According to the EQplayers website this weekend will be double experience weekend. It will run from Friday at 10 a.m. PDT to Tuesday at 10 a.m. PDT.

Enjoy the free experience everyone!

*** Highlights ***

- EQ’s 10th Anniversary celebrations continues. All the raid events will remain until May 25th. Lower Guk and Unrest group encounters kicked off on the 11th and end on the 25th as well. Enjoy the rest of the celebrations!

*** Items ***

- Added a missing heal focus to the Protective Gorget of the Deep.
- Added Improved Parry/Block to several neck items that were missing it.
- Applied new icons to the Beastlord epic 1.0 (Claws of the Savage Spirit).
- Changed the displayed solvent on many destroyable augments to make it clear that they can be dissolved by the Augmentation Solvent.
- Irae Faycite Shard: Ethereal Enhancement, Irae Faycite Shard: Klixcxyk’s and Icesheet Casc., Irae Faycite Shard: Ethereal Burn and Irae Faycite Shard: Inizen’s and Glacial Collapse should now properly focus the intended spells. A change has been made to all similar foci that should prevent a similar problem in the future.

*** Spells ***

- Triggered PC spells with large dummy values in cast time have had that time reduced or removed.

*** AAs ***

- The Berserker AAs Blur of Axes and Precision of Axes have been increased in power.
- The Shadow Knight AA “Cascading Theft of Life” has been renamed “Cascading Theft of Defense” to better fit its function.
- Harmonious arrow now correctly assigns hate to its user.

*** Raids ***

- Added Fractured Coeval Luminessence and Fractured Coeval Incandessence as a chance to drop from the chest that the mini bosses in discord tower drop. This also reduces the chance for stat and weapon augments from this chest.

*** Tradeskills ***

- The first set of changes to poison have been made. Strike of Ssraeshza poisons have a 10 second recast on them. Bite of the Shissar, Strike of the Shissar, Solusek’s Burn and E’ci’s Lament Poison remove about half the hate they give on each strike. Quellious’ Trauma removes about half the hate it did before. Quellious’ Trauma, Myrmidon’s Sloth, Messenger’s Bane, Fighter’s Bane, Warlord’s Bane, Archer’s Bane and Monk’s Bane have had their “proc count” increased so they last longer.
- Messenger’s Bane poisons will properly snare their target rather than giving them a speed boost.
- The recipe for Thundering Blades Rk. II has been disabled. It should not yet be able to be created.

*** Pets ***

- Fixed some typos in the pet help window.
- Fixed some problems with hot-keyed commands not displaying their state correctly.
- A new “regroup” command has been added. This command is very similar to “stop” except when using “regroup” the pet will not only stop attacking, but will revert to either follow or guard depending on what is selected. This essentially mimics the old “hold” behavior. “Regroup” and “stop” are mutually exclusive. If you use “regroup” both sit and stop should turn off. If you use “stop” then “regroup” should turn off.

*** Miscellaneous ***

- Campfire summoning has been turned on for the following zones (note that all usual restrictions apply): Crystallos, Mansion, Qinimi, and Tipt.
- Guild Banner summoning has been turned on for the following zones (note that all usual restrictions apply): Uqua, Tacvi, Qinimi, Tipt, Anguish, Demiplane of Blood, Deathknell – Tower of Dissonance, Crystallos (both normal and raid), Mansion (both normal and raid), Discord Raid and Discord Tower Raid.
- Fixed a problem that was causing voice chat volume sliders to get stuck on the screen.
- Revamped the way guild information is stored on the server to get around limitations on the maximum number of guilds. Some servers were hitting the max.
- Fixed a problem with raid dumps that were made when the raid window was not visible.
- The voice chat bar is now visible on login if your voice chat is active.
- Fixed a problem with bard focuses that caused Singing and Instrument mastery to not work if the song was otherwise not focused by any item or effect.
- Fixed a problem with guild creation that was causing it to fail when you tried to create a guild with a name whose beginning was a subset of an existing guild (e.g. creating “Killer” when “Killers in the Mist” already existed).
- Fixed an issue with displayed ordering of marketplace items.

A couple months ago I became very bored with Everquest II – my desire was like a light bulb that just burned out. I found myself bored of all the questing to level up. Honestly, it reminded me a lot of how WoW does it…go kill 10 of creature x and come back. Then go kill another 10…it drained me.

I occupied my free time with some Starcraft – I became half-way decent. I was really enjoying my time away from MMOs; I think the break was exactly what I needed.

Eventually the MMO bug got me again. To change things up, this time I decide to reactivate EQ1…there is just something about that game that keeps bringing me back in. I think it is some combination of it being my first MMO, the hardest one I have played, and good game play. Despite how much I like EQ, Rawrzor didn’t feel quite the same way. It took some convincing for him to reactivate – I had to level a Druid to 70 for him. All of the EQjunkies kick in and we got him a 70 Druid, Lulz, in a week’s time.

We spent a month or so exploring SoF and some of the other zones we missed while we were gone. I then started to do the SoD progression stuff, which is coming a long…but taking some time.

I also got the linux bug again…I installed Ubuntu 9.04 and began to play EQ in Linux (using wine). It was really easy to setup, the wine HQ page for EQ gave me all the info I needed. I also moved away from Ventrilo and started to use mumble because it works across all platforms…something that Ventrilo can’t claim. The sound quality is good and also the push to talk actually works in linux. The only disadvantage linux has to windows is that 4 boxing on an old P4 isn’t as smooth in Linux, but that should be expected…EQ wasn’t developed for Linux.