According to a Friday Press Release from Daybreak Games, the company has hired Larry LaPierre, a 14-year veteran of Electronic Arts and former Zynga general manager as well as Chris Wynn, senior director at BioWare, EA Sports, and a lead producer of Microsoft‘s Gears of War series. Both referred to H1Z1 as Daybreak’s “newest franchise” but did not reference other Daybreak games.

The gaming industry is small and its people tend to hop from company to company. As anyone familiar with the gaming industry knows, EA and Zynga both have a tarnished reputation. EA was nominated Worst Company in America in 2012, while Zynga has been accused of wholesale copying of competing games. However the profitability of EA and Microsoft’s Gears of War series cannot be argued. Daybreak has always been great at announcing things, but then struggled to execute and deliver. If I have a hope, it’s that these two hires will bring Execution and Delivery to Daybreak.

EverQuest and EverQuest II have kept the lights on at Daybreak for 17 and 12 years and I hope that these will get more attention and appreciation as well. This is being discussed on the EQ2 Forums.

We have received reports that Daybreak Customer Service is in the process of migrating from SOE’s rickety ticket system to a modern off-the-shelf solution called Zendesk. On the surface this appears to be good news, however there have been some growing pains in the process. Players have reported being unable to check the status of their own tickets, instead receiving a “Ooops, that page does not seem to exist” error. Others have been locked out of the site with automatic IP bans due to some kind of false positive. Also we’ve received reports that customer tickets have been automatically closed with automated responses based on key words in the ticket. For instance if the word “refund” is used anywhere in the inquiry, the ticket is closed and the customer is linked to Daybreak’s NO REFUNDS policy posting. It is also impossible to open a ticket from within Daybreak’s games. All tickets must now be opened at Help.DaybreakGames.com.

Daybreak’s short-staffed support team have been trying to make do and I’m cautiously hopeful that this new software will allow for a little bit more of that personal touch and care that SOE customers were lucky enough to experience for over 15 years.

Community Manager Tony “RadarX” Jones  responded on the lightly used Landmark subreddit:

We’re currently migrating our ticketing system to something much better which yes is ZenDesk. The migration shouldn’t impact anyone’s ability to contact support but if it is please let us know.

Bristlebane Day is back! From Friday, March 25th through Thursday, April 7th, enjoy one new quest, a new collection, more merchant goodies and perfectly serious items to craft, as well as content from previous years. On Friday, April 1st we’ll celebrate The Highest of Silly Days in the Enchanted Lands with our good friend Imenand.

Niami has posted pictures of the new recipe and merchant items over on EQ2 Traders. TLE servers will have a special Bristlebane Day themed merchant, a Gigglegibber goblin, in both Freeport and Qeynos.

Guide Sections:

• Achievement List
• Quest List
• New Content
• Returning Content

Too many alts? Get the Bristlebane Day quest tracker! Print it out or copy it to your own Google Drive by going to the File menu and choosing “Make a copy…”.

From Content & Social Media Manager Dexella:

On Thursday, April 28, EverQuest II will be launching GU 100! This members-only content, designed for highest-level players, will include new zones, content, features, and items. Today, we’re going to journey into the first new zone: Zek, the Scourge Wastes!

From EQ2 Senior Designer Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall on EverQuest2.com and the EQ2 Forums:

Ravaged by the horrors of war, the vast majority of the island of Zek has been unsuitable for habitation by anyone, ever since the Deathfist clan of orcs took control of the entirety of the island. They reduced the once-sprawling Jaggedpine Forest to a mere husk of its former glory, stripping much of the forest down to barren, charred earth, while pillaging the land deep below the surface through their ravaging mining operations. What little landscape remained lush and green was guarded by a band of woodland defenders known as the Green Hoods. Their numbers surged during the Age of Destiny, providing them the manpower necessary to begin striking back at the Deathfist Empire, but their successes would be short lived.

