Everquest Landmark is shutting down

Landmark, Everquest Next spin-off is going offline in February. The announcement was made today by Daybreak Entertainment, the company that bought the game developer Sony Online Entertainment along with Everquest franchise a couple of years ago, through a notice posted on the game website that reads the following:

"Since Landmark first entered Alpha, we have been impressed by the creative talents in this community. You pushed the boundaries of what Landmark could do, and we are grateful for the time and energy you shared through your creations in this game."

"Beginning today, Player Studio items will no longer be available for listing or for purchase in the Landmark Marketplace. Landmark will also no longer be available for purchase. All items in the Marketplace with a Daybreak Cash price will have their price reduced to 1 DBC."

For those of you that don't know the story, Landmark was released in 2013 as a construction and exploration game, where players could create all kinds of content that were transferable to the upcoming MMO of the Everquest franchise later on. But Everquest Next was canceled after Daybreak Games bought SOE, so Landmark virtually has had no meaning other than keeping busy the people that were playing it and having an open cash shop, as a "game" that literally doesn't hold any purpose or future.

But, wasn't it like that from the start? One would argue that getting people to pay to play with editing tools to create content that later on is going to be used in a game to be released in the future is a win-win situation for the developers. And in a certain way, it is true. The reality is that the community formed by Everquest players have been quite loyal to the franchise over the years, and it's been quite a while since the original Everquest game was released in 1999. Maybe too loyal for their own good. Maybe they wanted to believe that an Everquest game was going to be once again one of the top MMORPG in the market and that they would have fun like in the old times, and they pushed hard for it. But at the end of the day, SOE didn't show any progress with Everquest Next for years after announcing it, Landmark was sold to the community as a separate game and now, both of them are going to end closed.

Probably, Everquest community members the only ones that believed in the whole project from the start to the point of even paying to create content for a game without even a release date for it. It would be easy to say that they were mistaken, but you can't really blame people for wanting to play the game of their dreams. Meanwhile, the original Everquest and Everquest II are still running. Let's see how long they last.

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