Patch Scheduled December 7, 2009

From the EverQuest LaunchPad Update Notes (updated by SOE to fix time zone errors):

Game Update News: All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down on December 7th at 10:00 pm PST (PST is -8 GMT: 11:00pm MST, and the morning of December 8th at 12:00am CST, 1:00am EST, 6:00am for GMT) for the Early Access Launch of the Underfoot expansion and a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for about 10 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Underfoot NDA Lifted

From this SOE forum post:

Greetings!

As of 10:00am PDT Wednesday, November 25, 2009 Beta participants are now released from the confidentiality requirements of the EverQuest: Underfoot Beta Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Thank you to everyone who waited patiently for the NDA to be lifted before sharing information with their friends!

Please note that even though the NDA has been lifted, there are still some limitations. Also, the Underfoot Beta forums remain under restriction. You are not permitted to share information from that section of the EQ Forums.

Thank you for participating in the Underfoot Beta. We hope you enjoy it once it goes live!

- The EverQuest Team

Fall Faction Frenzy

From the EQ login screen:

Fall Faction Frenzy

This season of the harvest it's time to gather together and be thankful with the friendly or less than friendly denizens of Norrath and beyond. From 12noon (PST) Friday, November 20th until 12noon (PST) Monday, November 30th faction hits both positive and negative all across the world will be increased! Gain or lose bonus faction with friends and foes this season!

Patch Scheduled November 11, 2009

From the EQ log-in patch screen:

Game Update News: The next Game Update is tentatively planned for Wednesday, November 11, 2009.

UPDATE:

Game Update News: All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down around 2:00 am PST (PST is -8 GMT: 3:00am MST, 4:00am CST, 5:00am EST, 10:00am GMT) on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be down for about 6 hours.

Double Time Rare Weekend

From the log in patch notes:

10/30/2009

The haunting air has caused a strange phenomenon to occur. From 2pm PDT on Friday, October 30th until 10am PST until Tuesday, November 2nd, several rare encounters will double the rate of their appearance.

- The EverQuest Team

Which "rare encounters" are included are not known at this time.

UPDATE:

"It means that the chance for any rare NPC from the last four or five expansions to spawn in their associated encounter will be doubled. The rate at which their associated encounters spawn is unaffected."

"It includes anything flagged as rare in its encounter from recent expansions. I other words, anything that has a chance of spawning a placeholder instead of a named."

"Also, this only affects rare mob spawn rate. Not rare drop rates (global or not)."

- Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

Read the thread here.

UPDATE:

"From 2pm PDT on Friday, October 30th until 10am PST until Tuesday, November 2nd"

Since today is Monday, November 2nd, either the "strange phenomenon" has caused a rift in the space-time continuum, or they need a calendar. So, I'm taking up collecting a fund to buy them a calendar.

-----

Oh, besides a calendar, they need someone who can actually post corrections to errors, so once they get a calendar, they can post the corrections, since they can't seem to handle that at the moment.

The in-game Welcome to EverQuest window still says "Tuesday, November 2nd" so it is unknown if this has ended on Monday, November 2nd or will end on Tuesday, November 3rd.

SOE Network Downtime Tuesday, October 27th

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

SOE Network Downtime - All SOE games will be brought down for switch maintenance at 3:00 AM PDT on Tuesday, October 27th. Expected downtime is four hours.

EQ Halloween Starts October 24, 2009

It turns on October 24th (not sure of the exact time)

Most of the older things will return and a new event will be in as well. News article will be up tomorrow.

- Zatozia, EQ Community Relations Manager

The thread is here.

Halloween ends November 7th. SOE Official page is here.

The "West" Bug is Back

The infamous "West" bug, where you see a white or blue screen when you face west, is back.

A year or more ago, many players reported this bug. After a long, long time of trying to track this down, it appeared that SOE had fixed it for almost everyone. Now, it seems to be back.

This bug has been reported in the Field of Scale and the Hatchery Wing off the Field of Scale.

Reports of the "West" bug began to increase several weeks ago, but the last few days have caused many more reports.

Emergency Patch October 14, 2009

From the Official EverQuest forums:

All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down around 5:00am PDT (PDT is -7 GMT: 6:00am MDT, 7:00am CDT, 8:00am EDT, 12:00pm GMT) on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 for an Emergency Game Update. The servers are estimated to be down for about 3 hours.

SOE posted the following about the patch:

"The patch is to fix an issue with the Road to Underfoot events, not Dragoncrypt. The Dragoncrypt issue will hopefully be hot-fixed tonight before the patch." - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

Underfoot Beta Sign Ups Now

Sign Up for the EQ Expansion Beta

We are now accepting sign-ups for the EverQuest® Underfoot™ expansion beta. The beta period is expected to begin on October 20, 2009 and end on December 1, 2009.

As with last year's 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.

Read the full details and/or sign up here.

Patch Scheduled October 8, 2009

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Next Update Postponed - EverQuest's scheduled update for October 7th, 2009 has been postponed. We expect to be able to update on the morning of October 8th, 2009. This will be updated when final details are known.

UPDATE from the EverQuest LaunchPad:

Game Update News: New Schedule for the Update: All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down around 12:00 mid PDT (PDT is -7 GMT: 1:00am MDT, 2:00am CDT, 3:00am EDT, 7:00am GMT) on Thursday, October 8, 2009 for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be down for about 8 hours.

Patch Scheduled October 7, 2009 - CANCELED

Rumor has it that a patch is scheduled for October 7th. No official announcement has been made by SOE, however, the in-game Welcome to EverQuest window has the following:

Hot Zones! With the update on 10/07/09 we will be changing the hot zones. Look for Franklin Teek outside the guild lobby in the Plane of Knowledge after the update. The new hot zones include the exceptionally creepy Grieg's End and the Plane of Nightmares!

UPDATE:

Game Update News: All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down around 12:00 mid PDT (PDT is -7 GMT: 1:00am MDT, 2:00am CDT, 3:00am EDT, 7:00am GMT) on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be down for about 9 hours. We will also be doing maintenance during this downtime so please keep an eye on the EQ forums for status updates.

From: EverQuest Players - Game Updates.

UPDATE:

The Game Update and Server downtime has been postponed and will not be taking place on October 7th. We will post a new date when it become available.

From: EverQuest - Discussion Boards.

Ancient Heroes Raid Gear to be Nerfed

"All of the "raid" gear will be getting nerfed. I'll let one of the items guys explain in more detail. All I can tell you is that the gear will be very good group gear. It will not be raid-equivalent gear. This will be a change to the existing gear, so the items you already have will change." - Alan "Absor" VanCouvering, Assistant Lead Designer - EverQuest

In addition to nerfing the raid gear, some other changes will be made. Read the entire post by Absor here.

UPDATE: It has been announced how the gear will be nerfed, although the details of what the new gear will be like awaits the next patch due October 7. Until then, all raid gear has been removed from Old Man McKenzie and raids will no longer drop items. Instead of items, raids will drop "Brew tokens", which can be converted into Brew.

