Calthine over at ZAM posed a challenge on the forums. Can you level a character from 1-80 in a day? The surprising response was a demonstration that a character could be leveled from 1-80 in 5-7 hours.

Check out this article over at EQ2 ZAM.

Game Update 54 included a change to the appearance of cure potions. Instead of Arcane, Elemental, Noxious, and Trauma cure potions all having a green appearance, Gninja changed them to use different colors. These aren’t new graphics, as this would require an art build, but the change was much appreciated. However, the four types of cure potions now share the graphics of several other potions in the game.

EQ2Wire tinkered around in Photoshop for an hour and came up with some totally new cure potion icons and posted them on the EQ2 Forums to gauge player reaction. There was an overwhelming response requesting our icons!

Because there is no way for us to replace the existing cure icons with these new graphics without the ripple effect of a lot of potions in-game suddenly looking like cure potions, we were stumped. Fortunately Xalmat came through and, with some research on EQ2Interface, EQ2Wire is thrilled to present a technique to replace your cure potion graphics with ours.

We are getting reports that inactive EQ2 accounts have been reactivated to coincide with the launch of the Will of a Tyrant game update. Folks are reporting that their cancelled accounts are now showing as active for the next 3 weeks.

It’s unknown why this has been kept a secret or not communicated, but we thought it would be worth posting.

If you are feeling poetic, you might be able to get bumped to the top of the Sentinel’s Fate Beta list. Head over to EQ2 Forums and check out the contest to write a Haiku and maybe get into beta sooner rather than later!

If you’d like to see a complete chart of all the Chronomage Missions in the order they are given as well as the rewards (house-placeable plushies), check out Elquinjena’s writeup at Kithicor.org.

EQ2Players.com has always had some features locked away behind an optional $2.99/month subscription. The most notable of these features for me have been looking up Alts and Item Discovery information. The rest of EQ2Players.com has always felt rather unfinished to me, especially the oddly formatted Alternate Advancements display.

While EQ2Players.com has recently seen renewed developer attention in the last few months (check out the EQ2Players Forum), it’s premium features have always been a bit skimpy to justify the $2.99/month subscription in EQ2Wire’s opinion.

So we were impressed by today’s news that, starting December 17th, the extra fee for EQ2Players premium features will be dropped. Now all players with an active EQ2 subscription (either the regular EQ2 subscription, or the premium Station Players account) will now have access to EQ2Players.com features for no additional charge.

Link to the Announcement (and Discussion) on EQ2 Forums

Welcome to the first Reader Survey for EQ2Wire. Depending upon participation and feedback, we’ll hopefully have one per month. This survey will be of particular importance to frequent Twitter users. 🙂

Survey after the jump:

If you attended Fan Faire 2009, you may have watched the Jace Hall production “EverCracked”. It is a humorous documentary about the history of EverQuest, and the slightest hints about EverQuest Next, the 3rd EverQuest game currently in development.

Today marks the debut of the epic documentary EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest, available exclusively on IGN.com. The five-part weekly series, hosted and produced by Jace Hall, chronicles the trials and tribulations leading to the development, launch and success of the genre-defining massively multiplayer online game which celebrated its tenth anniversary in March 2009.

EverCracked! celebrates EverQuest’s legacy by taking a look at the past, present and future of the franchise. The film includes never-before-seen footage and interviews with industry moguls and longtime players. EverCracked! details the events, products, personalities and art that graced the world of Norrath over the years, with many tongue-in-cheek moments that befit EverQuest’s own sense of fun and humor.

EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest Debuting at IGN.com

Note: No EQ2 content!

I was posting some BBQ recipes for baby back ribs and grilled chicken breast on another forum and thought some folks here might like to read ’em. If you’d like more, post a Comment. Baby Back Ribs & Grilled Chicken Breast recipes after the jump.

Abbreviated quote from Rothgar (EQ2 Forums thread):

At 7:00am this morning our export script experienced a crash.

We’ve restarted the export process as of 7:00am PST on different hardware and are monitoring it closely.  The current impact is an extended downtime for Venekor players of roughly 12 more hours.  For Nagafen players, this would mean a delayed maintenance schedule, but hopefully not an extended downtime.

Follow the news of the EQ2 PvP Merge on EQ2 Forums:
Farewell to Venekor

Nagafen/Venekor Merge!