US Servers: 7:00~8:00am PDT | 10:00am~11:00am EDT | 14:00~15:00 GMT | 15:00~16:00 CEST
EU Servers: 7:00~8:00am PDT | 10:00am~11:00am EDT | 14:00~15:00 GMT | 15:00~16:00 CEST

It seems the difference in Daylight Savings Time between the US (which started DST on March 13) and the rest of the Western World (which starts on March 27) has thrown off the calculations in the official announcement, but we’ve got the correct times above.

We have update notes as of 8:37am PDT:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Maldura: Forge of Ashes [Raid]

• Adds in the Captains encounter should now despawn when the respective captain is defeated.

ITEMS

• Animate Core, Obsidian Earrings, Magma Rune and Molten Shard will now correctly add to the Terror of Thalumbra item set.

• Corrected a bug with Understanding the Weak Spots that allowed it to cause Master’s strikes to hit twice.

The monthly Moonlight Enchantments event begins tonight! The grottos open up on the 20th at 12:01am PT and close on the 21st at 11:59pm PT. The time applies directly with no conversion for all servers.

Achievement: Shinies Beneath the Moonlight
Merchant Items: See on EQ2 Furniture | EQ2 Traders Corner | EQ2 Design Gallery

Yesterday’s EverQuest II Spring Update Livestream is now viewable on YouTube. You can learn about Zek, The Scourged Wastes, the new Signature quest, the three heroic instances, and the x4 raid zone all coming on April 28th.

From the EverQuest II YouTube channel:

From the EQ2 Forums:

We liveblogged today’s EverQuest II Spring Update Livestream on Twitch…

EQ/EQ2/Landmark Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Senior Designer Carlos “Gninja” Mora, Senior Designer Chris “Chrol” Garlick, Designer/Systems Robert “Caith” Fouts, and Community Manager Ry “Roshen” Schuller presented a livestream today.

The new Spring Update — Game Update 100 (what happened to GU72?), becomes available to All Access subscribers on Thursday, April 28th. You’ll need membership to play any of the content and to use the items. Beta starts April 4th.

The content starts in a version of the overland Zek known as Zek — the Scourged Wastes. In addition to Zek-based fabled zones (Advanced Solo, Heroic, and Raid zones), the EQ2 team wanted to tell a story by redoing the overland Zek, the Orcish Wastes zone. The overland zone is available in both Advanced Solo and Heroic versions and both versions have good-sized Signature quest lines. The Scourged version of the zone has been completely repopulated with newly modeled orcs. The old “Zek — the Orcish Wastes” is still accessible of course for level 30ish characters.

• In this version, Deathfist Citadel has become Scourge Keep. Based on the same zone but revamped. There’s a new courtyard.
• Level 100 content
• New Cyan adornments and Cloak Gems (purple adornments for cloaks that aren’t War Runes)
• Gear will complement Terrors of Thalumbra gear, mostly slots and things that weren’t upgraded in ToT.
• There are 16 heroic nameds in the heroic zone but you can only kill 6 per dungeon run. Each boss has their own loot table and they require special tricks to spawn like clicking on something. Also a challenge boss.
• “Arena” event you can trigger to kill as many orcs before you die.

EverQuest II has tweeted a reminder that the Spring Update Livestream will be going live in about 45 minutes. We will be liveblogging the event.

Our spring update livestream starts in about an hour! Will YOU join us at 11AM PDT today? https://t.co/KcDFNmI39b

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) March 15, 2016

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Thalumbra

• All collectibles within the Glittervein Mines should be reachable now.

Icy Keep Retribution

• The Icy Sledge is no longer Appearance only, and can once again break past the ice barrier.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT

• Reduced the damage Devastation of War deals to named heroic encounters.

ITEMS

• “Aura of Immolation” no longer resets the ability “Transfer Contagion” or “Divert Breach”.
• Spiked Dragonscale Aegis and Draconic Deflector shields have had block chance added to them.
• Corrected stats on the Dwarven ringmail Tunic.

