Patch Scheduled September 8, 2010

While not officially announced, per se, it appears there will be a patch on this date.

Next Wednesday, 9/8/10 during our game update...

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Labor Day Bonus XP Weekend

Kiara the EverQuest Community Manager has posted that there will be a holiday experience bonus. How much the bonus will be is still to be announced:

YES!

Official announcement coming soon.

In the meantime the info will be:

September 2nd at noon (PDT) until September 9 at 10am PDT.

UPDATE: It has been announced that it will be a 50% bonus:

Experience Weekend Week - In honor of the Labor Day holiday 3-day-weekend, this Thursday we will be turning up the experience gain and it will run through the following Wednesday Night. (yes, we've heard many comments that not all players are available on the weekend - so cheers to you and to those that will be playing this weekend!) The experience increase will be turned on before noon (PT) on Thursday, 9/2/10 and will be turned off on Thursday 9/9/10 morning no later than 10:00am. The experience increase will be 50% during this time frame!

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Patch Scheduled August 18, 2010

From the EverQuest Players Network Status page:

All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be brought down at 2:00 am PDT (10:00 am UTC) on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 for an update. Estimated downtime is 6 hours.

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20% Underfoot Experience Bonus to End August 18

I seem to have missed the announcement on the bonus, so here it is with the date on when it ends.

Greetings Norrathians!

We're excited to announce that from July 28 through August 18, we're going to give you a 20% boost to experience in all the Underfoot zones.

If you've been wanting to make that final push to level 85, but just haven't had the time or felt like your experience bar was crawling, now is the perfect time to show the Underfoot who's boss!

Perhaps you are at the level cap, but have some friends who are lagging behind. This is perfect time to help them catch up to you and experience all that Underfoot has to offer.

The Underfoot zones are:

* Arthicrex
* Brell’s Rest
* Brell’s Arena
* Brell's Temple
* The Convorteum
* The Cooling Chamber
* The Foundation
* Fungal Forest
* Kernagir, the Shining City
* Lichen Creep
* Pellucid Grotto
* The Underquarry
* Volska's Husk

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"Hardcore" Versions of Dungeons Coming in August and September

From this post on the SOE forums:

Greetings Norrathians!

We are proud to bring you, back by popular demand, the buffed up versions of your favorite dungeons!

From August 18 through September 6 - Cazic and Blackburrow

From September 1 through September 13 - Lower Guk and Unrest

- Kiara, EQ Community Manager

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Giants, Giants, Giants! Is Back (by mistake)

With little fanfare, the Giants, Giants, Giants! quest is back in the game. Get it, as before, from Tzudani, Emissary of Veeshan, who stands in the Plane of Knowledge near the Guild Lobby.

No word yet on how long it will be around, so get it while you can.

For more information on this quest, visit the Giants, Giants, Giants! page at Fanra's EverQuest Wiki.

UPDATE: It seems that the quest was not supposed to be back, it is a bug. Here is the official word:

This event is NOT supposed to be up. Unfortunately I probably can't kill it before the weekend (it's not generally a good idea to make a last minute change on a Friday...).

If you do the event, we take no responsibility for the problems it might cause with the rewards. Do it at your own risk.

- Absor, EQ Developer

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Old Man McKenzie to Change in September

From this SOE forums post:

We have decided not to give Old Man McKenzie a sabbatical, but changes will be coming to what he does.

The major issue we have is that he gives a HUGE amount of reward, both in experience and items for absolutely zero risk except possibly a small amount of wasted time if you somehow manage to fail.

A smaller issue is people not learning how to play their own class, but this is only a small issue in our opinion, and probably not widely prevalent. We are sure it happens sometimes, but it is not the majority of the cases.

So, in the September patch, we will remove ALL experience rewards from the missions that Old Man McKenzie offers. We may bring the experience back in a modified form in the future, including requiring that you actually participate to gain the experience, but that particular point is still under discussion.

This will leave the monster missions as no risk way of gaining high value items. We continue to have no plans to raise that amount of brews given. If you think the item is valuable enough, then you will need to repeat the mission enough times to get the item. We still consider it too easy to get these items, even with the requirement to grind for a while to get some of them.

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Next Expansion Officially Announced

From EverQuest News:
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EverQuest® House of Thule™ is the seventeenth expansion of the groundbreaking EverQuest franchise. Now in its unprecedented twelfth year, EverQuest continues to add immersive gameplay, captivating storytelling and exciting worlds to its legacy, now set in a never-before-seen dreamland full of mystery and adventure. House of Thule offers an expansion rich in content and packed with game-changing features including a level cap increase and the addition of player housing, which new players, veterans and MMO fans will relish.

