16th Anniversary, Heroic Adventure changes, and Testing

Greetings, Norrathians!

It's cool and rainy here in San Diego, which is about as wild as our winters get. We understand that much of the rest of the country is under a blanket of snow, and a thick blanket to boot. If you or your loved ones are affected, we hope you are staying warm. Pull up your chair, grab a cup of warm cocoa, don your fuzzy socks, and allow us to explain what to expect for the next few months.

Anniversary Event Schedule

EverQuest's 16th anniversary celebration is nearly upon us! Though, it may be more accurate to say that it's already begun. You can get a head-start collecting anniversary currency by tackling the "War Games" mission in the Plane of War, which may not be a bad idea, as the (Special Celebratory Goods) vendor has a few new unique wares to offer. The main event, seven new Player-Designed Missions, kicks off on the 16th. Like the other anniversary events, these missions reward currency, but there are rumors of hidden bonus rewards if you approach the missions in a certain way or accomplish a side goal...

Our planned event schedule for the next few months:
2/25 - "War Games" mission in Plane of War (6 weeks)
3/16 - 16th Anniversary Player-Designed Missions (6 weeks)
3/18 - Brew Day (2 weeks)
3/25 - Bristlebane Day (2 weeks)
4/1 - Stomples Day (2 weeks)
4/15 - 14th & 15th Anniversary Player-Designed Missions (6 weeks)
4/29 - 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, & 13th Anniversary and Fabled NPCs (6 weeks)

Heroic Adventure Changes

We wanted to let the community know about some upcoming changes to the Heroic Adventure system. After our next full update, experience bonuses (like the Lesson of the Devoted, Learner's Aura, and Bottles of Adventure), will apply to the experience earned when the Heroic Adventure is completed. In addition, mercenaries will get a much larger experience gain at the completion of a Heroic Adventure.

Testing the New Loot System and New Player-Designed Missions

And last, but certainly not least, a big thanks to everyone that has been putting the New Loot System through the paces on Test. Several good changes and bug fixes have come from community testing and there's no way to overstate how much we appreciate your feedback. The system will be releasing soon(tm), very soon(tm). Likewise, thank you to everyone who ran through the Player-Designed Missions and provided feedback. We've put in a lot of fixes, tuning changes, and clarifications based on testing results.

Keep the good feedback coming!

Please let us know what levels the different events are for. Thanks.

Please test these new missions thoroughly.

Do the experience bonuses do anything for killing npcs in the instance that are not needed for task completion?
It would be nice to be able to hit lesson and clear the zone, do the final hail and get credit for all of the mobs killed instead of just getting double xp for completed steps and still nothing for any mobs you killed.
Also, if you hit lesson, complete the first step after killing a load of mobs that are in the way, and before you complete step number 2 your lesson is over, do you only get double xp for completing that first step?

Sunk costs fallacy.txt

How many rounds of 'fixes' for the exp nerfs are needed before admitting that they were a bad idea in the first place?

The daily HA missions were a great idea, more time should be spent on encouragement like that. That was a change that actually made the game more fun.

But this is the 3rd or 4th change to fix unexpected problems from exp nerfs. Are you even close to being even on time if those nerfs had just been undone instead of coming up patches to cover up created problems?

None of those exp nerfs have made the game more fun, interesting, or challenging for me in any way shape or form. And they keep getting MORE dev time spent on upkeep. Lesson, EXP pots and merc exp was working fine with kill exp. But now time has been spent partially undoing the lesson + quest exp nerf from a few years ago. Except all the quests it used to work with are nerfed, lol.

Any news on fixing the mixed up items on Plane of Knowledge vendors?

We've been ironing out the bugs & having the tasks tuned gradually to be more accessible & beatable for the last 2 weeks. They've been on Test for awhile & the devs (Hludwolf) have been working with us directly to get them all in top shape. Same thing with the Advanced Loot System.

I believe the 16th anniversary tasks are all for 75+ & scale to the highest level person in the instance upon that person zoning in.

Will there be any double xp weekends for the Anniversary??

No anniversary raid?

instead of listening to the customers about heroic lockouts you dig in more. Great way to retain players.

Relax dude, they are working on making changes to it. Give it some time and see how things turn out before jumping all over them and proclaiming your everlasting hatred.

OMG I can not wait until I can get the Shimmering Black Pearl aug the 16th can not come fast enough ....

This is why I love playing EQ , always something new or something old too do

Yimin

What it is? Share!

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=123281

What unique looking stats that haven't been seen anywhere else.

Hope this gets you too link for Shimmering Black Pearl ...

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=123281

Yimin

Heh... Just noticed that.

I think someone on this team or maybe the whole team is suffering from Escalation of Commitment on this XP nerf and some other things as well. For those that do not know what EoC is a short definition

An increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information.

Many an organization has suffered because a manager determined to prove his or her original decision right continued to commit resources to a lost cause.

Just revert the XP nerf this is BUS/MGMT 101 stuff.

The True Jonas Aug.

I'd also like to know when Fabled are actually going live. I'm not even going to try and assume where that might fit in to the schedule.

If it fits in the charm slot, I'll take copy + paste almost any day

And a big thanks to those testing the new 16th Anniv. missions... from the feedback in the bug threads, it probably would have been a small disaster without all your help and input!