Update Bugs 09/18/13

For me, the Mercenary window is not there at all when I log in - even if Merc is up. Once I open the window - its stays open. I thought this was happening to everyone, its very common in my guild - there was a lot of chat about it when it first appeared.
I have custom UI, but use the default merc window.

Weird, edit is not working ...
Additionally, I almost always have offline vender up when not on my main - so I am always switching from a character without a merc to on that may have a merc on the same account. I almost never log my main and then go right back to him.

The merc UI window was there this morning and wasn't closed out. I had it minimized on both of my accounts. However my merc disappeared on me this morning upon zoning out from the Guild Lobby to Plane of Knowledge and still wasn't there upon zoning back into the Guild Lobby.

This happened on my character Vanrau on Xegony.
9-26-2013 10:07am CST - Zoned from GL to PoK, merc is gone.
9-26-2013 10:13am CST - Zoned from PoK to GL. merc is still gone.
9-26-2013 10:20am CST - Zoned into old Guild Hall, merc reappears.

Hope this helps.

I just ran this test.

I logged in my main, waiting for my offline vender to go away, and - as usual - my merc window was missing. I opened the window and unsuspended my merc, then logged to desktop. I logged back in with my main and the Merc window was still there (yay).

I logged my trader back in offline mode. Then logged my main back in, kicking the trader. Got back in and my merc was still up, but the Merc window was gone.

You are probably using Firefox, so press the More Options button (editing works there).

Logged in today (PoK) and merc window was gone, as usual. Brought up merc window and merc showed in group and not in zone. Stances were gone but options were available (suspend etc). Zoned to guild lobby - same thing. Zoned to guild hall and everything is back to normal. Zoned to Argath and didn't check. Zoned to Valley and merc is gone again as per above. I flipped to the switch merc window and noticed that it said 1 of 6 slots. I have 2 purchased from SC for a total of 3 merc slots. The missing merc was in slot 2. Possibly this is the non-zoning merc issue. Are the rest of you using multiple merc slots?

I have not had the issue of the merc disappearing, but I find the merc window issue easy to reproduce:
Log in, have mercenary and merc window. Camp normally, drop from char select to server select and then come back into the game. The merc will be there but the window is always gone. This will be a nice fix, because it is irritating.

First, this vanishing merc syndrome is not new this patch, its been happening for quite some time. I have experienced this merc bug a number of times. I cross a zoneline, and simply find my merc is just missing -- as if it got lost in process of zoning. Merc no longer shows as a member of the group. The Stance tab has become empty -- none of the stances are listed. The button label displays Suspend, even though the merc is absent, and clicking the button does indeed swap the label to a grayed out Unsuspend and starts a timer countdown. Once the timer expires and the Unsuspend button becomes available again, clicking the button does not produce a mercenary.

Once it freaks out like this, camping (to character select does the trick, to desktop not necessary) is the only thing I have found to restore normal operation. For me, this has been highly intermittent, and I have zero suggestions how you might attempt to reproduce the condition.

My issue is only with the Merc UI window. It closes when you zone or enter world. Occurrance: seems to be 100% of the time but there may be rare exceptions. First noticed it a couple patches back. Have not noticed other UI windows experiencing this issue.

I have personally never experienced the zone-and-merc-disappears issue, but my regular groupmate does.

I've been having the disappearing mercenary issue for more than a year. It only happens sometimes, my estimate is once every 10 to 15 attempts to zone; I would guess that I don't see it in about half of my play sessions. If I then zone, the mercenary is back in the group after landing after zoning. Sometimes more than one zoning is needed, my record is about five zonings in a row that was needed to bring the mercenary back.

It happens in various zones / continents. There doesn't seem to be a specific action that needs to be done in the zone I'm leaving; sometimes it happens when zoning out after standing at zoneline for a few seconds, sometimes after prolonged exping in a zone.

When it does happen, the mercenary in the Party Window becomes shaded, and any attempt to bring the Mercenary window up ends with the message "You must own a mercenary to bring this window up" (see screenshot below).

I keep logs of what I do in Everquest. This issue first happened to me on March 30th 2012 (i.e. last year, this is not a typo). There is no message in the logs that would explain what happened (i.e. no rogue messages like "you dismissed mercenary etc.")

The weirdest thing is that it only ever happens on one of my three accounts. I three-box often, and often each character has a mercenary up. It never, ever, not even once, happens on two of my accounts. IT ONLY EVER HAPPENS ON ONE OF MY ACCOUNTS. This is unlikely to be a coincidence; since I started to see this issue more than a year ago, it happened about 50 times on that one account, and ZERO times on the two remaining accounts. This can't be a coincidence.

If you want to examine the characters and/or accounts, these are the names of the characters on each of the three accounts - all on Xegony:
- Aeia: one account/character that never experienced this issue
- Arland: the other account/character that never experienced this issue
- Bunnielle: the account/character that experiences the issue. The mercenary name is Levolie. The character has another mercenary, but I very rarely use that mercenary, so I can't say whether the bug is tied to an instance of a mercenary, or a character/account.

If it would help, I'm willing to do some more tests - zoning a lot of times, petitioning / sending an email to some address when it happens and waiting with the mercenary in the bad state until someone can investigate, or something similar. Just let me know if something like that would help you. (I'm a European player and play on European evenings.)

This is a picture showing how the group window looks when the issue happens to me:

Oh yes, yes. Seeing that image I realized I communicated some incorrect info in my last post.

When this condition occurs, my merc is not missing from group. The merc name does indeed still appear in the Group window, but the name/bar is faded as if the merc is out of zone -- just as Aeia's screenshot depicts. Also, as Aeia indicated, I have tried zoning back to see if my merc was somehow hanging out at the other side of the zoneline, but the merc is not in the previous zone either.

