June 9 will be a momentous day. Landmark will be introducing more than one awesome bit in the coming week, according to the most recent episode of Landmark Live!
Aside from the long-awaited introduction of cave formations into Landmark’s landmasses, the June 9 update will introduce swimming into the game! How do these two new features combine to add more adventurous experiences? Read on!
Props, Textures, and Player Studio
Aside from caves and swimming, the Landmark stream provided some other things to look forward to in upcoming patches.
For those who love building and hunting new materials for customization, there are new props and textures have already arrived in game. Two of the pictures across today’s article will show these new props and the gamut of new textures-slash-colors that will come with the update, with the new textures representing each of the different resources you can gather.
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The other thing mentioned that will arrive the week after next is the Player Studio. Information will be made available to certain regions on how they can file the necessary paperwork to sell their own goods on Landmark. For more information on this, players will want to check the Developer Discussion section of the forums for more.
Caves and Swimming
The big draw of the stream was the arrival of caves on Monday, but they also announced swimming as part of the upcoming activities you can do.
The stream reminded folks that once caves are thrown into the game, the only claims that will get wiped are those that intersect with cave entrances. Those affected – around 35 claims maximum per island – will get their stuff automatically templated and their materials and whatnot returned to them.
When a user logs in again to visit his respective claim, all they need to do is find a new location and reset their templates on a new claimed slice of land. In fact, the swimming mechanic will allow them to stake a claim below the surface of the water now.
What this basically means is that while users could only walk on water previously, players will be able to finally swim through water and also dive below the surface. Aside from staking claims underwater, players can also mine for resources beneath the waves.
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Workshop, Episode 1
Following the end of the stream, a second stream – Episode 1 of The Workshop Show – went live. As noted in an earlier column, The Workshop is a new video series focusing on the development of the game as furthered by the players.
After being provided with design documents for a given race – in this case, the dark elves – users went all out and built their own examples of dark elven architecture. The video started off with the history of dark elves and their mindset for their architectural style.
Player creations are then showcased and assessed based on the style guide and the deviations people have made based on the technology available in Landmark. As they noted, trying to replicate the architecture and also creating deviations from the style guide both provide a welcome perspective that could affect the future of Landmark and of Everquest Next.
While The Workshop Show is available in the link above, I’ll leave you with an awesome Landmark video showing one of the assessed creations. Enjoy!
Victor Barreiro Jr. / Victor Barreiro Jr. maintains the Landmark/Everquest Next column for MMORPG.com. He also writes for news website Rappler as a technology reporter. You can find more of his writings on Games and Geekery and on Twitter at @vbarreirojr.
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