As you have by now heard, EverQuest Next has been cancelled, and the great purge is underway to remove all trace of the product from Daybreak’s official channels and websites. EverQuestNext.com and the EQNext YouTube channel have been cleared out. Next up is the EQ Worlds App for iOS and Android.

The EQ Worlds app is not something I ever featured or talked about here on EQ2Wire, and perhaps that was an error on my part. I objected to the glitchiness that players reported when they first used the app at SOE Live 2013, and I was less than enthusiastic about an app that requires you to Share things on Facebook to access content. However in exchange for Facebook sharing, players of EverQuest and EverQuest II received in-game rewards, as well as bits of the EverQuest Next story. Maybe it wasn’t a bad deal at all for those who got the app to work.

From Laylaih, Communications Coordinator at Daybreak Games* on the EQ2 Forums:

*a name I have not heard before.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Our next stream is Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 11AM Pacific Time* and we would like to invite YOU to join us at twitch.tv/everquest2

During this stream, the EQ2 team will share highlights from the spring game update that Holly mentioned in her producer’s letter here.

We look forward to hanging out with you on Tuesday, March 15, 2016, and sharing the details from our big game update with you!

Introduced as an addon feature fourteen months after the game’s launch, Player vs Player combat in EverQuest II has always had an identity crisis.

In spring 2006, open-world PvP was bolted onto EverQuest II’s core game through the introduction of several open world PvP or “red” servers — Darathar (UK), Talendor (DE), Gorenaire (FR), Venekor (US RP), Vox (US), and of course Nagafen (US). In 2009, the population of Venekor, a RP PvP server, was merged with Nagafen. With the collapse of LiveGamer player auctions in 2011, Nagafen absorbed the Vox population.

Despite significant and later sporadic development effort to keep PvP relevant, Nagafen’s population gradually dwindled to a point last year where just a handful of daily logins were being reported. Last fall, the difficult decision was made to migrate those remaining Nagafen players to the decidedly non-PvP world of Antonia Bayle. All did not seem lost for PvP diehards though…

With last summer’s launch of Deathtoll, a Time Locked Expansion PvP server with travel restrictions, limited escape options, and access to Battlegrounds almost completely blocked, things were looking up for open world PvP. Thousands of TLE PvP characters were created within hours of the server’s launch. It briefly seemed like a second TLE PvP server would be needed, and indeed the name Bonemire was reserved, later depriving the consolidated Butcherblock/Crushbone/Oasis server from a non-punctuated name choice.

Yet despite massive early enthusiasm, the underlying problems of a bolted-on system remained. EQ2 was never designed for PvP and despite sometimes Herculean efforts over the years to maintain a semblance of balance, skilled players always find the right combinations of class, gear, and abilities to make them unbeatable, frustrating others until they leave. With the departure of more and more well-meaning but outmatched cannon fodder, the remaining kings of the mountain squabble over titles and wonder why their easy prey has permaquit.

PvP’s shrinking audience may ironically be attributable to listening to player feedback by EQ2’s developers. On more than one occasion, an extremely vocal minority has dictated forum discussions which led to hefty PvP patches that only relocated PvP lopsidedness rather than stamping it out. Regardless of who or what is to blame, PvP’s 10 year run in Norrath seems to be at it’s end.

On April 9th, Deathtoll will merge with Stormhold (the TLE PvE server currently unlocked up to the Kingdom of Sky expansion). Harla Dar, the Akella Online-managed Russian PvP server, will be folded into Splitpaw on March 30th. Cross-Server Battlegrounds will remain for those who need their PvP fix.

US Servers: 7:00~8:00am PST | 10:00am~11:00am EST | 15:00~16:00 GMT | 16:00~17:00 CEST
EU Servers: 7:00~8:00am PST | 10:00am~11:00am EST | 15:00~16:00 GMT | 16:00~17:00 CEST

From the EQ2 Forums:

US  & EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 7:00AM PST* for an update. Estimated downtime is approximately one hour.