· Current "raid" items would be "zeroed out", reducing all stats on them to 0, all augment slots will be removed, and the items will be renamed. This will pop out all augments on the items, returning them safely to players at no cost. Please be aware that the augments will appear on your curser when you log in after the update. Don't zone until you place them into your inventory.

· The "zeroed out" items can be handed to Old Man McKenzie for their full original value in Brew Points. We also plan to offer an additional item from a list of "free" items for those turning in these old items. Exactly what those will be is not certain yet, but may include Golden Casino Tickets and an illusion items.

· Then we will recreate the original raid items and put them back on the vendor.

· Requirements will be added in order to obtain the raids, to enter the raid zones and to loot any items off the raid chest. That same requirement will be added to purchase the raid gear from the vendor. The requirement will be that the player has completed all Crystallos raid events. The gear will be very useful for guilds that have completed Crystallos but have been unable to move forward from there.

Read the entire (complex) post by Absor here.

Sound Bugged

The September 15, 2009 patch contained a bug with EQ sound.

There's an issue with sound effects. It appears only one at a time is playing. - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

The official thread about the patch bugs is here.

Underfoot Launch Date Changed

Posted here:

To ensure that we can give our players the best possible gameplay experience and the amount of content that they've come to expect, we felt it was necessary to move the launch date for EverQuest® Underfoot^TM to December 15, 2009.

Participate* in all three of the Road to Underfoot events and pre-order and purchase the expansion by December 1, 2009 and you'll be one of the first to experience EverQuest Underfoot starting December 8, 2009.

*Terms and Conditions: Early access is available up to seven days prior to the commercial launch date for the expansion, which date is subject to change. *To be eligible for early access to EverQuest Underfoot, consumers must: (i) have a current, valid EverQuest subscription in good standing; (ii) have previously purchased the EverQuest base game and all previous EverQuest expansions (sold separately); (iii) participate in all three Road to Underfoot events with the same character on one account prior to 11:59pm (PST) December 1, 2009 (participation may require completing a task or quest or killing one or more NPCs); and (iv) successfully pre-order and purchase the Underfoot expansion prior to 11:59pm (PST) December 1, 2009. Players who do not satisfy all of the conditions listed above, including participating in all three Road to Underfoot events prior to 11:59pm (PST) on December 1, 2009, will not be eligible for early access to Underfoot, even if they successfully pre-order the expansion prior to December 1, 2009. The scheduled early access date for qualifying EverQuest subscribers is December 8, 2009 and the scheduled commercial release date for EverQuest Underfoot is December 15, 2009.

Pet Shrink Bug Fix Awaiting Next Patch

The bug where you are unable to shrink your pet will be fixed in the next patch, according to SOE.

It's fixed. It's just awaiting the next patch. - Steven S. Klug,
EverQuest Lead Programmer

The thread is here.

Giants, Giants, Giants! Quest Bugged

In the Giants, Giants, Giants! task, The Colossus of Skylance in instanced Arcstone is currently bugged. You often can't get credit for killing him. This is a known bug.

The only advice SOE can give is to kill him very slowly. However, this advice often does not work.

If you don't get credit for killing him, you can't continue the task.

The August 19, 2009 patch should fix this.

Patch Scheduled August 19, 2009

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Next Update - There is an EverQuest update tenatively scheduled for 2:00 AM PDT on Wednesday, August 19th. Downtime is expected to be approximately six hours.

The Road to Underfoot Begins

SOE begins "The Road to Underfoot". A series of three events, one in August, September and October. The first one, Giants, Giants, Giants! has begun.

The Road to Underfoot Events Pave the Way For You To Get Into EverQuest® Underfoot™ EARLY!

The busy gnomes of the EverQuest® team are putting the final touches to the 16th expansion to the EverQuest franchise, Underfoot, and we couldn't be more excited to unveil it to you! In anticipation of this EverQuest milestone, we're rolling out the Road to Underfoot events to give you a taste of what's to come and the opportunity to get there early!

If you participate in all three of the Road to Underfoot events and pre-order and purchase the Underfoot expansion, you'll receive early access into the expansion! The first event will begin in August, the second event will begin in September and the third event will begin in October. Check RoadToUnderfoot.com for the latest news about each event, new concept art, screenshots and to find out when SOE will start accepting pre-orders!

Giants are the featured event for August!

Read more about it here.

Patch Scheduled August 12, 2009

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Next Update - The next EverQuest update is scheduled for Wednesday, 8/12/09 at 12:00 AM PDT. Expected downtime is approximately eight hours.

Spam Filtering Going To Test Server

SPAM filtering should be going to the Test server sometime this week. - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

Read the entire thread here.

Emergency Patch July 18, 2009

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Emergency Downtime Tonight - All EverQuest servers will be coming down at 4:00 AM PDT on Saturday, July 18th to address an exploit. Expected downtime is less than one hour. We apologize for the inconvenience and the short notice.

Living Legacy Augment Bug

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Living Legacy Augments - Some players are not receiving the level of augment they should be. Development is aware of the issue and are working on resolving it. Please do not petition if you believe this is the case for you.

Spell Gem Lockups Bug Work Around

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Spell Gem Lockups - The issue causing spells and abilities to "lock" and become temporarily unusable has been found and a solution is in the works. In the meantime, forgetting and re-memorizing spells should correct the problem should you experience it.

Mayong Augments

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

Currently the NO TRANSFER flag present on Mayong starting equipment prevents players from inserting augments into it. We are aware of this issue, but as it requires all servers to come down, it can not be corrected until the next Live Update. Other armor available on the server will not have this issue.

Bonus XP Weekend

From EQ Players:

In honor of Independence Day and the opening of the Mayong (51/50) Server, EverQuest adventurers will be surrounded by a magical experience increase from around 11:00 a.m. PDT on Thursday, July 2nd until around 9:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, July 6th. Those nasty mobs will be worth an extra 51% experience points (on all servers!) through the holiday weekend. Happy adventuring!

Patch Re-Scheduled for July 15, 2009

From the Welcome to EverQuest login screen:

Next Update - The next EverQuest update is now scheduled to take place at or after 12:00 AM PDT on Wednesday, July 15th. Expected downtime is eight hours or less. This message will be updated with further details as they are known.

Updated on EQ login screen:

Game Update: The next game update is scheduled for Wednesday, July 15th. All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down around 2:00 am PDT (PDT is -7 GMT: 3:00am MDT, 4:00am CDT, 5:00am EDT, 9:00am GMT) on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be down for about 6 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience. We'll update the status if the downtime changes.

Next Expansion - EverQuest: Underfoot

EverQuest New Expansion in November: Underfoot 16th expansion

* Brell Serilis Underground Layer
* 12-15 zones.. and bonus content to launch later in April
* achievement tracking.. to track progression (more intuitive progression tracking)
* twice as many weapons as any expansions
* focused targeting window.. so you can monitor health of friend or foe..

