Letter From the Producer

Epic ornamentation quests, a 14th anniversary celebration, enhancements to the Housing feature, and Shadows of Fear (an extension of the Rain of Fear expansion) are just a few of the things on the horizon for EverQuest, all touched upon in a letter from EverQuest Producer Thom "Phathom" Terrazas:

Hello all!

So we're almost into our third month of 2013 already and if you are an EverQuest player, you know that March always brings something special. Not only it is my birthday, but more importantly it's EverQuest's Birthday! On March 16th, EverQuest is turning 14 and we have a few cool things to share with you.

At SOE Live in Las Vegas last October, we had a "Design a Mission" panel where we divided everyone up in smaller groups to work with a Designer on the EverQuest team. The goal of that panel was to have everyone participate in designing a mission that could be experienced by players of varying levels. We have had this panel in past years and the hope has always been to put them into game quickly for everyone to play. We've succeeded at times but other times, it takes us a while to fit them into our schedule. I'm happy to inform you that we will be launching several of these player-designed missions during our March Game Update to help celebrate our 14th Anniversary.

A couple years ago, we had an intern join our team and at one point, we let him work on some content just to fill out his remaining schedule and to see what he could do. Well, the content that he created was full of nostalgic Class-specific connections into the world of EverQuest. Some time ago, we placed a few of these missions on the test server for players to run through and they received rave reviews. So without further delay and after the Anniversary Game Update, anyone that has finished their Epic quest for 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0, will be able to test their knowledge and skills by traveling to historic locations in Norrath to earn an Epic Weapon Ornamentation to use on another weapon. We will reveal more information soon, but how can you argue against the ability to Burn Down Freeport and get rewarded for it?!

Tradeskillers, you'll be happy to hear that we will be putting in some new recipes to create some Hero's Forge Armor in March. We have several new animal-themed hats that will immediately take your thoughts to the famous Barbarian Polar Bear hats in Everfrost. Norrathians can find all the items for the recipe but they will need help from their fellow Tradeskillers in order to receive the final product.

We'll also turn on all past Anniversary events so mark the calendar for cool events to kick-off in two weeks!

Different Subject…
Now, we know that we have a good Housing and Guild Hall Feature, but we wanted to see how we could make it great. So, a couple of weeks ago, the Development team took over a Neighborhood on the Bertox Server and set up camp. We wanted to spend a couple hours and take a really good hands-on approach to find ways to better integrate the Housing system into the game. We are currently compiling our feedback and will be discussing how we can achieve this. If you want to offer your feedback, please post your thoughts on this subject as well. Also, if you want to go take a look at what some of us created, head to the Neighborhood zone from the Guild Lobby and look up the Priests of Discord Neighborhood. Feel free to vote your favorite house but remember, almost every house with substance is going to tell you that it could look better if they were able to place more items down in their lot or inside their house J

Hero's Forge Armor
Hero's Forge launched last year and we heard your feedback… We are currently working with some different tech to make Hero's Forge a tighter fit all the way around (although, I don't think I look fat in this armor, I'm just big-boned). Timing for launch of this new armor should be before the summertime. I'll be putting up some new screenshots just after the Anniversary to share our progress.

Shadows of Fear
Last year, we launched the Rain of Fear expansion (EverQuest's 19th Expansion) and in April, we will be continuing the Rain of Fear story with the Shadows of Fear Game Update. Shadows of Fear will be available to everyone that has purchased the Rain of Fear expansion. It will include some new zones while introducing some new storylines of godly proportion and you will have some Spell and AA lines that you haven't had before. Stay tuned for a Beta Announcement in March. You were signed up for Beta for the Rain of Fear, then you will be invited to come back and we'll have a small window to invite some of you that missed it last year.

Saving the best for last!
We have had a few changes to the EverQuest team lately. I would like to introduce you to Jonathan Caraker as the New Lead Designer for the EverQuest Team. Jonathan is no stranger to the EverQuest, as he has been a designer on the team for many years. Jonathan has been with Sony Online Entertainment for about 11 years, spending time on multiple games of which about 7 years was as a designer on EverQuest – most recently as on the Underfoot expansion. I hope that many of you will remember Jonathan to give him a warm welcome. We're really excited about Jonathan joining the team!