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SOE is now accepting Beta sign ups for House of Thule.
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From EverQuest News:
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We are now accepting sign-ups for the EverQuest® House of Thule™ expansion beta. The beta period is expected to begin on Monday, August 9, 2010.

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Go here for more information.
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UPDATE:  More information on  House of Thule can be found at Fanra's EverQuest Wiki's House of Thule page.
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Off Line Trading Under Consideration

From this thread on SOE forums:

We are still considering doing the "Linkdead Broker" thing where you can leave your broker up but be signed off the computer. We just have not been able to get it into the schedule. This will allow folks to turn off their computers when they are brokering, but their account will be logged in.

We will not be doing a fully offline broker model like other games at this point. The resource requirements are huge, and we cannot justify it.

- Ngreth, EQ Developer

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Archery Haste Bugged

It appears there is a bug with Archery. Haste does not work correctly with it.

SOE has posted about it here:

QA has confirmed that Archery and haste have an issue. It is now a bug in Code's Queue.

- Ngreth, EQ Developer

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Gnomish Arcanus Magical Experience Of Norrath XP Bonus

From the Official SOE EQ forum:

We’ve tasked one of our best tinkerers to create a new experience modifying device for your benefit and would like to unveil the Gnomish Arcanus Magical Experience Of Norrath (GAME-ON for short) device today. Not realizing that our tinkerer splits his time as a prankster, we’ve discovered that the GAME-ON device is set to random experience. The best that we can tell right now is that it is set no higher than a 50% experience boost and no lower than 25%. It appears that the GAME-ON device is set to turn on at 10am this morning (Pacific Time) and to shut down at 10am on Wednesday (also Pacific Time). As we get more data, we will share it with you. Otherwise, please accept this as a token of our thanks for your patience and dedication to EverQuest.

- Phathom, Senior Staff

You can read the full thread here.
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Patch Scheduled July 14, 2010

From the EverQuest login screen:

GAME UPDATE NEWS: The next Game Update is currently planned for July 14, 2010.

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Larger Bags Coming Some Time After August

From the EverQuest Producer’s Letter – May 2010:

Inventory Improvements

Much like adding mercenary types, another subject that you voted for was improved inventory. I’m happy to inform you that we have plans to improve your inventory with larger bags!

All I have to say is “About Time”! I don’t know how many times I’ve had to leave a group or area recently just to go sell or delete something to make room for a better item. Ugh! This is going to be nice! There are some additional inventory improvements we’re making but due to final designs not being complete, I’m limited as to what I can say today. Soooo…. if you haven’t heard the update on this subject in the next couple of weeks, you may have to head up to Las Vegas for the Fan Faire in August to hear about them first hand, straight from the horse’s mouth!

Well, that’s a couple of things I wanted to bring you up to speed on and there will be more items to update you on in the very near future – So on behalf of the EverQuest Team, I want to thank you for your continued support and passion for EverQuest. It truly is an honor to be able to work with a team that is as passionate as the customers that play our game.

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Game Update Coming in June

From the EverQuest Producer’s Letter – May 2010:

Coming up in June, we will be releasing our next Game Update: Rage of the Mercenaries! Rage of the Mercenaries fills that special need that has been missing for some of you. A Healer or Tank Mercenary has been the standard but if you don’t need help in those categories, a DPS Mercenary may just do the trick. Thus, the DPS Mercenary will be unveiled in two distinct flavors: A melee damage dealer and a caster damage dealer. Both of these mercenaries bring extra damage output to any party they are in. The melee damage mercenary will do consistent damage, while the caster mercenary will do its damage in shorter bursts, needing more rest. Both mercenaries will have a standard balanced mode where they do damage, but try not to get too much of the target’s attention. Both mercenaries also have a burn mode where they will not conserve mana or endurance, and pay no attention to hate generation, but will deal as much damage as possible, as fast as possible. This may cause them to gain the attention of the target. Finally, the caster damage mercenary will have a mode where it attempts to preserve mana. This mode will do less damage, but will allow it to last longer.

These mercenaries will initially be available at all of the standard mercenary merchants, in all of the standard races. It will also be spread into the already available special mercenaries obtainable through Legends of Norrath and special rewards.

These Mercenaries are on the Test Server now, so check ‘em out now and feel free to give us your feedback before they go live!

* Also releasing in Rage of the Mercenaries, we will have new Hot Zones created for levels 20 through 75 with new quests/rewards and the current Hot Zones will go back to normal (what they were before they were made into Hot Zones).

