As the warm days of summer loosen their grip and give way to the cool breeze of fall, it begs a reminiscing of how far we have come this year. There was already so much accomplished by the time the July Producer's Letter came out that to think there has been more is downright dizzying. Night of Shadows is still available at 25% off, but only until Oct. 9, 2023, at 11:59 PM PDT. This discount applies to all editions (Standard, Collector's, Premium, and Family & Friends).

Fundraising is underway for Extra Life, and we are over halfway to our goal as of the writing of this letter, I have no doubt we will smash our goal and set next year's bar higher still. We have some fantastic group, individual, and fundraiser incentives. Be sure to check out the Extra Life Guide for how to join Team Darkpaw if you have not done so yet.

With that being said, let's look at what has happened since the last Producer's Letter shall we?

Completed
July

    Scorched Sky event, bonuses, and new bags
    Coirnav was merged to Vox

August

    Living Legacy Raids with new Metamorphs
    Extra Life Incentives revealed
    New Quests and Mission implemented for Stone Cold Summer

September

    DirectX 11 API Port on Test server


Now for the part you've been waiting for...information on EverQuest's 30th expansion: Laurion's Song!

A door appears, and the heroes of Norrath walk through to find a warm and cozy-looking building. Light from the windows illuminates a clearing in a forest. Music and voices, as well as the tantalizing smell of cooking meat and mead, drift in the air. The inn's presence invites adventurers to rest and revel after exhausting and dangerous exploits.


Welcome to the Realm of Heroes, the place where the greatest heroes go when their adventures are over. Nobody remembers the last time anyone entered or left this place. Can you discover what the mystery is that lies under the façade of comfort and revelry?


Laurion's Song features a level cap increase to 125, new zones to explore, new raids, quests, and missions, and much more. Also new for this year, take advantage of Alternate Personas when you can swap between different classes quicker while retaining your current inventory, crafting skills, and flags.

Beta and pre-orders for Laurion's Song starts on October 10, 2023. It's going to be your first chance to get a sneak peek, help us test, and earn yourself a sweet beta reward.


That's not all that's coming soon. The DirectX 11 API port, which has been on the Test server since mid-September, is on track to make its way to live servers this month. Next month is the Extra Life Game Day, as well as the Extra Life server bonuses! The Feast of Giving and Raid, Raid, Raid will return next month, so prepare yourself for fun in November! December will see our annual Frostfell and New Year's events, as well as this year's expansion launch.


Upcoming
October

    2023's Expansion Beta + Pre-order
    DirectX 11 API port goes live

November

    Extra Life Game Day - Help us raise funds for the Children's Miracle Network.
    New Content for Feast of Giving

December

    2023's Expansion Launch - EverQuest's 30th Expansion!

As the sounds of 2023 begin to slowly fade into the background over the next few months, I'll begin work on the public 2024 Roadmap. EverQuest has a big year coming up and I cannot wait to share what we have in store for everyone. So, with that, this producer's letter has come to its end.

Until next time, sit back, relax, have a drink, and listen to the song of the trees,

Jenn Chan
Head of Studio

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EG7 on September 20th put out a presentation on how the business is going to Investors, we wanted to cover some of the Highlights in regards to EQ and Daybreak Games.


Monthly Active Users


EverQuest 1 is only the 4th of 7 for the Daybreak Games in terms of MAU. It seems to have risen closer to the 100kish Range from 67kish range that the last numbers we could see were around the time they were bought, during the Covid Pandemic Years, even up to the end Month, May 2023 it still remains in that MAU range.

These are basically double the numbers of EverQuest 2.


Monthly Revenue Trend


Even though EverQuest 1 is 4th for MAU, it is 2nd for Revenue, generally 1.5-2x the EverQuest 2 numbers.

Even though DCUO is so high, this doesn't go into Costs which DCUO with last numbers was quite higher then EverQuest 1 (the License probably doesn't help).


