25 | January | 2019 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

We saw a Producer’s Letter for EverQuest already this week, which was focused on the 20 year anniversary celebration.

Following that up is a Producer’s Letter for EverQuest II which indicates that both sides of the House of Norrath will be doing some celebrating in March.

The celebration will start with a new server, which will be up as a beta next week. Called Nagafen, it will seek to bring back the PvP style that was once part of the game. We’ll see if PvP nostalgia fares better than it did originally, as PvP servers and PvP outside of battlegrounds was shut down due to lack of interest in the past. Of course, this quote seems to be hedging a bit on the whole plan:

If it gets a good following in Beta, we’ll look to launching it live!

Maybe if they add a battle royale mode…

There will also be celebration and events on the Plane of Mischief in EQII as well as a new progression server, both to coincide with the 20 year anniversary in March. As with the two planned EQ progression servers, the details for the EQII progression server are not out yet.

EQII is also having its own anniversary event this year, as it is turning 15 come November. Included with that will be another expansion to the game that will “take you to a whole new unexplored location of lore and legend” according to the Producer’s Letter.

There isn’t much in the way of details, so we’ll have to wait for that to show up.

Addendum:

Bhagpuss has his own post up about the Producer’s Letter at last.

The often quiet Daybreak has surfaced to address the coming EverQuest 20th anniversary. That’s right, EverQuest turns 20 this coming March 16th.

In a producer’s letter from Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale… I hadn’t seen anything from her is so long that I wasn’t sure she was still with Daybreak… laid out some general expectations about what the company has planned.

Original Box Art

In game the letter says that there will be “brand new land, raids, and rares with a story about preserving our past, and it’s free.” That is something for the regulars, the people who still congregate to play on the live servers.

For the extended fan base, which includes those of us lapsed Norrathians, who like to watch from a distance but who haven’t played the live game with any serious intent for years, there are a couple of new progression servers planned.

Progression servers are the SOE/Daybreak specialty and have proven quite popular when given the attention they deserve. But Daybreak knows they cannot just roll out the same old thing every time, so these two new servers will be variations on the usual theme.

While the rules have not been revealed yet, one will be targeted as “hardcore” and the other “ultra-casual.” Sign me up for the latter I guess. I’ll be interested to see the rule set for both. And both servers will launch on March 16th to coincide with the 20 year anniversary.

Starting then will keep them far enough from the impending launch of WoW Classic, slated for this summer, which I suspect will own the retro server market for some time.

And maybe with two servers launching on the same day there won’t be a huge queue. Or maybe there will be. I’d take it as a good sign for the franchise if there was one.

In addition to that, the producer’s letter says that a real life fan event is possibly in the works.

We’re working on pulling together an EQ fan event so we can hang out with you, our honored guests.

There are no details, and the tentative nature of that statement means it might not pan out. But if it does, it will likely happen over the summer. More details are promised come March.

In addition, Daybreak is asking for player submissions of short videos, 20 seconds or less, about how EverQuest changed your life or 15 second videos of your main character in game, to be included as part of an a 20th anniversary album that Daybreak will put out on Facebook this year. If that interests you, you can submit your video via this page.

It has been a long time since EverQuest launched. It was a very different world back in 1999.

There is no sign or word about the predicted end of content for the game, something that came about as a rumor back around the beginning of May last year. (After one of those layoffs.) That some of what was stated has come to pass lends those rumors credence. But things can change. And I wouldn’t expect to hear anything about that before the anniversary, lest it mar the event. So we’ll hear more about what Daybreak has in store soon I hope.

Meanwhile, Bhagpuss has his own look at the producer’s letter and the coming 20th anniversary events.