4/4/23 11:00 AM
Welcome again, Adventurers! A lot has happened across the lands of Norrath from the heights of the Everfrost Peaks to the vast Underfoot Depths. We here at Darkpaw Games have been creating and designing, enhancing, refining, and trying to put a final polish on new content as well as familiar features.
If you've been following along our route of the 2023 Roadmap we shared back in January, you may be surprised when you notice that so much has already happened in EverQuest II! Here are some excellent examples: we've unlocked three raid zones in Renewal of Ro, introduced new content and merchant items for Erollisi Day, Chronoportal Phenomenon, Brewday Festival and Bristlebane Day, and launched the Beta for Game Update 122: Empire of Antiquity (GU122). Whooo!
That's not too bad, considering we've only just arrived in April. But wait now, there's more, because you know we're all about epicness and exciting adventuring and questing and the like, so...
Dragons of Rime Armor
Playing on Kael Drakkel is about to become even more friendly! Characters on Lore and Legend servers will receive a powerful enhancement that will allow them to take on heroic and many raid encounters solo!
Furthermore, accounts will be able to earn a new green adornment that scales between character level 50 and 125, and unlock the Kael Drakkel appearance armor sold by Ronald Gleneed, the Lore Token Merchant. The appearance armor and new adornment are unlocked account-wide and may be bought from Ronald Gleneed in both Freeport and Qeynos Province District on all servers. While on the Kael Drakkel server, you will find a whole slew of new housing items to spend Lore and Legend Tokens on to make your stay even more comfortable.
Between April 6 and April 25, we will be kicking off these permanent changes above by making the Kael Drakkel server available to all players—even those without membership—and granting a Jumpa-Lope pet to all accounts who log into the Lore and Legend server!
Next, we'll now be boisterously bouncing down the very obvious beaten path, thanks ever so much to the Beast'r bunch for that help. Hmmm... I wonder if we should learn basket making after the Eggstravaganza? Don't dwell on that too long because soon after they return, we're launching GU122: Empire of Antiquity.
For you PvP fans out there, at the end of April, we're opening Zarrakon, our newest TLE PvP server. But we're not even close to wrapping things up because we've got the very anticipated return of the Summer Jubilee, and with it a new inventory slot designed specifically for equipment obtained through live event content.
Let's take a peek at what has happened and what’s coming in the next few months.
Completed:
Worth noting and about the Tarinax merge into Antonia Bayle: The process went smoothly, and players were able to jump into game a few hours earlier than anticipated. Not only that, but we also caught a long-standing bug that had been complicating characters after server merges. We were able to address that bug during maintenance.
If you didn't catch the article yesterday, the Swag Store is here! It holds t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and a massive gaming pad featuring the Renewal of Ro key art. So, grab some loot and check the store often for updates to our selection!
Upcoming later this year:
Speaking of GU122: Empire of Antiquity, I am beyond elated to supply a sneak peek of the key art.
Looks familiar... where have I seen that?
Empire of Antiquity will usher in a huge new contested dungeon, new Adventure quests, new Tradeskill content, and new collections. More details about GU122 will be revealed on April 11, 2023 as it launches, so stay tuned!
We'd also like thank all you stalwart forums and Discord members for your persistence in giving us feedback. Later this year we will be introducing Class Balance Forums. This will be a new way for you to more actively take a role in what adjustments and changes get made for class abilities and making the process for how development resources are divvied up for those processes more transparent. There are a lot of details still to nail down, but the current working plan of this process will be 1) class specific suggestion post gets made, 2) community discusses and rates it, 3) highly rated suggestions are added to a shortlist and have a time investment added by development, 4) more community discussion to react to the time investment required, 5) suggestions on the shortlist have a vote opened on them, 6) suggestions with the highest vote above a cutoff threshold get added to the schedule for implementation. As you can see, this will be a tiered and phased process, but we hope it'll give you more agency and transparency in how adjustments and changes for class balance are made.
Lots of exciting updates are coming in the next few months so be sure to keep an eye on our news feed for more details! For now, we hope you’re enjoying Bristlebane Day (just a couple of days left for the event!), and as always, we absolutely appreciate you being part of the EverQuest II family.
Prepare to soar where only eagles dare,
Jenn Chan
Head of Studio
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