Tag: Everquest

Daybreak Ignores Everquest Ragefire Vote


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When it comes to Everquest and time-locked servers, polls ensure that the servers only progress as fast at the community wants them to. For Ragefire/Lockjaw, the latest set of progression servers, players voted by a very large percentage in order to keep the servers as they are for another six months, with the second most popular option being ASAP on Ragefire and 3 months on Lockjaw.

In an announcement posted on the official forums, however, Daybreak developer Aristo announced that the company will react to player votes by ignoring them, bending the rules and combining answers from two categories (ASAP and 3 months) and calling it the majority opinion. Instead of going with the top voted option (six months), Daybreak will instead open up voting for the Kunark expansion after three months.

Players stuck on Ragefire might have the option to transfer to Lockjaw, perhaps. It’s a possibility that Daybreak is investigating with no details or confirmation that it would be possible, also noting that the transfer wouldn’t be possible until after the servers fell out of sync.

Once Ragefire is settled into Kunark we’ll have to explore whether they want to return to the 6-month schedule or adjust it to a faster track. Likewise, although Lockjaw will hopefully be full of people who want to stick around in an era for a long time, we’ll check to make sure that remains the case as time goes by.

Daybreak Game Company seems to be suffering from a case of foot in mouth disease, as earlier today community manager Holly Longdale ruffled some feathers by stating that “casual players shouldn’t be allowed to fight Nagafen,” a rather out of touch comment considering that much of the content and competition is currently being nullified by large groups of players multi-boxing and botting.

“What we don’t want to do is instance raids, which is what casuals want us to do because they want to fight Nagafen. Casuals shouldn’t be allowed to fight Nagafen… that diminishes the achievement of others. That’s part of the challenge: You have to be better than the other guy; you have to be more strategic that the other guy.”

As for multi-boxing, Longdale assures us that they are “looking into it.”

(Source: Everquest)

Development Shifting Over To Everquest Next


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Since Landmark and Everquest Next share the same engine and certain mechanics, it’s possible to develop both games simultaneously at some level. In the latest producer’s letter, Daybreak announced that development on Landmark-specific content is taking a back seat to Next.

So, as we shift our focus and development to EQN, it just doesn’t make sense to continue with the Blueprint, since the goal of that has always been to provide short term, concrete plans of what you could expect and when, and that isn’t something we can reliably estimate at this point. When we have a better idea of timing on the various pieces, we will make sure to let everyone know.

(Source: Landmark)

[Community] Are Boxers Harshing Your Ragefire Buzz?


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(Community is a weekly column discussing ongoing events in various MMOs. Agree or disagree, we’d like to hear what you think in the comments below.)

Everquest’s Ragefire progression server has been up for less than a week, actually it’s been up for about four days, but if you’ve been trying to make headway in the game it might feel more like a week. Unfortunately, parts of the community are at each other’s throats over the issue of people not being able to play, and who is responsible for clogging Ragefire and camping its mobs. Daybreak has been working to alleviate problems without trampling on either side’s shoes, and the fighting is getting worse.

The culprit of choice for Ragefire are the boxers, players who run two or more copies of Everquest simultaneously, either controlling accounts separately or using programs like isboxer to direct multiple characters at once. A distinction between boxing and botting is important, since botting is unattended and boxing is one player actually operating multiple accounts. Boxing has become very common over the years in Everquest, as computers have expanded and become capable of running multiple instances of the game very easily. For Ragefire, where getting a spot on the server has been rather difficult, members of the community are understandably angry over long queues that are at least partially the fault of single players taking upwards of six or more slots.

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With Ragefire requiring a subscription, it’s also easy to see why Daybreak doesn’t want to tread on the shoes of someone paying $15 per month, per account.

On Daybreak’s end, the company has implemented an afk timer that apparently goes up and down based on how much demand there is to get into the server. I haven’t been able to test this out myself, but reports from other players indicate that the timer can swing as high as over an hour to as low as under ten minutes. In addition, Daybreak cobbled together a server queue that allows players to get their place in during peak hours and alt-tab out of the client or go into chat without worrying about the system automatically logging them out.

How do you feel about boxers in Everquest?

Half-Elfs Break Everquest’s Progression Server


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If you’ve been waiting for Daybreak to unlock the Ragefire progression server for Everquest, you’ll be waiting a bit longer. The server has been taken down due to a bug allowing players to log in with fully-formed level 50 characters. The Daybreak team is currently looking into what caused this.

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Weekend Wrapper:


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It’s time for another Weekend Wrapper, where we look at some gaming news that didn’t quite make it to MMO Fallout’s floor.

