We sat down with the full board of Sony Online Entertainment's producers to discuss what players can expect over the next few months.

Terry took the helm next to discuss EverQuest Next Landmark, commenting how excited SOE is about letting people into Alpha testing “just around the corner.” He emphasized that this is the earliest that players have ever been allowed into the development cycle of an SOE title. “People are used to getting in during a Beta of a game, where it’s really all about finding bugs, and all the tweaking and tuning and balancing of things,” Terry said. “We wanted to let people in much earlier than that so that they can actually have an impact on the direction that we’re going to go with the game.”

The Landmark team wants to get the input from Alpha testers, including ideas and suggestions that can be incorporated into the game, “so that we can extend and expand in the direction that they want, rather than the direction that we think they want.” Terry again stressed how excited they all are and that they’re looking forward to the interaction between the players and the development team. Dave jumped in to comment that “Basically, we figured this is one of the only stones we’ve left unturned, so we decided to go ahead and just go be completely crazy and do this also.”

Talking more about the celebration event on the 31st and explained that the Landmark demo should be about 15 minutes in length, allowing a brief glimpse at what the game has to offer.  “It’s going to be great to have people out here looking at where we work, how we work, and getting to rub elbows with us and talk to us about the things they find important across all the games,” Terry said. PR Manager Ben Conrad stated that over 1,000 people had RSVP’d on Facebook, which prompted SOE to further request an emailed RSVP—and they have been surprised that hundreds of email confirmations from as far away as Scotland. “It’s going to be a fun and celebratory way to kick off this year of EverQuest,” Ben said. Dave laughed that “it’s kind of turned into a mini SOE Live!”

We asked the obligatory question: when does the Landmark alpha start? Ben’s candid response was that “we’re not talking about that quite yet!”

Ann "Cyliena" Hosler, Managing Editor