Patch Scheduled Tuesday, September 25, 2012

From the SOE forum:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, September 25, 2012 at 4:30 am US Pacific* for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 3.5 hours. Keep an eye on the EverQuest website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

*Time Zone Converter

Patch Scheduled Wednesday, September 19, 2012

From the SOE forum:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be brought offline on Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 1:00 am US Pacific* for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 7 hours. Keep an eye on the EverQuest website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

*Time Zone Converter

Upcoming Player Studio™ Will Allow You To Make Marketplace Items

From the SOE web site:

Player Studio™ is a new program that invites (initially US-based) players to download sample geometry, learn how virtual items are constructed, and try designing items. You can try your hand at writing a creative name, item description and rationale for how it fits into the ongoing narrative storyline.

Selected items will be offered for sale in the SOE Marketplace alongside items created by staff artists, priced in SOE's Station Cash virtual currency. Revenue from the sale of these items will be shared back with the creative player.

The program is not yet officially running, but you can read up and even start creating items now. More information will be released at SOE Live 2012 in Las Vegas, NV.

Nineteenth Expansion "Rain of Fear" Announced

SOE announces Rain of Fear expansion:

EverQuest celebrates an unprecedented 20^th major game release with the Rain of Fear™ Expansion. Thirteen years after the initial launch of EverQuest and 19 expansions later, Rain of Fear™ continues an exciting storyline that started two years ago with the mysterious House of Thule™ Expansion, and continued in Veil of Alaris™.

You and your friends destroyed the newly created god, The Triumverate, causing an explosion that rocked Norrath and released the stolen power of fear. This power is returning to Norrath, falling from the sky in the form of crystalline shards.  Who will gain control of the essence of fear and bring balance between good and evil? 

The Harbingers of Thule entreat you to gather the essence of their lost god before it falls into the hands of others.  You will uncover the mysteries of the giant crystals that have fallen to Norrath, explore newly discovered lands, revisit the frozen wastes of Velious, and battle old foes empowered by shards, confront them and reclaim the power of fear.

Along the way you will progress up to the unprecedented level of 100!  We're pretty excited to see the first character reach level 100 in EverQuest, a true gaming landmark.

We will also be adding a few amazing features to this classic game.  We will be adding a way to track your relative aggro level.  Ever wanted to know when the bad guy was about to turn around and mash your rogue before it happened?  With the new aggro meter if you get caught over-aggroing, you'll have no real excuse. There are also new Collection and Hunter Tasks; these will allow you to gather up various items all over Norrath as well as track your kills to gain new titles and new rewards.  Want to become the Gnollslayer?  Gnomeslayer?  Now you can.  We will also be making some major improvements to the brokering system.  The Autonomous Brokering system (name may change if people continue to have issues pronouncing it...) is something that you have asked us for, something that we've wanted to make for you, for years. You will be able to turn off your computer and keep your trader up in Bazaar!

 Join the discussion at the SOE forum or visit Fanra's EverQuest Wiki Rain of Fear page for more information as time goes by.

Temporary Paladin Divine Stun/Healing Light Nerf

From the SOE forum:

Just a heads up for you Paladin types..

Healing Light will no longer proc from the AA Divine Stun. This is a TEMPORARY change until such time as code has time to address a significant exploit with this combo. No other stuns are being affected.

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

Dragons, Dragons, Dragons and Giants, Giants, Giants! Return

The Dragons, Dragons, Dragons group/raid quest and the Giants, Giants, Giants! solo/group/raid quest have returned to the game.

There has been no announcement from SOE, so we don't know if this is intended (it is assumed that it is) and no idea of how long they will remain in the game.

Free Braxi Mount is Yours to Claim

SOE has given all EQ players one free Braxi mount (Lava Braxi):

Congratulations! You have completed the third month of the Facebook Quest! Your new Braxi mount has been awarded. All players who have logged in to EverQuest from the conversion of free-to-play through Monday, August 27 have received this prize. Log in to game and “/claim” your mount today!