Acquisition


Sony's focus being in the console business and not the PC business, plus in the 7 year period prior to EG7 buying Sony Online Entertainment, SOE lost Sony around 400 million dollars. In the year prior to being purchased SOE was down 32 million, after EG7 bought them and reorganized (that is let go like half of the staff) they rebounded it to up 12 million instead.

We still don't know how much EG7 paid for SOE, but potentially got a deal from the losses. Nothing about why the losses were so huge as well, maybe related to the Sony Hacks in that time period, or EQ3 having to be canceled/rebooted like 3 times or their other handful of failed games.


Revenue/EBITDA


This chart is overall Daybreak Games Revenue/EBITDA performance with the bump being from Magic The Gathering Online in 2022.


Contributions


Of the Developers/Publishers that EG7 owns, Daybreak still ends up contributing the most revenues.


EverQuest 3


EverQuest 3 is not a guarantee, they have not committed to it just yet, but there are some estimates if they do commit, which from the 2025 Development Start, we will probably know either way in 2024.

For game style, there was mention of From Software over 13 years perfecting its formula to make Elden Ring which earned 1 Billion as the peak of the formula.

Suggesting that people are more open to Hardcore experiences, EverQuest 3 would probably be closer to the Original EverQuest back when it was more of a Hardcore Sandbox MMO instead of the Theme Park Modern MMO style.


Misc
They have pulled back from the bigger investment in their current games (no Remasters), basically suggesting the only extra investments will be in the form of cheaper things that keep the games running another 10 years or more, such as 64-Bit, UI Engine or DX11 style of upgrades (or if the game can raise its revenue).

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All EverQuest Live Servers will be brought offline on Wednesday, September 20th, 2023 at 6:00 AM PT* for an update. Downtime is expected to last approximately 6 hours.



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).


Achievement Changes: https://achievements.eqresource.com/achievementshistory.php?mdy=09202023
DBStr Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/dbstrhistory.php?mdy=09202023
EQStr Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/eqstrhistory.php?mdy=09202023
Faction Changes:
Spell Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/history.php?mdy=09202023


Update Notes:
September 20, 2023
_____________________
*** Highlights ***
- Improved the loading time of Overseer agent windows.


*** Quests & Events ***
- Pit Fight (Raid) - The event will only message you about failing the Unshattered achievement once, and will no longer do so when you have not failed that achievement.


*** Spells ***
- Bard - Corrected the spell timer for Nord's Disdain.
- Magician - Corrected an issue that prevented Remorseless Servant (Level 105) from being properly focused by Enhanced Minion XXV.
- Necromancer - Corrected an issue that prevented Call Skeleton Mob (Level 105) from being properly focused by Enhanced Minion XXV.
- Player spells with Stun and SpinStun effects that do not have explicit level caps set in data will now stun targets up to level 55 in all zones, rather than level 52 in some zones and level 55 in others.
- - The stun levels will be more clearly displayed in their spell descriptions.


*** Overseer ***
- Improved the loading time of Overseer agent windows.


*** Progression Servers ***
- Encounter Locked NPCs will now properly check whether they should attack a player's charmed pet.
- Encounter Locked NPCs will no longer unlock, when picking a target outside their lock group, if someone on their hate list can still attack them.
- NPCs spawned with a loot lock on servers with the Encounter Lock ruleset will now also be Encounter Locked to the person that spawned them.
- Fixed an issue where the Legacy Experience Bonus was reduced after losing a level, even though the account still had at least 10 max level characters.


*** Miscellaneous ***
- The /follow command now supports the name of another player, as an argument, in place of targeting that player.
- Added the /swarm command with arguments "qattack", "attack", and "leave".
- - These commands have identical effects as the /pet qswarm, /pet swarm, and /pet swarmleave commands.
- Fixed an issue where elemental damage was not being applied appropriately with ranged attacks.
- Added the /extralife command that will open your browser to the Darkpaw Games team page for Extra Life.


