Game Update: Tuesday, October 28 @ 2 AM PDT

All EverQuest Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 2:00 AM Pacific* in preparation for the expansion game update for The Darkened Sea. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately ten hours.

The EverQuest website will also be unavailable for some period of time during this Game Update.

Patch Notes for this update can be found here.

Keep an eye on the EverQuest forums and social media for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

*Convert to your local time

Will the 6 hour HA lockouts and RoF and lower expac XP degradation go into effect with this?

Can you give us an idea on what time we will be able to purchase the new expansion please?

Yes, it is not humanly possible to revert the changes as-is. Nothing will change their minds, it is how it is for the release of The Darkened Sea. This is how they wanted it, otherwise, they would just revert the changes and *not* go forward with the proposed 6 hour lockouts and reduction in stored experience.

When the servers come up / SoE services are restored following the patch, I am 99% sure you will get a popup at server select (possibly prior) prompting you to purchase Expansion 21.

Players will not be able to purchase The Darkened Sea in game until after this game update is complete.

Players will not be able to purchase The Darkened Sea on the website until after this website update is complete.

Players will be able to purchase this expansion by late morning, or early afternoon once the updates associated with The Darkened Sea are complete.

As mentioned in other threads, after this patch there will be 6-hour lockouts on Heroic Adventures. In addition, once characters level past 100 they will receive less experience in content that's associated with the Rain of Fear expansion and content released prior to that. The most difficult content will be what players find more rewarding.

As mentioned in the post here, we have additional updates planned for Heroic Adventures after feedback we received from the community. These changes will focus on providing bonuses to players that seek out challenging content and choose to complete a variety of Heroic Adventures, and less about restrictions against players that choose not to. We'll be communicating these changes with you soon.

The full post on this can be found here: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...-the-darkened-sea.214449/page-54#post-3138571

So by soon do you mean later today?

Hi Roshen, I apologize if the following question has been answered elsewhere. I must have missed it if in fact it is duplicated elsewhere.

With the level cap increase to 105, will the RoF expansion (and thus level 100) be opened up to the Free to Play crowd, or will they still be restricted to VoA and level 95?

Yes. With the launch of The Darkened Sea, Rain of Fear will be moving to be one of the expansions offered to players for free.

Does this mean that the changed xp for ROF and older will not be changing? you did not address that at all.

So basically, this is a confirmation that regular experience after 101 is still going to be destroyed, and there is no plan to revert this in any form?

He kind of did Sojero. The nerfs are confirmed as going in tomorrow/tonight, and the "additional updates" does not indicate that they will be rolled out in any way. I suspect the "additional updates" will be an attempt to make the nerfs more palatable. I also suspect they will fall flat... very flat.... so very flat.

Is this the announcement we are waiting for today?

Thanks Roshen. Instinct tells me that this will actually end up being the best feature of TDS.

Looks like if I want CotF for my long time paid account, I may as wait until TDS is available and just pay for that. But since my income has dropped, it will have to be on just one account instead of all 5 accounts.

How come they timed this expansion during a holiday event? lots of down time for people trying to do events. will the even be continued for a few extra days?

We know that the changes will go into effect with the patch, What I was asking is if they are going to reduce or take them away after when they make the changes to the HA's.

If the pre-announced announcement later today has any good news about the HA lockouts and RoF xp nerf, please don't forget to include a notice about that into the patch notes, so that the players don't think those nerfs are permanent.

I respect the job you do and have done, but man you're the community relations guy and it seems the message we're giving you is either not being listened to or ignored.

If you want this expansion to be a success sales wise you need to announce the lockout timer is gone and the nerf to ROF and lower XP is lowered or gone. You have 50 + pages of people telling you that they want to buy this expansion, but do not believe they can do so when changes you make hurt the game.

I have a serious question that you and no other dev have answered.

If I buy TDS I pay $40 for it and I pay my subscription fee. Why am I being punished for playing my way ? The SOE slogan is "Play it your way" Why are we now being punished for doing exactly that ? If I want to grind heroics I want to grind heroics. Why are you punishing me for doing exactly what you've told me to do ?

Now you want to give incentives for people to mix it up ? Daily and weekly quest that have you complete multiple heroics and gives you a bonus reward for doing so. Say a daily has you do 3-4 different heroics and gives you a bonus reward for doing them. Say a weekly has you do 12 different heroics and you get a bigger bonus for doing that content.

Also daily and weekly kill quest in multiple TDS zones that give you a reward it can be the same currency you get for doing heroics.

If you want us to do TDS content give us a reason to do it don't nerf everything else into nothing to force us to do it that is not the way you make your players want to play this game.