EQN:Landmark Beta Starts March 26th!

Oceans: The big empty areas around the edges of the islands will become filled with water, creating not only ocean but also bays and islands. When initially launched, Oceans will not have swimming or underwater behavior, but you can make claims in the water for the pure visual splendiferousness of it all, or along the many coastlines. (Swimming and underwater behavior will follow close behind. See second half of May.)

Caves: You'll be able to explore caves that connect to the surface, prospect all the way down through them, and dig through raw earth to uncover still other cave networks. All ore resource tiers will be available to all islands...they're just underground now. You'll also see the "Resource Detection" ability appear in the game so that you can detect the likely direction of resources as you dig through the world. Caves will continue to expand (a lot) beyond this initial offering, but this is what you'll see at the debut.

Player Studio: You'll finally be able to put up those templates you've been creating through Alpha and Closed Beta! Yup. This is the real-cash-payout system where you can sell templates through the Studio to other players! Format will be a lot like what you see when you start submitting your competition entries (with a bit more detail).

Newbie Friendliness: We have some big systems coming later (see Recipe Tracker and Achievements in June), but for now, we're going to put in some "quick fixes" designed to help all players, but to also let new players catch up with the rest of us quickly. Things like:
A reference for looking up item recipes when you're out in the field (away from crafting stations)
A progression path diagram that lets you see "at a glance" the progression path of crafting tables (and what they can make).
Some basic help dialogs when you start the game and after you plant your first claim flag.
Some useful chat improvements ("General" chat tab, tear-off chat panes, some quick reply improvements, etc.)
Some game changes: You get all building tools when you plant your first claim flag, and all basic crafting tables will also be present at the Hub.
Oh yeah, and fixing your claim boundary visual so it's not so blue and bit-mappy.

Customer Service Tools: Okay, maybe you're surprised to see us tell you about internal tools. Surprise! But just letting you know that we have work to do to let our CS team be helpful and efficient with Landmark. Some of the dev team will be building nice things for them so they can, in turn, be helpful to you.

Crafting 2.0: This is a lot of stuff, so some of it may slip to June. We'll see how it goes. This includes the Imbuing, Refining, Reinforcing and Salvaging systems that complete the Crafting 2.0 set of upgrades. (The first piece of that new rollout was Upgrading.)

Treasure Chests: Loot will start to spawn in the caves and you'll stumble onto it as you explore. (Yes, this is the start of a truly wondrous thing known as "the loot system". Fun things lie down this path and it starts here.

Biome-Specific and Time-of-Day Music Tracks: More Jeremy Soule goodness coming your way. And a new system that plays music oriented toward the current biome you're in, and also keys you into the time of day changes with signature themes.

VoiP: I can hear some of you saying "Why? We already have Ventrillo/TeamSpeak/VoiP'o'Choice". Good for you! But you'd be astonished that you are not in the majority of players. And this game really keeps your fingers busy sometimes. So VoiP is needed for socialization. And building it into the game ensures that everyone has access to VoiP, which is cool.

Underwater Features: Mostly, this means swimming features (although there is some fun Heroic Movement stuff associated with it). But also we'll add the underwater effects that are missing at the launch of Oceans and underwater foilage. Your sea claims will become much cooler.

Map Improvements: Wouldn't it be great to be able to actually find stuff on the map? Like where a player's claims are located? Or where most players are located right now? Wouldn't you like to be able to set a waypoint? Plus tags. You can search for tags on the map and find things easily. (A bit like how you do tag searches in the Showcase, only with real geographic reference in your local area so you can see where it is on your map!)

Minimap: For those that hate minimaps, don't worry...you can close it. But seriously, try it out. It'll be chock full'o'info. And useful!

Okay, June is a bit further away, so we'll just state goals for the whole month instead of doing two-week chunks. We'll slip things around in order, probably, but these are the goals for June.

MyStore: Your personal interface into your own Player Studio business.

Glass: As a building material. Let's see what sorts of voxel goodness you can do with that!

Improved Character Creation: You didn't think the character create you see now was final, did you? Much more is coming. The presentation of that area will be overhauled, there will be more body types and customizations you can make, and more.