* The Welcome Screen is getting a great new look to give you more game relevant information and better functionality that you have requested. A Calendar has been added that will contain pre-populate events and dates to keep you better informed of future events. Uncompleted Achievements will now be visible on the Welcome Screen to see challenges that you should accomplish. Thirteen additional pieces of flair will be released at the same time with a few more coming very soon afterwards to fit in line with some future features we have in store for you.

* The Marketplace will be getting some additional features that will help you find what you’re looking for (categorization, searching, etc…). We think you’ll also like the new Item Preview feature that allows you to see what the item looks like in game before you purchase it.

You can read more about this on SOE's official Rage of the Mercenaries page.
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Server Merges Between June 22nd and July 6th, 2010.

Between June 22nd and July 6th SOE will be merging various servers.

Go to the EQ Players Server Merge News web page to learn more.
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EQ Memorial Ding!

From the EverQuest Producer’s Letter – May 2010:

Memorial Day Weekend!

On Wednesday, May 12, 2010, EverQuest launched the EQ Memorial Ding! promotion on the EverQuestLive Facebook page.

This promotion allowed you the community to throttle the XP bonus on Memorial Day Weekend by “Liking” our EverQuestLive Facebook page. In just under one day, we were able to accomplish four out of the first five goals of the promotion (I told everyone we underestimated your power!) …and the fifth goal was crushed within a mere days after the promotion launched, way before the deadline on May 27th. Nice going everyone! Because of the success of this promotion, we may be adding more benefits with some loftier goals.

Along the way to reaching each of these goals, we are giving out some reward items via the Marketplace. Since the five goals were met this past week, we have turned on eleven rewards for you to purchase for no cost. These items will remain through the Memorial Day Weekend for you to pick up so don’t wait too long to log in and claim your gifts before they are taken down. They will go away on June 1st, 2010. [emphasis added]

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Patch Scheduled June 9, 2010

GAME UPDATE NEWS: The next Game Update is currently planned for June 9, 2010.

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Patch Scheduled May 12, 2010

From the log in screen Update Notes:

GAME UPDATE NEWS: The next Game Update is currently scheduled for May 12, 2010.

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Experience Increased for Anniversary Sewers Task

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

HOTFIX - April 9, 2010
- Raised the experience modifier in Karl Kranigan's lair in the Freeport Sewers.

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Underfoot Group Armor Bug

From Ngreth, EQ Developer:

I looked and the data on the servers does *NOT* match the data that I intended to be in the game.

SO. this armor set will be changing. It will be more like the original poster stated, where each piece is an upgrade.

the visible armor in Underfoot, once IN Underfoot gear, is intended to be a piece by piece upgrade, as well as a set upgrade. This is *NOT* true when going from SoD to Underfoot, but once in underfoot each piece is an upgrade over the previous piece. Going from SoD to Underfoot you do need to look at the armor as a "set" to see an upgrade, and even then it would be possible to pick and choose pieces from SoD to get certain stats to be better than lower tier Underfoot, probably at a sacrifice of something else. This is also *NOT* true for non-visible armor, where you need to be looking more towards sets, and you may not get a piece by piece upgrade, and may even see some weirdness in sets depending on which piece you pick.

From this thread.
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Chests Added to Some Underfoot Missions, More Due Soon

From the Welcome to EverQuest in-game window:

More Treasure? - Yup! We've added treasure chests to several of the Underfoot missions. The missions in Brell's Temple, Fungal Forest, Volska's Husk, Lichencreep and Convorteum all drop chests. With our next update we'll be adding similar rewards to the rest of the Underfoot missions. So grab some friends and have some fun!

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Hotfixes and Veteran Reward Problems from Welcome to EverQuest In-Game Window

HOTFIX - March 23, 2010
- Corrected an issue causing the Distribution Facilitator to not give a gold abacus to everyone who needed one.

HOTFIX - March 25, 2010
- The Tribunal's most wanted have lost their ability to land furious blows.
- Lowered the aggro and assist ranges of many NPCs in Convorteum.
- Changed the locations where a Clockwork Magma Meter MCMXCIX stops in order to reduce the duration and difficulty of his quest.

Message of the Day
We are still working to correct the ongoing issues with players' Veteran Reward time, and appreciate everyone's patience while we resolve this issue. At present, CS is only able to update Veteran Reward time for accounts which have purcased a 1-2 year supscription and have not yet received their first years' time.

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Anniversary Quest Rewards Bugged

At least two anniversary quest rewards have been reported as bugged.

