On Tuesday, August 26th, at 3AM Pacific, (-7:00 UTC), all EverQuest worlds will be brought down for a scheduled update. The estimated downtime is 7 hours.

The SOE Game Operations Team

Bastards better fix Time Instancing :)

Hasn't been any announcement of what is in this patch has there?

<strong>Upcoming for August 26th, 2003</strong>

<strong>Plane of Mischief changes going to the Legends. </strong> The Plane of Mischief, home of the trickster Bristlebane, has undergone an extensive revamp. As one of the most unusual places to visit in EverQuest, this zone will be a very interesting challenge, if you have a sturdy funny bone.

<strong>Partial Zone Revamps coming to all servers. </strong> These changes are not as dramatic as those made to the Plane of Mischief, but they are great improvements to these zones that needed only a little modification to make them much better. The zones we'll be updating this week are: The Deep, Charasis (Howling Stones), Dragon Necropolis, Siren's Grotto, The Hole, The City of Mist, The Accursed Temple of Cazic-Thule and Velketor's Labyrinth. Gameplay in these zones has been improved, based on feedback from players and careful review of the content.

<strong>New filters and chat message options will be added. </strong> We will be separating pet melee messages into their own category. You will be able to send them to whichever chat window you want, or filter them out completely in the Options window. We have also added the ability to send /random messages to any chat window you'd like. There is no option to filter these messages, however, to prevent any loss of the information in cases where it is needed.

<strong>Memorizing spell sets. </strong> We will be adding /memspellset # to make memorizing spells a bit less bothersome. Using this command will memorize one of your saved spell sets. # is the number or name (or shortened name) of the spell set you wish to memorize. Note that if you use a shortened version of the spell set name, it will match the first spell set that has those characters, so /memspellset Dots will find your "Dots and Charms", or "Dots", or "Dotsandstuff" - whichever shows up first on your list.

<strong>Shared Bank gains a Plat slot. </strong> We will be adding a Platinum slot to the shared bank to make transactions between characters on the same account more convenient.

<strong>Rain Spells can be deadly. </strong> Rain Spells have been resisted 100% of the time when an NPC was above level 20 and had less than 10% of its hit points left. We will be removing this restriction.

Also, as a heads up to players that have created their own user interfaces for EverQuest, these are the interface files that we expect to change next week.

** UI Files **

* Changed *
EQUI_BankWnd.xml
EQUI_BigBankWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_ActionsWindow.xml
EQUI_JournalNPCWnd.xml
SIDL.xml
EQUI_Animations.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI.xml
dragitem26.tga

* New *
dragitem27.tga
window_pieces06.tga
window_pieces07.tga

* Removed *
EQUI_JournalTextWnd.xml

Wuwu!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Rain Spells can be deadly. Rain Spells have been resisted 100% of the time when an NPC was above level 20 and had less than 10% of its hit points left. We will be removing this restriction.

[/quote]

That makes them a hella lot more useful.

They're gonna @#%$ up POM, those bastards. I won't forgive them.

Sounds like it's going to be a great patch. Those are some of my fav. zones and I'm looking forward to being able to hunt in them again. I just hope they didn't mess up the overall feel of each of the zones and just upped the cons and changed the drop tables.

PoM will be interesting. I've heard comments about some of the changes, that it's located in Great Divide now, that it's more of a raiding zone, etc. I loved PoM the way it was until I got absolutely sick of having my bind spot there, hunting for stupidly rare quest drops, how it screwed over your melee friends and the bad exp. So, I don't think this change is a bad thing.

Interesting.

I think CoM and Velk's are already pretty much perfect for their intended audience, so I look forward to seeing how they are changed.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> hunting for stupidly rare quest drops, how it screwed over your melee friends and the bad exp. [/quote]

Too bad that is the way ALL zones are now, or have you not played a character from level 1 lately?

SOE has screwed over ALL the classes and the game in general, in the guise of "improving" the game they have really f$%&^%$ over the play in EQ....I can't wait till there is another game out there in the wild...

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>They're gonna @#%$ up POM, those bastards. I won't forgive them.
Bittleaye Arkades[/quote]

Norath to Bittleaye - Norath to Bittleaye. It was already
@#%$'d up.

Why is CT being revamped again? It's nice as it is. Maybe bump up the xp zem a little bit, but other than that it's fine. No one goes there so we have our pick of camps when we go. :)

Tallarain, I guess I'm just not that bitter about the game as you. Why do you still play? If you hate the game that much then go do something else. Don't give the excuse that there just isn't any other game out there. Take your online friends and go play some real time strat games, online poker, scrabble, heck you can even play go fish at yahoo online. Surely, that's more fun than spending so much energy hating eq

Yeah, CoM revamp might be really interesting. I PL'd my little wizzy there and I rather enjoyed the zone.

Although... nothing beats Sol A as a fun PL zone. /sigh There's something about having 20+ gobbies or gnomes running after you and then AE'ing them!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Too bad that is the way ALL zones are now, or have you not played a character from level 1 lately?[/quote]

I disagree.

I've played 3 different characters from level 1 in the past month. I now have a 33 druid, 23 necro and 13 bard. The low end game is great now. The newbie armor quests mean you can actually do quests at low level now that result in something useful (unless you're twinked of course).

Mobs actually drop loot now as well, so the path to level 20 isn't a path of scraping coppers to buy spells anymore (again, if you're twinked, it didn't matter anyway :) )

My bard did the Tranquilsong armor quests in Kelethin and got decked out in a nice looking blue armor set that gets lots of inspects from passers by... and of course that is what is important - looking good :)

The low level game is great IMO.

Agree the newbie game is a lot better. I think the respawning with items should go to at least level 30 though. :p

I played a wee ranger and did the newbie quests. They were fun.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Plane of Mischief changes going to the Legends. The Plane of Mischief, home of the trickster Bristlebane, has undergone an extensive revamp. As one of the most unusual places to visit in EverQuest, this zone will be a very interesting challenge, if you have a sturdy funny bone.[/quote]

No No. This can't be true. Least let me visit old POM for once before they revamp it !! /cry

Oh I don't disagree that there was work needed on POM. But that's not what they've done, at least according to the stuff that's leaked from Test. They've turned it into just another raiding zone, not really different than any other, and in my opinion that will ruin the unique nature of the place.

Rain fix!!!

Hooraaaaaaaaaaaay!

Oh lord... a raiding zone? Booooooo!

Yeah big boooo! Raiding = teh sewk ;)

Unless its 3 groups or less then it will = fun :D

I understand that many people like raiding. That's why there's already tons of raiding content in the game. POM was completely unique in being focused on quests, and on content for soloers and small groups within that quest content. Now it will be a zone just like many others, losing all that made it special to many of us.

I never liked PoM anyway. Too many greens for me and the only time I 'attempted' to explore it I got a headache, literally. The items suck, the exp sucks, and the quests suck so anything they do to it would be an improvement, although I'm not sure I agree with turning it into a raid zone.

It definitely wasn't a zone to everyone's taste :)