LockSixTime, and background commentator Cyliena, recently discussed Landmark with Sony Online Entertainment's Senior Producer Terry Michaels and Director of Development Dave Georgeson during our July 29th Twitch livestream. If you don't have time to check out the full hour-long recording, here's a recap and highlights of everything discussed!
On Tuesday, July 29th (today!), Sony Online Entertainment's Director of Development, Dave Georgeson, and Landmark Senior Producer, Terry Michaels, will be joining LockSixTime for a Landmark play session livestream! Join us this evening and tune in on the ZAM Twitch TV channel at 4pm Pacific (7pm Eastern). See you there!
UPDATE: The recording is now available after the jump, or catch the text highlights here!
Sony Online Entertainment launched a 48-hour Steam sale on their Landmark Founder's Packs yesterday. According to the official forums (as well as reddit and Twitter), this sale left a bitter taste in some people's mouths.
When it comes to controversial topics such as this (especially as an active member in SOE's gaming community), I try to be fair and see it from both sides of the coin. Sometimes we need to take a deep breath and put down the pitchfork for a moment, while other times we are completely justified in feeling wronged and slighted. Unfortunately, this sale seems to fall in a grey area no matter how I look at it.
Another week groans by, dragging behind it those of us hoping for a chance at a glimpse of what we're waiting for. How dramatic a pose we strike; after all, it would be ludicrous to feel like this over something that wasn't that important.
So, here it is, the calm before the storm and the insufferable wait. I imagine we've all been here before, at different times and in different parts of the world, refreshing home pages and bouncing around subreddits.
I'm glad that, as an adult, I've found something akin to the magic of waiting for Santa, but I don't think my inner child sees it that way.
I wonder sometimes, in passing fits of maturity, how it must feel on the other side. The weight of expectation, the doubts, that feeling of having a secret you just have to pass on before it bursts.
The feeling of excitement coming from those with new toys to share at SOE Live is palpable; they're proud, they're confident, and they can't wait to let us see what they have.
In my part of the world, we don't do summer very well. The buildings are made to keep the heat in and the rain off, and my people turn a frightening shade of pink in the sun. But I cannot complain, because when I feel the sun on my face or shift uncomfortably on my leather desk chair, I think of the Mojave Desert.
In less than a month, the lucky and privileged among us will be in the costume-jewel of the desert, the shrine to the arrogance and hubris of humankind they call Las Vegas. We are called to hear the word and spread it throughout the unholy land.
The word, of course, of EverQuest Next.
It's been almost a year since the big reveal, and despite the world of EverQuest Next being built before our eyes, with weekly updates and above-and-beyond levels of community interaction from the developers, we still don't know much more about how the game will play.
What will a day in the life of the EQN player be like? We have a good idea of what it will look like, we have a pretty solid grasp of how our characters move and react to our instruction, but what about the game?
So far in Landmark, we can build, we can play, and we can absolutely have a lot of fun – but in my opinion it's still not really a game. Let it be known I am not using the word 'play' in a derogatory way, I'm not saying playing a game is somehow 'better' than just playing.
In my own personal universe, playing a game is about accepting challenges and working to overcome them. It's the challenges and the specific goal that transform the activity from play to playing a game. Inventing and playing games comes as naturally to humans as telling jokes or adultery, so how could we not wonder when the 'game' would begin?
We've talked so much for so long, it's tough for those of us without experience in making games to put into perspective how much progress has been made, how close the rock is to the top of the hill; when are we going to tip over the edge and feel the exhilaration of the downhill stretch?
What do you want to see in Vegas? What are your hopes for the EverQuest Next keynote? Dave Georgeson on the iWalk will be a sight (get well soon!), but what of reveals, announcements and surprises?
Coinciding with the final day to get your SOE Live All Access badge for $149 (you can get it here) is the release of this year's panel lineup. Since player panels have not been announced, they are not on the schedule yet, and what content will be livestreamed is still unknown. The full schedule is available here and notable panels are:
Continue after the jump for Landmark, H1Z1 and miscellaneous panels of interest.
Week after week, I continue to be impressed by the way SOE is continuing to give players the opportunity to contribute to the development of EverQuest Next. Through the roundtable discussions, constant twitter interaction and especially the workshop, the players are being given an unprecedented ability to influence the design of a game that has the potential to change the way we think about MMORPGs. What an incredible privilege, and we're just getting started.
With all the talk of new mechanics and new technology in EQN, it's easy to miss one of the key factors that will define this game and set it apart from the competition. While other games have to sell us on the promise of compelling story or an engaging and lasting endgame experience, Landmark allows SOE to sell us on the entire game world.
