If You Build It : Landmark

Landmark launches this Spring. That means Daybreak Games has, at most, just under three months to straighten the rugs and put out the peanuts before opening the doors to anyone who can scrape up the ten dollar admission fee.

Of course, there might be more of a sense of urgency if the game hadn't been in Early Access for two years already. And never forget, if you can't wait, those Trailblazer Packs giving Instant Beta Access and a 48 hour headstart at launch are still on sale for $99.99!

Okay, let's not get into the la-la land of modern MMO pricing. No good can come of it. Let's look at the game.

For a start, is there one? There's a question people have been asking for while. I lose count of the posts I've written describing Landmark's latest change of direction, while wondering if anyone, least of all the developers, have a clue where it might be heading.

Reports of the removal of the Starter Tower turn out to be exaggerated. You do have to build it yourself now, though. It takes 56k stone, which I estimate at around 45 minutes mining.

Well, here we are, heading off down yet another road. Only this time it's different. For once it's not a road to nowhere. As of last week's wipe all roads lead to launch. Come "Spring" this thing has to be "a game". Is it?

No. Not yet. Not nearly. But it could be. If you make it one.

Yes, you. The player. The customer. The Luminary. That's what DBG has decided to call you and I have to say that, daft though it is, it's at least more euphonious than "Landmarkian".

Names for descriptive purposes only.
May not reflect actual environments.
Terms and conditions apply.

Take off all those hats and put on some of these: builder, designer, scripter, writer, director, gamesmaster, entertainment officer, master of ceremonies, unpaid laborer. You're going to need a lot of heads. And DBG is going to need a lot of goodwill, something that was in very short supply indeed on the official forum during the two days downtime prior to the launch but which seems to be slowly returning now people are able to get in and mess around with the new tools.

But before we get to that, let's look at what you do get that you don't have to make for yourself, or, more likely, hope another "Luminary" is going to make for you. I don't propose to go into a huge amount of detail - the changes are very substantial and I haven't had either the time or the patience to explore them all in depth - if you want chapter and verse on the update Domino has you covered here.

Here's the basic deal: for $9.99 DBG will provide all the infrastructure you'd expect - the servers, the UI, the landscape. You get access to a wide range of "props", a catch-all term that includes every pre-made, placeable object from furniture to monsters. Recipes (to make weapons, armor, potions and the like), creatures to place on your Claim Build, and various resources are offered as drops from gathering and adventuring.

Both those activities, never robust, have been thoroughly gutted but Landmark's "adventuring" is perhaps now the most unambitious such activity ever seen in an MMO. Instead of exploring to find caves that were sometimes frighteningly extensive and confusing you simply click a UI button to appear instantly in a randomly-selected bijou cavelet (known collectively and euphemistically as the "Chaos Caverns"), where a handful of extremely uninteresting basic mobs wait mindlessly for you to come slaughter them.

And that, I think, is about your lot. Oh no, wait, there are Achievements as well. Of course there are.

If you were expecting quests, narrative, a storyline, cut-scenes, lore, or indeed any written content whatsoever then you came to the wrong game. Perhaps you were thinking of EQNext?

Landmark exists in an existential void. It is because it is. It has no past. If it has a future it's a future you'll be making for yourselves. That's the collective "you" - the Luminaries.

Could that work? It just might. It's hard to tell right now because although the Wipe and Final Restart (pending one more possible pre-launch wipe but let's not get picky) has brought curiosity-seekers back in numbers, as yet few are back up to speed. The islands Landscapes are almost all bought up but most of the Builds are empty lots as yet.

Almost the last free Build on this Landscape. (Does that really sound better than "Almost the last free Claim on this Island?" Really, DBG?)

I did manage to find a build that was showing off the most basic capabilities of the new scripting system; a compound where a cadre of guards was holding off an incursion by a Toxic Giant. It looked surprisingly authentic. I joined in on the side of the guards and the giant took notice of my amazing DPS skills (press and hold LMB), broke off his engagement with the forces of authority and chased me off the claim. It felt almost like I was playing an MMORPG.

Landmark runs like a drunken pig in stilettos on my elderly PC and looks about as pretty but if you have a machine that can handle it the world, such as it is, looks good enough. The biomes may feel generic and everything might look bland but that's really because they're no more than blank canvas and basic clay. Roll your sleeves up and get on with it: an ambitious myth-maker might work miracles.

Red border means I got beaten up. Makes a nice frame, too.

It shouldn't even be that difficult. It looks as though complexity is out of fashion here. You can, of course, only simplify a set of virtual building tools so far, but compared to where we were a year or eighteen months ago this latest version is pared down to the pith.

