Mhm. It's the biggest reason why I am giving a shit about it. They are recommending a game's progression not based on shitting out and expending quests, but by adventuring, to try and get people to engage in the changing world, than consuming scripted content.

"Landmark is the world builder. It will serve the purpose to EQ Next what the Starcraft Campaign Editor served to Starcraft, or a SDK serves to Team Fortress 2. It is a world building tool, that they are making to feel like and play similar to Minecraft, but with much greater detail. Once Landmark, as a tool, is complete, they will release it Free To Play for all people to play Landmark, and build stuff.

Then, they will use Landmark to sculpt a world map, and build Norrath. Once Norrath is built, they will work on the MMO design, classes, and the like. This will be released as a second game, EQ Next. This is a non-quest themepark based horizontal progression MMORPG that emphasizes emergent experiences, rather than scripted ones. Using the voxel based world that they build with EQN Landmark, they will have a destructible world, with AI programmed with sets of likes and dislikes that will guide their behavior around a world that is being constantly changed.

During development of Norrath, on their end, with the fully functional Landmark out, they will put up the ability for people to create themed structures for EverQuest Next. For example, they may say "We need an Unrest. So we need an underground ruined dungeon.", and so players can struggle and build. Whoever gets the most votes, for example, will get their content put into the main game, getting credited, so that their creation was a part of the game."

So they are getting people to design the game for them. And here I thought SOE had no vision! Why are people falling for this?

By this same logic, Valve has been getting people to design Team Fortress 2 for them. Blizzard has been getting people to design StarCraft for them. Bethesda has been getting people to design The Elder Scrolls series for them. Letting your player base be involved in the development and growth of the game is not immediately the same as getting other people to design the game for them, in the connotations you're implying.

Player interaction with a game players find interesting is not exploiting, nor is it shrugging off the responsibility of development. It is a way to build hype, and it is a way of including your fan base in your game in much the same way that many games now evolve based on player interaction. SoE has to do this to build a sense of good will with their player base after the shit they have done to us in the past.

If SoE is going to turn around their image, they need to start by trying to include their player base. Players are not going to create the mechanics, they are not going to create the factions, the classes, the gameplay, none of that. They are being let into helping to shape small, isolated aspects of the game world, so they can feel more involved and attached to the game in a way only a small indie developer could provide in the past.

It is incredibly smart, and SoE would be damn near idiotic to not do this given their reputation.

too bad EQN is going to be pure shit, landmark seems kind of neat

second down looks more like entrance to black burrow

also... lol more games on flat monitors

EQN will have 40 classes and you don't need more than one character because your character can be all 40 classes at once, basically making your own class out of those abilities. 4 of your active abilities (weapon abilities) will be from your current class, while another 4 abilities (support) you combine from all your other classes. So you can be warrior with some cleric support abilities in one fight and ranger with some wizard porting in the next fight (if you unlocked those classes). For each class there is a horizontal progression and you have to decide which classes you want to spend your xp on.

That's what i understood in a nutshell. I will give it a chance once it's out.

http://media.giphy.com/media/T6QOv7Vw24IU0/giphy.gif

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/1667656448/h343E63CD/

Lol! Yea i am sceptical as well how this will feel. We will see.

The idea is that you'll basically create your own class playing the style you want to play. They've even talked about letting you re-name the class to whatever you want. The idea behind it is that you'll pick a class that has the right slots of damage/defense/support/movement abilities and then slot in the abilities that you like in there. Then, with that class, comes two different distinct weapon choices with different move-sets and animations that go along with that class.

Here's a tidbit from an article to give you an explanation of two distinct weapon types:

What they've described is a system where there are several classes that fill the same niche with different skill-sets. So you might have a ranger that uses a bow and double blades that has two movement abilities and two damaging abilities available to slot, on the other end you might have an archer that uses a long bow and a sword and shield as its two weapons, and it might have two damage abilities, a support slot, and a defensive slot.

Their description is that you might have a rogue type that does great damage normally but seems to get OHKO'ed by mage types. So, you look through your abilities and you notice one from one of your defensive classes that lets you take 80% less magic damage, you slot that in and you can create a new class called a Magebane or whatever you like and now you're good against mages. The idea is that there is flexibility to the class system and they really want you to be able to design and create every element of the game for yourself.