News/Updates:

  • RuneScape’s Road Trip is in full gear, although players might find their quality of life improved via ninja patches.
  • Old School RuneScape patches in slayer partners, new teleport animations, and more.
  • Marvel Heroes is running a Buy One Get One sale on heroes and costumes. Buy one from the in-game store, get a token for a random hero/costume.
  • Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade devs discuss melee mode, pistols, and more.
  • Gazillion Entertainment discusses Marvel Heroes post-Ultron updates.
  • Everquest’s Ragefire progression server is now in beta.
  • The Division is being developed by four different studios.
  • Zynga cutting jobs, games, and studios.

Release Spotlight:

  • Black Mesa (Early Access): Currently in early access, Black Mesa is an approved remake of Half Life on the Source engine.
  • Warhammer 40k: Regicide (Early Access): Regicide is a turn based strategy game with very positive reviews.
  • ARMA 3 (Released): Not a new release, but those of you who haven’t picked this game up can play for free on Steam all weekend.
  • Wolfenstein: The Old Blood: $20 gets you a great single player campaign.

Daybreak Game Company Embraces Project 99


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It isn’t too often that developers acknowledge, let alone embrace a private servers emulating their games, especially if the title in question is still in operation. Daybreak Game Company, however, has decided to embrace the Project 1999 private server, an emulation project of Everquest as it was in its early days, to officially recognize and approve its existence.

We have recently entered into a written agreement with Daybreak Game Company LLC that formally recognizes Project 1999 as a fan based, not-for-profit, classic EverQuest emulation project. The agreement establishes the guidelines that we as a project must follow, but it will allow to us continue to update the game without risk of legal repercussions.

P99 players can rest easy knowing without the threat of legal action hanging above their heads.

(Source: Everquest)

Everquest Progression Server Voting Commences


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Everquest is set to release a new progression server, and the team wants player feedback on how the game should transition into new expansions.

Our Progression Server player poll is now live in game and asks you to select from 4 options. Below is a summary of the options that the Designers put together. Mechanics within these can be refined or changed, like using player voting to progress, but in general this is how we see the options for a new Progression Server at the high level. (They are very complicated under the hood.)

Players can choose between existing rules, time-locked progression, slower progression, and seasonal challenges. The options, with their individual requirements, can be found at the link below.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

(Source: Everquest)

Breaking: Dave Georgeson Departs Daybreak Game Studio


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Dave Georgeson has announced via Twitter that he is no longer involved in the Everquest franchise.

Update: Daybreak Game Studio has confirmed a big round of layoffs. An unknown number of employees have been affected.

(Source: Twitter)

Everquest 15 Year Anniversary Graphic


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Sony Online Entertainment has released an infographic detailing just how technology and the internet has progressed since Everquest launched in 1999, not to mention detailing a decade and a half of the franchise’s achievements. Do you remember when hard drives cost $25 per gigabyte? I do.

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SOE Releases Revised List


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Ask and you shall receive. Owing the massive amount of feedback regarding SOE’s recently announced changes, John Smedley has posted a revised list of coming changes to Sony All Access. In short, the “pick an item” system won’t be coming, however players will be forced to claim the stipend monthly.

  1. We’re lowering the price of All Access to $14.99
  2. We’re going to make it so every subscriber to all our PC games an all access member. Basically there will be one SOE membership for our PC games. Please note there are some minor restrictions around our kids titles (simply put – if you’re a 12 year old who signed up for FR you won’t have access to the adult games so we’ll likely leave the lower priced kids offerings as separate subscriptions for under 12 for the same low prices).
  3. We’re keeping the 500 SC included with the subscription instead of going to the “pick an item” system. We heard you. You didn’t like the change. The only change we are making is that we’re now going to make you claim it monthly. You can still hoard it though I realize this is a bit of a pain but honestly it’s the best compromise we could come up with that solves the problems I mentioned in the other thread.
  4. we are going to be giving our members a 10% discount in our marketplaces.
  5. European players – we have an idea on how to include you in this but we need to discuss with our partners.We have a pretty good idea on this though. give us a bit of time to suss this out.
  6. Nothing is changing with Player Studio items – you’ll still be able to buy them with your 500SC.
  7. Console titles – you’ll notice I only mentioned the PC titles. Our goal is to include the PS3 and PS4 games that we have, but I want to be up front and say that isn’t a done deal.

So you can still hoard station cash, but you will have to claim it manually rather than allow it to accumulate automatically. I have a feeling that something is coming to alleviate SOE of the station cash hoarded on accounts that haven’t been used in years. While a few things have been reversed and cleared up, the details surrounding Sony’s plans for all access are undoubtedly not over yet.

(Source: Reddit)

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