As far as more levels:

No. There is no level increase for EverQuest: Underfoot. - Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite, Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment, LLC)

"Find Your Allies" Progression Task Bug

The task "Find Your Allies" by Nedsin Tabbels in Korascian Warrens may not be offered to some people. This is the first task he offers in a group of three. Instead, they are given the second and third tasks from him. Since they are never offered the first task (Find Your Allies), they can't finish this stage of the progression.

[12/23/2008] Well, bad news.

In order to fix this I'll have to change some data on the tasks themselves. Unfortunately servers have to come down to update task data. So I can't get this into a hotfix no matter how quickly I get it fixed. I'll fix it today, but it won't be updated until the next full update.

- Absor, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

Until this can be fixed, GMs will now manually assign the task to you if you petition.

The full thread is here.

Bonus XP for Frostfell

A Frosty Experience Bonus: To help them celebrate the season of Frostfell, adventurers will be surrounded by a frosty bonus experience increase of twenty-five percent starting with Tuesday, December 23, 2008. The frosty bonus experience will remain until the end of Frostfell, Tuesday January 6, 2009. Enjoy the holidays!

From the December 23, 2008 patch message.

Failure to Target Group Members by Clicking Their HP Bug

Not being able to target group members by left clicking their HP is a bug and has been fixed internally. - J. Chan, Senior Programmer - Everquest

It is not yet known when the fix will go live.

The full thread is here.

New Pet Functionality Coming Soon

After the new pet functionality has been pushed, the following are some of the new pet features you will have!

1) New pet UI! You will be able to assign buttons to all pet commands in the pet window!

2) Pet target will be displayed under your pets hp bar so you will always know who your pet is attacking!

3) Toggleable buttons throughout the pet UI for sit/stant, focus, hold, taunt, and spell hold!

4) New pet text based commands! You will now be able to toggle all states off or on, or simply toggle the state with a pet text based command. For example, /pet focus on, /pet focus off.

5) New pet attack command will switch your pet to attack the new target regardless of AA's or level. Great for new and low level players! (Old command will still exist as qattack which is what it always should have been).

6) New pet hold functionality! (Ever had your pet not hold properly? Ever have your pet run off and aggro a mob somewhere far away in the zone? Ever have to spam pet back? Well, not anymore!)

7) New pet focus + pet hold functionality (call this pet state "pet convergence" )! This is what the players really wanted, now, when you turn on both the focus and hold states, your pet will attack SPECIFICALLY what you want it to and when finished won't attack or aggro or do anything else! No more pet back, no more of your pet doing anything but what you exactly want it too! Pets not allowed in raids because they might run off, aggro some mobs, and wipe the group? Nah, this ain't happening with the new changes!

8) Improved /pet back off. Fully clears the hate list and stops your pet from doing whatever it was doing before.

9) Bug fixes for: focus failing to work properly when aggroed in certain situations, PERSISTENT pet states now hold on zoning, on logout, and are will now be 100 percent persistent.

10) Coming soon, new and updated full and complete documentation of all these changes!

juhans-DEV
EverQuest Programmer

The full thread is here.

Emergency Patch December 11, 2008

This message was shown in game:

MESSAGE OF THE DAY: Greetings Norrath! There will be a scheduled patch tonight at 2 a.m. Thursday 12/11/08 with an estimated downtime of 2 hours. We apologize for the short notice, please plan accordingly. Thank You!

It is to be assumed that the 2 a.m. refers to USA Pacific Time.

UPDATE:

...tonight's patch is only to fix Win98/ME issues. - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Assistant Lead Programmer

The post by S. Klug is here.

Powersources Due to Only Drain During Combat

After the next patch (expected about Dec. 9 or Dec. 10) powersources will only use their power while you are in combat mode. (Note, as always, planned changes might not be in the next patch due to more time needed. If so, it might take a bit longer.)

The full thread is here.

SoD Quest Item Storage NPC to be Changed

A new NPC in the Guild Lobby, Flavin Deeppockets, will hold on to some of your SoD quest items for you. This will save you some bank space. Just hand him an item and he will hold it. It will cost you 1 doubloon per item to get an item back. He is east of the magus.

He is soon to be changed, however:

Sorry it took so long to get back on this, but I had to do some research on what was and wasn't possible in the system before I could make a determination.

The SoD quest NPC will be changed to use chronobines instead of doubloons and will buy any of your quest items for 1 chronobine as well. So you'll only ever actually be losing chronobines if you're buying an item you've destroyed or lost in some other maner.

It's important to note that he won't purchase the combined pieces, only the individual quest rewards.

-Ryan, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Patch Scheduled October 31, 2008

A patch is scheduled at 2am PDT. The patch is expected to take 3 hours.

LoN Ethernauts Promotion = 5 Free Packs Per Month But None to Drop In Game

From October 9, 2008 through February 11, 2009, current EverQuest and EverQuest II subscribers with paid subscriptions in good standing will receive five non-tradable Ethernauts booster packs per month included with their EverQuest or EverQuest II subscription at no additional cost, for their personal collection.

During this promotional period, the booster pack in-game drops in EverQuest and EverQuest II will be suspended, and will resume on February 12, 2009.

See the full description of the Promotion here.

Huge Increase in HP and Mana Not Intended

People logging on after the last patch found a nice surprise, their hit points and mana had increased quite a bit. Too bad it is a bug.

It was not supposed to go up as much as it did from what I'm hearing. So don't expect it to stay that way forever. Enjoy it while you can. - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Assistant Lead Programmer

The full thread is here.

Patch Scheduled October 29, 2008

From SOE forums:

All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be brought down at 1:00 am PDT on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be down for 7 hours and are due to come back up on at 8:00am. (PDT is -7 GMT: 9:00am MDT, 10:00am CDT, 11:00am EDT, 3:00pm GMT)

Missing Bonus Items to be Fixed Next Patch

10-24-08: Status Update: Any pending issues with bonus items will be resolved with the next Game Update which is pending for next week. - Zatozia, EQ Community Relations Manager

The full thread is here.

No Stats New Jewelery To Be Fixed

New Compartmented Dwarvium and Temporite jewelery are not showing any stats.

Found the bug. Fixed it... but it needs a data patch to go live. I am not sure when the next data patch will be. ...It is looking like next week, though I do not have a specific day (it sounds like Wednesday... but sometimes this post launch patches get pushed a day to Thursday) - Dev-Ngreth, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Oceangreen Quest Pieces Bug to be Fixed

Various quests in Oceangreen are supposed to give you pieces which would later be combined to create something. However, many people are not receiving the pieces.

So after doing some checking, it seems this is real, and is a problem..

However.. There will be a simple way for people to receive the items necessary without having to petition. - Elidroth, EQ Designer

We are implementing something to allow people to NOT have to carry all the myriad parts of these quests around all the time taking up inventory space.

This same system will actually allow people who have lost the item, or in this case did not receive it due to some missing data, to also get the item if they have completed the appropriate content (quest, mission... or whatever the appropriate content was)

There will be more information on this in the future. - Dev-Ngreth, EQ Designer

it is mostly done, it just needs some testing and confirmation that it works.