If you’ve been following the EQ2 Streaming Client announcement thread, you’ll know that Rothgar is very excited about this new feature coming to EQ2. Remember, this is an optional client which will allow players to jump into EQ2 in as little as 5 minutes rather than waiting for a 5-10 hour download.

So far, the streaming client delivers the most basic experience. It delivers content to the screen as fast as possible, sometimes before the game is even really ready for it. As soon as there is enough data to draw a zone, the zone appears. However this may mean other players, armor sets, enemies, etc. may all still need to be loaded before the character can safely move around. For example, players arriving at the Character Select screen start out with no appearance until the data is loaded.

The first grand step has been taken, now it’s time for the next step — Adjustments. First is setting some minimal limits before a zone will load. Then setting certain things to have priority to preload at certain times.

Here’s Rothgar‘s update:

We’re actually already working on this.  I’ll go ahead and fill you in on the things we are still trying to do in the next few weeks.

• The patcher will continue to download assets before you hit the “Play” button so if you walk away from the computer it will continue working.  The assets it downloads will be a prioritized list starting with character select assets, then starting zone assets.
• We will force download of the default character/race during the zoning into character select.  This way you don’t start character select with a missing model.
• During the race-selection part of character select we will fetch the other races in the background
• During the class-selection part of character select we will fetch the other class assets in the background
• While you’re in a starting zone we will prefetch assets to destination zones.

We should have another update going to test server today with a feature intended for slower connections.  Aggro mobs will render as a “red ghost” if they can’t be drawn within a certain amount of time and we’re still waiting on their textures to download.  The goal is to let you see the mobs that would attack you as soon as possible if you’re on a really slow connection.

Thanks for all the great feedback so far!  Please keep it coming.

From EQ2 Forums:

We are proud to announce the release of our new streaming client into beta!

The streaming client will allow players to get into the world of Norrath faster than ever before.  We’d like your help testing this new technology.  Please check out the announcement in the Testing forum and let us know what you think!

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=461076

Some of the key points of Rothgar’s posting (please go read the whole thing if you are interested):

We’ve recognized for awhile that the current size of the EverQuest II installation (about 10gb) is a pretty large barrier to entry for many people.  We’ve seen the posts on the forums where many players excited about trying the game never make it in due to the large download and sometimes unreliable patcher performance.

When the streaming client leaves beta we will not be forcing it on any existing players.  You will always have the choice of running the existing patcher and downloading all assets prior to entering the game.  The streaming client will provide a nice alternative for new installations or for computers that you don’t update often.

We’re looking for as many players as possible to download this new streaming client and give it a try.  We’re asking that you do a fresh installation into a new directory and see how fast you can get into the game.  The streaming client is currently available for the Test Server only.

Our marketing department has an aggressive campaign over the next few months leading up to the expansion with the primary goal of acquiring new players for EverQuest II.  The streaming client is an important part of this campaign and we would love your help evaluating this new technology.

Early Results

Already, some players have reported being able to start the EQ2 Streaming Client, create a character, and log into the game and start playing in as little as 5 minutes. Compare this to the existing 10GB download which even on a very fast cable or fiber connection could take 5 or more hours.

Lucan D’Lere is now back up on the previous hardware.

Rothgar fills us in:

Lucan up!

Sorry again for the issues this morning and those of you that lost some progress during the maintenance.  We learned a lot from the migration.  You can’t imagine how big of a step this is behind the scenes.  Well, those of you in IT probably can. 

We’ll let you know our plan for round 2 as soon as we have the migration process fixed.

Commentary

Believe me Rothgar, I do. 🙂 Having migrated FeldonCentral from shared hosting, to VPS, to a previous dedicated server, to its current hardware, yes, hardware migrations are painful and just when you think it’s going to kick over, another surprise stabs you in the heart…

Butcherblock and Nagafen are currently unlocked. They are rolled back to their state at 5am. Any quests, progress, loot, etc. you acquired after this time has unfortunately been lost.

Lucan D’Lere should be up shortly.

Another attempt will be made to upgrade EQ2 servers to 64-bit platform in the next few days.