Details about the fourth and final Facebook Quest will be revealed in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out and get ready for that final push to the finish!

The mount appears to grant 300 HP, 250 mana, 250 endurance and an unknown amount of AC when ridden.  It also appears to be runspeed Run2, which is not the fastest speed.  It is unknown if it will increase its speed to match a faster mount, if you own one.

Double XP for Labor Day Weekend

From EverQuest Community News:

Double Experience in EverQuest this Friday to Monday!

Starting at 10:00 am Pacific on Friday, August 31, 2012, and lasting until 11:59 pm Pacific on Monday, September 3, 2012, we'll offer a Double Experience in EverQuest! Take advantage of this Double Experience Weekend and watch those XP bars skyrocket!

Expansions No Longer Purchase-able with Station Cash Beginning August 27th, 2012

From EverQuest Community News:

Starting Monday, August 27th, 2012, we will no longer accept Station Cash as a payment method for Expansions and DLC Packs. Real-world currency will be the only way to purchase these products.

The reason for this is simply that these products require a high level of development resource and are therefore a substantial cost. We want to continue to run aggressive Station Cash promotions, which we know our customers love, but cannot continue to do this and protect the revenue that we need to offset these costs.

In consideration of our players who would like the opportunity to purchase current Expansion and DLC Packs with Station Cash, we are running a 50% discount on them from Friday August 10th until Sunday August 12th*.

As always, if you have questions about your Station Account or Station Cash Balance, please contact customer service at http://www.soe.com/support.

Veil of Alaris Half Price August 10 - 12

From EQ Community News:

Get 50% OFF when you buy any expansion pack. Hurry, sale ends 8/12/12.

• Veil of Alaris™ (was $39.99 NOW $19.99)
• Veil of Alaris™ Collector’s Edition (was $89.99 NOW $44.99)

Offer is valid from 12:01AM PDT 8/10/2012 to 11:59PM PDT 8/12/2012.

Patch Scheduled Friday, August 3, 2012

From EQ Community News:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be down on Friday, August 3, 2012 at 6:00 am US Pacific* for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 2 hours. Keep an eye on the EverQuest website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

*Time Zone Converter

UPDATE:  The patch notes state this patch is to fix the server lag issues:

*** Emergency Update ***

- Corrected an issue that was causing server CPU use to spike and adversely affect game performance.

Raid Lag Issue To Be Addressed

On the SOE forum, Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager, commented in the thread about the lag been seen lately on raids:

We're hard at work on this issue, no announced fix yet though.

UPDATE: The Friday, August 3, 2012, patch noted above will hopefully fix this issue.

New Armor Graphics System Coming in August

From the SOE forum:

Introducing Hero's Forge!

Hello Norrath!

I am excited to announce the newest feature for EverQuest launching in August: Hero’s Forge!

Hero’s Forge is a new armor system that allows you to dramatically change the appearance of your armor. Working similarly to our augment system, which has also received upgrades, Hero’s Forge is an add-on system that will be sold per character.

Once you purchase this new system for a character, you will be given one set of armor that you can use immediately. You will receive a Plate, Chain, Leather, or Cloth Armor Set, depending on your class preferred type. Any character that has the feature will also be able to obtain a selection of armor, including multiple color variations and different styles through all sorts of different activities within EverQuest.

We plan on continually adding new armor and color variations after this brand new system goes live. In addition to the armor found in game, we plan to offer additional sets, colors, and pieces through the Marketplace in the future, though the finest pieces will be available all over Norrath through normal game play.

We can’t wait to see your reaction to this amazing new apparel available in EverQuest. Good Hunting!

Thom “Phathom” Terrazas, on behalf of the EverQuest Team

So far it looks like you have to purchase the initial system (for real money and/or Station Cash?) for a yet unannounced amount per character. You get one set of armor and can get others through both in-game and out of game (Station Cash) ways.

Living Legacy Raids Secret Return?