All those progression paths for gathering and crafting are gone. The endless grind to upgrade your tools is over. Harvestable plants are back to being mere set dressing. There's just a single craft station left - the Replicator.

The multiple layers of underground caverns and their associated tiers of ore and gems have been replaced by a simple binary: everything is either on the Surface or Underground. Combat, never complex, is another binary. You have your Left Mouse Button. You have your Right Mouse Button. Now go kill something.

The Replicator - Craft Station or Super-villain?

You might have to look quite hard. The decision to have no wildlife on the surface, neither to hunt nor to provide ambient color, seems perverse until you discover that the creatures builders place on claims can wander off. Well, not so much "wander" as chase and kill anyone who disturbs them. It could get lively out there, especially when some people can't tell the difference between mobs and players.

After a couple of hours poking around I feel cautiously optimistic. As an MMORPG Landmark is a complete and utter joke. It's a non-starter. As a toolset for creating MMO content, however, it has genuine potential.

We've seen how players need little incentive beyond the approbation of their peers to put in far more work than paid professionals would ever be willing or able to offer. Star Trek Online, the various versions of Neverwinter, EQ2's own sublime housing and less-than-adequate Dungeon Maker, all of these and many more have been seized with both hands by players eager to show their creativity, get their name on a leaderboard or earn a title or a trophy.

DBG has built a toolset. It's still a little shaky and rough around the edges but it works. If that was all you'd be getting then $9.99 wouldn't seem an unreasonable price but your ten dollars down doesn't just give you the opportunity to build a castle of your own. It's also an entry ticket to every pageant and parade and tournament in the land.

And that could turn out to be quite a bargain.

As One Door Closes... : EQN Landmark

The Landmark alpha fades into the sunset today but never fear! In a couple of days it will rise from its shallow grave and lurch back to life as... Landmark Closed Beta!

Everyone who bought a Trailblazer Pack gets four beta keys to give away. Originally they were supposed to be the temporary one-week kind but SOE, out of the kindness of their hearts, I'm sure, have upgraded the offer: all free Trailblazer keys now last for the whole of beta.

I'm hoping to persuade Mrs Bhagpuss to donate one of hers for a giveaway here (haven't actually raised the idea yet...) but just in case that doesn't happen Isey at I Has PC might still have one left, if you're quick.

Who Knows Where The Time Goes? : EQN Landmark

Oh heck! Another day gone and what have I got to show for it?

Well, I learned how to make an archway - after a fashion. I also learned how to superimpose a texture on pre-existing terrain, and how to extract a texture from pre-existing terrain and superimpose it on something else. That kept me amused for hours.

I also taught myself how to distress and deform voxels to simulate weathering. Fine in theory although in practice it's a bit like a Minor Threat gig - too many straight edges. Still, pretty shabby if I do say so myself.

SOE did something to the day/night cycle recently. I'm sure I never saw those clouds before or not in those colors. It had a side effect of ramping up the intensity of torches and other lighting effects to the point where you need to wear sunglasses indoors. Which, naturally, I do all the time anyway. All we hyper-cool '50s and '60s cats wear shades after dark.

It was never my intention to build some kind of Thomas Crown Affair mountaintop hideaway, all right angles, cutaways and vertiginous drops from the terrace. It just happened.

Certainly if I'd planned it I'd have had the terraces descending in extending tiers, not overlapping each other and casting constant shade. It did, however, give me the chance to learn how to excise a massive chunk of masonry and cut and paste another chunk in its place.

At the moment a great deal of the interest, what I guess you might call the "gameplay", comes from learning to use the tools. They're pretty limited and I don't know how much that's down to Alpha and how much is voxels. I've seen a good few complaints on the forums suggesting that Voxelfarm, the licensed software that Landmark uses, can be a good deal more flexible than we're seeing so far so my bet's on "it's Alpha, dummy!"

Dead grass in my planter. I live in the desert and we don't have water yet so what can you do? Another thing I learned today was how to use Alt-Select to grab textures that aren't in the standard gimme set. Doesn't help much. I can see live, green grass from my claim that looks very much as though it's in the same biome but can I get it to grow on my patch? Can I heck as like!

So there we go. I'm quite scared, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I've been here before after all. Barely any of the good stuff is in yet and already days are vanishing like summer mist. If they give us Storybricks I may never be seen again.

The Road Ahead : EQN Landmark

Last night, just before my bedtime, Drexella, SOE's Community Manager, put the EQN Landmark "Roadmap" up on the Alpha forums. It was too late for me to comment on it but I came home from work today expecting to spend a good while wading through the blogosphere's reactions to this lengthy, detailed and fascinating document.

Tumbleweed...

