Daily Archives: January 21, 2026

The EverQuest Frostreaver TLP Poll Results – Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

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I mentioned back in December, in a Friday Bullet Points post, that Daybreak had announced not just one, but TWO special rules servers for 2026.

The first of them, named Frostreaver, set to launch in May, was going to have its rules and parameters set by a player poll done in the forums so that interested parties could help Daybreak decide on what people really want.

This was, of course, a transparent reaction to the tepid response to last May’s Fangbreaker TLP server and the popularity of The Heroes Journey pirate server, which appeared to be eating Fangbreaker’s lunch dramatically enough that Daybreak stepped in to sue the people running the emulator in order to get it shut down.

May 2025 – Fangbreak

Now, that whole case is fraught, and I don’t necessarily believe THJ is the sole cause of Daybreak’s financial downturn, a line Ji Ham has pushed during the previous two quarters.

But it seems pretty apparent that THJ will lose due to the whole in-game cash shop thing, which makes the whole thing an obvious for profit enterprise built on the EverQuest IP using EverQuest code and EverQuest art assets.  This seems all the more likely since THJ got the binding arbitration path they were asking for, the only route that favors companies more than the courts.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation seems keen to ignore the whole money earning enterprise aspect of THJ and somehow believes that something being free to download means that you can do whatever you want with it.  This is not at all what “fair use” means, but when you have an agenda you ignore the facts I guess. However, the arbitrator who will actually decide the outcome will not be so generous and will apply the EULA and other agreements and case law to the situation.  It is unlikely to go well for THJ.

All of which leaves us with the question; can Daybreak deliver something that would appeal to the THJ audience? Despite their ire towards Daybreak, they seemed like a group with nostalgia for the game and Norrath in general, but were unwilling to put up with the hardcore “you must suffer for your enjoyment” model that EverQuest has traditionally clung to?

My guess is no, Daybreak won’t be able to deliver, largely because their hardcore mindset won’t let them color outside of a specific set of lines.  So what we got in the poll was a clear indication of what dials they were prepared to turn and how far they were willing to turn them.

Cutting to the chase a few hundred words in, these were the results they posted:

Expansion Unlocks:

  • What expansions will be available when the server opens?
    • Winning vote – Standard + Scars of Velious Launch
  • Should this server ever STOP unlocking expansions?
    • Winning vote – No, the server should continue unlocking expansions until reaching Live
  • How often should expansions unlock after Planes of Power?
    • Winning vote – Standard +: Expansions should unlock every 8 weeks
  • Should Beastlords and Berserkers be available at Launch?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should Gates of Discord unlock faster?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should Legacy of Ykesha unlock with Planes of Power?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should Prophecy of Ro unlock with Depths of Darkhollow?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should Dragons of Norrath unlock with Omens of War?
    • Winning vote – Yes 

Special Rules:

  • Should this server have Truebox?
    • Winning vote – No, clients per computer should be unrestricted
  • Should this server have Open PvP?
    • Winning vote – No
  • Should this server have Encounter Locking?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • How fast should Experience Gain be on this server?
    • Winning vote – Live (Fastest)
  • Should this server have Free Trade?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should this server have Level Locking?
    • Winning vote – No
  • Should this server have Disabled Item Level Requirements?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should this server have Early Item Focus Effects?
    • Winning vote – Yes 

Bonuses:

  • Should this server have Evolving Bonuses?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should this server have Randomized Loot?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should this server have Challenge Achievements?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should this server have Resource Hunter Bonuses?
    • Winning vote – Yes
  • Should this server have Legacy Characters?
    • Winning vote – Yes 

While there are any number of items on that list I am not sure about, the general theme was to make things progress as quickly as possible, with the highest level of xp earning, the least restrictions, the most bonuses, multi-boxing, no gear restrictions, and kicking off with the latest expansion pack that was on offer.

The audience wants to go faster than three wild women in a Porsche!

My favorite item was the repudiation of PvP, but I am always there for it when the rabid “if you just turned on PvP you would make a bazillion dollars” crowd get shouted down.  The EQ PvP servers were simply a way to quarantine the worst people in the game away from the rest of the audience.

