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.

Removal (or not) of PC/Pet Push on NPCs on Hold

When asked if Push is going or staying, Elidroth (EQ Game Designer) replied:

I don't have that answer right now. I think push is dumb on a personal level.

In another post in that thread he went on to state:

All I can do is remind people that this is something players want, and see where it winds up in the task priority list, which I don't set, or get a vote on.

Harm Touch Fix Due in August Patch

Posted by Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment, LLC, on the SOE forum:

I put the fixes in for the DOT [component of Harm Touch] today. August patch is when they'll go out. I asked about a hotfix and was told no.

Patch Scheduled Tuesday July 26, 2011

From the SOE forum:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 4:00 am US Pacific (US Pacific-PST is -8 GMT: 5:00 am MST, 6:00 am CST, 7:00 am EST, 12:00 pm GMT, 13:00 am CET) for a game update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed..

Some details:

This update will include fixes for Shadowknight Harm Touch, Convergence of Spirits, and Extended Ingenuity amongst others.

Possible Hotfix July 22, 2011 - POSTPONED

In order to address several issues that have arisen as a result of the last patch, there may be a hotfix occuring [sic] around 10:30am Pacific Time. This hotfix might result in a complete repop of all zones, and will be messaged in game. Please be aware that during the repop, it will be advisable to find a safe spot in game.

The AB server may have this hotfix slightly delayed so as to not adversely effect game-play during a high concurrency time frame.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter,

- Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager

UPDATE:

Looks like due to some testing difficulties our hot-fix is being delayed until Tuesday morning.

-- Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

Hardcore Heritage Ends

In an hour and a half from this posting, EQ's Hardcore Heritage will end.

Despite the fact that a bug prevented the proper raid loot from dropping in the Clan Crushbone Demise of the Emperor raid, causing people to lose several days worth of opportunities, there is no sign that it will be extended to compensate.

Hardcore Heritage should be back next year, although by then the Clan Crushbone loot is expected to be overshadowed by the newer Veil of Alaris loot.

EQ Players Unable to Show Characters or Signature Banners, Being Worked On

Currently, attempts to view a character at EQ Players results in getting the following error message, "CatalogManager.properties catalogs com entity.catalog struts.xml". People who have their character's EQ Players banner as part of their forum signatures (on any forum) have also discovered they are not working.

We, as in Customer Service, do not provide direct support for the Station Players website. I did have the pleasure of sitting with SKlug today who assured me that the CatalogManager.properties catalogs com entity.catalog struts.xml issue, specifically, is being looked in to and should be repaired as soon as possible.

-- TSR Joshua M., Technical Support Representative, Sony Online Entertainment

Other issues with EQ Players, such as outdated leader boards and many other problems, will not be addressed until some time in the future when a new web site team is hired / assigned.
.

Antonius Bayle Server Instance Loading Bug Top Priority for SOE

I am actively working on this. It's not a load issue. There's something very odd going on that I haven't been able to track down yet. It's my #1 task at the moment though.

-- Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

.

Hotfix Under Development For Patch Issues

A number of bugs from the July 20 patch are due to be resolved with an upcoming hotfix. Some quotes from SOE Devs and Programmers on these issues:

An update:

Going to hotfix all of this [melee beneficial ability duration timers]. Putting changes in-place currently, we'll test them out, and then it'll get scheduled. I'm hopeful we can do all this without bringing the servers down (thanks to some recent SKlug magic).

Working on a hotfix for the AA issues in this thread including melee's beneficial ability durations being shorter than they should.

Also working on the illusion issues and HT issues.

Update.. The Beastlord illusions issues with things that turn you into the image of your warder can't be hotfixed because they're actually hard coded fun. So those issues will have to wait until we can patch and bring the servers down. Pretty much everything else can be hotfixed.

.

Patch Scheduled July 20, 2011

From SOE forums:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, July 20, 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 am CET) for a game update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 5 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed..

.

Crushbone Raid "Demise of the Emperor" to be Off Limits to Mercs

Now on the Test server with the expectation of arriving on live servers on July 20:

Crushbone's raid will no longer allow mercenaries.

.

Nerf to Fast DoTs Coming

This nerf is designed mainly to rein in necros but will be done for all fast DoTs.

Lower the damage fast DoTs do against raid bosses only.

The thread on the SOE forums describing the nerf and the discussion is here.

This is currently on the test server with the expectation of arriving on live servers on July 20.
.

Patch Scheduled for Next Week, Maybe

In keeping with SOE's policy of not revealing classified information because of the risk of tipping off al-Qaeda, there is no official word of a patch next week (July 20).

However, "loose lips sink ships" and Chandrok forgot to censor his post:

This charm should be working a bit better after the patch next week.

[bold added]
.

The Executioner's Crimson Trophy Charm to be Fixed

The Executioner's Crimson Trophy has terrible stats unless you are "holding hands" with a cleric. This is contrary to the description on the item and impractical in gaming.

This charm should be working a bit better after the patch next week.

-- Chandrok, EQ Developer

.

Hardcore Heritage Glowing Armor Problems

From this thread on the SOE forum:

People have reported being unable to get two bracers of this type of armor because they are lore, even though they don't say so. You must give back the first bracer you get to Thach Jerden who will then give you a different type of bracer. At that point you will be able to get a second bracer.

Breastplate emblems are currently broken on the armor and will be fixed soon(tm).
.