Massively^™

Senior Producer for EverQuest Clint "Jourdian" Worley laid out a letter to the dedicated playerbase this week, looking back on developments in the game last year. He also looks ahead to the rest of 2008, teasing some of the updates to the game we can expect to see this year.

The big deal for 2007 was, obviously, the release of the Secrets of Faydwer expansion. Worley sees the expansion as a great success, with particular emphasis on the benefits reaped from their three-month-long Beta period. He states that this year's unnamed expansion (which they're already hard at work on) will receive the same treatement. He found the April Fool's day joke absolutely hilarious, and states that they're looking forward to a new, similarly in-depth quirk in a few months ... though he does note an on/off command will be available for players without a sense of humor.

Read on for more from Worley, including news about live events, bug fixes ... and server merges?

With any new expansion comes the fun of running through a new area for the first time. Of course, this also generally involves getting horribly lost, or running smack into things that may prove to be a smidge too powerful for you. As we understand the pain and horror involved in losing experience, we wanted to bring to light a great map pack available for the new EverQuest expansion, Secrets of Faydwer.

Obsqura (the Friendless Lizard) and Naedion from the guild Raging Fury on the Antonius Bayle server have taken a great deal of time and care in creating these maps -- and making them available to the public for download. For those who are not familiar with how EQ maps work, you'll need to download them and unzip them into your /maps directory in the EverQuest folder on your drive. (And for those concerned about malicious code, you'll be glad to know that EQ maps are purely text files.) Many thanks to them for doing this for the EQ community at large!


[via EQvault]

Submitted for your approval: here's a collation of all our new eye candy this week.

Galleries

EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark

For those inhabiting swank digs under rocks, or those uninitiated in the ways of the Everquest, you may not realize that two major expansions launched today: EQI: Secrets of Faydwer and EQII: Rise of Kunark. We've been following both expansions extensively, so thought we'd round up some of the more notable features for those about to Everquest (we, of course, salute you):

Beta tours

• Everquest Secrets of Faydwer beta tour
• Everquest II Rise of Kunark beta tour

Guides

• Sarnak starter quest guide
• Sarnak character creation how-to
• Rise of Kunark mega information link overload

Video

• Sarnak character creation how-to
• Sarnak dance movie
• Sarnak fire breathing movie

Galleries

• Secrets of Fawydwer gallery
• Rise of Kunark gallery
• Sarnak starter guide gallery

Here we are with our second round of EverQuest: Secrets of Faydwer giveaways for you today! For those of you not aware of what all the goodies are that come with this expansion, here's a quick taste of what players have to look forward to:

• The level cap has been raised to 80! This of course means a bunch of new spells, Alternate Advancement points, and a slew of new armor and weapons to check out.
  
• Over a dozen new zones -- Travel to interesting new areas, find new monsters, and kill them for plat and prizes!
  
• Over 100 new quests added for you to solo or get groups for, including 28 new high-end raids.
• Oodles of new Heroic gear to buff you to heretofore previously unattainable levels of ass-kicking.
  

All you need to do to win one of the three copies of this mega-bundle of Secrets of Faydwer, original EQ and all the expansions to date that we're giving away is to leave a comment below. So long as you're 18+, a resident of the U.S., and everything else covered under the official rules, you're set to go. So what are you waiting for? Get to commenting!

This just in: we've actually been contacted by the fine folks at Sony Online Entertainment, who have given us a veritable plethora of copies of both of their new expansions launching today! This means that we've changed the original prizes from just the one copy we had, to 3 copies -- as well as the prizes for the rest of the day! That said, for EQ2 we couldn't be more excited about this, as some of us were lucky enough to get into the beta for Rise of Kunark. You can trust us when we say that the Sarnak are a wickedly fun addition to the Everquest II stable. The attention to even the little details of the starting area in Timorous Deep on up will impress both old and new players alike. But enough gushing about Everquest II and Rise of Kunark -- for now, anyway. Let's get on with giving you a chance to win your own copy!

This hour we're offering three copies of the EverQuest II expansion, which actually includes the core game and all expansions up to this point! So those new to EQ2 and those who've been around alike will be able to use this prize. Full of win, no? All you need to do is leave a comment below and you could be one of the lucky people who walks away with your very own copy -- and the ability to create your very own snarling Sarnak! You must be 18+, a resident of the U.S. and all the rest of the hoopla from the official rules.

Good luck!

For those of you who also keep your torches burning bright for EverQuest, this giveaway is for you! For this giveaway, we're offering a copy 3 copies of the newest EverQuest newest expansion, Secrets of Faydwer. But don't think that this is only for the people who only own EverQuest already. This expansion actually includes all the prior games in a giant roll up of gaming goodness for both EQ veterans and total EQ newcomers alike.

All you need to do to be eligible for this drawing is to leave a comment before 2:00 PM tomorrow (11/13) telling us what your first ever MMO was and how you got into it? Did your friend call you and tell you to go get it right now or they were going to buy it for you -- or was that just me? Of course, you must be 18+ years of age, a U.S. resident, and all the other official rules stuff. Let us know!

Update: We've just heard back from SOE who has gifted us with some boxed copies of Secrets of Faydwer. So this giveaway has just gotten three times as cool because we're giving away 3 copies of Secrets of Faydwer instead of 1! Stay tuned throughout the rest of the evening for more EverQuest giveaway goodness!