The Steel Behemoths raid reward is not being give to any characters who are dead when the final mob dies. SOE has responded that a fix is planned to be pushed live on the morning of March 18. Players who have already done the raid and not received their reward may be out of luck and forced to do the raid again if they want their reward.

The SOE forum thread on the Steel Behemoths bug is here.

UPDATE: This problem should be fixed as of the March 18th Hot Fix:

Karl Kranigan will now give rewards to folks that happened to get themselves killed while defeating his Behemoths if they ask him for a [reward].

The Dragons, Dragons, Dragons task reward is also reported to be bugged. It does not seem to be properly updating if you have done the task last year and you do it again this year. Word on when a fix will go live has not been seen.

The SOE thread is here.
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11th Anniversary Begins

Starting 3/16/10, get in on the 11th anniversary in-game events until 4/26/2010

From the SOE EQ 11th Anniversary page.
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Patch Scheduled April 14, 2010

From the EverQuest LaunchPad login screen:

The next Game Update is currently scheduled for April, 14, 2010. Details will be made available as we get closer to that date.

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Emergency Patch March 12, 2010

All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down on Friday, March 12, 2010 at 3:00 am PST (PST is -8 GMT: 4:00 am MST, 5:00 am CST, 6:00 am EST, 11:00 am GMT, 12:00 pm CET) for an Emergency Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for 5 hours. We apologize for the inconvenience. For accounts actively participating in the 3 day Underfoot access promotion, we are extending the access through Saturday, March 13th instead of Friday, March 12th due to the issues experienced.

From the EverQuest Discussion Boards.
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Some Tier 9 (Damascite) Underfoot Clay Bugged

it looks like head and legs are going to be "flaky" all of the "head" recipes are using the "leg" clay. The leg recipes are also using the leg clay... which is where things could act unpredictably, no telling which one the code search will hit first (possibly head...)

I am putting in a fix, but... I am not sure when that fix can be pushed to live, so... be careful with leg combines...

- Ngreth, EQ Developer

From this thread.
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More Underfoot Stuff Due in April

Exactly what is coming is unknown but some new AAs for sure.

Working on new stuff for April patch. It's coming.

- Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), EQ Game Designer

From this thread.
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Patch Day March 10, 2010

From the EQ forums:

All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 12:00 am PST (PST is -8 GMT: 1:00 am MST, 2:00 am CST, 3:00 am EST, 8:00 am GMT, 9:00 am CET) for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for 8 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

The patch message can be read here.
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EQ 11th Anniversary Coming March 16th

From the SOE EQ Dev blog:

Next month [meaning March] we will be hitting our 11th Anniversary for EverQuest!!! Woot! I know where I was 11 years ago – Where were you? We’ll have to get Zat to collect your feedback on your initial steps into EverQuest way back then. I know we’ve got a few stories we can share with you… it should be pretty interesting.

Next month we will launch some new content and features for the Anniversary, turning on some previous content while giving it a twist and packing anything else in there that we can think of.

We’ll have more details about March and what is to come after, very soon.

The "more details" have not been forthcoming. Requests to SOE for more information have been ignored.

It is not known exactly when the events will start and end, however, according to one source it begins the same time every year, on March 16th, at midnight PST. Estimates on how long it will last range from one month to six weeks.

UPDATE: SOE has posted info. Go here to their 11th Anniversary page.
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This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://fanraeq.blogspot.com/.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://atlantiseverquest.blogspot.com/atom.xml.
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Convorteum Secrecy Lifted (Maybe)

SOE has been silent on when to expect the new Underfoot zone, Convorteum. However, according to massiveonlinegamer.com, they have released some info.

EQ Players still says nothing. What is the truth? Who knows, but SOE sure doesn't make it easy for their players to find out anything.

Here is what massiveonlinegamer.com claims SOE has said:

The new exclusive Convorteum zone add-on for EverQuest Underfoot is scheduled to release on March 10th, 2010. Experience the latest and greatest expansion content with the never before released zone and a new bonus item. Underfoot just got bigger and better.

In an effort to resist the wrath of Brell, a new fortress has been constructed. Fueled by the resentment of his creator, The First Creation is plotting his vengeance. Discover the dangers of Convorteum!

In addition, massiveonlinegamer.com states:

That's not all, of course. The new add-on boasts six new raids, multiple new quests, and one new mission for players to take advantage of.

You can read what massiveonlinegamer.com says here.