From Caith on the EQ2 Forums:

From the EQ2 Forums:

Attention players: we will perform a general maintenance beginning at 5:00AM PST* on Tuesday, March 8th. The amount of downtime may vary, depending on the service. If the downtime extends beyond four hours, we will update this thread.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Game logins for all Daybreak games
• Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games
• Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes.

Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance.

~The Team at Daybreak

Event season is in full swing and next up is Brewday! This year the event will begin at 12:01am PT on Thursday, March 3rd and conclude 11:59pm PT on Wednesday, March 17th. There are new merchant items, one new collection, and a new tradeskill book this year, in addition to previous content.

Niami has posted pictures of the new recipe and merchant items over on EQ2 Traders. The TLE servers will have a special Brewday themed merchant, a boozy celebrator, in both Freeport and Qeynos.

Guide Sections:

• Bar of Brell Locations
• Achievement List
• Quest List
• New Content
• Returning Content

Too many alts? Get the Brewday quest tracker! Print it out or copy it to your own Google Drive by going to the File menu and choosing “Make a copy…”.

Roshen has posted an EU server consolidation FAQ on the EQ2 forums. It also mentions the RU servers merging into Splitpaw, and Sebilis merging into Antonia Bayle.

EverQuest II is best with friends! Over the course of the next few months, we’ll be bringing players from our EU servers together. We’ll be consolidating servers, as we did with the US servers last year.

We want to wrap this up this spring, and this is the time frame we’re currently working towards:

• Russian servers (Barren Sky and Harla Dar) are scheduled to be merged with Splitpaw on Thursday, March 31, 2016.
• By the end of April, we plan to consolidate Splitpaw, Storms, and Valor into a new server!
• We’ll be merging Sebilis (our Japanese server) into Antonia Bayle. This is scheduled to happen after the EU server consolidation.

Russian characters and guilds on these servers will be required to be renamed into names that work within the English alphabet. In-game text and all support for the game on these servers will be provided in English.

After the merge of our Russian servers (Barren Sky and Harla Dar), you may see strange symbols or boxes when looking at the list of homes to visit, the location of items on the broker, or players in your guild. This will be the case while these characters are being renamed into names that work within the English alphabet.

Players should pick up soulbound (NoTrade) items from shared housing (such as Guild Halls) BEFORE the merge. This will prevent losing ownership of placed items during this merge.

We’re happy that our EverQuest II players will continue to have a home as they continue their adventures in Norrath. We appreciate your continued support!

Check out the entire FAQ here.

UPDATE: Maevianiu addressed some language concerns:

Everyone will be able to chat, and shout and etc in any language. It is just the names that we cannot support, we looked into redoing all of our translation engineering to support multiple languages, but it was too much for the resources we have available. So all of the game text will be in English, and character names will be in English alphabet.

Akella also posted their own announcement for the Russian server merges. You can thank Google translate for Splitpaw’s voracious appetite:

From the EQ2 forums:

It’s time to stock up on blue marble – the Neriak City Festival returns to Darklight Wood from March 1-7! Spend City Tokens on local specialties, generic festival goods, appearance clothing, or food & drink. Make sure all your characters have finished the Neriak Postage Collection, speak to Kella Swampfoot to assist with festival quests, and achieve 89 seconds or less in the local Aether Race to earn the Fearless Flyer title.

WHEN: 12:01am PT on March 1st – 11:59pm PT on March 7th
WHERE: Darklight Wood, outside Neriak, /loc -554, -53, -74
QUESTS: Special Delivery, Special Order Crafting, Special Order Gathering
ACHIEVEMENTS: Delivery Ahoy, Harvesting Hoopla, Kella Caffeinated, Requisition Acclamation
MERCHANT ITEMS: EQ2 Traders | EQ2 Furniture

From EQ2 Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee on the EQ2 Forums:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to tell you exactly what is going on with the TLE servers.

