Double XP and Station Cash Saturday April 30, 2011

To thank players for their patience during the recent service interruption, we will be hosting special events this weekend across our game portfolio, including a Double Station Cash day on Saturday, April 30th. We are also working on a “make good” plan for players of the PS3 versions of DC Universe Online and Free Realms. Details will be available soon on the individual game websites and forums.

EverQuest will also be holding a Double XP day on Saturday, from 12:01am PST to 11:59pm PST.

To redeem game cards for Station Cash, visit the Game Cards webpage.

Read the full statement here.
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Patch Scheduled April 27, 2011

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 12:00 am US Pacific (US Pacifc-PST is -8 GMT: 1:00 am MST, 2:00 am CST, 3:00 am EST, 8:00 am GMT, 9:00 am CET) for maintenance. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for 9 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

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AA Fixes Coming In May

Several AA fixes are due to arrive in the May patch. As always, things may change. I also expect more fixes to be added.

From a SOE forums thread on Embalmer's Carapace:

Fixed it. Finally found what was causing it to drop early. May patch.

- Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment, LLC

From a SOE forums thread on Improved Shield Specialist:

I've removed the damage bonus with ISS, however you should now be correctly getting the agro increases as intended with the May patch. We got some code time recently to give me actual ways to affect your damage, agro, etc. depending upon having a shield equipped or not. Before it was purely damage increases. Now I can manipulate almost anything including agro bonus.

This is something I very much want to use to help diversify the warrior class in the future so you can better utilize your class skills when tanking AND when not.

- Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment, LLC

From a SOE forums thread on Acute Focus of Arcanum and Wizard Third Spire of Arcanum Rank 3:

Acute Focus of Arcanum - LevelMax raised to 90.

Third Spire of Arcanum Rank 3 - Level Max raised to 90.

- Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment, LLC

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Stomples Day (Easter) Quest Active Until May 1

In the honor of the elusive Stomples, EQ will be celebrating Stomples Day this year!

Wandering about the Plane of Knowledge is Grundle Cogwelder, a Gnome with many questions on his mind. Somehow he’s got it in his head that rabbits come from eggs. Make sure to stop by and visit him soon!

- Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager

Grundle offers a quest to collect some eggs. The reward is an item which when clicked will sometimes turn you into a white rabbit and sometimes cause baby rabbits to appear around you.
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Some Items Now Light Sources, Change Affects Charm of the Elusive Eidolon

From this SOE forums thread:

All helms in House of Thule and all raid weapons now have light sources. It was my error that the patch notes for these changes were not included in the patch yesterday. This should explain why the Charm of the Elusive Eidolon is showing lower stats for most players.

-- Chandrok, EQ Developer

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April 13 Patch Causes Download Problems

The April 13 patch has caused many people to be unable to download and play EQ.

One possible fix is to use the latest new LaunchPad (LP3 or LaunchPad v3). This may be obtained at http://launch.soe.com/everquest/

Here is some advice for installing LP3:

Even better than this, especially when your EQ folders, like mine, do not directly reside in the default folders SOE uses.

1. Run the launcher install program. On the first screen, where it asks you where your EQ folder is, DO NOT use the default path, use the path where your actual EQ folder is (in my case it's both C:\EQ and M:\EQ , since I run one account per actual EQ folder).

2. Let the setup run itself, log in and whatever...

3. When it starts checking for data, cancel it right away, and go to options. (otherwise you'd end up downloading all 6.5GB) Click the Scan button besides "Game Assets" a few lines under the Open Folder button. Wait.

4. When scanning is done, close the options page, and resume the checks.

For multiple accounts, do not check the "Remember this login blahblah" on the screen where it asks for your username and password. If that is checked, LaunchPad will skip the login screen and go straight to patching every time it runs; great for one standalone account, but horrible for multiples.
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"Leap" AAs Bugged

New Hastened Leap AAs were added in the March 9, 2011 patch. Due to a bug, some people have been reporting that they get an error message when they attempt to Leap.

The error message says you can't leap because the recast is [something like] 1193046 hours.

In this thread on the SOE forums, the issue is discussed and it is currently suggested that if your Leap is bugged you should petition.

However, many GMs and other customer service personnel are unaware that this is a bug in the game, and not on your system. Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), EQ Game Designer, has stated that he has sent an email to them describing the issue and you should tell them if they have any problems to contact him directly.
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SOE Considers Auto Granting Lower Level Toons Free AAs

Something I've thought about in the past and was recently brought up in the forums by a couple people is the idea of granting some AA when you reach the level to use them. The idea being its very hard for a new player to catch up to become useful to relatively current content in any reasonable amount of time. So, without getting too wrapped up in the particulars just yet, I have this question:

Would people be against going back a few years and granting all AA previous to some milestone to anyone who reaches the required level for the AA?

There are some hangups to this question though.

* Milestone point selected for granting AA previous. I'm thinking anything prior to Secrets of Faydwer right now.
* Devaluation of time spent by people not affected by this change (IE - long term players who've earned the AA spent)
* Achievements for AA would be affected since you wouldn't be spending the same number.
* This would affect each class very differently and there would not be enough time to sift through and pick and choose which AA would be auto-granted.

As before, this is not something I'm already doing. This is a request for feedback on an IDEA.

-- Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment, LLC

You can read more about this and comment on the SOE forums here.
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