*** UI ***
- Fixed an issue that would cause slow loading of items in tradeskill containers when experimenting.
- Fixed an issue that would cause items in the hotbar to not update properly.
- Added a Reset button to the Barter Search window that clears the search text.
- Added a search box to the Dragon's Hoard window.
- Fixed an issue where UI windows moved with the right-click arrange options were not saving their new positions.
- Split the Achievements chat filter into Achievements (You) and Achievements (Others).
- Added a chat filter for Food and Drink messages.
- Added item quantity to the confirmation message when looting a stack of NO TRADE items.

- Changed -             
EQUI_BarterSearchWnd.xml
EQUI_DragonHoardWnd.xml


*** Previously Updated ***
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Stone Cold Summer event from running on some eligible progression servers.
- Fixed a client crash when closing the Parcel window.
- Added a replay timer of 2.5 days to all Agent of Change instances.


- The EverQuest Team

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Grab your thick socks, hot cocoa, and some snacks! You’re going to need them for the adventuring and running around you’re about to do all over Norrath. Much like years past, we’re heating up bonus chances to rare spawns, faction gains and losses, lockout timers, and experience gains. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect from this year’s event:
 
All times for when specific bonuses start is 12:00 a.m. PDT, and they all end at 11:00 p.m. PDT.

    100% bonus chance for rare creatures to spawn and to faction gains and losses – September 12 to September 25, 2023
    50% reduction in lockout timers – September 26 to October 9, 2023
    150% experience gains – October 10 to October 23, 2023

Fall Fun is all about fun, so get out there and have . . . well, fun!



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).

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Hail, Norrathians,

You've worked hard enough this year, so have a seat in your favorite chair and join us in-game! From now until September 5, 2023, at 11:00 p.m. PDT, get extra experience gains with 100% extra XP doing anything in game. 

Thank you for being part of the EverQuest family and for all you do throughout the year. Enjoy!



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).

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All EverQuest Live Servers will be brought offline on Wednesday, August 16th, 2023 at 6:00 AM PT* for an update. Downtime is expected to last approximately 6 hours.



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).


Achievement Changes: https://achievements.eqresource.com/achievementshistory.php?mdy=08162023
DBStr Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/dbstrhistory.php?mdy=08162023
EQStr Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/eqstrhistory.php?mdy=08162023
Faction Changes: https://factions.eqresource.com/factionhistory.php?mdy=08162023
Spell Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/history.php?mdy=08162023


Update Notes:
August 16, 2023
_____________________
*** Highlights ***
- Added an option to use the old UI instead of the new UI. See the UI section for more details.
- The expansion requirement for purchasing and using custom Guild Halls and Guild Trophy Tribute has been reduced from Veil of Alaris to House of Thule.


*** Items *** 
- Added the quest flag to Humming Finsternacht Rune, Whirring Clockwork Rune, Glowing Prismatic Rune, Humming Fleshwrought Rune, Whirring Archaen Rune, Glowing Entropic Rune, Scintillating Obsidianite Rune, Sparkling Precandescent Rune, and Twinkling Hyperfiligreed Rune.
- The Ice Encrusted Katar, Velium Threaded Katar, Luclinite Ensanguined Katar and the Phantasmal Luclinite Katar have all had Sympathetic Vampiric Draw added to them.


*** Tradeskills ***
- Fixed a client crash caused by running out of inventory space while tradeskilling with Make All.
- Tradeskill combines completed with Make All now place items directly into your bags instead of being automatically put away from your cursor. If you run out of room while using Make All, the items will be placed on your cursor. If you are holding item(s) when it's time for a new combine, they will be placed into your bags.
- If the zone and client go out of sync when doing tradeskill combines with Make All, there should no longer be a 12 second delay.


*** Quests & Events ***
- Rallos Returns: Both tasks will now lock once Rallos Zek is defeated. Also, the Council will do less damage and Rallos will do a bit more damage.
- One of Our Own (Task): Added a 30 minute replay timer.
- Pit Fight (Raid): No non-grimlings will gain the benefits of being within Hargil Bloodpoint's aura. Achievement failure messages will be given when the first failure happens.


