Welcome to the Secrets of Faydwer!

I would like to welcome everyone to EverQuest Secrets of Faydwer, the 14th expansion. The developers here at Sony Online Entertainment are pleased to open the servers and kick off the launch! We are extremely happy with the extended development time that we had this cycle and we are looking forward to everyone having a great time with our hard work.

In addition to the expansion, we have a couple of noteworthy additions. We have done work to address the stability issues on Solteris and we have also worked with one of the players to track down a workaround for the infamous WEST BUG!!! Both of these issues have been hanging around for quite some time so we are looking forward to these optimizations getting out to everyone. Please check the update notes on the optimization for the west bug.

We have found that even after our latest round of work on both of these issues, some players may still experience either bug or both. We are addressing the issues as they are reported and appreciate your patience while we work to get everyone running as expected. I hope that those of you that have been affected by the various Live issues are having a “better” gameplay experience.

The development team has been very busy with Live issues even during the expansion. We will continue to work on addressing some of the larger outstanding issues and we really do appreciate constructive comments and feedback on problems and fixes that we integrate. Ultimately, we want all players to have the best experience possible and we are making that happen… one step at a time.

We are moving forward and the art staff is already working on the next expansion and the conceptual art and early zone art is looking really good! I plan to expose some of the inner workings during the next development cycle to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the passion and creativity that happens every day on the EQ development team.

I am also discussing new server types with the development team and what types of game rules and mechanics would be a good idea or a bad idea. As I have said before, the Progression servers were a huge hit and I believe that there is room for specialized servers in the future of EQ. I do want to say thank you to the players that took the time to comment on the thread that was started a few months back on that topic. You would be surprised how a small comment can spark a creative streak!

I look forward to discussing more and more of the upcoming details with you all. Check the boards and the main EQPlayers page often.  The team and I work pretty close with Zatozia everyday to get some unique features up on the EQPlayers website, features like the Unfolding the Lore series. Look for more features like this moving forward and please let her know if there is something you would like to see.

Good luck with Secrets of Faydwer and have fun!!!

Clint Worley
Senior Producer EverQuest
Sony Online Entertainment.