It turns out that those Database Upgrades announced for today for Butcherblock, Nagafen, and Lucan D’Lere were in fact complete replacements of the server hardware with 64-bit servers. This is very exciting news, as this has the potential to solve a lot of lag and performance problems. However all has not gone according to plan.

Rothgar posted yesterday:

All three (Butcherblock, Nagafen, Lucan D’Lere) are getting new hardware, latest DB version and upgrade from 32 to 64 bit.

Rothgar reported early today that Nagafen was back in operation:

The server is back up and you have new database hardware.  This should help a lot with database heavy tasks such as zoning, broker transactions, etc.

Keep in mind that all we upgraded at this time was the database.  This is a big improvement but its not going to be a fix across the board for all types of lag.  We’ll continue to look at other lag improvements for these issues though.

Gunthore, a player on Butcherblock, pointed out that Butcherblock server is still down.

The server (Butcherblock) did come up on schedule, but people were having problems logging into some characters, so they locked the server, but people were still able to play who were logged in. I logged out around 11 or so.

Rothgar is currently using this thread to provide updates on the situation:

We’re getting these reports from the other servers as well, so it looks like there is an issue with some characters.  We’re looking into it now to determine if it was a data-transfer problem or a code problem related to the new DB version.

As soon as we know more we’ll let you know the course of action.  Best case, we make some tweaks on our side and those characters will be accessible.  Worst case, we’ll have to take the servers down and re-copy data from the old database.

Continued:

We’re going to go ahead and lock all 3 servers, Nagafen, Butcherblock and Lucan D’lere until we have the issue resolved.  This is just a precautionary measure should we have to roll-back to the data from about an hour ago.  We don’t want you to lose more time.

I’ll keep this thread updated when I have more info.

Unfortunately, today’s attempt to upgrade Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere was unsuccessful and SoE are now in the process of getting us switched back to the old 32-bit hardware in use before the upgrade. Unfortunately, some folks were able to play on the upgraded servers for as much as 4 hours. Any progress/loot acquired during this time will be lost. Here’s Rothgar‘s announcement:

Hi everyone.  We’ve found the problem and have a plan of action in place.

What was the problem?

The process of copying the data from the old database to the new database had issues with specific characters.  Mainly these were older characters with large amounts of data associated with them. All of their data didn’t copy correctly which caused them to not be able to load.  The same behavior occured with other database record types, such as housing records, where their associated data was very large.  This caused some house zones to fail to load as well.  This is why some players received different error messages.  You might have been attempting to log in a character that was fine, but he was camped in a house with a problem.

What is the solution?

Our database engineers will need a little more time to find out why the migration process had issues with these specific records.  Once that issue is solved, we will perform another migration and test these characters specifically to ensure that problem is fixed.  We don’t have an ETA at the moment, but need to be prepared for this to take a couple of days.

What do we do in the meantime?

In order to get everyone back online again, we are going to revert back to using the old database which is still 100% intact.  The data in the old database was frozen at the time we went down for maintenance.  So this means anything you did early this morning will be rolled back.  We’re very sorry that this had to happen.  Unfortunately we can’t risk the time or data by copying backwards from the new server to the old server.

How do we keep this from happening in the future?

We are documenting our testing processes to be sure to include characters and houses that meet the critiera that caused this problem in the first place.  In the future we will have specific test cases that will keep this problem from occuring again.

How does this affect the Venekor -> Nagafen Merge?

If we can repair the migration process quickly, we hope to not impact that timeline.  However we must also plan for the possibility that the delayed database migration might cause us to delay the merge for a few days.  Hopefully it will not come to that.   We’re all very excited about getting you on the new hardware and completing the merge as soon as possible, so we are doing everything we can to make that happen.

So again, I apologize for the rollback and the downtime associated with this maintenance.  We’re starting the process of reactivating the old database servers and hope to have you back up in an hour or two.  As soon as we’ve got the issue with the migration process fixed we will post a revised timeline for the new maintenance.

Commentary

There have been some complaints that here are these great 64-bit servers in the pipeline, and that it would be rolled out very slowly. First server to be upgraded was Nagafen, then if it proved successful, Venekor would be merged into Nagafan and then we’d start to see this technology roll out to other servers, eventually reaching the server that most desparately needs this upgrade — Antonia Bayle.

