Patch Scheduled October 31, 2008

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

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

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

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

See the full description of the Promotion here.

Huge Increase in HP and Mana Not Intended

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

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

The full thread is here.

Patch Scheduled October 29, 2008

From SOE forums:

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

Missing Bonus Items to be Fixed Next Patch

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

The full thread is here.

No Stats New Jewelery To Be Fixed

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

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

The full thread is here.

Oceangreen Quest Pieces Bug to be Fixed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The full thread is here.

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

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

See the entire thread here.

Patch Scheduled September 5, 2008

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

Reuse Delay Gone for Portal to Banner [Revised]

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

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

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

See Inviso 2.0 Item Bug to be Fixed

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

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

The full thread is here.

No More Multiple Evolving Lore Items

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

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

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

- Merloc, EQ Designer

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

The full thread is here.

Stealth Change to Healing Clickys

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

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

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

Nuke clicks should be unaffected.

Enjoy!

- Bembaru, EQ Coder

The full thread is here.

Flagging / Keying Change Due "Soon"

New news from SOE:

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

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

Required Level 46

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

Required Level 55

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

Required level 57

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

Required Level 60

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

Required Level 62

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

Required Level 65

1. Txevu
2. Tacvi

- Rytan_the_Wyrmlord, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

No ETA announced yet.

The main thread is here.

More from the same thread:

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

- Rytan_the_Wyrmlord, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

Two things to note here:

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

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

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Welcome to the Station LaunchPad

EverQuest is now officially on the Station LaunchPad.

Read all about it from the patch notes here.

EQ Producer Letter - 8/13/07

Clint "Jourdian" Worley, EverQuest Producer:

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

The Producer's letter is here.

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

Fan Faire Report

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

General Gameplay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Guild Bank – Possibly adding a coin slot to it

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

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

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

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

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


Class Specific

1. Wizard -

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

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

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

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

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

2. Shadow Knight -

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

3. Warrior -

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

4. Magician -

* Pet Invis - Removing invis from the air pet.

Misc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Raiding Specific

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

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

* Powersources - Raid powersources may see a duration increase

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


Itemization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Spells

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


Lore

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

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

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

Q & A from Merloc’s Tower – 7/20/07

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

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

EQ Producer Letter - 7/31/07

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

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

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

EverQuest House of Commons Dev Chat - July 18, 2007

Click here for log.

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