Server Merge and Server Launch September 8 (plus a progression server in the future)

From SOE General Dev Updates:

Mayong Server Merge Next Week - (Tunare Server) - Next Wednesday, 9/8/10 during our game update, we will be merging the Mayong Server into the Tunare Server. The Tunare Server will likely be down longer than the other servers to finish the merge. More information will follow on the exact time frames.

New Server Launching Next Week - We will be launching a brand new server with our Game Update on Wednesday 9/8/10. Trakanon is the name chosen by you in our poll results. Character Transfers will not be permitted to Trakanon but we may allow it some day in the future.

Progression Server - A progression server has been asked to be launched for quite some time. When we did the polls last year, the Mayong 51/50 server was chosen as the front runner and a progression server was chosen as a runner-up. The Mayong launched and had a great turnout but we are ready to turn a new page with that server and move onto the next best thing. After popular demand and much feedback by you, we believe a time-locked progression server is the best one to launch next. So we're discussing the best time to launch and best roll out plan to unlock each expansion so that content is maximized and accomplished and balanced so that you are not rushed nor left behind.

Scheduling for a Progression Server - We are currently all hands into development on our House of Thule expansion (launching October 12, 2010) and we are giving it as much attention as needed to ensure a great launch. Focusing on a progression server launch will have to come after the House of Thule, where as a schedule will be determined at that time. We have a time frame in our minds that makes sense to us and with our schedule but we will hold off on announcing that time frame until after a successful expansion release.

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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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