So it’s very unfortunate that today’s attempt to get 3 servers rolled onto 64-bit was a bust. I remain patient and optimistic that in the next few days we’ll see a successful upgrade to 64-bit.

From EQ2 Forums:

Starting at 5am PDT, tomorrow Thursday October 15th, Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere will be brought offline for upgrades to the database.

We estimate the downtime to be about 5 hours and servers should come back online about 10am PDT.

Thank you for your patience and we apologize for the inconvenience.

And that concludes the EQ2 ZAM Chat.

Guests were:

• Alan <Brenlo> – EQ2 Producer
• Brett <timetravelling> – Dungeons/Content
• Nathan <Kaitheel> – Live Events/Quests
• <Gninja> – Quests, Zone Design, Live Events
• Greg <Rothgar> – Lead Programmer
• Paul C. <Frizznik> – Mechanics
• Paul M. <Cronyn> – Lore, Content, Quests
• Emily <Domino> – Tradeskills

Rough Chat Logs of this event are now available at EQ2 ZAM.

Some of the topics that stuck out to me:

• Brenlo: At the moment we have no plans to (have) LON cards (drop from mobs). That is why we went to giving each active player 5 packs a month.  We like the current delivery method as it gives every player the cards regularly.
• In response to the idea of changing Adventure class (for example, a high level tradeskiller not satisfied with the adventure class they chose), Rothgar replied with: This is something we’ve talked about and understand that it would be a desired feature. However, we don’t have a timeframe on it and haven’t worked out the details.  We’ll have some more discussion on it and see if we can work it in soon ™.
• In response to a question about more PvP options on PVE servers and giving casual PvP battlegrounds, Brenlo replied with: I would look for a big announcement in the very near future.
• With regards to Shaders, Rothgar advised us: We are still working hard on the Shader 3.0 system.  This is a huge amount of work to convert all of our thousands of existing shaders into the new model.  We still have some challenges to overcome and we’re still tweaking performance.  We don’t have a date yet as to when we will push it to Test, but as soon as we feel comfortable with the final product, we will let you know.
• Winwin chimed in with this question which I’m sure many of you would like to know the answer: Do you guys have a tentative date for the race change service on station cash? The answer? Tentatively scheduled for October 20th.
• And for those of you who might have heard about the EverQuest II Complete Collection box coming out on the 19th, note that it does not have an in-game item. It is meant to get boxes on the retail shelf and attract more new players. New players would get 60 days of free gameplay.

Regarding Class Balance, Aeralik chimed in with these answers:

• Summoners will see some signifcant changes to reduce the number of pet lines.  Summoners will have one fighter pet line and one dps pet line in the summoner tree. The dps pet line will work on scout/mage pets. The int line will then transform into something like the summoner version of the rogue strength line.
• Rogues will see the wisdom line changed to be more inline with current itemization.
• The (priests) cure lines are all seeing a number of changes.  We are also looking at individual abilities make sure they are desirable.

and one of my questions:

• What role (if any) will Armor and Weaponsmiths have in the expansion? Mastercrafted items would have to be incredible to be desirable at their classic level of 82.  Will we see level 90 mastercrafted gear become important, as other games are doing?

got the reply from Domino:

• We’re not planning a *completely* different direction for mastercrafted gear at this point, however we’re definitely aware that it’s going to have to  be balanced assuming that many people will be wearing at least some shard gear.  It’s something I’ve been working with Fyreflyte to balance, and we’ll probably need to continue the balancing based on feedback during beta.
• Both armor and weapons will definitely be seeing a lot more nice blue stats, for one thing.  And I know I can count on you and others in here for honest and helpful feedback!

and in relation to Item Degradation:

• Fendy:  Can we have any more details on how item degradation is going to work?  When can we expect to hear more?
• Frizznik: We are looking at the system now. It is a work in progress so we can’t give exact details of what it is right now because we are still working them out.  We are trying really hard to make sure that you don’t lose overall power from one level to the next, and will want to get items that provide better power gains for you.  We will definitely be providing information in advance so will have notice of what it is. When we know, you will know.  🙂

Here’s another cool question that got answered only in #EQ2FFA:

• Artemiz: Should we expect more raid style scripted encounters in the heroic zones for Sentinels Fate like the ones in the Shard zones for TSO or something more casual players will find fun as well?
• timetravelling:  Yes and Yes? The scripted encounters have actually been quite popular. One of the big pieces of feedback we received though was the desire for more ‘casual’ content, and we’ve created quite a bit of that as well!

and about Antonia Bayle:

• Rothgar: As soon as we get the Venekor merge behind us we will be looking at upgrading the DB hardware for AB.

