EverQuest Next Landmark has announced that closed beta will start on March 26th. EverQuest Next Landmark, for those who don’t know, is a hotly anticipated online social building game linked to EverQuest Next. For example, from the blurb :
This is your chance to help build a game! Build alone or in groups to create Landmarks. Join massive construction contests and your creations could last forever. The best buildings players create will become permanent fixtures in the EverQuest Next world.
It’s a sandbox game, you can build with their tools and people have been happily building away during the Alpha process, now it’s getting close to Beta time.
There will also be opportunities for people to sell their wares for real cash via the Sony Online Entertainment Player Studio, although this will initially be restricted to those in the United States the plan is to extend this to other countries, it should also be noted that sales via the Player Studio will be for multiple games, so content creators may see plenty of opportunities.
There’s a rather epic forum post discussing the business of EverQuest Next Landmark, it’s a free to play title so selling items and encouraging people to purchase items and subscriptions will be important. The opening post, from an official bod, also discusses players selling items :
Phase 4: We launch Player Studio. At that point, all of our players can start submitting templates to the store and letting other players buy them. This should occur early during Closed Beta.
Hopefully that means people from outside the United States will be able to sell items. However it should be pointed out there’s a rather hefty commission fee for selling goods this way:
SOE will share 40% of the net amount it receives from the sale of the item with the player that created the item.
Plenty of content creators will baulk at that, but opportunity knocks for those who think it’s a reasonable trade off between reach and sales. Time will tell whether it’s a success but it’s encouraging to see other products offering content creators the option to sell their own wares.
There are a couple of ways of getting into closed beta, you can purchase a Founder’s Packs, which gives you unlimited access to the Landmark Closed Beta or you can apply to acquire a Time-Limited Closed Beta Key, which is a free method of getting into the Closed Beta, but is far more limited than the Founder’s Packs options.
Founder’s Packs come in three varieties, priced at $19.99, $59.99 and $99.99. All three varieties will allow you full closed beta access. The packs are:
Settler Pack – $19.99
- Unlimited Closed Beta Access
- Settler Flag ItemPlant your flag in EQ/EQII
- Founder’s Pickaxe
- Title: Founder
- Forum Title: Founder
Explorer Pack – $59.99
- All items from Settler Pack
- Alpha Access
- Explorer Flag ItemPlant your flag in EQ/EQII
- Ring of Bounty
- Mega Pocket
- Courtier’s Regalia
- Tech Sergeant’s Gear
Trailblazer Pack – $99.99
- All items from Settler Pack and All items from Explorer Pack.
- Alpha Access
- Trailblazer Flag ItemPlant your flag in EQ/EQII
- Mastercraft Bracer
- Void Vault
- Noble’s Regalia
- Tech Commander’s Gear
- 4 Shareable Closed Beta Keys
- Your Name in the EQNL Credits
Now I think you’d need to be quite a fan to buy the trailblazer pack and get your name in the credits, but this is what Alpha access is for, to see if you like it and more importantly, to see if your hardware likes it. However fear not if you don’t want to purchase a founder’s pack, a more limited Closed Beta access option is available in the shape and form of the time limited closed beta key. I’ll quote the site for further details :
What is a Time-Limited Beta Key?
A Time-Limited Beta Key works like this:
When you redeem your code at EverQuestNext.com, you will get access to the Landmark Beta for seven days. Time-Limited Beta Keys are stackable – so you can redeem multiple to gain additional game time.
We will be offering Time-Limited Beta Keys through a variety of mediums, including:
Random selections from our Beta Applicant list. To apply for beta, click here.
Random selections of our EverQuest and EverQuest II gold members.
Giveaways and promotions through various gaming websites and our social networks. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and Twitch.tv.
So there are plenty of ways to get a look at the product but bear in mind the system specs, this is going to be for 64 bit windows, the Alpha specs were quite beefy:
Minimum System Requirements:
- OS – Windows 7 64 bit
- Processor – Intel i5 Quad Core or higher / AMD Phenom II X4 or higher
- Memory – 4GB RAM
- Hard Drive – 20GB Free
- Video Memory – 1,024 MB RAM
- Video Card – nVidia GeForce GTX 275 series or higher / AMD HD 4890 or higher
- Sound Card – DirectX compatible
- Internet – Broadband (3Mbit/sec or higher)
Recommended System Requirements:
- OS – Windows 7 64 bit
- Processor – Intel i5 Quad Core or higher / AMD Phenom II X6 or higher
- Memory – 8GB RAM
- Hard Drive – 20GB Free
- Video Memory – 1,024 MB RAM
- Video Card – nVidia GeForce GTX 560 series or higher / AMD HD 6870 or higher
- Sound Card – DirectX compatible
- Internet – Broadband (10Mbit/sec or higher)
So this is a lot higher than the minimum specs for Second Life but I suspect more and more titles will be heading in the direction of 64 bit operating systems in the near future. There’s a lot of potential with this sandbox type world and I expect many more sandbox style games and MMO’s to appear in the future, this is where things are heading and these are quite exciting times.