Furthermore, Akil Hooper is now the Creative Director on EverQuest. Akil, AKA "Lyndro", has recently been performing the duties of Lead Designer on the EverQuest II team and also worked on EverQuest in years past, just like Jonathan. Julie "Ellyra" Burness and Doug "Elidroth" Cronkhite have also been promoted to Assistant Lead Designers and will be working closely with Jonathan and Akil to keep EverQuest headed in the right direction. They have been working in this capacity for a couple weeks now and I really like it. This is a great change for the EverQuest team!

Thank you all for reading & see you in game soon!

Thom Terrazas
Producer, EverQuest

Comments

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Mountable Heads
# Mar 03 2013 at 12:53 PM Rating: Decent
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Would love to see the various biped race heads mountable (Elf, Halfling, etc). Smiley: lol
you were wondering where this was posted so you could reply
# Mar 02 2013 at 3:11 PM Rating: Decent
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on the forums?
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/everquest-the-game-the-team-today-and-coming-soon.4182/

there you go. so far there are a lot of responses but none seem to discuss what has been discussed here.
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you were wondering where this was posted so you could reply
# Mar 02 2013 at 3:54 PM Rating: Decent
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Thanks for link
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do they need suggestions?
# Mar 02 2013 at 1:49 PM Rating: Decent
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also, for those houses where the owners think it is awesome to hide the door, how about an easy exit for visitors? in eq2, you only have to type /house to get an option to leave.
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do they need suggestions?
# Mar 02 2013 at 1:46 PM Rating: Decent
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so far, i see a copy of the mazes that are already in use, leading to a totally empty house. some of the other houses are the same ol, same ol. and some merely copy what we already do. how about some new landscaping options and maybe even some new looks?? how about some of the big majestic houses like they have in eq2? how is any of this much of an improvement???
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Vitality earned in house
# Mar 01 2013 at 11:00 PM Rating: Decent
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One thing I would like to see is vitality earned by staying in your house. I feel maybe this was part of EQ2, but that may be the sailor Jerry's talking. Either way, would make houses more useful and used, being in your yard could count too, which would drive people to actually hang out in the neighborhoods
Guild hall on test
# Mar 01 2013 at 7:05 PM Rating: Decent
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If you want to see a cool guild hall, jump on test and PM any member of Subdivisions for an invite. I'm pretty proud of all the hard work we put into it.
Not Really impressed with Priest of Discord Village
# Mar 01 2013 at 6:07 PM Rating: Decent
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Double post??

Edited, Mar 1st 2013 4:28pm by Vinney
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Not Really impressed with Priest of Discord Village
# Mar 01 2013 at 5:50 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Different Subject…
Now, we know that we have a good Housing and Guild Hall Feature, but we wanted to see how we could make it great. So, a couple of weeks ago, the Development team took over a Neighborhood on the Bertox Server and set up camp. We wanted to spend a couple hours and take a really good hands-on approach to find ways to better integrate the Housing system into the game.


There is a lot of talent from other players that put this neighborhood to shame and those players comments on SoE's forums have gone ignored. So much that SoE has blended two forums together Tradeskill and Housing that housing has virtually disappeared in the threads. We, players who partake in housing, have asked for more space (ignored). Asked for a system to help tour Servers, Neighborhoods and Houses. (ignored) (at one time this idea posted on SoE's forums but was removed when they merged forums), Asked for a way to buy more space via the Marketplace. (ignored). A Separate forum to display houses and guildhalls, like it was before. (ignored). House of the week feature, (Announced but never implemented)

I am pretty proud of My neighborhood on Zek, Cedar Country Meadows. Have over 22 houses and imo a pretty good looking guild hall (GH now locked because of pvp. Please contact Vinney or Armourcarr and will be glad to grant you permission to tour). You need to have your little Crew from Priest of Discord Village go and tour there.
I do want to complement Phathom, 101 Brimming Heights, Sepkix 104 Brimming Heights, Prathunxxx 104 Terminus Street (inside) Their house's showed a lot of talent.
I wish you will take some of our advice but still trying to find this post on SoE to respond.



