EverQuest Next Overview and Media

Sony Online Entertainment finally detailed how they imagine EverQueest Next will change the franchise and, more significantly, the MMORPG genre. EverQuest Next features destructible environments and allows players to shape the world around them, permanently*. In an MMO! Director of development Dave Georgeson iterates what SOE's vision in creating a type of game that hasn't been seen before:

 "W hen you change the core advancement systems of the game, and then combine that with emergent AI, destructibility, and permanent change…well…now you’re playing with a set of tools that no one has assembled before, and you can make something unique, which translates into a gaming experience you’ve never before seen."

*Permanent change is definitely a major component SOE's vision for EverQuest Next, but Georgeson clarifies that not everything can be truly permanent, else it would become a diminishing world ultimately reduced to nothing. The world will be allowed to heal itself, but the details of that aren't known.

Not only is permanent change achieved by destructible enviroments, alongside also come events and quests - common to the genre of course - which can be completed to also dramatically modify a locale. These non-repeatable events are promised to have lasting change on the world. 

Finally, 40 "professions" are promised to be  available at launch, each with unique abilities and weapons.

I've only scratched the surface with the details. Six short videos and several screenshots have been released, showing off various locales, combat, destruction, and how any thing in the world can be altered by the players. Check it out!