Annoyingly I still don't have time to dissect, discuss and analyze it in anything like the detail I'd like. That will probably have to wait until after the weekend, when thankfully I have the whole week off to pontificate to my heart's content. For now, though, since no-one else on my Feedly or Blogroll seems to have anything to say about it and in case anyone who might be interested has missed it, here are a few choice extracts. All text in bold is my emphasis:

"In general, the dev team does not want to turn the game into “instant travel"...It’s almost certain that most of these options will be somewhat limited in usage by requiring either crafting of an item or requiring a certain amount of time to expire before reuse".

"Caves : The surface world is cool, but it’s only the top layer of what we promised. So caves are coming. Lots of spaces to mine through and explore. Why add them now? Because the resource tiers are *supposed* to be spread down through the crust of the world, not segregated on separate islands and spawning on the surface. You’re not playing the intended game yet, and we need to move the game closer to the real end-goal now. "

"So we’re introducing Upkeep which is basically a small amount of in-game coin you have to spend to keep your claim from being repossessed into the world and made available to other players."

"New movement methods: Methods of gliding, flying, etc. will be added to the game via items that you can craft and find."

"Death Penalty: Yes, death will have teeth. Try not to die ..things will try to kill you".

"Running (dynamic) water: This is the piece that will come in last. This is the rivers and waterfalls that everyone wants. It adds more real estate choices, but it also creates a lot of gameplay as you folks can start diverting water to do all kinds of interesting things on your claims."

"Achievements are the “quest-like” equivalent within Landmark."

"Unlocking recipes: Right now, all recipes are available at crafting tables as soon as you make them. When this system goes into the game, you’ll need to find those recipes before you can make them at the crafting tables"

"There are a LOT more systems to come after March. All the huge stuff like PvP, advanced combat, better AI, interesting physics features, plus a whole host of “possibles” and “must haves” ".

There's a lot more than that. If you have any interest in Landmark at all it's well worth reading the whole thing. The alpha forums are open for all to read. Here's the link again in case you missed it the first time.

I think this Roadmap conclusively puts to bed the idea, still frequently spouted on the forums and elsewhere, that Landmark is only, or even mainly, a toolkit for builders. SOE have been saying for a while it would be a full-feature MMO and now they're finally beginning to flesh out some of the detail on what that means. I predict a lot of builders who are having a fine old time already will not be best pleased, especially now we know for certain that that one, fleeting reference to PvP all those months ago wasn't a joke after all.

Personally, I can't wait!

What Does Landmark Tell Us About Everquest Next?

Okay, maybe it's a bit soon to be asking the question with any expectation of a meaningful response but it is what everyone's thinking, isn't it? After all, a year ago no-one had even heard of Landmark. John Smedley had dropped a little squib about how we'd be getting our hands on something Next-related and playable before the winter was out and speculation was running high on whether that meant EQNext could possibly be released by the end of the year or whether it meant we'd get some kind of demo or mini-game or character creator to play with.

Then the big reveal came at last summer's Sony Live and what we got was something clumsily called Everquest Next Landmark. Yet even so, although Landmark came as a total surprise and was scheduled to appear first, focus remained firmly on EQNext. Everyone and his dog churned out reams of reaction, analysis and speculation in most of which Landmark barely got a mention. Then, somehow, the emphasis began to change as promotional videos began to appear, Landmark got some firm release dates, and this odd duck MMO-or-is-it became something you could actually pay money for, expect to play, and soon.

You can tell it's a rich world. Even the flowers have particle effects.

Now Landmark is here, at least for a given value of "here", one that reads "some of it's here and some of what's here even works". There's no NDA, bloggers are giving their impressions almost daily, showing off their creations (or apologizing for them), YouTube is filling up with "How To" videos. You can even go read the alpha forums without signing up for alpha. In short, Landmark is now A Thing.

Which is all well and good and heaven knows I'm enjoying it all a heck of a lot more than I ever expected to but it's still EQNext that I really want to play. As Wilhelm observed a while back, with the flowering of Landmark the flow of information on EQNext seems to have dried up almost completely. Not only that but Smed seems keen to skip EQNext altogether and move on to the next next MMO in his ever-shrinking  yet ever-growing stable.

Now that does look like Norrath.

So, since SOE aren't talking so much about EQNext any more and since Landmark is what we have, let's take stock of what little we know and see where that takes us. My immediate reaction to the EQNext reveal last year broke things down into eight headings. One was Landmark itself and one (Collectible Classes) appears to be only intended for EQNext. Three more (Emergent AI, Combat and Dynamic Events) aren't due to arrive in Landmark until beta. We'll get back to those then.

That leaves three:

Looks - My initial reaction to the EQNext footage was that it looked very cartoony and I was happy with that. I like cartoons. Other people were less impressed. There were even dark comments in some quarters about it looking like Free Realms. Well, people who thought that way might be quite reassured by Landmark. It's nowhere near as cartoony as that video might have led you to believe.