Edited, Mar 1st 2013 4:33pm by Vinney
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Touring GM housing!
# Mar 01 2013 at 1:07 PM Rating: Decent
I was taken a peek saw a few empty houses some decent yards, When I popped into the 3rd house to find my self stuck. Didn't find it funny, Please remove my toon I made just to tour this from your home. You know who you are! address was 105 that's all I recall!!!
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Touring GM housing!
# Mar 01 2013 at 2:11 PM Rating: Decent
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Lets say you can't gate cause you are ducking and trying to use /rewind doesn't work. From the character select screen when you click on the character you can choose to go home. I think its every 6 hours if im not mistaken. So you could get out that way. Is Humingbirdqueen really your in game name too that they are suppose to know who you are? This must be a joke posting. Its hard to believe you are serious.
Touring GM housing!
# Mar 02 2013 at 2:02 PM Rating: Decent
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uhh-- she made the toon to TOUR the housing- that means toon is level 1 and doesn't yet have gate or origin- which means it is STUCK. my advice is to start hitting herself so she can die and go to tutorial. I agree, i don't find getting stuck in a house very funny either - we need a command like eq2 has - /house which brings up an option box, one of which is leave house
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Touring GM housing!
# Mar 02 2013 at 6:38 PM Rating: Decent
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She can't use /quit or /exit or what ever the command is to get out? Then come back later and delete the character. The fact the person hasn't replied makes me think it was just a troll post in the first place.
Touring GM housing!
# Mar 03 2013 at 9:34 AM Rating: Decent
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well, she also posted it on the forums. sometimes people post and then for some reason don't come back and check their post or post again. doesn't mean they are trolling, just that they haven't checked back. unfortunately, at this time, there is no quit or exit command. what she can do, however, since she is so low a level, is camp and then choose tutorial to log back in. i had to do that a few times.

I was once stuck in a house with no way out. it was one of those betwixt places that zoning into a house or zone would sometimes get you when housing was fairly new. i tried camping but it wouldn't let me for some weird reason. i remember petitioning as a stuck character. people tried to summon me but being in a house they couldn't. i was on my berserker so someone suggested that i remove my armor and kill myself. it worked. upon dieing i found myself in the lobby where i was bound.

the need for an exit command is one the devs have been ignoring in eq1 for some time now. apparently they thought it more important in eq2, but then as i understand it there are different devs for that game.
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Touring GM housing!
# Mar 04 2013 at 2:30 AM Rating: Decent
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I was in my home and /exit worked just fine. I had to load up Everquest again but otherwise no problem. Then from that point once she gets back to character select she would select return home. It is an inconvenience though and like you said they should just add a normal command to let people exit homes. I would love to hear some feedback from hummingbirdqueen but i doubt i will ever see any.
Touring GM housing!
# Mar 01 2013 at 7:03 PM Rating: Decent
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Return Home is now tied to origin and is indeed on an 18 minute timer now. This change was only a few months back.
Touring GM housing!
# Mar 02 2013 at 1:18 PM Rating: Decent
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Oh cool. Thanks for the info. I didn't realize it could be used so often.
Vacant Guild Plots
# Mar 01 2013 at 9:51 AM Rating: Decent
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Every guild owned village has multiple empty guild hall plots. I would love to see these plots made usable. Could guild leaders and officers use them as standard housing plots? Could they be used as guild parks .. no houses .. just trees, cabanas, benches and other items? Leaving all this beautiful real estate vacant is such a waste.
Zuh?
# Feb 28 2013 at 2:22 PM Rating: Decent
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"Shadows of Fear
Last year, we launched the Rain of Fear expansion (EverQuest's 19th Expansion) and in April, we will be continuing the Rain of Fear story with the Shadows of Fear Game Update. Shadows of Fear will be available to everyone that has purchased the Rain of Fear expansion. It will include some new zones while introducing some new storylines of godly proportion and you will have some Spell and AA lines that you haven't had before. Stay tuned for a Beta Announcement in March. You were signed up for Beta for the Rain of Fear, then you will be invited to come back and we'll have a small window to invite some of you that missed it last year."

