Labor Day Double XP Weekend Expected

Posted by Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager on the SOE forum:

Sorry, got in later than usual today. It'll be posted soon but yes there is an announcement about a bonus xp weekend comming [sic]

For those who are not in the USA, Labor Day is a holiday which occurs on the first Monday in September. This year the weekend is September 3, 4 and 5, as Monday the 5th is a Federal and State holiday and considered part of the weekend.

UPDATE:

Starting Friday, September 2, 2011, and continuing through Monday, September 5, 2011, experience the glory that is bonus experience in EverQuest. Simply play the game as you normally would and receive even more experience for the things you enjoy doing! It’s easy and fun, and we’ll see you in Norrath!

It has been confirmed that the "bonus" experience for the weekend is double normal. SOE just decided to call all future experience increases "bonus" regardless of how much the bonus is.

In an effort to be precise we will be branding all future bonus xp weekends as bonus xp weekends rather than double xp weekends. That way they keep the same name regardless of the bonus applied. I can confirm this weekend will be a 100% bonus (i.e. double).

Pre-Veil of Alaris Launch Events To Be Extended

Although mentioned in the August 10, 2011 patch, little is known about the Pre-Veil of Alaris Launch Events.

Meeka Gharn in the Plane of Knowledge was known to offer the "Only The Blind Will See" task but the reward was a weapon ornamentation that few wanted. Now it appear that task is needed to be completed to request another task from him, a group task that awards a range item.

The task, "Baga's Stand" can be done without completing "Only The Blind Will See", as only the person requesting it needs to have done that.

Currently, there is a bug with the reward, if you have the reward in your Dreamweave Satchel, and claim the reward again, your Dreamweave Satchel will vanish!

Also, the range item does not have a Dodge focus, this is likely to be fixed in a patch soon.

Read more about this on the SOE forums thread.

UPDATE posted on the SOE forum:

Due to an issue affecting a very small number of users, we have decided to extend the availability of the quest “Only the Blind Will See” through Tuesday, September 6, 2011, to make sure everyone who wants to participate in the pre-Veil of Alaris launch fun can experience this unique quest. Not only that, but for those unfortunates who don’t get a chance to do this quest, we’ll be adding the final reward for this quest to the upcoming Veil of Alaris Launch Event.

Can you help Meeka Gharn find the truth of the ancient book? Log in to EQ and find out today!

Emergency Patch Scheduled Wednesday, August 31, 2011

From this SOE forums announcement:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 6:00 am US Pacific (US Pacifc-PST is -8 GMT: 7:00 am MST, 8:00 am CST, 9:00 am EST, 2:00 pm GMT, 15:00 CET) for a emergency maintenance. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 2 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Fellowship Experience Sharing to Be Changed

Currently this is on the Test Server. No word on when it will go live. It is expected to go live once the bugs are fixed and it is adjusted for various reasons. It may change somewhat before going live.

From this SOE post on the Test forum:

Currently when someone activates Fellowship Experience Sharing, a portion of the experience that they earned is shared with other members of their Fellowship who also have Fellowship Experience Sharing activated. This is directly applied to other members of their Fellowship who also have Fellowship Experience Sharing enabled.

After the next patch to the Test Server, this will substantially change. Going forward, instead of experience being directly applied to Fellowship members, this experience shared will go into a bank (specific to each member) called Vitality. So If Player A is earning 1000 experience per kill, and is sharing with Player B, C, and D, then players B, C, and D will each be receiving 250 exp per kill into their individual Vitality banks.

Once a player with Vitality experience logs in, they will receive bonus experience for any kills they are credited for, allowing them to gain experience at a vastly accelerated rate*. This bonus experience is paid out of the Vitality experience they have accumulated, and once they run out out vitality they will no longer receive bonus experience. This bonus experience will be applied at a rate of up to 5x if doing normal experience, or up to 3x if doing AA experience.

In addition, when a member of a Fellowship has reached the maximum limit of Vitality experience, Fellowship Experience Sharing will be automatically toggled off for them. The current limit on Vitality experience is enough regular experience to gain 10 levels or enough AA experience to take the player to their AA cap. Vitality experience does not expire, and is permanent (until used). If a player cannot gain normal experience, they cannot store Vitality experience.

Click on the SOE forum post link to read more and comment on the proposed changes.

P.S. In addition, it is expected that the game will soon be changed so you may only join a fellowship once every 20 hours.

Patch Scheduled Wednesday, August 10, 2011

From the SOE forum:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 3:00 am US Pacific (US Pacifc-PST is -8 GMT: 4:00 am MST, 5:00 am CST, 6:00 am EST, 11:00 am GMT, 12:00 CET) for a game update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for 5 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Login Servers Going Down for Maintenance - Wednesday August 3, 2011

From the SOE forum:

On Wednesday August 3, 2011 we will be perfoming [sic] maintenance on the EverQuest Login Servers starting at 7:00 am Pacific (Pacific is -8 GMT). The maintenance will last approximately 2.5 hours, and during that time players will be unable to log in. No disruption is anticipated for players who are already logged in during that time, however please be aware that service disruptions are possible.