It appears that the Living Legacy raids are back in the game.   Without a single word from SOE, the NPCs appeared and are offering the raids.

Join in the discussion on the SOE forum, and maybe SOE might even comment!

Knowledge of Alaran Culture - Advanced Now Auto Granted

From the SOE forum:

All players who are level 91 or higher will receive Knowledge of Alaran Culture - Advanced automatically upon entering any Veil of Alaris base zone.

This will grant the players the ability to purchase Veil of Alaris AAs that require this.

Game and Services To Be Down For 8 Hours Thursday, July 26, 2012

From the SOE forum:

We will perform maintenance beginning at 12:01 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2012; this will impact the following services:

Game Logins (across all SOE games) will be unavailable from 12:01 AM Pacific* Thursday, July 26, 2012, to approximately 8:00 AM Pacific* Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Commerce transactions, including purchases on our websites and in-game marketplaces, will be unavailable from 12:01 AM Pacific* to approximately 8:00 AM Pacific* Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Account management will be unavailable from 12:01 AM Pacific* to approximately 8:00 AM Pacific* Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Forums will be unavailable from 12:01 AM Pacific* to approximately 6:00 AM Pacific* Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Players who are already logged in will be logged out from the game.

We apologize for this interruption and will resume all affected services as soon as the maintenance is completed.

Click here for a Time Zone Calculator.

EQ Players Character Listings to Return "Some Time in the Future"

Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager, posted the following in the SOE forum:

When the site was redesigned for Free-to-Play we included a space for this functionality to return, however no specific dates have been promised as this is still very much a work in progress. Because this functionality requires work by the game team, web team, and a number of other teams within SOE it's difficult to say exactly when this will happen. We still plan on this at some time in the future however!

Mysterious /Q Death Cause Discovered, To Be Fixed

From JGray, EQ Developer, in a SOE forum thread:

We've tracked down this issue. Essentially, if you /quit, /exit, or go linkdead, when the zone took over your character, any items that you had equipped that were unusable (yellow, or purple for augments) were having their hit point bonuses subtracted from your health. If the hit point bonuses from the disabled items added up to more than your total health, then you'd die. The fix didn't make the past patch, but should be in with the next one.

Alaran Language AA Requirements To Be Removed in the August Patch

To purchase some Veil of Alaris AAs you are required to have certain levels of Alaran language.  This requirement will be removed in the August patch.

Doug "Elidroth" Cronkhite, Sr. EQ Game Designer, commented on the issue:

Once you're level 90, you'll automatically get the first of the Quest AA. At level 91, you'll get the second one, which will allow you to buy all the VoA AA that were locked behind the language requirement.

This was unable to be put into the July 18 patch:

Unfortunately we discovered this issue well after design lock, and there was no way we could get this in this morning's patch. We'll look at what's possible, whether this will require a full downtime, and make our determination how to proceed. We are still working hard on this issue and understand its importance to players.

Elidroth gave an explanation on why it was not in the July patch here:

Apologies all..

I made a mistake in the script that was running to handle this on the AA side and it wasn't caught until after design lock was already passed. This will go in for the August patch. Feel free to yell, scream, and burn me at the stake if you wish. My fault alone on this.

UPDATE:  Elidroth posted some more info on the subject:

I have already detailed what will happen with respect to AA. That is the area I control. Basically what's going to happen is when you log in, if you own VoA, you will be auto-granted two Special AA:

Knowledge of Alaran Culture, and Advanced Knowledge of Alaran Culture. The second one is what's required to get the rest of your class-based AA for the expansion. This simply makes the Alaran language not important FOR AA ONLY. I don't control armor, spells, or anything else.

Also, I don't make the call on bringing down the servers to patch this. I fixed my part of the problem, but server reboots go up the chain of command to be approved or not.

Patch Scheduled Wednesday, July 18, 2012

From the SOE forum:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be down on Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 3:00 am US Pacific* for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 5 hours. Keep an eye on the EverQuest website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

*Time Zone Converter