So does this mean we don't have to pay for Shadows Of Fear since it's not considered a full expansion?
Portals
# Feb 28 2013 at 2:05 PM Rating: Good
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I noticed the 3 unfinished portals in Shard's Landing are completed, but non-functional yet. Shadows of Fear, i'm guessing will activate them.
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Buff Timers
# Feb 28 2013 at 1:36 PM Rating: Decent
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Please stop all the buff timers in Houses and neighborhoods, just like in the guild lobby, guild hall and grand guild hall. As a addicted house maker in Norrath, I often have to chose between keeping my raid buffs on or enjoying the game. which isn't fair. There isn't reason it should be ticking anyways, and to branch out how about PoK or PoTranquility or even A Sea, cant kill any npc cant acquire loot people are often tired siting in the gh/gl and ggh just because we don't wanna lose our buff timers, as a player since Nov 9th 1999, It will only be logical to have all the non kill zones lock buff timers so people that are not in a group or looking for xp atm can explore some more zone of the game with out the buff timers fading. It will do a 3 things promote more exploration, reduce large amounts of players just being static in one zone, aka gl. And allow for other uses of everquest's features with out the lost of buff timers in non kill zones.
Buff Timers
# Mar 01 2013 at 2:53 PM Rating: Decent
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Agree!!!
Buff Timers
# Mar 01 2013 at 10:14 AM Rating: Decent
Well said and Amen.
No more evictions please...I paid up!
# Feb 28 2013 at 9:42 AM Rating: Decent
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Speaking of houses, I see no reason to "evict" or send a crate of eviction to a person that pays "rent on the property. To make matters worse, you have made it possible for someone else to swoop in and purchase the land upon which your house and goods stood.

Please amend this. I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have mentioned this. The other day, I received a crate of eviction for someone else's property, but at first I thought, "WAIT! I log on every one of my blessed characters on a frequent enough basis (even if they don't have a house). Then, I read the address of the goods and had no idea who's house that was since, GUESS WHAT????!!! The plot no longer held the name of the character that I originally and happily supplied with items with as a kind gesture. More recently than the owner had done! Fix please.

This change would be the best thing you could do at this point as far as housing is concerned.

Additional Comment 3/1/13: How about this...those that have gold accounts in good standing would be immune to eviction if, at the very least they logged into their account within a certain amount of time. Those with free-to-play accounts could be another story...thoughts? That would be another incentive to go GOLD :)

Edited, Mar 1st 2013 10:58pm by fluticazone

Edited, Mar 2nd 2013 1:22am by fluticazone
No more evictions please...I paid up!
# Mar 02 2013 at 2:17 PM Rating: Decent
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What really irritates me is that i own 5 guild villages which i paid $35 real life dollars for and still will get evictions even though there is plenty of money in each estate and i bought the village. no one else can buy in the villages since my own toons make up the guilds. there should be a way to not affect the villages that were purchased in the marketplace. this is the most unfair rule housing has. and btw, if you don't bring in at least one toon for each guild monthly, you will be evicted from your guild hall. the 3 month rule doesn't even apply to it.
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Buff Timers
# Feb 28 2013 at 9:30 AM Rating: Decent
Since the housing neighborhoods are an extension of the Guild Lobby and/or Guild Hall, the neighborhoods and houses should be areas where the buff countdown timers are turned off. I would spend more time in my house and the surrounding neighborhood if I didn't have to go find new buffs after each visit. Thanks.
Buff Timers
# Feb 28 2013 at 1:35 PM Rating: Decent
should include baz in that.
Buff Timers
# Mar 01 2013 at 7:07 PM Rating: Decent
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demchuk wrote:
Since the housing neighborhoods are an extension of the Guild Lobby and/or Guild Hall, the neighborhoods and houses should be areas where the buff countdown timers are turned off. I would spend more time in my house and the surrounding neighborhood if I didn't have to go find new buffs after each visit. Thanks.


himlars wrote:
should include baz in that.