As time goes on, and particularly after SOE Live, more and more of us will buy in to EverQuest Next through Landmark. As we continue to move forward, designing and iterating on all kinds of user-generated content, we'll develop an intimate understanding of the way the world is put together.
For those of us that play Landmark and engage with the workshop and with the community, by the time EverQuest Next opens its doors it will already feel like home.
Imagine setting foot in Norrath for the first time, already knowing the names of every tree, being able to recognize the building styles of different races, and just generally knowing how the world works in a way we wouldn't have dared to dream about a year ago. The stage will be set for the new history of Norrath in a way that we have never experienced.
It's the nature of the beast that MMOs are so bound by their retention strategies, often leading to developers implementing unpopular systems to keep people playing and paying. What if a game could create a retention strategy that made the game more popular? What if the reason we continued to log in was because we were invested in the world, and are proud to be a part of it? I'd take that over being drip-fed on a gear treadmill any day.
The question had to be addressed sooner or later, as in these times of so many quality free-to-play titles, the old strategies just won't fly. We've all played that game, we've had a lot of fun playing that game, but players are smart and we need to be fooled.
We had a lovely chat last week about the way persistent online games are evolving—in particular, how innovation is becoming more possible. As the industry moves on to the fresh scavenging grounds of the MOBA genre and MMO players are becoming savvier and discerning about the type of content they want, the way we think about MMOs is changing.
Inertia, nostalgia and confirmation bias all still play their part, of course. It's not difficult to find examples of all of these in large scale discussions of any game, but it seems there is a growing sense that things don't have to be done the way they've always been done. An argument from tradition is, after all, no argument at all.
In the past a major barrier to innovation has been the massive investment and risk involved in releasing an MMO, and once it was loose, keeping the beast fed with a stream of content and features to maintain a healthy playerbase seemed like an impossible task.
Last week I mentioned No Man's Sky as a specific example of how the industry is changing, as it seems to encapsulate many of the current trends while still managing to be fresh and exciting in a way that the stagnant behemoths around it at E3 couldn't compete with. It was made by just a few people who wanted to make something really special, in a time where that has become more possible than ever before.
With no points, levels or specific goals, emphasis on exploration and emergent gameplay, being voxel based with gathering and crafting being core mechanics, No Man's Sky could be considered a Minecraft clone. I do not mean that in a derogatory way at all, I use the term only to make a point. Are you ready for the point? Here is the point.
As we of a certain age are aware, there was a time when every first-person shooter was called a Doom clone, it was fertile new ground for the industry to explore and it took a while for the genre to mature to the point that games could be considered on their own merits. Once we stopped thinking of these games as clones we could start seeing what possibilities existed.
There have been a fair few games labelled Minecraft clones, including Landmark, which is why it's important that No Man's Sky has largely avoided the tag – not because the comparison is offensive, but because it means the game is being considered on its own merit. We look at the game and marvel at what it is and what it could be without resorting to shorthand.
We made it! I got around to talking about Landmark, finally.
During E3 2014 I was joined by ZAM's Vice President of Technology, Michael Ender, as we checked out the latest additions to SOE's sandbox MMO, Landmark. We both had played the title since Alpha, but hadn't been in-game recently to experience the newer updates which featured water and caves. What we saw at E3 impressed us enough to dive into Landmark once again.
One thing that we, as MMO players, tend to agree on is the fact that it is impossible for a developer to produce content at the same pace players can consume it.
Obviously this causes many challenges for a team intending to provide the service we call an MMO—if players don't feel like the game is offering them anything new, players will leave.
We all know, or know of, someone who 'went back to WoW'. I am one such person, just in case you were the one person who thought you didn't. Don't say I never do anything for you. Of course, people don't go back to their old MMO because they're excited at the prospect; it simply acts as a comfortable place to maintain the holding pattern.
The trick for MMO developers then is to find systems that keep players playing and feeling engaged with the content without adding too much expense. This is the reason you have to run the same raid over and over; it's nothing but a timesink designed to keep you on the treadmill.
It's a tactic that's worked for many years, and adding extra goals and rewards into the mix kept the illusion of progression or mastery, and there's nothing wrong with that. Everything we do in these games is designed to give us this illusion, all we're doing is pressing buttons.
The problem comes when the players see behind the curtain—we’ve we've spent years doing laps of this circuit and we've got wise. We know it's a ploy, we know it's all smoke and mirrors, and once the trick is revealed, the magic is gone.
