Landmark: New Beginnings
This past Friday, Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) relaunched Landmark, their online multi-genre RPG sandbox & swords game for another round of Closed Beta testing.
The relaunch followed 3 days of offline servers and massive changes to the game world, with the hope (for current test players) that this will be the last character-progression wipe, and the next-to-last land claims wipe. If the developers' work goes as planned (Beta testing being a turbulent process as it is), current Beta testers will be able to keep their character as-is, with achievements and possessions intact even through the changeover from Closed Beta to Open Beta testing. Open Beta, as of this writing, is the last planned land claim wipe.
Current and new players saw some immediate improvements: for the first time, the Character Creation screen enables you to mouse-wheel in and out from the full body view to examine your choices for your avatar's face. (In the Alpha testing and the beginning of Closed Beta, with little to look at or go by, I found myself counting how many clicks in which direction "my" face was on the slider for faces. I was lucky in my choices, my gamer buddy Tam was unhappy enough with his results that he was ready to scrap having a male character at all).
Beginning player experience is much improved--the Achievements system acts as a gentle tutorial path, rewarding actions in one area of play or another with tools to do more. Exploration, building, fighting, and crafting are all provided for--though I've yet to find any monsters to fight in my island's cave systems.
Starter "houses" are a nice touch. The current choices, with the now-free resources available, are a brick warehouse, a stone castle tower, a modern abode, a sandstone dojo, and a slate villa. All nice clean builds that can act as idea starters for detailing your land; using them also places the remaining craft stations you receive as a new player. Now that stone and several other building materials are "free"--no longer needing to be harvested or purchased--dedicated sandbox builders can jump into their projects early, and harvest later. In-game mechanisms give players replacement items of their choice if they previously purchased any of the designated free resources from the microtransactions marketplace. All purchased resources, refunded or rare, travel with your account and show up in inventory upon your first log-in.
Caves, caverns, and surface caves are newly generated, with some new rules and features, on completely new islands, which now include deciduous forests, lava lands, and ocean biomes. More of the cavern ruins from the player Ruins Contest winners are now in-game. The number of game servers have been cut from nine to four, so you'll actually have neighbors for once.
That's it for now....I'm going to go see if Tam carried out his threat to make a female character to have a less homely behind to stare at throughout the game.
Interested in Beta testing? Go to the Landmark home page and purchase one of the Founder's packs.
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