Assuming it works properly, it should go in shortly after launch. (since it is all but done) We are just in lockdown to try and prevent last minute changes from causing bugs. - Dev-Ngreth, EQ Designer

There wasn't a chance to get this NPC tested before launch. We chose to hold it until after launch rather than send it live undtested. We'll get it in soon. - AbsorEQ, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

"Unknown Spell" in Custom UI Short Buff Window to be Fixed

"Ok, this is fixed and should be in the next patch. I need to do some digging to see why it broke in the first place to make sure my fix isn't breaking something else, but barring anything odd, it should be good." - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Assistant Lead Programmer

See the entire thread here.

Patch Scheduled September 5, 2008

In order to fix a crashing issue, all EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be brought down around 2:00 am PDT on Friday, September 5, 2008 for an emergency update. They are estimated to be down for 2 hours. (PDT is -7 GMT: 3:00am MDT, 4:00am CDT, 5:00am EDT, 9:00 GMT)

Reuse Delay Gone for Portal to Banner [Revised]

As of the September 3, 2008 patch, the 15 minute delay to reuse the Guild Portal to the Guild Banner appears to be gone. Before then, if you used the portal to go to the banner, you would have to wait 15 minutes before you could do so again. Now, it appears you can use the portal without delay.

No word in the patch message or from the Devs on this.

[EDIT: It appears that the reuse delay is still there. When the banner was tested before, their was no reuse delay, however, it has been reported that the delay is still functioning.]

See Inviso 2.0 Item Bug to be Fixed

I'm sure almost everyone is aware of how putting a see invis aug on an item with faerune allows a player to see a rogue that is using SOS. Is that supposed to happen or is that just a mess up in coding? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I have only heard different answers from different players, and never a definitive answer from a Dev. Thanks! - Sirrod

It's a bug that will be fixed soon. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

No More Multiple Evolving Lore Items

In the next patch evolving items that are lore will be going onto linked lore groups.

If you somehow acquired two versions of the same evolving item one of them will be removed after the patch.

I don't think this will affect most players, but this is a heads up just in case.

- Merloc, EQ Designer

What does this mean? It means if you get an evolving item that is lore, you won't be able to have two of them in different states of evolving.

The full thread is here.

Stealth Change to Healing Clickys

When someone mentioned that healing items were critically healing and being affected by healing AAs, one of the Devs responded:

Actually, it is an intended behavior. I intentionally added it.

While fixing the heal crit issues, I had a discussion with Rytan and Prathun about item-based heal spells. We decided that heal spells from items should be focusable, but only from AAs.

Nuke clicks should be unaffected.

Enjoy!

- Bembaru, EQ Coder

The full thread is here.

Flagging / Keying Change Due "Soon"

New news from SOE:

As I'm sure most of you are aware, backflagging has been a hot topic for EQ for quite a while now. The complex flagging mechanisms for older expansions can make it difficult for guilds that take on new people to experience the content they are wanting to do. With the sheer amount of content between Qeynos and Crystallos it can be extremely difficult for new players to catch up with their friends in any reasonable time frame.

So, in order to make it easier for players to access appropriate content we would like to make some changes to previous flags. All of the existing flags will stay in place, as will the various quest rewards that were additional benefits to their completion. However, the following zones will have an alternate entry criteria of a minimum level. It's important to know that either the previous key OR the new minimum level is required to enter the zone, not both.

Required Level 46

1. The Howling Stones
2. Old Sebilis
3. Cobalt Scar

Required Level 55

1. Veeshan's Peak
2. Vex Thal
3. Sleeper's Tomb
4. Locked areas of the Temple of Ssraeshza

Required level 57

1. Bastion of Thunder
2. Halls of Honor
3. The Temple of Marr
4. Tower of Solusek Ro
5. Drunder, The Fortress of Zek
6. Yxxta
7. Kod`taz

Required Level 60

1. Plane of Water
2. Plane of Air
3. Plane of Fire
4. Plane of Earth
5. Uqua
6. Ikkinz

Required Level 62

1. Plane of Time
2. Qvic
3. Inktu`Ta

Required Level 65

1. Txevu
2. Tacvi

- Rytan_the_Wyrmlord, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

No ETA announced yet.

The main thread is here.

More from the same thread:

The various flag requirements for actually spawning the instances and stuff have not been changed as of this time. So you'll still need 1 guy who has the flags to spawn them in many cases. We're going to look at those and evaluate them on a case by case basis and may change some of them in the future.

- Rytan_the_Wyrmlord, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

Two things to note here:

First, these changes won't occur on the progression server. The point of that server is to experience content as it was released as much as possible, so this runs contrary to that. The work Rytan has been doing has included a check to negate the changes if we're on a progression server. When the progression server eventually catches up to normal servers and essentially becomes a normal server, these changes will kick in.

Second, this is part of a larger push aimed at updating the low to mid-tier game in a way that will culiminate in events aimed squarely at attracting new players and people who have left over the years. This isn't the first change we've made like this recently and certainly not the last. There are a number of other things that will roll out over the next few months so if you're upset about this change because you feel the way to keep the game healthy is to continue to make sure that people new to the game or returning to the game have as steep a hill to climb as those of us who did the climb when the mid level game was thriving and the hill was much smaller, then I'll apologize in advance because you're not going to be getting happier anytime soon. I understand the feeling that it cheapens what you personally had to do to get into the content at the time and Rytan is working out some rewards for that effort, but I think continuing to attract new players that you can actually play the game with once they reach your level is a bit more important than that and, frankly, the online landscape isn't the same as it was. People simply won't tolerate what they would even a couple years ago so we're working to address that.

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Welcome to the Station LaunchPad

EverQuest is now officially on the Station LaunchPad.

Read all about it from the patch notes here.

EQ Producer Letter - 8/13/07

Clint "Jourdian" Worley, EverQuest Producer:

Hello everyone! Now a Producer's letter that has a bit more meat to it compared to the one that rolled out prior to Fan Faire.

The Producer's letter is here.

Commentary: If this is what he considers more meat, then Jourdian must be anorexic.

Fan Faire Report

Here are some issues reported from the latest Fan Faire in Las Vegas.

General Gameplay

* Fizzles – They plan to look into changing the fact that fizzling a spell takes up a gift of mana. Between the MOTP patch and the following one, fizzles didn't use them up and they seemed to agree that fizzles shouldn't use them up.

* AC – Planning to address some issues involving AC caps. They would like to see AC be a more dramatic change than it currently is. Rashere mentioned a few times that visible AC isn't what a players AC actually is.

* Buff Timers – Looking into equalizing buff timers so that some of the fundamental long term buffs will have the same timers.

* % Health – Hopefully they will find a way to put this command into the game. On the wishlist.

* Auras – Code is preventing fixing aura stacking at the moment. Looking into possibly adding a self buff to the aura you cast so that you'll have that on you if you run into an aura stacking issue.

* Rezzes – 1-2 second immunity after rezzes could be possible. They would consider allowing a player to get a couple items looted before they start dealing with the Aes of the zone they're in.