Again, this is just questions I picked out that I thought would appeal to EQ2Wire readers. I will be doing a Survey soon to find out just who my audience is.

Where do the Questions Come From?

The questions asked in the EQ2 Dev Chats come from user submissions. Developers who participate in the chat see the COMPLETE LIST of UNFILTERED questions that ZAM submits. They see the best and the worst. The fluff and the hard, controversial questions. They go through and decide what questions they can answer. Generally these are not “When are you going to fix Brawlers?” or “When are raids not going to suck so much?” or questions that will get a “we are still looking into that”.

I know there were a lot of complaints in the #EQ2FFA (free for all) chatroom saying that controversial questions weren’t asked or answered.  They receive a ton of questions in advance, and they usually get through all of these, and then start trying to get through the questions asked during the chat. You have a much better chance of getting your question in if you submit it a few days in advance. They may also be able to get you a better answer. If you want your question to get asked, submit your question in advance. I do.

I do not work for EQ2 ZAM. I do not work for SoE either. It’s helpful to be independent sometimes. 🙂 I do hang out sometimes in ZAM’s EQ2 chat channel just to shoot the breeze. I do submit questions to Calthine as they come to my mind. I also try to think of questions that the developers can answer. ANYONE can submit questions to Calthine @ ZAM.

If folks think I’m getting favoritism or think that my questions have a better chance, then by all means post your question to me as a Comment, or send it to me using the new Contact Us form. I’ll save em up, clean them up so they might get answered, and submit them. If I already know the answer, I’ll send you a reply. 🙂

Calthine has posted on the EQ2 Forums that it’s time for us to start thinking of and suggesting questions for the next EQ2 ZAM Developer’s Chat today:

Y’all are cordially invited to the next exciting EQII ZAM Developers Chat!  Members of the EverQuest II Developer and Community Teams will be there, so bring your questions!  If you’d like to submit questions in advance, send e-mail to calthine (at) allakhazam.com (subject Dev Chat).

• Thursday, October 8, 3:00pm PDT <– NOTE this is one hour earlier than usual
• In the #EQ2 channel on ZAM IRC
• General chat during the actual event will be in #EQ2FFA

	For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM.
	If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can use our Java Chat connector.

Memory Issues

Despite the updated EQ2 Client, some players are still reporting issues with running out of memory in EQ2.

One workaround users are reporting, is to periodically minimize and then maximize the EQ2 application. This seems to reclaim some memory. The EQ2 dev team continue to search for the cause of these issues and intend to release another updated EQ2 client in the next few days.

Chronomage Missions

Thanks to Atan for testing out and reporting back on the Chronomage Missions. If you read EQ2Wire, you know that 3 new NPCs have been added in East Freeport (on the Inn patio) and Qeynos Harbor (across from the docks) to encourage playing level 15-70 content and provide additional rewards.

• The first of these Quellthulians NPC will mentor you down (without another player present) in 5 level increments from level 10 to 75 for a small fee (5 g and 100 status).
• A second NPC offers one of 37 Chronomage Mission quests to go back and explore a dungeon ranging from level 15 to 75.
• The third NPC offers Rewards including some appearance armor (requires 10,000 faction with the Quellthulians) but more importantly, a house item related to the aforementioned zone. There are presumably 37 different house items you can claim by completing these missions.

When Game Update 53 went live, once you completed one of these missions, you were locked out from picking up any others, no matter how many days you waited. Today’s Hotfix corrects this, and each quest is deleted at midnight, allowing you to do a new quest each day.

Just remember that now that the quests are being deleted each night, you should return to the Quellthulians immediately after completing each mission and pick up your decorative house item (if you want it), because it will not be available after the quest disappears from your quest journal.

Note: No EQ2 Content

So what have I been doing instead of updating EQ2Wire? Why getting ready for Talk Like a Pirate Day. 🙂

How? By going back and playing the Monkey Island games of course!

