EverQuest Producer’s Letter Fall 2021

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

WOW! Finally 64-bit Server and Client Coming to EQ

Greetings, Norrathians!

We are excited to officially announce the long-awaited conversion to 64-bit Servers and Clients for EverQuest!

You may be wondering, “Why is this important?” The answer is simply, with more available memory we can immediately decrease the “out of memory” client crashes. This update is going to allow for the utilization of more of the memory on your computer and on our servers. Currently, no matter how much physical or virtual memory is on your machine we are limited to using 4GBs of it. With 64-bit clients, we can in theory use up to 16 exabytes. The “out of memory” issue is statistically the number one reason we see client crashes right now. Additionally, this change allows for increased client and server performance by allowing us to load more into memory instead of relying on slow reads from a hard drive. Plus, this puts us on a path to have more and higher resolution art in the game.

We will begin rolling out the new 64-bit update to Beta in the coming weeks, and at that time you will need to run a 64-bit Windows OS to continue participating in Beta. However, the 64-bit update will not be launching with the launch of the new expansion: Terror of Luclin. You will still be able to enjoy EverQuest’s 28th Expansion launch without any interruption on live servers. After the launch of the expansion, we will be updating the Test Server about a month before the full launch to live servers. This release to the Test Server is currently targeted for early 2022. We want to make sure this transition is as smooth as possible, so these dates are subject to change in order to make sure we can provide you with the best possible update. LaunchPad will automatically update your client and you will be able to enjoy EverQuest in a new and improved way. It is just around the corner so stay tuned for the Beta and Test Server announcements!

Officially, the sunsetting of the 32-bit client will take effect on the day that the 64-bit clients are released to the live servers. Because of this migration, we will no longer be able to support 32-bit systems. We recommend making backups of any INI files (or other customizations) in your client directory and upgrading to at least the minimum 64-bit specs as shown below:

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

  • OS: Windows 7 64-bit or newer
  • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400/AMD Athlon x2 4050e
  • Memory: 3 GB RAM
  • Graphics:  Nvidia GeForce 8800/AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT or higher (comparison chart)
  • Network: Broadband Internet Connection
  • Hard Drive: 15 GB of free hard drive space

OPTIMAL RECOMMENDED SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS

  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit or newer
  • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850/AMD Phenom II x2
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 260/AMD Radeon HD 4870 or higher (comparison chart)
  • Network: Broadband Internet Connection
  • Hard Drive: 15 GB of free hard drive space

You can determine if you are running a 64-bit version of Windows on Microsoft’s Support Site.

This update is an example of how we here at Darkpaw Games are constantly dedicated to improving and innovating on your favorite game through key modernization initiatives. In the coming years, we are planning on more big projects like this and hope to be able to share some of them with you in the future.

Thank you for your continued understanding, patience, and support and as always, we will see you in Norrath!

-The Darkpaw Team