* Hover – The request to have a “no hover” toggle option was mentioned and will be looked into.

* Spell Sets – Possible addition of more spell sets to how many you can have saved.

* Ldon Points – Possible for these to eventually be turned into a currency like newer expansions have.

* Faction / Merchants – It was suggested to link item cost to faction in the case of currency items.

* /Ann – Looking into making this persistent so you don't have to turn it on every time you log on. Also will look into making it channel specific.

* Guild Bank – Possibly adding a coin slot to it

* Guild Lobby – Potentially adding a zone to the bazaar so that players can skip going through PoK.

* Cross Server Instancing – Is not possible and won't be most likely for a long time. This is due to the way the game was created and has nothing to do with people potentially abusing the system. Its a code thing.

* Chaotic Jester – Will not be changed. Its meant to have positive and negative rewards and they have no intention of altering how it works.

* Line of Sight – These issues are code problems and its not something that we can expect to see any changes to soon.

* PVP Recourse Spells – Certain spells may not be used in PVP on normal servers since they have recourses. There was a reason for this initially but since so many spells are now affected by this simple rule, they will look into flagging some spells as PVPable since the reason they weren't allowed doesn't apply.


Class Specific

1. Wizard -

* Cryomancy - Has been changed to unresistable damage and unresistable snare. The snare has been properly set back to 65% which is the maximum amount that you can snare a mob for. Nodyin wasn't sure why it was broken but it should be fixed (if it isn't already in game). Snare immune mobs will no longer have this land on them, however, and that was intentional.

* Spell Changes - The wizard spell changes are still not finalized. The general idea is that you will use a specific nuke to get a proc that will affect only a specific spell so you will need to cast certain spells in order in order to maximize your DPS. This type of casting pattern will appear for the TBS / TSS lines and will be continued with SoF.

* Spell Changes - I pushed both Rashere and Prathun into responding at least twice about the statement Prathun made about burst DPS coming at a higher penalty and sustained DPS being increased. Both of them insisted several times that sustained DPS would be getting an increase and that our burst will not be affected. I'm still very skeptical of this since I still feel that if they start giving us all this sustained DPS...they won't give us the needed burst improvements we need.

* Familiars – I requested a permanent “get lost” feature to be added for the wizards so that they wouldn't have to get rid of them every time they zoned. This was written down to be looked at.

* Burst DPS – Berserker vs. Wizard. In a 2 minute fight where resists and mitigation aren't an issue, Prathun said that a wizard should win when both are equally raid geared. Thats the balance he thinks it should be but that doesn't mean thats the case right now.

2. Shadow Knight -

* Slay ___ - Paladins were never supposed to have Slay Undead in its current form. Slay Undead is WAY too powerful and paladins should be thanking their lucky stars they have what they currently have. They are hesitant to put a Slay humanoid or other such ability in the game since they would do it correctly and SKs would be upset that their ability would be very limited in power compared to the broken Slay Undead. In my opinion they should do it anyways and nerf the paladin one in the process but they didn't say they were going to do either.

3. Warrior -

* Weapon Graphics - These are going to get larger. Merloc doens't like the little swords any more than you guys do.

4. Magician -

* Pet Invis - Removing invis from the air pet.

Misc

* TBS Beta Rewards – There is still no word on these. I believe the difficulty is that they aren't sure if they've got records of who would qualify. They haven't decided completely against them yet.

* Server merges – They feel that EQ has a healthy population right now that isn't drastically changing. Of all of the SoE games, EQ1 has the highest number of subscriptions and while it may seem that the particular niche we play in has a low number, they don't see the numbers to justify any merges at this time.

* Filters – A lot of bugs with filtering text were reported. They will be looking into making pet procs visible and allowing your own spells to be filtered into their own window since that currently isn't functional.

* Caster Armor Graphics – Got no response to this. You can thank Wycca for screwing us here since he got the conversation changed away from this.

* UCS – Going to see if they can get AFK messages to go through for cross server tells and also queuing messages that happen while you're zoning.

* TSS Charm – There will possibly be alternate pieces soon for the charm since raids like Udengar and Ambersnout are rarely done.

* Aug Distillers – Since people were having an issue with buying too many aug distillers and they don't see a reason for them to be no-drop items, they will most likely be making them tradeable.

* Firiona Vie – Rashere is looking into loosening up the rules on the Firiona Vie character transfer rules. This may only affect transfers to Firiona Vie at first but he would like them to be different than they currently are.


Raiding Specific

* Solteris server instability is still being looked at. Nothing new here.

* Level 80 will make TSS raiding content very easy and any guild thats around the demiplane level now should have no trouble with it.

* Powersources - Raid powersources may see a duration increase

* Solteris Spells – Only 19 rank 3 TBS spells have been purchased and they realize there is a problem there. We argued for them to be switched to the phosphite system and they are considering it since there are flags required to buy the spells anyways. They plan on discussing this and possibly adding a third option to solve the problem.


Itemization

* Item Focuses - Will soon be able to have minimums. This could go two ways. Either some focuses could simply just have their minimums raised or potentially you could have to choose between a 10%-75% focus or do a 40-45% focus depending on your playstyle.

* Focus effects – Other than the focus minimums, there isn't any plan to radically change how these work at this time.

* Melee Focuses – Looking into merging Parry and Block. I believe this one got a thumbs up.

* Solteris Focuses – Level cap changes on focuses are possible and likely on Solteris items.

* 2H Weapons – Possible extra aug slot on 2h weapons in the future.

* Caster Weapon Ratios – Will be looked at. He didn't know that there was an interest in seeing the ratios go up but sees no reason not to look into upgrading them.

* Charm Slot Augs – Hopefully will see some new options for this in the next expansion.

* Intelligent Items – Merloc wants to add more of these, just needs the time to do it.

* Gear in SoF - It was said that raiding gear will be nearly 1000 hp and that groupable gear will be near Solteris level. This was a little scary to me since it is such a massive change. It was unclear if this included aug values and powersources or not.


Spells

* Spell Ranks - in TSS and TBS were minimal and smaller than they should be. The concern was that rank 1 spells needed to be an upgrade to their predecessors and they couldn't allow rank 3s to be that much more powerful. With the upcoming expansion there will be much more room to work with and the spells will actually be larger upgrades between the ranks. The rank system will be continuing, no news on if it will be more like TSS or TBS as far as obtaining goes.
* Enchanters - Will be getting an AE knockback + root + mem blur spell in SoF.
* Wizards - Will be getting a Patient Harvest upgrade in SoF since it will be much needed with the upcoming gear changes


Lore

* Sleeper – When he woke up..he ran off to a place called Dragon Scale Hills I believe (someone can correct me..I might have misheard) and he is coming back in SoF. They would not tell us if we will be killing him or doing something like waking him up again.

* Ayonae Ro – Her banishment is what allowed Mayong Mistmoore to escape and attack in Solteris. Now that we have killed him, don't expect to see him back for quite some time but it is possible that he could come back eventually.

-----------------
The full thread is here.

