March 14, 2001 3:00 am
EverQuest Turns Two
Two years ago this Friday, EverQuest was launched, forever changing the course of online gaming. Today EverQuest boasts nearly 360,000 active subscribers, and a two-year retention rate of 65%. Peak usage tops 89,000 simultaneous users with average peak usage at roughly 87,000. The EverQuest community continues to grow daily.
We've put up a page on the EverQuest website to help celebrate EverQuest's achievement and to thank our loyal fans. Over the next couple of days we will be posting interesting content from EverQuest's humble beginnings, as well as a few surprises. Check it out! http://everquest.station.sony.com/2ndanniversary/index.jsp
Ever Changing, Evolving, Expanding
The Warrens:
As part of our two-year celebration, we're pleased to announce the release of "The Warrens", a free expansion zone located on Odus. "The Warrens" is a low-to-mid level dungeon and the home of the Kobolds on Odus. You can patch the Warrens by running the "Optional Patch".
In addition to filling-out the continent of Odus, "the Warrens" will also serve as a platform to try out some of the new ideas brought forth by members of the team and the public aimed at addressing some common gameplay issues. We would like to see what options might be open to and enjoyed by the players in the future.
The first issue addressed in the Warrens is the problem of higher level characters competing with lower level characters for loot on lower level creatures. To address this issue, in the Warrens, a group that "outclasses" a particular foe will not receive any loot that is MAGIC, LORE, or NODROP. All other loot will drop. "Outclassing" a foe is defined as having a group makeup such that no one in your group receives experience from the kill. This can happen if, for instance, the foe is "green" to all group members, or if the group makeup is of such a wide level range that the system determines the fight was unbalanced using regular experience rules.
Any time that an NPC would have dropped special loot and does not due to it being outclassed, a message indicating that the combat was "trivial" will be displayed to the group.
As time goes on, we will be implementing new gameplay subsets and adjustements in the Warrens. Please be sure to let us know what you think!
The Planes:
The Planes of Fear and Hate have been updated as part of our two-year celebration. Adventurers in the Plane of Fear will notice that some high-level foes are now available. Rewards for former "boss npcs" have been moved down to underlings that are roughly as powerful as the old bosses were.
The Plane of Hate has also received a large update, but this one also includes the opening of a previously undiscovered part of the zone, now full high-level expansion-oriented content. Much as with Fear, rewards from bosses have been moved.
Epic Quests:
As part of the Plane updates, we've made several adjustments to Epic quests for a number of classes. Previously, questers of many classes were put in direct competition with regular non-questing adventurers for a few coveted spawns. In these cases, a new step has been added to separate the "Epic Encounter" NPCs from the "Epic Quest" NPCs.
For those who are mid-quest, all quest requirements have remained the same. In other words, if you turn the same items into the same NPC, the same reward applies. What has changed is that some components may be in a different location from where you expect them. It is recommended that you check with the last NPC in line or other adventurers to find where you need to go next.
Patch Day
Along with the big announcements above, today was a patch day as well:
- Fixed a bug that allowed exploitation of the period of time between character control being established and loading of character faction tables.
- Fixed the Dagger of Frost. Its special item flags were improperly removed in the last patch.
- The spell, Mark of Karn, has been enhanced to heal more per hit.
- The effect on the Celestial Elixir Breastplates has been changed to the enhanced Mark of Karn. The casting time on these items has also been changed to 9 seconds.
- NPCs in Thurgadin will no longer stop traveling when you /hail them.
- Fixed a problem present in Nagafen's Lair and the Plane of Hate that caused framerate to drop over time.
- Shift-clicking on a stack of items will cause you to pick up the whole stack. This is in addition to CTRL-clicking on a stack, which will cause you to pick up one. These both also work for coins now as well as items.
- In addition to the above, holding down the shift key while clicking the "Sell" button in the vendor screen will cause you to sell the entire stack of items if a stack is selected. For example, you can sell 20 peridots by selecting the stack, and shift-clicking "Sell". I'd recommend though that you give them to your neighborhood cleric first though :) The ability to buy stacks is on the list for implementation in the near future.
- There are a ton of new recipies for trade skill users out there. Check your books.
- There are a bunch of new quests as well.
- It appears that we fixed a bug with the Mend skill that caused it to be unavailable for a few seconds after it was supposed to be ready for use. Let us know if there are any further problems.
- Foraging items will now yield a message giving you some idea of what you've foraged.
Please remember that the /movelog for the Rathe and E'ci is scheduled for this weekend. Please read the message below for details on the /movelog.
A Message From Customer Service
We regularly receive requests from customers that want their characters moved from one server to another, or from one account to another. Unfortunately, due to the EverQuest EULA, the number of requests that we receive, the desire to maintain stable server communities and economies, and other problems associated with character moves, we can not move characters across servers or accounts.
It is important for the integrity of the server that items from a server remain on that server. We also feel that it is important that characters that have built up a reputation, good or bad, have to live with the consequences of their decisions, and are not allowed to retreat from that reputation by changing servers.
The only exception to this rule is when we open a Movelog for moving a large number of characters to new servers. At no other time will we move a character in such a fashion.