Set in the Carribean, these hilarious point-and-click adventure/puzzle games started in 1990 and have continued since. The latest are Tales of Monkey Island, and the first adventure is available FREE as a gift on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition came out just this summer and was completely rebuilt from the original 1990 game with 1920 x 1080 HD graphics, awesome music, and full voiceover. If you played the original, it’s a revelation to see it in HD. If you didn’t, well, it’s just a fun point-and-click (no typing!) adventure and the humor is laugh-out-loud funny. Insult Swordfighting, ghost-slaying Root Beer, what’s not to love? They even added a Hint system so if you can’t figure out a puzzle, you can get a nudge in the right direction by pressing H, rather than running to GameFAQs. (Steam download for 10 bucks!)

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge — Although it is now the only Monkey Island game not available with voiceover and updated graphics (it’s a VGA 320 x 240 256-color game), this game is quite deep and complex and the surreal ending cannot be missed. At the end, I promise you will be saying “What the hell just happened?” and wanting more.

Curse of Monkey Island — After Ron Gilbert (creator of the Monkey Island games) left LucasArts, the remaining team had the impossible job of picking up the Monkey Island storyline and trying to explain the bizarre ending of MI2. They stepped up to the plate and delivered a hilarious, epic game spanning two CDs that explained (almost) everything and even earned a nod from Ron Gilbert that CMI was “pretty good”. This is the first cinematic Monkey Island game, all hand-painted stylized 2D graphics and animated cutscenes. Just remember… We’re a band of vicious pirates, a sailin’ out to sea; and when you hear our gentle singing, you’ll be sure to turn and flee!

Escape from Monkey Island — This is the one I’m diving into today. It is the first Monkey Island game to feature any significant 3D, namely the characters. The backgrounds are still stylized 2D. I’ll update this as I get into EFMI. This was also released on the Playstation 2.

Tales of Monkey Island — After a 10 year gap in the Monkey Island saga, and after LucasArts dissolved their adventure game division, most of the staff moved on to form a new outfit — Telltale Games. They’d been wanting to produce a new Monkey Island game, and they recently got their chance. And Ron Gilbert is even involved, if tangentially. Rather than one large game, Tales of Monkey Island is a series of episodes, released monthly. The first two episodes have been released and three more are expected.

The first chapter in Tales of Monkey Island is free in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Note that Monkey Island 2, Curse of Monkey Island, and Escape from Monkey Island are all long since out of print and can only be found for aftermarket purchase on eBay. Until they go back in print, or get remastered in high definition (one can live in hope), a Google search for “complete Monkey Island Saga” may serve you well.

Gaming History

Before I started playing EverQuest II, I played a lot of adventure/quest type games. King’s Quest, Monkey Island, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness. These solo adventures that require solving puzzles and unlocking new areas is what got me into gaming (along with side-scrollers like Castlevania, and semi-RPGs like Legend of Zelda). MMOs are a very recent addiction for me.

Back next week with updates on Game Update 53 and other things EQ2.

Besides, the EQ2Flames server can’t take much more of this. 🙂

EQ2 is undergoing maintenance for a few hours, so here’s a free kitten…

Remember folks, EQ2 (and all SoE games) will be going down starting at Midnight (3am EDT) tomorrow for Server Maintenance (This is not Gu53). All games will be down for 12 hours (that’s 3pm EDT). [Read More]

However all is not lost, the Allakhazam EQ2 Chat on IRC will be up and running and you might see a few SoE folks popping in from time to time. Check it out!

	For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM.
	If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can chat here.

If you have been wanting to hit the Test Copy server, but the PvP ruleset makes you queasy, you’ll be happy to know that the server will be reverting to PvE ruleset after tomorrow’s downtime.

See you in the chatroom!

An unintended effect of the August 26th Hotfix is that Quest Sharing is now completely broken. With the exception of daily Missions, quests of any kind and any level cannot currently be shared. The window appears for the other player, and they can click Accept, but the quest never gets added to the Quest Journal.

Little is known of this new project. It’s existence was revealed in the Jase Hall production ‘EverCracked’. Mentioned by Smedley.

Platform: PC, PS3, or both

EQ1 and EQ2 subscriber numbers are both up so would presumably be a third concurrent game in the series.

Project has no official title.

Stay tuned!