Q & A from Merloc’s Tower – 7/20/07

Throughout the week, Merloc receives questions from various places and answers as many as he can. He wanted to start sharing some of his answers with everyone else so that he wouldn't have to repeat himself.

Here's the fourth edition of Q & A from Merloc's Tower.

EQ Producer Letter - 7/31/07

Clint "Jourdian" Worley, EverQuest Producer, has released his latest letter to players. The link to it is here.

Commentary: This letter basically says nothing. He recently became EQ Producer and upon gaining the position he told us how he would listen to us and he would communicate with us often to keep us informed. Once again, SoE promised us they would be responsive, and once again, they have lied.

Update: Jourdian responded, "I really did mean to shoot out an update instead of a full blown Producer's letter. Once Fan Faire is over I will be at liberty to discuss more about the expansion, new additions to the game and overall concerns and suggestions." Read the entire thread commenting on the Producer's letter here.

EverQuest House of Commons Dev Chat - July 18, 2007

Click here for log.

This chat mentions they are aware that the "West" bug began a new breeding season after the last patch. They also mention that the most hated "feature", expendable Power Sources, are going to be in the next expansion and will be increased in power. So get used to even more boring grinding in crappy missions just to have your gear not suck.

House of Commons Dev Chat Log - June 20, 2007

I've been slacking with EQ lately but here is the chat log for June 20, 2007, click here.

Knight Summoned Steeds Bug, Fix Due Next Patch

Knights have three separate steeds which they can call up. With the new AA window, they were combined into one.

I'm going to fix that. Next patch all 3 lines will be separated out again.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full post is here.

Mage Fire AAs Bugged, Fix Due Next Patch

Mages have AAs that permit them to increase their fire damage. One requires you to assume Fire Elemental form, the other does not. The one that does not require Fire Elemental form appears to be bugged.

Both the "Heart of" and "Core" AAs still exist. The Mage correspondent alerted me that the requirements were set incorrectly on both of them (Requiring rank 3 of the "Elemental Form: X" line instead of the previous rank 1 requirement. I've corrected that bug and it will be fixed in the next patch.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

Read the full post here.

Careful, or Your Face Will Stay That Way

Making faces really can cause problems. And you thought your parents were just trying to scare you!

i changed my facial features and whenever i zone they revert back to something else. anyone else have this problem? it seems to only happen when i try to use no facial hair and have a bald head.

It's a bug and should be fixed with our next patch.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Read about it here.

New Expansion Release Dates and More

Clint "Jourdian" Worley, EverQuest Producer, has posted a letter about SOE's future plans for EQ. Among other things, he says:

In this Producer letter I am proud to announce that we're changing our tactics so we can accomplish what we have set out to do and do it with the quality we know we can deliver. Our next expansion will be released in November. This will give us more time to polish the game content and features. I am also happy to announce that November will be the month for all future expansion releases as well.

Read his letter to players here.

Upcoming DoT Hate Change

In the near future, we're going to make a change that will reduce the amount of hate generated by DoTs so I wanted to give a head's up. For most damage spells, they generate aggro based on the base amount of damage they do. DoTs do this as well, generating hate based on their damage every tick, but they also generate initial aggro worth one tick of damage when they first land. This means that they basically have one extra damage tick's worth of aggro at all times.

We're changing things so that you won't gain aggro based on the DoTs damage until it actually does its first tick of damage which will bring them in line with other damage spells for the amount of hate they generate.

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

DoT Shielding Still Broken

Although the April 18 patch message reported some fixes to DoT shielding, it appears there are still a few problems with it. It seems that while it works now for DoTs cast on you, when the mob that cast it dies, it stops working.

Just checked with code and they've got a fix for this already.

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

No word on when the fix will go live.

The full thread is here.

Frostcrypt Trash Mobs on Steroids

Normal mobs in Frostcrypt have been taking steroids, according to reports. Norrath Mob Anti-doping officials have begun an investigation after hearing they were hitting for upwards of 10k.

We've been able to reproduce this problem (as was stated in the Maximum Redfang!!! thread) and it has been given to the coders so they can look into it.

Thanks for the heads up on this issue! - Maddoc, Assistant Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Massive Changes Coming for Cultural Armor and Tailoring / Smithing

SOE has announced that they will be making some huge changes in Cultural Armor as well as the skill up paths for Tailoring and Smithing.

The changes are too large to detail in this post so you should check out the announcement here.

More Skin to Vines Changes Due

The druid spell Skin to Vines has never worked properly. After several fixes, SOE has announced that they will be making another change. Hopefully, with this change, the spell will finally work properly.

Since Skin to Vines now turns undead and summoned creatures into plants and stops other abilities from working, it seems the cure was more harmful than the affliction. With some new functionality we received a few days ago I was able to change Skin to Vines such that it works on everything except undead and summoned creatures. This should go live in our next major patch. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Prathun, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Additional information:

Good point. Changed it to affect everything but Summoned, Construct, and Undead. Thanks! - Prathun, EQ Designer

DoT Shielding Fixed?

Fast updates on this one...

Code has found and fixed the issue. DoT Shielding was only working if you cast a spell on yourself or in a PvP situation. After the fix, DoT shielding will properly work on any spell NOT cast on you by yourself and will continue to work in PvP.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

SOE was not clear it is already fixed in the game or if it will go out in the next patch.

Progression Servers To Merge

On March 28, 2007, we will be merging the EverQuest Progression Servers. Characters will be moved from The Sleeper server to The Combine server and The Combine server will retain its name. The Sleeper server will then be closed.

We will not be doing the low level character wipe at the time of the merge. We will re-evaluate the situation after the merge and determine if the character wipe is needed.

The scheduled downtime is from 4:00 am Pacific Time to 12 noon. We will provide the answers to other questions as needed before the merge as needed.

The full article is here.

Fabled Augments Bugged

The fabled augments can't currently be inserted, but they should be fixed in the next patch.

The 35 AC aug from a 55ish level NPC was a mistake, the 35ac is meant to be 35 endurance and it will be changed in the next patch.

- Merloc, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

8th Anniversary Events Live

SOE has announced a number of things to commemorate the eighth anniversary of EverQuest. Of main concern is the Fabled mobs and a new scavenger hunt.

Anniversary In-Game Events - We have introduced dozens of Fabled Luclin NPCs, we brought back all the fabled fiends of years past and there is a new scavenger hunt! Speak with Tyla Filinav in the Nexus if you are interested in helping her collect a few things. These Anniversary Festivities will be available from March 16, 2007 through April 16, 2007.

Read all about it as well as some messages from current and former developers here.

EQ With All Expansions for $19.99

Apparently SOE has secret plans to release a new edition of EQ with all expansions. I call the plans secret since the press release seems to only be found on Casters Realm and no where else. EverQuest.com and EQ Players have no word on this.

EverQuest® The Anniversary Edition includes all expansions ever created for EverQuest® making it the largest compilation of MMO expansions ever

EverQuest The Anniversary Edition will only be available at participating retail locations and is scheduled for release on April 23, 2007, for the suggested retail price of US$19.99.