*** Spells ***
- The various guild and fellowship banner spells will no longer stack with each other.
- Refined the description for the Superior Standard of Power.
- Increased pet HP for the following swarm pet spell lines at all ranks:
- - Bard - Pests of the Piper
- - Beastlord - Bark at the Moon
- - Shaman - Pack of Aina
- - Monk - Cloud of Fists
- - Necromancer - Call Skeleton Swarm
- Updated the focused pets for the following swarm pet spell lines. They are once again more powerful than the unfocused pets.
- - Beastlord - Bark at the Moon
- - Necromancer - Call Skeleton Swarm
- Fixed many spell descriptions that were incomplete or inaccurate.
- Added messages that will indicate when your pets are summoned with the benefit of a pet focus.
- Adjusted the damage values of Mana Recursion spell line to make up for the twinproc changes.


*** AA ***
- Increased pet HP for the following swarm pet AAs at all ranks:
- - Bard - Song of Stone
- - Beastlord - Attack of the Warder (renamed from "Attack of the Warders")
- - Druid - Spirit of Nature (renamed from "Spirits of Nature")
- - Magician - Host of the Elements
- - Necromancer - Rise of Bones
- - Necromancer - Swarm of Decay
- Increased max pet count for the following swarm pet AAs:
- - Ranger - Pack Hunt (max pet count is now 2 starting at rank 4)
- - Shadow Knight - Chattering Bones (max pet count is now 2 starting at rank 13)
- - Shaman - Spirit Call (max pet count is now 2 starting at rank 2)
- - Wizard - Call of Xuzl (max pet count is now 2 starting at rank 3)


*** Overseer ***
- Overseer event quests are now shorter! Specifically, duration timers now range from 3 - 6 hours. This change applies to all Overseer event quests, including the new quests for Stone Cold Summer, Feast of Giving, and next years Tempest Festival in addition to the previously released quests for EQ's Anniversary, Scorched Skies, Nights of the Dead, and Frostfell.


*** Progression Servers ***
- Davorre Bloodthorn is available starting in classic.
- Living Legacy will now be available on servers with Secrets of Faydwer unlocked.
- Corrected an issue that could cause stationary NPCs to not regain the ability to proximity aggro players after being Encounter Locked.
- Updated how Kalim`Kar the Gold (in Seeds of Destruction) and Dwekvard Gravelpick execute their spell rune exchange.


*** Miscellaneous ***
- Corrected multiple issues that could cause an NPC's death to be credited to someone that didn't actually do the most damage to it.
- Fixed several issues related to the spell buff windows that could cause the client to crash if a spell is attributed to a corpse or a player that's not in the current zone.
- The expansion requirement for purchasing and using custom Guild Halls and Guild Trophy Tribute has been reduced from Veil of Alaris to House of Thule.


*** UI ***
- Fixed an issue where the quantity window would initialize partially off-screen.
- Resolved an issue that would cause items in bags to flicker constantly. Flickering still may occur if you have many, many bags open, but should be less obvious.
- Fixed item power source bars to show in all bags/banks.
- Fixed the mail icon on the selector window always showing unread mail when using the older UI.
- Tweaked the quantity window so it can now be escaped.
- Added an option to use the old UI instead of the new UI. You can enable it by either checking the appropriate box in the display tab of the options window, or by adding UseNewUIEngine=0 in the Defaults section of your eqclient.ini. Please note that you MUST restart your client for the change to take effect!
- When holding an item (or hot button or spell gem) and zoning, the attached icon should now be much closer to your cursor instead of at the top left of the screen.
- Fixed typos and consistency mistakes in Inventory Stats and Mercenary tooltips.