Anyway, the response was not unexpected, and the results make the server seem mildly interesting to me.  But I don’t think it will go far enough because it still maintains the whole structure of pushing people into mandatory grouping.

My gut says that the hardcore nostalgia audience, which has gotten a fresh server catering to it annually for a decade, has been sated at this point.  The remaining, as yet unserved, nostalgia audience wants to be able to do a solo walk through of the old locations, to be able to solo overland mobs in their level range no matter what their class choices was, and not spend hours grinding bandits in West Karana or where ever in order to level up.

This is what I call the “Tour de Norrath” option, where you can wander alone and see the sights, fight the mobs, and get enough of a taste of things to sate your nostalgia without having to invest in all the things that EverQuest has traditionally required of players.  I’d subscribe for that server.

But that is, as I say, my gut talking.  I have no hard evidence, just a sense of the situation no doubt driven by my own desires, and I am not going to be like the PvP trolls and project my own views on the rest of the world and call it a majority opinion.

And I can, based on history, experience, and a bit of intuition, come up with reasons why the Norrath team would reject such an option.  There is a whole host of self imposed restrictions, the whole hardcore heritage and devaluing the achievements of past players if you don’t have to do everything in the snow, uphill both ways like E’ci intended.

There is also the open question of what a server that was easier to level on that the live servers… you’ll note that was as far as they were willing to go on the xp front… would do to the mix.  The argument will always be that you can do all that on live, the xp curve is easy for the first 50 levels or whatever, and you can have a mercenary.

True, and I have done that… but it also isn’t the same thing.  If nothing else, the broken economy on the live servers and the travel shortcut that is the Plane of Knowledge makes the whole thing less interesting that a fresh start server where you might have to walk from Qeynos to Freeport.

In my asking for easy mode and difficulty at the same time I am only highlighting that the “what should it be?” question isn’t easily answered.

Anyway, we shall see how this plays out in May.

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Is It Midnight Yet? The WoW Midnight Pre-Expansion Patch Goes Live

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Up front:  The WoW Midnight pre-expansion patch has dropped.  After all an all day maintenance it is up and available.

World of Warcraft Midnight

I feel like I just did a little blurb about a WoW expansion pre-patch.

Oh wait, that’s right.

That was the WoW Classic Anniversary Edition Burning Crusade Expansion Pre-Patch that went live last week.

As previously noted, any of my past statements about Blizz caring about timing and not stomping on one release over another… all now proven false.  Remember when people used to claim that Blizz announced their expansion launches to crush minor competitors they probably didn’t even care about?  Well, if you believed that what does this say about the state of WoW Classic then?

Okay, I am going to have to let go of that.  I know.  I am not even playing WoW right now.  But I still want to mark the milestones, and a retail WoW expansion is a once every two years kind of event, so a bit of a big deal.

From the Blizz announcement, this is the short short summary of what has landed.

  • New Demon Hunter Specialization—Devourer
  • New Race and Class Combination: Void Elf Demon Hunters
  • Class Combat Design Updates
  • Stat and Item Squish
  • User Interface Updates
  • Transmogrification Updates
  • Player vs. Player (PvP) Training Grounds
  • Housing and Endeavors
  • Pre-expansion event
  • The Winds of Mysterious Fortune Returns

What that all means… well, you’ll have to go to the link below to get at the details that Blizz is sharing.  I have not been paying close attention, but a couple of those items are bland headlines on top of controversial changes.

For example, we get some sort of user interface update with every expansion, and there is always an addon apocalypse of sort… but not like what is coming with Midnight, where Blizz has decided to blow up the addon meta and take over some aspects of that in the main UI.

There is also a pre-expansion trailer.

And an accompanying, much longer, pre-expansion survival guide.

All of this is leading up to the WoW Midnight launch on March 2, 2026, which will give everybody a good few weeks to come to grips with the changes and Blizz to fix things that they may have not gotten quite right.

And, of course, Blizz would very much like you to buy the expansion now please, and maybe throw in for a six month subscription.  Those Microsoft exec bonuses don’t pay for themselves.

Anyway, the game is off and running towards another launch day.

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