Itemization

We’re done with global adjustments to Kingdom of Sky loot. We know that some items simply do not measure up, and we are absolutely fixing/adjusting these on a case by case basis as we find them (such as the Gnorble earring brought to our attention today).

In this time, we have done a thorough pass on Echoes of Faydwer loot to assure the progression is significantly better than KoS and to make sure raid loot is absolutely better than heroic, heroic is better than quest, etc.

From the EQ2 Forums:

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Maldura: Forge of Ashes [Raid]

• [eq2u]Signet of Pure Terror[/eq2u] now correctly requires a Stone of Ashenfell Power or Stone of Greybeard Power as a purchase requirement.

ITEMS

• Psionist Crowns can now be upgraded through crafting using either original crowns or newly dropped crowns. Required component is now any crown of that armor type.
• Psionist Helms that were previously upgraded using the Mindstone Crystal can now be crafted into the new version of the crown. The recipe book has had the new recipes added.
• New armor drops* now have a descriptor added to their name for clarity.

Caith added:

ITEMS

• The potency and crit bonus of Echoes of Faydwer dropped and quested rewards have been adjusted to match new progression.

* The new raid and heroic drops added on February 17th are having their names changed slightly so they can be viewed side-by-side in game (and as a side benefit, they will no longer conflict on EQ2U).

From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums:

Hail Norrathians!

It’s going to be another great year for EverQuest 2! The team is excited to be working on new content updates as well as already being waist-deep on our next expansion, all coming this year.

We spent January getting our plans nailed down and are busy getting ready for a big content update for members this spring. This update will have new fabled dungeons and places to explore packed with quests (timed ones too!), key chests, adventures, and awesome stories.

For more news and details, join us for a livestream on Tuesday, March 15 at 11AM PST on twitch.tv/everquest2 and we’ll show you what’s in this game update and answer your questions live with the team!

Here’s your first hint of what’s coming in this spring update…

 

Move over old orc, the Scourge is in town!

Like the merges we did for US servers a few months ago, we’ll be moving ahead with the server merges for our European servers this spring. Our goal of combining these servers is to build and foster a vibrant server community. We know there may be questions about the European server merges and we’re working on building out a FAQ so players can know what to expect. Feel free to ask any questions you have now, but know we may need a bit of time before we can provide all the answers. We’re grateful for your patience and support and we’ll continue to keep you updated so our players have plenty of notice on the timing of these upcoming merges.

Continuing a time-honored tradition in EQ2, we’ll have new additions to our upcoming live events, Brew Day and Bristlebane Day. When those events roll around this year, make sure you join the festivities and get your holiday-themed rewards while you can!

Hang on to your class hats… there’s plenty more to come!

Update from Roshen:

This won’t be a “campaign” with a price associated with it.

Our spring game update will have new fabled dungeons, and other new zones. You’ll need a membership to access these zones, and the more interesting drops that come from these places will have the prestige tag on those items.

The purpose of New Content in any MMORPG is to provide additional length to the “treadmill” so that players who revisit heroic dungeons or raids always have new things to do. New zones provide new rewards that raise the bar and keep that loot chase going. It is totally expected that when a new content update or expansion is released that previous items will be trumped by new ones. However we’ve seen something new and unexpected since the release of the Terrors of Thalumbra expansion.

In an update on January 20th, existing Weapons and Jewelry items were removed from the loot tables of current enemies in raid zones and then newly upgraded Weapons and Jewelry items were added. These new weapons and jewelry had new names.

In an update on February 17th, existing Armor pieces had their Crit Bonus and Potency slightly upgraded, then removed from loot tables while newly upgraded Armor items were added with hugely upgraded Crit Bonus and Potency. This new armor had the same names as previous items.

There is no doubt that the Terrors of Thalumbra raid gear at launch was hardly worth getting out of bed for. Clearly something had to be done to itemization and we’ve been assured that this was the best way to do it with the time available. However there are several concerns with this approach of replacing rather than upgrading items inline.