So, while Bethesda were showcasing TESO at QuakeCon, SOE have their own little convention where they unveiled the new Everquest game. Most of the footage is now up at the http://www.everquestnext.com (and you can also sign up for the beta).

Personally I have been very cynical over the state of MMORPGs lately and none of the heavy hitters like Tera, GW2, SWTOR, or the upcoming TESO do anything to push my buttons. I've been awaiting the announcement of EQN trying to hold my expectations in check. I was not disappointed and this is looking like a genuinely fun game.

Some of the key features are a completely destructible world built out of voxel technology, in addition to Everquest Next Landmark which gives the players free reign to claim their own land and create their own content in it. It seemed like a mixture of Minecraft-esque ingame building and using worldbuilding tools. The inherent nature of voxels give you a lot more flexibility with details in geometry and architecture than, say, the way Bethesda's tools work.

As for the gameplay itself leveling in the sense of gaining experience points and hitting milestones for increasing your stats seems to be gone. This is instead replaced by a multi-class systems where you unlock new classes and abilities as you play the game. The other big feature is "rallying calls". They are apparently kind of like those special world events you see every months/years in games like WoW, but their outcomes are completely determined by what the players do rather than what the developers decide what is going to happen, and these are going to forge unique and persistent long-term world changes for each individual server.

Another cool thing is the worldbuilding where Norrath is designed with several different layers. So beneath the surface you have this whole other underworld waiting, and another one under that, and from what I understood these are at least partly procedually generated.

Landmark is a separate game from the main Everquest Next and is being released late this year. They are also going to hold contests where, say, the developers have created art assets for a water-themed dungeon, they release the assets for Landmark and let the players go wild with it. Then the player-made dungeon with the most votes gets their dungeon permanently incorporated into the main game. If I heard correctly the winner will also be entitled to royalties for their work.