Veil of Alaris Pre-Quests Coming October 1st

From EQPlayers News:

The Gnomes are about to commence work on their greatest project ever! Join them Saturday, October 1 through Sunday, November 14, 2011.

Deep in the valleys of the Steamfont Mountains the Gnomes are preparing perhaps their most ambitious endeavor to date, the construction of a massive airship. Does this have anything to do with the Emissary of Brell? Where do the Gnomes plan to travel? Has the King of Ak'Anon contrived some plan of his own? Journey to the land of the Gnomes and investigate their enterprise. Perhaps you could lend a hand, as the gnomish people have been known on occasion to be generous to those who assist them.

Go forth and find the answer to this gnomish enigma! Seek the Chief Engineers for revelations on the future of Norrath!

Dragons, Dragons, Dragons! Quest Bug To Be Fixed

At various parts of the quest you are required to hail the Emissary to continue.  It has been reported that the Emissary is missing during several stages.

Absor, EQ Developer, replied to the issue in this SOE forum thread:

We are working on a fix for this.  Hopefully we'll get it out tomorrow [Tuesday].

SOE Webcast Reveals Some Veil of Alaris Plans

On September 22, 2011, SOE had a webcast which announced several features planned for VoA:

• Improved Taunt.  An ability that the mob ignores its hate list and will attack whoever used the ability.  The Warrior version is called Undivided Attention.  Paladins and Shadow Knights also get a version.
• Free Target.  This enables you to target areas.  One use is to spawn Auras.  Shaman will be able to spawn their Malos Idol in a spot away from them.  They will no longer have to run up and plant it.
• AAs - Monks are getting a new pulling tool.  Temporarily named Constrictive Dark, it is a single target silence whose main purpose is pulling caster mobs.
• Bard instruments to be improved.  They will extend songs of that type by 1 tic and the melee damage bonus is going from 25% to 30%.
• Devs will now have NPC generated parses to better evaluate raids and group content.
• New Power Sources under consideration, but will not happen by VoA launch.
• Tier 1 VoA gear will be minimum level 85 and attunable.  Although the content is designed more for level 90 toons.
• Higher levels of Tribute.

Of course, everything is subject to change as they continue development of VoA.

If you wish to waste 21 minutes to hear what you just read above, you can view the webcast here.

Emergency Patch Wednesday, September 21, 2011

From an in-game system wide message:

all EverQuest is having an emergency patch at 6:00am on Wednesday, September 21st. Downtime is expected to be two hours.

All times should be assumed to be Pacific time (USA).

UPDATE:  SOE has posted the full information on their forum:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 6:00 am US Pacific (US Pacifc [sic] -PST is -8 GMT: 5:00 am MST, 8:00 am CST, 9:00 am EST, 2:00 pm GMT, 3:00 pm CET) for a game update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for 2 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Giants, Giants, Giants! and Dragons, Dragons, Dragons! are back through Tuesday, October 11, 2011

SOE announces:

Everyone loves killing giants and dragons so we thought it was time for the Giants, Giants, Giants! and Dragons, Dragons, Dragons! tasks to return! How well can you do in these limited time challenges? Find out before Tuesday, October 11, 2011!

Veil of Alaris Beta Registration is Live

From EQ Players news:

We are now accepting sign-ups for the EverQuest® Veil of Alaris™ expansion beta. The beta period is expected to begin on Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

As with previous years' beta, the sign-up process has been made easier for you… and for us! Once you sign up, the system places you in a pool of potential beta testers. When the invite stages occur, beta testers will automatically be selected from that pool. We will, however, still be limiting the number of participants during different beta stages—the difference is that now you don't have to wait for a window of opportunity to sign up. The beta sign-up page will remain open until the beta ends. Once you sign up, you do not need to sign up again.

Go to this link to read more and sign up.

Patch Scheduled Thursday, September 15, 2011

From the SOE forums:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Thursday, September 15, 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.

Power Outage in San Diego Shuts Down EQ

A widespread power outage across San Diego has shut down EQ Thursday afternoon (September 8, 2011). No information on the cause or when power will be restored is yet available. For more information on the power outage, it is suggested that you Google, "San Diego power outage".

UPDATE: Customers should expect to be without power for hours, possibly through the night and into Friday. SDG&E (San Diego Gas and Electric) said 1.4 million customers have been affected by the outage.

UPDATE:  As of Friday, September 9, EQ should be back up.

Older Focus Effects Will Not Be Increased When Level Cap Raised

Veil of Alaris will include an increase of the level cap to 95. Currently dropping focus effects degrade when used for spells above level 90 (or lower). In the past, SOE has gone back to the previous expansion when there was a level increase and changed some of the focus effects on the older items. This enabled them to still be useful.

This time SOE has announced that they will not do so for Veil of Alaris.

From this thread on the SOE forum:

I spoke with the Dev team at length about this issue today, and there was a lot of discussion including what our historical actions in this regard have been, how doing so would relatively effect casters (with their disproportionate power gain at the begining [sic] of expansions due to spells being easier to aqquire [sic] than gear) vs. melees, and a number of other issues.

After weighty consideration, and possibly a bit of shouting, the Dev team has decided in this case to not increase the caps on current focus effects.

Thanks,

-Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager

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.