I smell Elf.

In fact I don't think it feels cartoony at all. The screenshots sometimes look a little like animation cells but as computer game graphics go I'd say it's more towards the "painterly reality" end of the scale that Guild Wars 2 occupies. As for the worldliness of the world, even though the landscapes are procedurally generated and the number of biomes is very limited yet, still they have considerable heft. Some of the scenery is quite breathtaking and the transitions from biome to biome are relatively subtle and convincing. The lighting effects are as stunning as promised.

Once designers and artists get their assets down against this backdrop I would anticipate an extremely satisfying and immersive world to emerge. Playing Landmark has given me every confidence that, if nothing else, EQNext will both look sumptuous and feel like Norrath, two things that have hitherto never been achieved at the same time.

I think I banged my head on a rock coming down. I'm seeing double.

Destructability - When Dave Georgeson announced that EQNext would be constructed from destroyable voxels I was somewhat underwhelmed. It seemed like one of those gadgets that sound great when the guy talks it up in the store but when you get it home you can't actually think of much to do with it and it ends up at the back of the cupboard under the stairs. How wrong I was.

Being able to terraform the landscape at will is astonishingly entertaining, far more so than I imagined it would be, but in the context of EQNext it has the potential to add whole new orders of complexity to the gameplay. One of the very best things about the original Everquest, at least prior to the Planes of Power expansion, was the way it allowed players to come up with their own solutions to problems. Improvisation was very much the order of the day and there were many times when we worked with whatever tools we had to hand to get the job done dirty when we couldn't do it clean.

The Ice Cream Mine Is Mine All Mine.

Being able to manipulate the environment opens up so many possibilities. Just imagine the ranger, running back to the camp with a posse of goblins in tow, leaping over the pit trap the party has hastily been digging while she was out on the pull, turning to notch an arrow to her bow just as the last of the goblins falls onto the squirming, squealing heap at the bottom. Then imagine the smile fading on her face as those goblins begin to burrow through the earth, disappearing out of sight only to re-emerge seconds later, boiling out of the ground right beneath the party.

Realistically I doubt we'll see such an on-the-fly, interactive use of the destructible environment in PvE although with the famous Storybricks emergent AI who knows what's possible? In a PvP setting, though...well I wouldn't stand in one place for too long, that's all I'm saying. Either way, whether the full potential is joyously realised or whether it ends up being hamstrung by practicalities, having seen desructability in action I give the voxel revolution my firmest vote of confidence.

Ok, just keep calm. A back flip ought ta do it.

Movement   - This was the throwaway at the reveal. Dave Georgeson kept calling it "parkour", which just made me think of Lady Penelope's chauffeur. I gave it a couple of lines. Lots of commentators didn't even mention it at all. Again, big mistake.

One thing SOE's MMOs have often been criticized for in the past is the appearance and animation of the character models. It's not something that comes in very high on my list of likes or dislikes for any MMO but some folks do get very exercised over it and even I notice whether a character "feels" right. Boy! do these feel right.

No doubt there will be polish passes to come but even at this stage character animations are clean and satisfying and movement seems comfortable and natural. With no NPCs in place there's no way to judge whether the big-eyed look that received some criticism when it was seen in the EQNext footage will, as promised, make sense in context with the Storybricks AI but I can say with confidence that player characters in game do not look either overblown or weird. Uncanny valley this is not, nor is it Mulan in Norrath.

Hard to see, I know, but I'm up there somewhere.

Better still is that "parkour" thing. Not only is it fun, which was expected, but like the destructibility it has enormous gameplay potential. The sliding down scree and slopes kicking up dust part is exhilarating and the forward rolls and somersaults are entertaining but at the moment they're just visual sugar because in alpha we can run up any slope and fall from any height. Once the physics goes in and the death mechanic along with it, that sugar is going to turn to salt, adding flavor to every roll and tumble. A good slide or a double somersault might save your life, or at least some repair bills. This is one kind of "action gaming" I can get behind.

What's more, demonstrating its intention to be more than just a gimmick or a simple background mechanic, movement becomes an attribute you can improve with gear. You can get items to help you jump higher and, of course, run faster but best of all you can get a Grappling Hook. Again, it sounds like an amusing toy when you read about it but once you get one in your hand it feels as important to your character as a sword or a bow. Add some mobs, especially ones with grappling hooks of their own, and the prospects for treetop chases and spectacular entrances and escapes abound.

And that's how it goes in the World of Speculation. Imagination knows no budgetary constraints. The reality of EQNext, when it comes, will probably be far more pedestrian and predictable than any of that. But then, that's what I thought about Landmark...