Tag: Landmark

Daybreak Continues Shrinking: Landmark To Shut Down


Daybreak Game Company’s library continues to shrink just a little more, with the news that the rest of Everquest’s Next’s failed dream, Landmark, will shut down February 21st. As of right now, the game will be unavailable for purchase while all items in the marketplace will have their cost turned down to 1. In addition, Player Studio items will not be available for listing and purchase in the Landmark Marketplace. The servers will come down on February 21, 2017.

Landmark, originally known as Everquest: Landmark, was a supplementary game sold to players on the foundation that it existed to test Daybreak’s engine for use in the full Everquest Next. When Everquest was cancelled last year, Landmark dropped the Everquest name and was spun off into its own building game. Fans hoping to see compensation are out of luck, Daybreak will neither be making it possible to host your own server nor will they be reimbursing anyone who invested in the title.

Our thoughts: Landmark is probably the most fraudulently marketed game in recent memory, from the fact that it was sold as a supplement to an MMO that the studio knew wasn’t fun and was potentially on the chopping block, to the fact that the announcement of EQN’s cancellation came conveniently after the no-questions refund period expired, to the fact that people who put in for the $100 founder’s pack only got to have the game launch and not even last a year. Considering this is the second game shuttered within the last year, and it looks like Daybreak won’t even take the easy route and compensate people with digital goodies for their other games (at no cost to themselves), Landmark and EQN should be a shining example to avoid putting any money into this company until the game goes gold.

(Source: Daybreak)

Landmark Steam Launch “Mostly Negative,” Traffic Mostly Absent


EverQuestNextLandmark64 2014-02-03 00-23-35-78

Landmark’s launch on Steam last week, optimistically, should have been a positive thing. The game has been in development for a long time, suffered through the loss of its companion MMO, the sale of its developer and subsequent layoffs, and the sunsetting of a large number of titles on the launchpad that it shares. It should have been a happy moment. You can take a look at the Steam Landmark forums and see pretty quickly that optimism is in fairly short supply.

As of Sunday night, Landmark is sitting on Steam with a 39% “mostly negative” rating, of more than 1,800 reviews. The game has peaked in Steam traffic at 125 concurrent users, according to Steam charts. Threads in the forums often bring up the words “scam,” “ripoff,” and expletives we won’t go into here.

So what happened? To understand that, we need to dive into some history.

Landmark was originally sold as Everquest: Landmark, it was supposed to be the game that would serve as the basis upon which Everquest Next would be built. Players were told that they could build things in Landmark with the best of the best making their way over to the MMO. It would also allow Sony Online Entertainment to test the engine and experimental ideas.

Then SOE got spun off and became Daybreak Game Company. Games were shut down, people were fired, and ultimately we learned that Everquest Next was being cancelled. It just wasn’t fun, we were told.

So players are understandably upset. Many feel that customers were misled by Daybreak selling a game as the foundation for something that they might have known wasn’t working out and likely wouldn’t see completion. Seeing as Landmark was supposed to be a content creation platform for Everquest Next, the cancellation of the latter makes the former seem mostly pointless.

Other players are angry that Daybreak has not provided Steam keys to people who bought the game during early access, regardless of how much they spent, coupled with the fact that they suddenly announced in March that the game would no longer be free to play as the company had been advertising up until then. There is also heavy criticism of the game’s content, allegations of poor optimization, floaty combat, and little to do in-game with a number of features heavily cut or cancelled outright like player vs player combat.

For the fact that Landmark has 1,800 reviews, no one seems to be playing it on Steam. As of this publishing, the peak player count since launch has been 125 people. It is currently sitting near 1,000 on the list of most played Steam games.

Landmark’s long term viability will need to be seen.

Development Shifting Over To Everquest Next


eqnexttown

Since Landmark and Everquest Next share the same engine and certain mechanics, it’s possible to develop both games simultaneously at some level. In the latest producer’s letter, Daybreak announced that development on Landmark-specific content is taking a back seat to Next.

So, as we shift our focus and development to EQN, it just doesn’t make sense to continue with the Blueprint, since the goal of that has always been to provide short term, concrete plans of what you could expect and when, and that isn’t something we can reliably estimate at this point. When we have a better idea of timing on the various pieces, we will make sure to let everyone know.

(Source: Landmark)

Everquest Landmark Drops 32-bit OS Support


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Gamers looking forward to seeing Everquest Next Landmark on 32-bit operating systems can officially put their dreams to rest. Dave Georgeson posted on Twitter today to announce that there will be no 32-bit version of the game.

Another News Flash: Landmark is going to have to be a 64-bit OS game *only*. We are going to be unable to support 32-bit OS as we had hoped.

Unfortunate indeed, but unavoidable due to unforeseen technical issues. For those who already purchased Landmark, SOE is offering refunds with no questions asked.

(Source: Twitter)

Everquest Landmark NDA Lifted


smedley

The Everquest Next Landmark alpha has been up for less than 24 hours, and John Smedley has taken to Twitter to announce that the nondisclosure agreement has officially been lifted. Players are allowed to talk about what they want, stream what they want, and post screenshots as they want.

The NDA is officially lifted for EQNL. Have fun. It will be Monday before we can yank it from the game

As far as people getting the wrong impression from the state of the alpha, “that’s life,” says Smedley.

(Source: Twitter)

SOE Promises Refunds For Unsatisfied Alpha Testers.


eqnexttown

Sony Online Entertainment is set to launch the alpha for Everquest Next Landmark later today. Given the increasing reliance on early access purchases and your average gamer’s habit of buying an alpha stage game and then being stricken with buyer’s remorse because it isn’t a finished product, SOE is offering a full refund for anyone not satisfied with the alpha. As John Smedley stated on Twitter:

We will offer a full refund to anyone not satisfied with the Alpha. It’s not confidence. It’s being honest about the fact that Alpha’s aren’t for everyone. Plus we don’t know the kind of problems we expect to see. Things like running it out of North America now. I don’t want any EU players feeling like they got screwed if the streaming has hiccups at first. We just don’t know what we don’t know yet.

It’s actually nice to see a company respond to early buyers with something other than “you should have known what you’re getting into.” Hopefully this quality guarantee will be adopted by other companies, but that is unlikely.

(Source: Twitter)

Videos Now: Everquest Landmark Crafting


Everquest Next Landmark looks better with each passing video. Today the folks at Sony Online Entertainment dive into crafting, detailing how players will go about obtaining recipes and crafting items. Learn about altars and recipes and the secret meaning of life. Hint: It is corgis.