Claims 2.0: Claims have been in a functional, but simple state for a bit now. During June, we'll be making it so you can push a button to place a claim-sized template and letting you swap between those templates easily. ("Mood of the Day" claims, anyone?) We'll be adding the "claim cap" system (where you earn more claims as you game), we'll allow more claim add-ons with variety of ownership (for the true town-type buildouts), and overhaul the upkeep system to be what was designed (instead of the current 8-day system we're using now).

The Economy: Merchants, so you can swap out resources for coin (which pays for upkeep as well as being a handy commodity for trading between players), and the Market Stalls at the Hub (so you have a place to set up shop for travellers passing through).

Death!: Yup, health and damage systems are coming into the game. Along with the ability to die, we'll also be adding Shields, which is a system of defenses you can use to avoid that pesky death thing.

(A Surprise Feature that will get Added Here after a bit More Confirmation with Coders so they don't Lynch Me...check back again Soontm )

More Map: Fog of war will appear on the maps (unveil them as you explore so you can see where you've been already and explore the rest), and you'll be able to see the maps for other islands and worlds! (Currently, you can only see your current island's map. Getting to see other maps will be useful when you want to find specific biomes or seeing where claim space is available.)

Recipes & Achievements: Remember those quick fixes we did back in early May? These are the real systems. A recipe book which lets you gather recipes as you explore, only able to make them *after* you find them, not immediately at all crafting stations. The current design was a shortcut for Alpha. Also Achievements, which is a great system for not only rewarding you for doing cool things as you play, but also as a useful (and optional) way for players to discover the game when they come to it originally.

Social Systems: A simple label for a LOT of stuff. This is Chat 2.0 (where we overhaul the current chat system for sets of improvements like links, add the MOTD feature so we can tell you important and cool stuff happening in the game, as well as configuration and channel options), and also an overhaul of Groups (for more options and integration with new features), and we add Guild support.

Voxel Water: Yup. Water becomes a usable material. Now that's going to create some interesting buildouts!

Hoo boy. This stuff is probably going to change. We move stuff around...a lot...as we develop, but here's our *current* plans for July.

Character "Wearables" System: Say goodbye to the single-piece outfit and hello to the ensemble of parts. This allows a lot more character customization, but it also sets up the systems we need for armor...which we need for Combat. (Oh, the segue.)

Combat: This simple word is composed of one heck of a lot of systems and effort. And is the bulk of what's coming in July.
Pathing: Voxel worlds are really, really tricky when it comes to competent AI pathing. But July is when we intend for you to see it in action.
Abilities: Abilities you can craft and earn, as well as all the necessary abilities for the monsters you'll face. (Monsters? Oh yeah...those too!)
Physics: Remember that voxel world? Yeah. Interaction with that requires physics.
Targeting: Both for the players and the monsters. (Many different systems.)
Projectiles: Projectiles are a completely separate system from melee.
Monsters and Loot: There's no PvE without enemies, and little reason to endanger yourself without loot. (An extension of the Treasure Chest system.)
All of this is a relatively unsexy way to describe something that's going to bring a ton of danger, adrenaline, and life to the game. We'll unveil how we're going to debut this all into the game closer to July, but the plans are highly cool. It should be fun.

SOEmote: Machinima creators, rejoice. SOEmote makes its public debut in the game. In addition to the real-time face manipulation, it's also intended to let you record your own emotes, as well as letting you disguise your voice on VoiP (for roleplaying or anonymity).

Above-Sea-Level Water: Ponds and lakes at various altitudes across the islands. More variety of environment and the overall feel of them gets closer to where we want the islands to be aesthetically.

As much of this as possible before SOE Live in mid-August. So we've seriously got our work cut out for us. This team is amazing, but still human. We have to rest some time. So we'll see. But here's the plans.

Building Tool Refinements:

NOTE: Building tools refinements will be ongoing throughout Closed Beta. It's being mentioned here because the refinements should be "open-beta ready" at around this time in the schedule. But improvements are continuing from now until this time.)

We've all been working with these tools for a long time, and we've gotten used to (mostly) their foibles, but foibles they do have, and they need to go away. We're gathering feedback on all the tools and making refinement designs. (Your feedback is always heartily encouraged!) Sometime in July or August, those improvements will find their way back into the game. Sometimes we won't wait that long (like with the Smoothing Tool refinements...don't worry...we didn't forget).

Mounts: Yup. Horses are the first goal. We'll see about more.

Dynamic Water: Flowing water that you can manipulate with buckets and voxel dams and culverts. Have fun!