EverQuest Next — which is a totally different beast — has no current timetable. It could release in 2015 or 2025 for all we know right now.
Massively, Leaderboard: EQN vs. EQN Landmark
Therein lies the rub.
Last August, when SOE Live was done, I was quite excited about EverQuest Next. It was the big announcement out of the event. I wrote ~2,500 words about EQN, less than 100 of which were about Landmark, which was a Minecraft-esque tool set pseudo-game that I did not quite understand.
The EverQuest Next Vision
I did not really care about Landmark. I wanted the core game that was described at SOE Live. The one that was… well… a freakin’ EverQuest MMORPG, with emergent AI and a new class system and all the things they presented.
I worried that, after the huge splash the EQN announcement made at SOE Live, that SOE would follow past patterns and let the excitement die off through neglect.
And, I guess if I am speaking strictly of of EQN, my worries were well founded. EQN has been relegated to a series of banal survey questions that the same few people debate on their forums. Such is the Round Table. It apparently only seats about a dozen.
However, if we just follow from SOE Live, then excitement has been maintained to a certain extent… only occasionally interrupted by the usual SOE foibles… if we include Landmark in the picture. Since SOE Live, Landmark has grown to take up almost the whole of the SOE marketing and community interaction effort. At this point somebody stumbling onto the scene might justifiably conclude that EQN is just shorthand for EverQuest Next Landmark.
So I am… well… “frustrated” or “annoyed” are too strong… bemused, I guess, that SOE led with EQN at SOE Live, talking that up a great deal, only to let it fall by the wayside while all focus was devoted to Landmark, which looked like an adjunct product at the time of the announcement.
Yes, I understand that SOE ought to focus their marketing on the project shipping soonest… these days we ship at alpha and charge people for the privileged… and that there is an audience for Landmark… but dammit, they talked about this other thing I wanted and now barely acknowledge its existence. Validate my selfish needs, damn you!
I guess I just fear another outcome like The Agency.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Yeah, the EQN/Landmark thing threw me for a while. When the Landmark alpha was being sold, I was all excited that EQN was that far along. Then I looked at the benefits of signing up and they sounded a little odd, and then I investigated more and it was this … construction kit, I guess? That seems to be what they’re selling. I honestly can’t quite tell, but it’s sure not EQN.
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I still don’t know exactly what EQNL is, I lost a lot of interest when I found out it’s cash shop driven. I figure I’ll just let the release sneak up on me and then surprise me.
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If they were both coming out together then obviously I’d be playing EQNext and Landmark could wait until I was finished, if I ever got round to it at all. Come to that, I’d very happily give up on the whole concept and existence of Landmark if it meant we could have EQNExt in beta in the spring and launched before Christmas.
Even after the announcemnt at SOE Live last summer and taking the most optimistic view possible however, I never really expected to see EQNExt in 2014, not even as a beta. I always thought we’d have to wait until 2015 at the earliest and quite possibly later than that. On that basis I’m happy to have something, anything new, vaguely Norrathian and moderately intriguing to mess around with in the interim.
Landmark was certainly trailed originally as some kind of building set, and when it appears in alpha that’s what it looks like we’ll be getting. Over time, though, it’s supposed both to include all the tools they’re using to build EQNext and to operate as full-fledged MMO in its own right. That definitely includes combat, crafting and character progresson- whether it will eventually include quests, dungeons, raids and the whole nine yards I guess we can only wait and see.
And if the worst comes to the worst and SOE never get around to finishing EQNExt, well we can just use Landmark to build it ourselves!
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All I see is SOE trying to milk people for more money with the Landmark program. How predictable.
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I think the Everquest Next name is what caused most of the issues.
They should’ve said, “We have a great engine, and to prove that, we’re releasing a modified version of our creation kit as a full-fledged game. There’s a good chance that it’ll interact with Everquest Next in some way, maybe even by letting us use content created by our fans. It’s called Landmark and it will be out next year.”
By attaching the EQN part to it, I am expecting a game much like Everquest Next. However, much of the discussion thus far has been on including science fiction and other themes? It just seems weird unless you actually do the research.
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