, said Sony.

There is also a game called Everquest Next Landmark. This, however, is not the same game. It is a sandbox game in which the main objective is to build, modify and form things next to gathering the materials and unlock the tools to do so.
Here one can also do quests, but only those that are made by you or others. It has no direct connection with Everquest Next. The only eventually direct connection with the main game is that the developers could choose your creation to be implemented in the ‘main’ game.

Everquest Next will be in beta sometime in 2014. You can sign up for it on their website. The alpha of Everquest Next Landmark will already start in February 2014 and closed beta in March 2014. Early packs can be bought to get guaranteed access to these.

Here’s a video of some features of Everquest Next:

On Sunday I will write about Everquest Next Landmark.

Game on!

Steven

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On this years Blizcon, Blizzard has officially announced and confirmed their upcoming expansion: Warlords of Draenor.

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There will be no new classes added to the game, but instead they have announced to redesign the character models with better graphics (I would rather say more poly’s) and facial expressions. The new expansion continues in Draenor, the homeworld of the Orc’s) and it will not be the last expansion. The continent of Draenor will be a map that takes place in the past. Blizzard did not reveal in one way this content is launched though however. Because it basicly is part of the Burning Crusade expansion map but then a good amount of years before that all got destroyed etc.
Netherstorm however will not be explorable yet on launch but at a later patch.

The patch allows you to level up to level 100. For those still having their characters at level 80 or simply want to start all over with a new class, can make use of the one-time-usage level 90 booster. I take it that this is to make people enjoy the content faster.
With the level 90 booster, you will receive a certain set of items as to not end up with greens at the level 90 content. Also will Blizzard give these players a special tutorial area where they will learn about the game (in case they are new players).

At level 100, characters will receive a major boost to one of their abilities.

Blizzard says also that they will add the possibility for you to own your personal fortress in which you can customize the layout and appearance. Same faction friends can visit your garrison and trade resources. The Garrison will not be instanced, but part of the main world. How Blizzard is going to do that with so many players is still unclear to us.
Somewhere we have the feeling that these Garrison’s are going to take part in pvp but this is unsure.
In your garrison you can collect followers – npc’s that will perform tasks for you such as gathering resources or crafting both when you are online and offline.

During your quests or missions in the game, you will collect both crafting resources for yourself as resources for your garrison to upgrade or expand buildings with.

Your inventory will get more room again. Similar to how mounts and pets are stored, now also toys, heirlooms and tabards will be account bound popup menu’s. Even quest items will become of a new system, stopping cluttering in your inventory.
Next to that your inventory can become sortable by the item type you specify.

Some more features are being added to make it more clear to you what items have been added to your bags since the last time you opened your bags (blinking white) and a new icon to indicate vendor trash. Track sizes will increase and you will have the ability to craft directly from your bank (similar as in Guild Wars 2).

The game will add seven new dungeons at launch, with a mix of choices for leveling up as well as “new, unexplored Dungeons to delve into at max level,” including the return of Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) as both a Heroic and Leveling dungeon.

There’ll be two new raids released around launch, and flex scaling has been revamped. Blizzard introduced a new Mythic difficulty as well, which is even harder than heroic with a fixed 20-player size.

Draenor will introduce a world PvP Zone, which is more like a persistent sandbox than an instance with a clear beginning and end. Cross-realm technology will be used to balance out the pairing of Horde and Alliance factions, and UI improvements will introduce an objective tracker and capture stats. In addition, flags will fill with color as they’re captured to make your current progress even clearer.

New Battlground scores will give you a better idea of how you’re doing, and those scores will be based on doing damage, healing, capturing, and objectives. And at the end of Battlegrounds you may get lucky and win an item in advance such as, rather than waiting to trade in honor. Those items may include : bonus armour, bind-on-equip gear, or consumables.

We can expect more to be revealed about this new expansion to World of Warcraft over the coming time.

All I have left for you are three different videos on youtube about the new expansion.

Announcement Trailer:

Remaking a world:

New Faction zones:

Game on!

Steven

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We wrote about this game a very long time ago (in December 2012 to be precisely). Now the game is in pre-release beta, available through Steam. Today I’d like to take a closer look at the game as it is now, although still in beta, and write a small preview of it.

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22CANS are the developers behind GODUS. They had their game GODUS on Kickstarter in December 2012 and got funded through that. Peter Molyneux is leading the project.

When you start the game for the first time, you get a sort of introduction video about the world you just created and entered as a god.

And then your game starts. You see a bunch of people, called Followers, on your screen and a landscape that seems to be built up of layers of ground just as if it was an onion. Every layer can be pushed away or pulled longer by a click and dragging it with your mouse.

But for using these god moves, you need faith. Faith is coming from your followers, your people. Without faith you cannot play god over them.

The settlers will build on ground where ever possible and multiply themselves. Also they will pray and have faith in you.
With the mouse you click on trees and stones to make them disappear. This gives you faith.

When you make enough place for building a house, a square appears along with a number and depending on how much space there is for this house, the bigger the house that can be built there. A bigger house gives you more faith and more people. Every now and then faith builds up in the form of pink bubbles (prayers?) that you will have to click to get it in your faith depositum. Also a flag appears when they have multiplied themselves. Clicking on the flag (tip: you can actually just click on their house) will let them out of their house and start working on building new houses or other assignments.

Moving land and other functionality (apart from clicking stones and trees) costs you faith points. So you need to have continuously enough faith to keep making your people happy – which in turn will give you faith – which you can use to make them happy etc etc. When these people have been working and running around for a while, they get tired and need healing to continue. You can click on them to give them that energy back to continue (+100health). This doesn’t seem to cost anything (yet).

If you want your people to go some special place to build new houses or to explore land, you can use a special shrine’s that kind of mind control your followers to move there. You will have to switch it off to make them do anything else than following you. The more faith points you have available to spend in your faith pool, the more functionality will be available to you at hand.

In the “story mode” you will have to explore and find cards in treasure boxes and reach set goals every time to get further in the game and unlock more functionality.

There is also a multiplayer mode. For single player you play against AI gods that battle you in either defeat or a certain objective (such as population, faith, diamonds gathered etc). The real multiplayer mode means you can play with other players via Steam against each other for similar objectives.

At time of writing Godus is in open beta. Numerous bugs and reduced functionality can be annoying, but that’s why it is a beta. I have good faith that it can be a great game in the future when all the other gameplay has been added, especially since it now already is an addicting game that makes you lose track of time.

Godus is available on Steam as a pre-release beta, currently priced at EUR 19. Regular patches makes more gameplay available and fixes a lot of bugs every time.

We most likely will play this game for the coming time and will write a review when this game is officially released to the public.

Game on!

Steven