Go here to read the full press release.

Allegedly, this was sent out in the Station Newsletter. Since I subscribe to the EverQuest Newsletter (I still haven't received any yet) and not the Station Newsletter (since I have zero interest in their other games), I was unaware of this information.

Developers' Chat March 21st

Click here for a log of the chat.

No Reward for The Domes Are Cracking Mission

Yes the reward is missing. I don't know how it happened but I'll take the hit for this one. We'll need a patch to get this fixed but I've already made the change on Test. As soon as I know when we can fix this I'll let you guys know. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Bazaar Items Lose Pricing

In a stealth 'update', items placed for sale in the bazaar must have their prices input again.

Due to the method for storing bazaar prices, any prices on bazaar listing has been removed. You will need to relist your bazaar items with new prices. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes. Going forward there should be no further issues with pricing being removed from items. - Kytherea, EQ Community Relations Manager

The full thread is here.

Note that the prices should be saved in your bazaar log file, so check your Log folder and you should be able to find them there. However, you have to manually input them into EQ.

Some people have created some programs to automate fixing this. Go here to read the thread.

Melee Bind Coming to Katta Castrum

Currently, melee types can't bind in Katta Castrum, even though it is a city.

I'll change it so you can bind there.

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Station Access Subscription Price Increase

Note: Be aware that this only applies to people with a Station Access subscription, which allows them to play many SOE games for one price. It does not apply to those people who only play and pay for EverQuest.

February 28, 2007
_____________________

News for Station Access Subscribers

We want to give you some important information regarding your Station Access subscription. Effective April 2, 2007, the new monthly subscription rate will be US$29.99 per month (not including applicable taxes).

We know that rate adjustments are never popular, but the increase is driven by our desire to provide our Station Access subscribers with a consistently high quality entertainment experience, as evidenced by our most recent addition to the Station Access subscription plan, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes™.

You don't have to do a thing; you will automatically be migrated to the new monthly subscription rate under your existing subscription plan when your current subscription plan comes up for renewal on or after April 2, 2007.

We appreciate your support and continued participation in our community.

Station Access subscriptions are recurring, meaning you will continue to be billed at the appropriate subscription interval, until you affirmatively cancel your subscription. Subscription fees are subject to tax and value-added tax, as applicable. The subscription charges are in addition to the cost of the games that are part of the Station Access subscription plan. All game software is sold separately.

For more information, please visit: www.stationaccess.com.

Deathknell Flag Problems

Several problems with the Deathknell flags have been reported. Several fixes have been put into place, others will require a full patch.

Read the full thread here.

Forage for Everyone

A forage AA will be made available to everyone in the next few months if things go as planned. We didn't get the code changes we needed to make this work for TSS and it wasn't something that I could do for TBS.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Darkened Chanting Woodspirit in Plane of Storms Bugged

The Darkened Chanting Woodspirit is for the shaman epic 2.0. This mob has several issues that prevent a shaman from completing this part of the epic.

Thanks for posting. I've looked into it and it has been fixed. The change will be live in the next couple of days.

Vahlar, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Quest Fixes Due Next Patch

The Cleansing the Island quest requires that you say to the researcher "vials" and "special potion" for the cures and disguise potion to turn you in to the various animals of the island. He then gives you a stack of 50 cures and one special potion. However, the text never mentions this.

I've added information to his task text that mentions that you have to ask for the potion and the vials. This will go out with the next full update.

- Absor, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

The Secret of Sunset Ridge? quest requires that you hand in the Sunstone Sun Charm that you handed in on a previous mission. Needless to say, since you handed it in earlier, you don't have it now to hand in.

Well that was pretty stupid of us. That happened because of a lack of communication between two designers (my bad).

I've fixed the Sunstone Savages task to not require handing in the Sunstone Sun Charm, but that will have to be updated with a full update, and I don't know when that will happen.

- Absor, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Charm Augment Removal Problem

I'm not sure if this is something new, but it seems like augments with extra text are not displaying solvent information.

I'll ask code to look into it and correct the display so that it displays the solvent type as well.

- Merloc, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Old Sebilis Key Problem

If you have the idol but don't have it on your keyring, it seems you can't go in. It looks like the zone in only checks the /key and not the idol.

I've been working on this problem most of today. I think I know what's going on and have a fix heading over to QA to verify. The problem seems to affect people who only have the idol and don't have it on their key ring yet.

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Update 02/27/2007:

I can get a semi-fix in place without a full patch that will let people use the normal entrance again. You just won't be able to fellowship in until a full patch is done. I'll be looking to get the semi-fix in place today or tomorrow.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Developer Chat - February 21, 2007

House of Commons Dev Chat Log - February 21, 2007

Stacked Items Bugged in Bazaar

I saw something from a coder about looking into something about this.

It seems to be when the seller has more than one stack of an item, and to give the buyer the quantity requested it needs to hit a "second" stack, it does not count anything from the second stack in the money it gives the seller. From the note it looks like the coder found the issue.

I am not sure when the fix will go in, but I expect that it needs a patch.

Though admittedly this will put a crimp in peoples "AFK" sales... if you can just have one stack per item, it should keep your money complete until the fix goes in.

- Ngreth, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Guide to the Katta Castrum Portals

I have placed a guide to the Katta Castrum Portals in my EverQuest Wiki.

The Wiki is here.

The guide is in the Zones section. At the moment, I've placed a link at the top of the Zones section. It can also be accessed by clicking on the link for Katta Castrum. In the future, once TBS has been around for a while, I plan on removing the link at the top of the page but it will still be accessible through the Katta Castrum link.

A direct link to the guide is here.

Please feel free to edit or add to the Wiki any EverQuest information you have.

More on Guild Banners...

The "Banner Material Kit" and "Banner Dye Kit" are the items that are used to create a banner and place it in the world.

When you open the guild window and go to the "Banners" Tab, you should see a list box with a single entry that says "Standard of Honor". Just beneath that list box, you'll see a checkox that says "Show All", select it.

This will populate the list box with a bunch of banners that are going to be greyed out (which means you don't have the components to create them). Just beneath the checkbox you checked is the description window, which will give you a brief description of the banner's effect, as well as the items needed to create that banner, which you may then purchase those items from the two guild banner vendors in Plane of Knowledge.

The "Banner Exchange Insignia" are used to edit the settings (looks) if your banner. The more you change the looks of your banner, the more it's going to cost you by requiring a higher tier of exchange insignia.

- Maddoc, Assistant Lead Designer

Placing a banner requires 12 guildmates to be in the same zone within 150 distance units from the player planting the banner. If they're too far away, they will not be able to place the banner.

- Maddoc, Assistant Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Veeshan's Peak Mobs Loot Tables Bugged

It seems the mobs are dropping cloth caps instead of their normal loot.

The appropriate folks are aware of this. Currently one of the crash bugs prevents us from even live-copying zones, so we will get it fixed as soon as we can. - Ngreth, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Guild Banner Bugged in Demiplane

It seems you can plant the Banner in Demiplane but when people try to use it, they get this message: "Current guild banner cannot be teleported to".