- Changed -
EQUI_Inventory.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_TradeskillWnd.xml


- The EverQuest Team

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On Wednesday, July 19, 2023, Coirnav is being merged onto Vox, and any characters you have on Coirnav will be accessible from Vox. To complete this work, there will be up to 12 hours of downtime beginning at 6:00 a.m. PDT (1300 UTC) for all EverQuest servers. Please note that this is also the date of the Live Update which will be included in the scheduled downtime.



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).


Achievement Changes: https://achievements.eqresource.com/achievementshistory.php?mdy=07192023
DBStr Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/dbstrhistory.php?mdy=07192023
EQStr Changes:
Faction Changes:
Spell Changes: https://spells.eqresource.com/history.php?mdy=07192023


Update Notes:
July 19, 2023
_____________________
*** Highlights ***
- The Coirnav server has been merged into Vox.


*** Items *** 
- Kaznak's Bulwark Emblem, Fragment of Ethereal Steel, Dour Blue, Sleeper's Essence, Petrified Sharktooth, Sylra's Trinket and Smoldering Core of Radir will now work on charms and range items with appropriate augment slots.
- Mixolydian Arpeggio on the on the Spectral Loremaster Breastplate and Loremaster Breastplate of Spectral Luminosity will now cast Masterful Mixolydian Root instead of Masterful Mixolydian Third.
- Geerlok Party Bot now has more appropriate lore text.


*** Quests & Events ***
- Added a replay timer to the task for the Bloodmoon Keep raid "Ralkor's Crystals" and "The Soulbleeder Must Bleed" event.
- Fixed the Superior Standard to scale properly. Also adjusted the spell to add additional effects and account for the proper scaling.


*** Spells ***
- Magician - Adjusted damage values for the Shock Of Many spell line. All spells now do increased damage with fewer pets (tier 1) and many do increased damage with many pets (tier 2 and 3), but Shock, Jolt, Clash, Strike, and Barrage have had their tier 2 and 3 damage reduced.
- Corrected an issue where certain spell reagents (Essence Emeralds, Fuligan Soulstones of Innoruuk, and Cloudy Stones of Veeshan) would not be consumed.


*** AA ***
- Necromancer - Added Rank 11 of the Archetype AA Summon Corpse, which casts Thanatos' Proclamation.
- Shaman - Fixed an issue with the Class AA Spirit Call that caused certain ranks to summon the wrong pet.
- Berserker - Updated Ranks 10 and 11 of the Focus AA Focus Arcslice to correctly focus Arcshear.


*** NPCs ***
- The general supplies merchant Duath Untez in Abysmal Sea can now send and receive parcels.


*** Overseer ***
- Several new event-specific Agents have been added to Overseer, available only during the Stone Cold Summer event in August.
- - A new line of event-specific Overseer Quests, available at all Overseer levels, are also available for a limited time during Stone Cold Summer.
- - New achievements, found in the Overseer >> Holiday category, have also been added for completing each of the new Stone Cold Summer event Overseer Quests.


*** Progression Servers ***
- Corrected an issue that could cause an Encounter Locked NPC to become unattackable if it killed the only person on its hatelist.
- Disarm will no longer affect NPCs that you cannot attack due to it being Encounter Locked to someone else.
- Updated the /yell command to unlock all Encounter Locked NPCs that you're able to and added a one second reuse timer.
- Corrected an issue with Legacy experience bonuses appearing for other characters in the group who did not have a bonus.


*** Miscellaneous ***
- The /bug command will now only report target information for NPCs.
- World server lag during raid win completion and receiving rewards should be reduced.


*** UI ***
- Fixed the location of the Quantity Window when opening it from windows using the old UI engine, or when the UI scale is not 1.
- Fixed some spots on item cursor attachments.
- Fixed cursor trails sticking around when the UI is scaled below 1.0.
- Switching between windowed and full screen modes and resolutions should be more responsive and interactive.
- Fixed links in the Story Window. They now will either open into the story window (local files only) or in an external browser. It's strongly recommended that players go through their existing custom story files and verify that any HTML is correct (all tags are properly closed, no missing quotation marks, etc.) to ensure they display properly.
- Guild banners have learned to include the zone instance number where they are planted.