Everquest will always hold a place in my heart. One of these days I will go back. As strange as it may seem, there is a part of my soul that I left in Greater Faydark, high atop the tree city of Kelethin. I think it's the MMORPG place that always felt the most like home to me. Even in my later years and levels I went back to that city every night before I logged off. I wish somebody could identify and duplicate that "feeling" and put it in another game. Until such time, Everquest retains it's crown despite it's dwindling numbers.

To some this may seem like The Ballad Of The Sugar Plum Noob, but the good folks at SOE have kindly published some tips on their site on how to survive this coming Tuesday's patch with a minimum of anxiety or discomfort. To a certain extent, this information is good information for all of us who live in virtual worlds, not just the world of Norrath.

1. Don't let the door kick your butt on the way out. In other words, get off the server before the engineers pull the plug. There's always a possibility of a game transaction being lost if your timing is off. I've also seen cases where a rollback has had to be performed and people who tried to further their characters in the eleventh hour got burned.
2. Physician heal thyself, or at least get a necromancer to help. Sony suggests that even though the servers will attempt to clear corpses during maintenance it's always best to do it yourself.
   
3. Be a shutterbug. The best way to protect yourself from maintenance-induced psychosis when your custom user interface becomes borked is to take a screenshot of it in all of it's pristine (functional) glory before the mayhem begins on Tuesday. A screenshot can be a useful tool for remembering what you had, and what you need to replace.

A definite hat tip is in order to the folks at SOE for their thoughtfulness in publishing these helpful reminders!

MMORPG.com will be hosting a live chat with the developers of EverQuest on November 15th at 7:00 PM EST. There will be a particular focus on the new Secrets of Faydwer expansion. You can either plug in through their web-based chat interface, or connect via IRC in the #mmorpg channel on forthegamers.org.

EverQuest set the stage for the contemporary, DikuMUD-inspired MMO experience. Its subscriber numbers have dwindled over the years but it still retains a hardcore following. The new expansion aims to satisfy some of their cravings for new content, and to win back some old-timers as well.

Also, check out our tour of the expansion.

Watch the official SoE video exploring the new expansion lands, then read below for a write up of my beta tour!

I played EverCrack, uh, EverQuest for 7 years. The game was hard. Death meant loss of experience that would erase an entire week's level gain. It also meant all your equipment stayed on your body requiring venturing back down to the mob infested pit to retrieve it, but this time you're naked and it's 3am. On a school night. And many core game mechanics that we know and love were not developed yet, such as having no way to get gold and items to alts other than to hand them to a random stranger and hope they would be there when you logged on your alt.

The game evolved, making time spent in Norrath not quite so harsh. But it when World of Warcraft launched, I went running to it like the Promised Land: no corpse runs, no experience loss on death, a mail system to move items and cash to alts. It was all good with a side of good. It soon became hard to justify logging on to EverQuest where a 5 hour experience grind could be lost in a few deaths.

So it was with some trepidation that I poked my head back into the game to get a tour of their 14th expansion, Secrets of Faydwer. And I what I saw made me want to come back to the game that I remembered so bitterly and so fondly at the same time.

For those of you just joining us, we're still handing out party favors from yesterday's launch of our site. The fine folks at Sony Online Entertainment were kind enough to throw in beta keys for us to give to you, our soon-to-be loyal readers.

What beta keys, you say? Why, shiny keys to EverQuest: Secrets of Faydwer beta and Everquest 2: Rise of Kunark. All you have to do for a chance to win is post a comment. Not here, silly. In the original contest posts linked below. Posting a comment in the contest posts by 11:59pm EST tonight will qualify you to win. That's it.

The only restriction is that you must already have a paid subscription to the game(s) or else the beta key will be no good. Also, you must agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement so no blabbing to your friends about what you see in the beta until the NDA is officially lifted.

So get to commenting! But not this thread, this EQ: SoF contest thread and/or this EQ2: RoK contest thread. And feel free to enter to win the many other contests we have running today.

Earlier today we announced that we're giving away 15 EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark beta keys. Not to be out done, the fine people of the original EverQuest have also granted us 10 beta keys to give away from their next expansion, Secrets of Faydwer.

Rules for entry are extremely complex and rigorous: just post here. That's right. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post by Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 11:59pm EST and you're entered. We'll randomly choose ten people from the list and send each of them on a one-way trip to newest expansion lands in Norrath.

The only caveat is that you must already have a paid subscription to EverQuest or else the beta key will not work. And also, you will be playing under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so no squealing to your guildmates about all the shinies that await. Of course, the NDA will probably be lifted some time early next week, so you don't have to hold back your school girl glee for long.

So get to commenting so Massively can ship out these beta keys. Never know when we're going to get more coming in.

EDIT: Give-away is over! E-mails have gone out! If you didn't get in, don't despair. The NDA will be lifted in a few days and the expansion will be live on Nov. 13th.

What, 24 hours of Tabula Rasa schwag isn't enough for you people? Fifteen days of action-packed sweepstakes not keeping you satisfied? Fine, then -- we'll have to resort to giving out some beta keys to you greedy mofos. Check back later this morning for chances to win 10 EverQuest: Secrets of Faydwer beta keys and 15 EQ2: Rise of Kunark beta keys courtesy of the lovely folks at SOE. See you soon!