I agree to both of these posts. However, having the feature wouldn't change my behaviour.
Buff Timers
# Feb 28 2013 at 2:02 PM Rating: Decent
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I disagree since you can shop the Bazaar from anywhere now.
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ok sounds good
# Feb 28 2013 at 8:26 AM Rating: Default
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Yup sounds good and I'd like to see the player housing system and relevant home and guild zones being more dynamic to the point that players can have double storey houses and ones that can fit underground with false walls as a pit trap option.

There are already doors to nowhere that allow us to link houses together but it be nice if we can create a bit of an adventure for those that feel up to exploring a bit, kind of like being a bit of a dungeon master.......maybe even allow us to drop some droppable loot - instead of selling to tribute vendors or giving away in ooc; as a reward for solving a puzzle or challenge like swimming through water and being able to breath underwater then using a shrink potion to get through a small door then levitating over pit falls and lava or spikes or viper pits!

It would be nice if we could restrict the levels classes and numbers in a group for the challenge. Many of us would love the opportunity to be level 6 again kitted to our best and then try each other’s trials and tests. Imagine being able to put monsters in the house challenge for your friends to have to navigate through! Could also control local conditions like very cold or very hot, making folks very hungry and all food go off so spells where summoning food and light sources are important. Might be an interesting way for new players to get to appreciate some of the early level spells etc.

Eye of zomm for a wizard/mage etc might be a requirement to find out which monsters are where because agro box is so big and once the door opens the group only has a limited time to get to the other side of the maze etc. So many little challenges can be put in the game that we haven’t yet experienced in the last 14 years......yet ;)

Edited, Feb 28th 2013 9:29am by Fortunbas
ok sounds good
# Mar 02 2013 at 2:50 PM Rating: Decent
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kind of like eq2's chronomagic where you can level down? actually, i think adding soe's dungeonmaker to eq1 would be very interesting. i would also like the idea of being able to tell a story in a house - would bring a new dimension to the decorating. why shouldn't things like fountains and houses be free placeable? that would be awesome. i just wish they wouldn't tie new housing quests to the new high-level expansions. exploring housing, doing tradeskills, and soling content should be all viable options to people who prefer not to get in a raid or group and grind to 100. offering something for everyone would go a long way to breathing new life into the game.
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new stuff
# Feb 28 2013 at 2:03 AM Rating: Good
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I think it sounds very interesting. I"m looking forward to the release.

That intern Ricky is referring to designed some raids btw, better than some other events that I've seen.

umm
# Feb 28 2013 at 1:06 AM Rating: Decent
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So this year for the fabled we have to look forward to past content and maybe some ornamentation stuff. How about a quest or task that will unlock the ability to use the ornamentation stuff in the first place? New Hero's Forge armor recipes for tradeskillers. Is it gonna be the same trash you can pick up in the bazaar for 2pp? If they start adding new tradeskill crap to mobs through each of the expansions for the hero forge armor stuff i hope they at least make it so that the components can be sold to vendors.

I also like the line "A couple years ago, we had an intern join our team and at one point, we let him work on some content just to fill out his remaining schedule and to see what he could do." They make it sound like he is so blessed to be working for free since interns don't get payed. Wasn't that particular intern also the guy that was working on updating the epic quests and nearly got done with all of them?
umm
# Mar 02 2013 at 2:58 PM Rating: Decent
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so far the only thing i saw about hero's forge recipes was:
"Tradeskillers, you'll be happy to hear that we will be putting in some new recipes to create some Hero's Forge Armor in March. We have several new animal-themed hats that will immediately take your thoughts to the famous Barbarian Polar Bear hats in Everfrost. Norrathians can find all the items for the recipe but they will need help from their fellow Tradeskillers in order to receive the final product."

so we get some dumb looking hats with stuff like polar bears on top of our heads? not my idea of great new recipes. why can't they let the playerstudio be used to design some new recipes? i would buy them. and make the end results tradeable please. while they are at it, the consignment system would be nice - at least with that no-trade items that are player made like mountable heads could be consigned. better yet, make the mounted heads tradable.
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