- The EverQuest Team

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All EverQuest servers, Test server, and services, will be taken offline for scheduled extended maintenance on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:30 a.m. PT*. This affects login, commerce, and authentication services. Read-only access on forums and websites will be possible. Please watch our socials or forums for updates! The estimated downtime is expected to last until approximately 12:00pm PT.



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).

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Hail, Norrathians! We are firmly in the summer season and, as many of you already know, much has happened since we last touched base. Since the April Producer's Letter, we've kicked off our Extra Life fundraising efforts along with our global Daybreak Games Super Team page, Tempest Festival kicked off with all new content, we launched the new UI engine, and our newly designed Evolving Ruleset Server, Oakwynd, went live. It feels like so much has happened in such a short span of time, but we're not even close to being done with all our plans for this year!
Before we dive into what's on the horizon, let's check out what's already happened thus far.

Completed:

    April
        Extra Life fundraising and Daybreak Games Super Team page
    May
        New content for Tempest Festival
        New UI engine released
        New Evolving Ruleset TLP, Oakwynd, launched
    June
        New Pride Month Familiars
        Hardcore Heritage
        New Raid Banner
        Claws of Veeshan free for everyone

And now it's time to tell you all about the great things coming up next! First, Coirnav players will be moving to a new home as the server is merged to Vox this month. Never fear, however, if you do not wish to move to Vox, you are welcome to use a free transfer to move to one of the other allowed servers prior to merge day. Stone Cold Summer will see some new content in the form of quests, a new mission, and overseer. Grab your ice-cold lemonade and join us for the fun! And last on the list, but not least, the DirectX 11 API port will be up on Test, be sure to join us there for some testing.

Upcoming:

    July
        Scorched Sky event, bonuses, and new bags
        Coirnav will be merged to Vox
    August
        New Quests and Mission implemented for Stone Cold Summer
    September
        DirectX 11 API Port on Test

In other happenings on the servers: Yelinak recently unlocked the Omens of War, and Mischief and Thornblade both unlocked the Secrets of Faydwer! We've also got the Death, Death, Death! Event coming soon. Sharpen your swords and ready your bows and staves as this is all about killing the most old-world bosses faster than anyone else on the server! Living Legacy Raids event is coming up, Whizzlebang Twempt in Steamfont Mountains will be waiting for you to begin your adventure!

Once again, Darkpaw Games, as part of Daybreak Games' Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiative, has pledged a donation of $5,000 to The San Diego LGBT Community Center. One of the many projects this organization works on is helping to solve the housing crisis in San Diego.

And let's not forget that we are continuing to team up with Extra Life to help improve kids' health. The official Extra Life Game Day is November 4, 2023, and we're planning some fun things and incentives for everyone, so be on the lookout for upcoming articles! Visit our Extra Life Announcement and read all about how we are part of the Daybreak Games Super Team as well as what your contribution does for children in need! Fun times, great games, excellent causes!


Yikes! I wouldn't want to meet this guy in an alley.

If memory serves me correctly, this is where I touch on the upcoming expansion. Great things are happening, and the team is working ever diligently on the lore, quests, and much more! All I can say for now is that things are not always how we remember them...or are they?


Signing off as songs of the past linger in my memories,
Jenn Chan
Head of Studio

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The Scorched Sky Celebration just got hotter! Starting on July 1, 2023 at 12:01 a.m. PDT and ending on July 8, 2023 at 11:00 p.m. PDT, all characters will earn:

    A 76% bonus to character experience.
    A 76% bonus to faction experience.
    A 76% increase to rare spawn chance.

So, as you're out there in Norrath showing your allegiance to Fennin and Solusek Ro, why not reap some extra rewards?

Enjoy, and on behalf of the entire EQ team, Happy Scorched Sky!



Check this out and more in our EQ Calendar (Be sure to set it to your time zone [in settings on the Calendar] for your times!).

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