If you thought Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was done with the EverQuest brand , well, think again. The company has come up with a successor to the classic MMO with EverQuest Next (EQN), which aims to give MMO die-hards a world they can mold and disrupt to their heart’s content. According to Sony, “there are no levels” in EQN, but with around 40 different classes at launch, players can mix and match abilities and develop them as they go along. The game will also be smart enough to learn from your decisions, offering up related opportunities so you can do more of what you like, be it crafting weapons or beating up orcs. Further, NPCs are given “motivations” and “core values” so that they’ll attack you not just ’cause you’re within aggro range, but because they want your gold for example. Perhaps the biggest departure from other MMOs is that EQN introduces the idea of fully destructible environments that would result in permanent change to the landscape. Blow a hole in the wall? Well, it’ll stay that way, at least until someone else comes along to patch it. Since you can now destroy things, SOE also launched something called EverQuest Next Landmark , a sandbox that lets gamers create objects and buildings in the EverQuest world with the same tools SOE designers used to make the game. Amateur game architects can share their creations with friends, or collaborate with them on larger projects. Landmark will launch as a “Free to Play” title later this year, and marks the first stage in EQN’s release. As for EverQuest Next itself, well, its pricing and availability has yet to be announced. Until then, treat yourself to some gameplay footage and read up on what’s new in the press release after the break. Filed under: Gaming , Alt Comments Source: EverQuest Next
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Sony keeps the MMORPG flame alive with EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next Landmark
The University of California—an enormous institution that encompasses 10 campuses and over 8, 000 faculty members— introduced an Open Access Policy late last week. This policy grants the UC a license to its faculty’s work by default, and requires them to provide the UC with copy of their peer-reviewed papers on the paper’s publication date. The UC then posts the paper online to eScholarship , its open access publishing site, where the paper will be available to anyone, free of charge. Making the open access license automatic for its faculty leverages the power of the institution—which publishes over 40, 000 scholarly papers a year—against the power of publishers who would otherwise lock content behind a paywall. “It is much harder for individuals to negotiate these rights on an individual basis than to assert them collectively, ” writes the UC. “By making a blanket policy, individual faculty benefit from membership in the policy-making group, without suffering negative consequences. Faculty retain both the individual right to determine the fate of their work, and the benefit of making a collective commitment to open access.” Faculty members will be allowed to opt out of the scheme if necessary—if they have a prior contract with a journal, for example. Academic papers published in traditional journals before the enactment of this policy will not be made available on eScholarship at this time. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments 
On Saturday, the Obama Administration vetoed the International Trade Commission’s potential ban on a few models of older Apple phones and tablets. Samsung opened the case against Apple with the ITC in 2011, and the commission decided in June that Apple had, in fact, infringed upon a Samsung patent, US Patent No 7, 706, 348 . The decision garnered attention because the patent is considered essential to industry standards, meaning Samsung is required to license the patent (rather than sit on it, or refuse license it to some competitors). The ITC ended up recommending a ban be placed on the infringing products brought forward in the case, which included AT&T models of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3, iPad 3G, and iPad 2 3G. In June of 2013, Ars wrote of the ITC’s ban: ”The decision can only be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation’s top patent court. Theoretically, the President can also block an ITC-ordered import ban, but that hasn’t happened since the 1980s.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments 
BREAKING: Effective 5:00 PM ET, Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS in NYC, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other markets. $TWC $CBS — CNBC (@CNBC) August 2, 2013 Read more… 
Torre de David is a 45-story, partially-finished office tower that houses a vibrant community of squatters in Caracas. It’s also an internationally-known symbol of Venezuela’s economic troubles, to which the The New Yorker and The New York Times have both devoted long profiles. But there hasn’t been much video documentation of life inside—until now. Read more… 
