Greetings, Norrathians!
The time has come once again for my latest Producer’s Letter. It’s been an incredible year since we last touched base. You’ve gotten to know some of our new game designers and engineers, we’ve shared in the fun during a handful of annual events, we all saw the amazing success of the launches of Mischief and Thornblade—our Randomized Loot TLPs—and now we’re venturing into uncharted waters with the pre-order and beta testing of our next expansion, Terror of Luclin.
If you’re like many of us, your minds were blown when video game technology went from 8-bit to 16-bit. (Here’s looking at you, speedy blue guy!) Personally, I’m very excited to finally and officially announce 64-bit clients and servers are coming for EverQuest! This was and continues to be a big endeavor and we plan to post an article about it soon. Just know that it’s coming, and we’re aiming for an early 2022 launch after the release of Terror of Luclin. (It will be coming to the beta server sooner than that, though.)
As many of you saw, we recently opened pre-orders for our 28th expansion, Terror of Luclin. All of us were proud of the new landing page our team members and partners helped create. If you haven’t seen it, you can check it out here: https://www.everquest.com/terror-of-luclin. But what’s most important to note is all of you. The response from you, our community, to Terror of Luclin has been nothing short of spectacular, and we sincerely appreciate all of the positive comments and feedback we’ve received.
One other important milestone for us is partnering up again with Extra Life to help raise funds for Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. They really do make a difference in so many children’s lives and on a personal note, they hold a special place in my heart for what they’ve done for my family. When we did this last year, we hoped it would go well, and all of you far exceeded our expectations. We’re back at it again this year, and we’d love it if you got involved again. Give a donation or help spread the word—we just want you to be part of this again. You can join our Darkpaw Games team by clicking here. Fundraising will continue through the rest of 2021 but mark your calendar for November 6. That is Extra Life’s official day to stream EverQuest and EverQuest II to help raise awareness.
Calling all artists! We’re looking to hire some new talent in the coming weeks and months. We’ve got a lot of ambitious plans, and we’re going to need some extra help in reaching our goals. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, bookmark and keep an eye on our Careers page for updates.
Also rounding out the rest of 2021 will be the return of the Raid, Raid, Raid! event, a Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale, Frostfell, and to get you ready for the holidays, a Winter Holiday Sale. Lots of fun still left to be enjoyed before some even more exciting things start to roll out in 2022.
Finally, server merges. While we’re not prepared to officially announce specific server mergers because we are still gathering data on our end, just know that we’re being diligent about them and will let you know any updates as soon as possible. Look for messaging around this in the first half of 2022.
From all of us here at Darkpaw Games, we deeply appreciate the years you’ve spent with us and we can’t thank you enough for being a valued member of our community. You fuel us every single day with your passion. We know you have your choices, so thank you for spending your time with us as we get closer to 23 years strong.
Wait . . . there is a golden feather on the floor,
—Jenn Chan
Head of Studio
