Bright Future?

Taken directly from Daybreak's official forums:

"Hail Norrath!

It’s anniversary time for EverQuest and its 17th year!

The past year was fantastic, and we thank you for that! This year is also shaping up to bring healthy doses of Norrathian delights!

Coming next week with the anniversary, the team has created the Gnome Race event for everyone to enjoy on ALL servers! To participate, you'll need to create a new gnome in Ak'Anon. Look for Tipsy Teena near the exit from Ak'Anon to Steamfont Mountains and be prepared to drunk-dash and get flung across Faydwer all the way to the Estate of Unrest! Keep an eye out for world broadcasts when the race is about to begin because the prizes include brand new, awesome gnomish clockwork Hero's Forge armor pieces! For those not as adept at drunk-dashing, we will have an alternate set of clockwork Hero's Forge armor available in the marketplace.

What else? A fabled Legacy of Ykesha raid is coming for our players that raid on live servers for the anniversary! Woot! This raid and another bonus (wink, wink) will start on March 16th, so stay tuned for an announcement about that. Given the popularity of the dog and cat pets, and being true to our legacy, we felt it appropriate to bring you Gnolls in a Barrel. Do a barrel gnoll! This pet bundle will also be available starting with the Anniversary update on March 16th.

You have all shown us how much love you have for EverQuest, just like us, so we want to keep exploring new ways to enjoy this incredible game. Heading into summer, we have some big and fun plans in the works. We are still finalizing the details before we make any grand statements – and there should be a grand statement as we inch closer. The expansion for this year is well under way and looking incredible on the art front as well as design. We are really jazzed about where are new adventures will take you, and we’re excited to see what you think when we are ready to share more!

On top of all the stuff you will see, there’s some stuff you won’t! We are making some backend changes to improve server stability while also minimizing the loss of progress due to rollbacks. These changes will be mostly transparent, but it will help us to provide a better experience.

So, to all Norrathians, happy anniversary and thanks for all your support and commitment to EverQuest! Get ready to get your Gnome on and join us as we celebrate the anniversary with a drunken Gnome race on the Vox server on Wednesday, March 16 at 3PM PST.You can also join our team in a Twitch livestream on twitch.tv/everquestlive!"

A Legacy of Ykesha raid... that could be interesting. Some of the funnest lore/zones in the game in my view, but from the least impressive "exspansion" (it wasn't called that originally... just an extension) in EQ history. Now if they had made LoY a bit deeper (and have drops useful to the upper-tier population) and maybe completed it (there is a lot of evidence that it was nowhere near a finished product for quests and such). Anyway, I digress... Yay anniversary!