I brought this up with several people last week, we're looking into it. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

TBS Solteris-Progression Arc Bugged

It seems that the progression Combine Signet Ring is bugged in various ways. Read this thread for more information.

TBS Task "Confront Emperor Vaakiszh" Bugged

The Emperor does not reset on failure. So if you wipe or evac while fighting him, the mission fails.

Sorry about that. I have a fix for this and I'll check when I get in to work to see what the status is on this (has QA verified the fix works?) and figure out when we can get it out to the Live servers. The event can be completed now but just has issues if you wipe. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Bonus Experience Weekend

Bonus Experience Weekend

Greetings,

We hope that everyone is enjoying all the features that The Buried Sea expansion has to offer. The team worked hard to focus on content and features that would enhance gameplay, while reducing the adventuring downtime in between. If you haven't tried it thus far, you can find information about the expansion here.

We would like to apologize for the inconvenience of the amount of server downtime that has occurred since the release on Tuesday. To help you enjoy this weekend, we are turning up the heat! Experience will be increased fifty percent on Friday evening and will remain until Tuesday morning [February 20th] at 10 am Pacific Time.

Enjoy!

~ The EverQuest Team.

The link to the post is here.

TBS Port Spells On The Way

It appears that The Buried Sea expansion will launch without any port spells. They are going to add a wizard port to Katta and a druid port to Buried Sea. This isn't going to make it in time for the launch, but it will follow shortly afterward.

(Checking the official post on lifting the Beta NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement), it appears that I am allowed to relay this information since it relates to game content but I am not allowed to link it to the source or say exactly how I know. But I can tell you it is an official word from SOE.)

Update: I can now link to an official word on the ports. Also here is a developer post on the issue -

Prat made them all - ports, group ports and translocates/zephyrs. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

TSS Item Changes

Just to give a quick update here...

We weren't able to get the TSS item changes in for the live patch this week. It's the top item on Merloc's task list at the moment, though, and I expect he'll be wrapping them up later this week.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Rampage and Other Questions

A while back there was talk of changing the "goes on a Rampage" message to reflect if it was single or AE. Is this still "in the works" or abandoned?

A while back there was talk of adding faction hits to Stitcth and Sothgar (if not all raid trash) to facilitate backflagging. Is this still "in the works" or abandoned?

A while back there was talk that the skels in non-instanced dreadspire were fixed on test to be non-see-ivu and set to normal instead of raid mobs. Is this still "in the works" or abandoned?

Enquiring minds want to know. - Prex_Atlane

1. Fixed and will go live with the next patch. Sorry for the delay. We thought it was done already, I'm not sure what happened with that.

2. That's in progress. Rashere asked me to look at the entire TSS progression arc and I'm going to be doing that over the next few weeks including these raids and faction hits on them. It makes sense to add "backflag" faction to the raids if you can 85/15 into them.

3. I'm not sure about that, I'll check

Nodyin, EQ Designer (02/08/2007)

The full thread is here.

Update (same thread):

AE Rampage will be shown as "Soandso goes on a WILD RAMPAGE" after the patch tomorrow.

Also, the dreadspire see IVU NPCs should be fixed. That change was done a while ago and the data will go out with the patch.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Pets - "Thanks for the Memories"

A bug was introduced wherein pets would forget the NPC they were told to attack. This is due to be fixed in the next patch (February 13).

I believe the "pets forgetting their attacker" problem was introduced with the OOC changes which made an NPC forget about you 30 seconds after you left its awareness range. Since pets are NPCs they are also affected.

We've added a check to exclude PC pets from this calculation which should return them to their previous behavior. Barring any problems, this should go out with the expansion patch.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

Wizard Instacast Bug to be Fixed

The bug that affects instacast spells, you try to cast one, and if it fails for some reason, ALL your spell gems gray out for the duration of the refresh (10 seconds), will be fixed in the next patch (February 13).

As far as I know the fix for this is done and will go out with the Patch for TBS. If it's still giving you issues let us know after that. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

In Game Mail Purge Starting February 20

Greetings,

In order to improve the performance of the in game mail system, starting on February 20, 2007, we will be implementing a routine purge that will clear out all in game mail that is more than 4 months old. This will be an ongoing process.

To help players save messages that they wish to hold on to, on February 13, 2007, we will be implementing the new ability to export their email to a text file in the EverQuest directory. To use the new Export feature, take the following steps:

1. Open up the e-mail window (ctrl-E).
2. Select the messages you would like to export by clicking them in the top pane, using shift-click and/or ctrl-click if you would like to select multiple messages.
3. Click "Export".
4. The selected messages are then saved to a file in the EverQuest Mail directory with a name in the format:
SavedMessages_charactername_servername.txt.

This export will need to be done with each character that has mail you wish to save.

Thank you,
The EverQuest Team

The notice was posted here.

Patch and TBS Release Due February 13

On Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 2:00 am PST (3:00 am MST, 4:00 am CST, 5:00 am EST, -8.00 GMT), the EverQuest Servers will be coming down a Game Update, and the release of The Buried Sea Expansion. The estimated downtime is about 12 hours. If further delays are expected we will make an announcement on the EQPlayers website and the official forums.

Druid Epic 1.5 and 2.0 Spells to be Fixed

The druid epic 1.5 and 2.0 weapons have been the only epics whose spell effects have degraded above level 70. This will be fixed in the next patch (when The Buried Sea expansion goes live, ETA February 13).

Yep, done. Changed the following spells to work up to level 75 before scaling down.

Nature's Blight
Silence of the Snake
Season's Fury
Serpent's Silence

- Prathun, EQ Designer

I am unable to link his post since it was made on the Beta forums. He gave permission for people to announce this despite the Non Disclosure Agreement that normally prevents anyone from revealing what is discussed in Beta.

King Odeen Raid Updated

Last night [01/25/2007] we updated the King Odeen raid. The following changes were implemented. Please let me know if you experience any further issues, and thanks for your patience.

• The issue that could cause the King to remain non-combatable while on the bridge MAY have been fixed. We were unable to reproduce the bug, but introduced changes that might have fixed the problem.
• King Odeen should no longer warp from his location at the Hot Springs to the Bridge and from the back of the castle to the Hot Springs. Note the he will teleport beyond the front gate and the castle gate, and run from there (that's intentional).
• Removed some of the basepop in the throne room.
• Fixed the script that modified the King's resistances as he moved from area to area. At each area he will now be amazingly resistant to a specific type of magic (or two).
• The King will remove all spells on him each time he changes locations.
• Reduced the number of adds that the King calls while fighting at the hot springs. Note: we were not able to reproduce the reported swarming issue. This change should reduce the problem and may eliminate it.
• The Wraithguard that protect the King on the bridge no longer summon.
• The Wraithguard that protect the King on the bridge will give up the fight when the King surrenders.

Absor, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Guild Banners in TBS

SOE has posted some information about the new Guild Banners that will be in The Buried Sea expansion.

Here is the link.