As I stated previously, the button label reads Suspend as if the merc was still alive and present, even when I zone back to check.

Have a similar intermittent merc bug. One of 3 accounts about every 5th to 6th time I port group the chanter's merc stops off someplace for a beer. is in group but not in zone. Cannot switch to another merc buttons says need to buy a slot even tho the account has all 6.
Only way to cure this is to suspend merc and wait 5 minutes to activate, then can switch to a different merc.
I don't switch mercs very often others are for specif uses chanter normally runs with caster dps.
One thing I suspect might be part of issue is that the caster merc tends to stay farther out from group than other types, is it possible this is a missed the port effect like leaving an OOR player behind?
My AWOL merc oly seems to occur with ports not regular zoning via portal.

May be related to the merc issue, last week I was grouped with my other half we zoned and when we had both finished I was just grouped with 2 mercs and he was on his own.

Oh yeah, the split group bug happened to me as well. Three players, each with a mercenary, in a group. After zoning, two players and three mercenaries remained in a group, and the third player (whose mercenary was still in the first group) was alone outside of a group. I have a picture about how that looked too; note there are two EQ windows on the screenshot: top-right corner of the screenshot shows the first group with 2 players (Aeia+Arland) and Bunnielle's mercenary Levolie, and left of it is the screenshot of Bunnielle's window.

This split-group bug happened to me only once or twice, compared to more than 50 instances of the missing merc bug. Just like all the instances of the missing merc bug from my previous post, this happened to Bunnielle and her mercenary - never to any other character/account I play. It happened more than a year ago; times posted below are not typos.

This is the chain of events that led to this problem (excerpts from EQ log, with lines prefixed with "--" explaining what I was doing with my army of 3):

-- Bunnielle's log:
-- The whole group is zoning. In the new zone, Levolie (Bunnielle's mercenary) is simply missing (as described in my previous post).
[Sat Aug 25 13:34:19 2012] Aeia begins to cast a spell. <Succor>
[Sat Aug 25 13:34:24 2012] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
[Sat Aug 25 13:34:51 2012] You have entered Sarith, City of Tides.
[Sat Aug 25 13:35:18 2012] You must own a mercenary to bring this window up!

-- Bunnielle's log:
-- Bunnielle attempts to zone, to make the mercenary appear again.
-- Instead of fixing, the group is split into two: Aeia+merc, Arland+merc,
-- Bunnielle's mercenary in one, and Bunnielle alone.
-- Please note the weird messages about joining a group, becoming a leader
-- of a group, and most importantly the message about Levolie joining Bunnielle's
-- "solo group", despite the fact that Levolie the mercenary is still in Aeia+Arland's group.
[Sat Aug 25 13:37:44 2012] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
[Sat Aug 25 13:38:14 2012] You have entered Valley of Lunanyn.
[Sat Aug 25 13:38:17 2012] You have joined the group.
[Sat Aug 25 13:38:17 2012] You are now the leader of your group.
[Sat Aug 25 13:38:17 2012] Levolie has joined the group.

-- Bunnielle's log:
-- Then Bunnielle tries to zone again. Nothing changes, the group remains split.
-- Aeia attempts to reinvite Bunnielle to the original group.
[Sat Aug 25 13:38:32 2012] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
[Sat Aug 25 13:38:56 2012] You have entered Sarith, City of Tides.
[Sat Aug 25 13:39:41 2012] Aeia invites you to join a group.
[Sat Aug 25 13:39:41 2012] To join the group, click on the 'FOLLOW' option, or 'DECLINE' to cancel.
[Sat Aug 25 13:39:51 2012] You cancel the invitation to join Aeia's group.

-- Aeia's log:
-- Aeia, just after sending the invite to Bunnielle, is seeing the following message:
[Sat Aug 25 13:39:28 2012] You invite bunnielle to join your group.
[Sat Aug 25 13:39:29 2012] There are too many players to merge those two groups.

Bertoxx server. Bloody Kithicor mission: Bitter Victuals

Step: Insert each of your S'tauna Poison Vials into a Victuals Chest found in the supply huts 0/6 (Old Commonlands)

I put all 6 poison vials into different chests. But it only updated 4/6. It wouldn't be so bad if the NPC would give you more poison vials on request. But he won't and we had to drop the mission and start it over.

In addition, if you kill Aithoris Nightstalker before you are told to, you have to wait for him to respawn and kill him again. This makes no sense. It should update regardless.

Oh, yeah, the above mission on the second attempt the chests accepted the poison and got past that part.

But it was then bugged in that the mobs don't respawn.

We killed Aithoris Nightstalker before we were told to because he aggro'ed when we were killing spiders.

[Mon Sep 30 21:42:20 2013] Aithoris Nightstalker has been slain by Duncanhines!
[Mon Sep 30 22:24:32 2013] by this time, neither Aithoris Nightstalker nor any of the dark elves in the chest camp he guards respawned.

In the past (when they could kill us) he and the elves respawned constantly. So this is not normal.

So we could not complete the mission and had to drop it.

That's twice we tried to do the mission and failed twice due to it being bugged.

Now you can say, "This is a very old mission and we don't really go back and fix because who does it." But you have to do this mission for Void progression, which is needed for some spells and augments that you can not get any other way and level 100 players still use.

Since this patch started I have run into a severe bug wherein my graphics card usage jumps to 100% and the game grinds to a halt until I exit EQ and restart it.

I do not know how to reproduce it on command, but it seems to happen if I tab out of EQ and do something else that requires the videocard like watch a clip on youtube. (Maybe because I watched it full screen?).

So far it has only happened when I have had multiple instances of EQ open, but that may simply be a coincidence.

My graphics drivers have not been changed since the patch, so it is definitely EQ causing the issue.

finally fixed thanks!