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EverQuest Next Landmark enters closed beta on 26 March

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Well, that was quick, wasn’t it? EverQuest Next Landmark was only in alpha for two months and it’s already entering closed beta, bringing with it all them types what bought the game’s Founder’s Pack.

The closed beta will launch on 26 March.

“Our Alpha has been absolutely fantastic,” write SOE. “We could not have asked for a better result with you, the players, finding a huge assortment of radical new ways to use our building tools and cooperating so incredibly to push the boundaries of our game. Thank you!”

We had Richard Cobbett look it over and his response was that “For all its frontier aspirations, this is a corporate take on the sandbox, up to and including planning to charge upkeep on your sandcastles. Summed up in a sentence or two, Minecraft was a game that started as a toy and exploded into a phenomenon with the force of exactly seventeen neutron bombs. Landmark was built to be part of an empire.”

With that SOE are wiping the servers and setting up new islands for all the new players to jump in on. While the beta will go live on 26 March, the server wipes will take place on the 24 and 25 March, meaning that today, the 23 March, is the last day you can take part in the alpha.

“To get ready for the end of Alpha, we *highly recommend* that you template any items on your claims that you want to resurrect during Closed Beta,” say SOE. “Consider templating things with props, without props, and possibly even re-textured as dirt or something simple so that you can rebuild it easily when you have few resources available. (NOTE: When the claims are wiped at the end of Alpha, we will be templating each of your claims for you, BUT many of your claims require vast amounts of resources before they can be placed so it still might be beneficial for you to go in and make individual templates to make it easier to restore pieces of your claim as you gain resources.)

“What will the data wipe entail? EVERYTHING will be wiped…except your character name, your templates and any items you purchased (Founder’s Pack items or marketplace purchases). Yes, that means everything else. When Closed Beta begins, you will need to choose a new appearance, gather new resources, craft new tools and make new claims from scratch again. Everyone starts at the same place.”

It all sounds very final, doesn’t it?