Sad Farewell to Landmark & A Look Back at Alpha/Beta

Posted on by Aywren

Last night, Daybreak dropped yet another bomb in the form of an email that informed players that Landmark servers will close on February 21. Now, part of me had a strong hunch this was coming, but another part of me just looked on in disbelief.

I know it’s a money thing. I get it. Yet, I don’t.

EverQuest Next Landmark

I bought the $59 Explorers Pack for EverQuest Landmark on the first day alpha launched. I have no idea why as I’d just previously been burned by SOE’s floundering alpha/beta pack for Dragon’s Prophet. I really had no plan to buy into the alpha, and it was totally an impulse purchase.

I just remember I was home from work that day (sick?), I saw that the team had lifted the NDA on day one, and I had a hunkering for a sandbox world. I thought the idea of building the next EverQuest game was an amazing one. And, in the beginning, when Smokejumper and other devs were right there with us making something special, it did feel like the purchase was justified. Back then, Landmark was an amazing, sculpt-able version of Norrath.

Norrath has Two Suns?

I blogged my experiences all through alpha and into beta (I’ll link these below). I clocked in a good amount of time as I learned the game’s systems and how to build. As a sandbox game, Landmark had a huge amount of flexibility, especially once players stumbled upon building methods that not even the devs could have foreseen.

There was a strong roadmap. The team stuck by it and kept developing a world we could alter to our own vision. I saw many new, improved iterations of crafting and building. I had several claims over that time, and really enjoyed building and exploring.

A Landmark Valentines Poem

Then, somewhere in the midst of beta, they added caves and water. Something happened with those builds that rendered my ability to play the game almost null. Though my PC was fairly new and not a pushover, I was hardly getting 10-15 FPS no matter what I did… and that meant that I had to sit out the beta until they got it fixed.

Because of that, my posts stopped in May of 2014. It wasn’t until May of 2015 that I picked up the game again because it was honestly unplayable for me until then. I did come back to test the FPS issue from patch to patch, and did report it, but it took a year before it really got resolved. I was not the only one with this issue, but it existed for a long time.

Slow Downfall

Needless to say, that broke my momentum. I came back to a game I didn’t really recognize, and found it hard to wrap my head around all the changes that I missed. The game was no longer “EverQuest Next Landmark.” The company was no longer “SOE.”

The loading screen, back when it was once named “EverQuest Next Landmark.”

A month later, I became very disappointed as the team threw the much-loved roadmap out the window. I already had a feeling that it was the beginning of the end. Sadly, I was right.

In March 2016, the game did launch out of beta, but Daybreak announced the end of development for Everquest Next. It was a kick in the gut for a lot of players, especially those who put their heart and soul into building what they thought were assets for their upcoming dream MMO.

I did log in a few times after the March release, but it just wasn’t the same. They had added a lot of neat systems and building options, but the magic and excitement of alpha/beta was gone. While I’ve kept Landmark installed on my laptop, I haven’t actually logged into it since March, 2016. So I guess I can’t say that I’m losing something, but in a way, I am.

Potential.

What stuns me is that this game had so much potential to be a strong sandbox contender. They did a lot of things I haven’t seen in other building games, and I know that those who love it will deeply miss it. If this game had been released towards a building/sandbox audience, rather than being linked to the failed EQNext, it may have been a small success. I still have those dreams of riding a flying mount across the inter-connected islands of wonderful player creativity… that was touted to be the future of Landmark that we never got.

But I guess at this point, that’s moot. All we’ll have are our memories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e1d8aG8FBk

EverQuest Next Landmark Alpha Post Archive

Landmark Beta Post Archive

Landmark Release Post Archive

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