EDIT NEW NEWS: We finally have official word on when it will go live:

It will be up tomorrow [March 10, 2010] following the patch when it opens to everyone (who meets the flag requirements). Right now we took it down because it has very, very old data.
- Aristo, EQ Designer

From this thread.
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UI changes coming in March update

I just wanted to give some warning. The March patch will have some changes to the inventory window (new stats pane) and mercenary UIs (alt currency cost displays). These may or may not break your custom UI. The changes are now on test, so check them out before patch day. - Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

The full thread is here.
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Frostfell Goblin Illusion Quest Broken

The Frostfell quest to get the Mask of the Grumpy Goblin, a mask with Effect: Illusion Frost Goblin, is not available this year. Maynar Furrwik gives the task.

Unfortunately, Maynar was removed due to technical difficulties so the secondary quest is not active this time. - Zatozia, EQ Community Relations Manager

Read the entire thread here.

Campfires and Guild Banners Not Working In Underfoot

In the most cases, it looks like the campsite/banner teleport disables were unintentional. We will look into it, but I have no ETA for you, or even if it will make it into the patch on the 15th.

There may also be a reason for it in some zones, so this is also not a promise that it will be relaxed in all zones, or really any zone. Just that we will look into it.

- Ngreth, EQ Designer

The entire thread is here.

Frostfell Live December 9th through January 8th

From EQ Players News:

Frostfell Adventures

As the air starts to chill and the frost begins to cover the ground, the season of Frostfell begins. No holiday season is perfect though and a couple of your fellow Norrathians need your help to make Frostfell a merry holiday for all! Visit your favorite major city and the Plane of Knowledge to find out how you can help.

The season of Frostfell will embrace Norrath from December 9th through January 8th. Various events will be available at different intervals throughout the season. So make sure you join in the fun before Frostfell is over for another year.

Although there are no new events for 2009, most of the past quests can be done at this time.

Patch Scheduled December 15, 2009

From the main Official EQ Forums page:

All EverQuest Live Servers (except Al'Kabor) will be coming down on December 15th at 1:00 am PST (PST is -8 GMT: 2:00am MST, 3:00am CST, 4:00am EST, 9:00am GMT, 10:00am CET) for the main launch of the Underfoot expansion and a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for about 7 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed!

Extended Patch and Underfoot Preview Info

The servers will be coming down again at 8:30am PST [December 10, 2009] to address the Underfoot access issues. I guess the network maintenance finished early, so they brought the servers back up.

There will be no rollbacks for those of you who got your bonus Underfoot preview for two days. However, if you camp out in an Underfoot zone, you will be moved to Plane of Knowledge after you log back in. Those that pre-ordered, but did not qualify for early access will of course be able to return to Underfoot this Tuesday morning.

- Steven S. Klug, EverQuest Lead Programmer

The SOE post is here.

Patch Scheduled December 10, 2009

Beginning at 1:00 AM PST on Thursday, December 10, 2009, all SOE game servers will be offline for hardware maintenance. This includes all of our MMOs as well as TCGs. We expect this downtime to last around 5 hours.

In addition, All EQ Live servers will be undergoing an additional downtime until 11am for a Game Update to correct issues with the Early Access for Underfoot.

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

The link to the SOE post is here.

EQ Players Going Free

From a SOE EQ forum post by Zatozia, SOE Community Relations Manager:

We are pleased to announce that beginning December 17, 2009, SOE will no longer charge separately for access to Station Players premium features for each of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, EverQuest and EverQuest II. Access to standard and premium Station Players features will now be included at no additional cost for all subscribers to each of these games (with active, paid subscriptions in good standing.) Station Access subscribers with active, paid subscriptions in good standing will continue to have access to all Station Players standard and premium features.

Station Players subscribers currently in a paid billing cycle will continue to have full access to the Station Players premium features they have already paid for through December 16, 2009. Station Players subscribers who have prepaid subscription time that extends their subscription period past December 16, 2009 will receive a pro-rated refund for any such pre-paid excess subscription payments*. Such refunds are expected to be issued by January 17, 2010.

We appreciate your loyalty and commitment to SOE's games and look forward to bringing you more enjoyable products and game features in the future.

*Please log in to your Station Account to update your billing address. If a valid credit card is active on your account, refunds will be applied to such credit card. If your account is paid via SOE Game Card or other SOE accepted payment method, we will send a check in the refund amount to your current billing address. No refunds will be given for Station Access accounts as a result of SOE no longer charging separately for Station Players premium features.

Not mentioned but it is fairly obvious that EQ Players is going free for the reasons that it has never worked right, few people have been paying, and, most importantly, the key reason to use it (finding out what quests/flags/keys you have) is obsolete with the Underfoot in-game "Achivement System" to tell you.

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.

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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.