From the EQLive website, a number of zone revamps are being patched, Droga and Nurga both go to everyone now and many other zones have had their populations looked at. Upcoming for July 9th By now, you've probably heard that we're working on our next expansion, The Lost Dungeons of Norrath. We're attempting some interesting new technology and some awesome new design ideas. Keep your eyes open for website updates about that. But, this column isn't about expansions, it's about upcoming Live features, and we have plenty of them for you this month. We've been working on a lot of zone revamps, both partial and more complete. Nine zones were updated this month for Live servers, and Legends will be getting a new revamp as well. That's a lot of zones! We're addressing issues in those zones that players have had concerns about, with the intent to make them a little more interesting and desirable to play in. Check them out; we think you'll like what we've done with the zones. Oh, and for those of you that celebrate Independence Day, have a safe and explosive 4th! Several partial zone revamps coming to the Live servers. Droga and Nurga will be moving from Legends to the Live servers with our next update. Along with those zones, we have completed partial revamps of several other zones: The Deep, Charasis (Howling Stones), Dragon Necropolis, Siren's Grotto, The Hole, The City of Mist, and Velketor's Labyrinth. We chose these zones to update based on feedback from players, and have implemented changes that will make these zones more entertaining to play in. If you haven't been to one of these zones in a while, you may want to go back and revisit them after our next update. Grieg's End changes going to the Legends server. Grieg's End is one of the more interesting zones in EverQuest, but the original design made pursuing the content in this zone a bit complicated. The redesign includes new encounters, items, traps, and events that make the zone a challenge for the experience group, with plenty of events for a raid group. These changes will revitalize this zone and should make it one of the more popular places for characters of the appropriate level to visit. Tradeskill trivial failures will be reduced. Obviously even a great master can make mistakes. EverQuest players, however, have expressed that they feel master tradeskillers fail on trivial items too frequently. We have reviewed the trivial failure chances and have made a change to the way they work. The greater the skill of the character relative to the skill needed to complete a recipe; the less likely he is to fail on a trivial recipe. Damage Over Time Spell Foci update. We have implemented a change to focus items for Damage over Time (DoT) spells. Focus items improve aspects of certain spells when they are cast. Originally, DoT spells were included in a group of other spells that some focus items affected. But the nature of DoT spells is very different than other spells, and the affect of these focus items on DoT spells was not what we wanted it to be. To correct this, we have changed the Extended Affliction line to Burning Affliction, which cause DoT spells to do more damage, instead of having a longer duration. New Imbue, Enchant, and Thicken spells will be introduced. Certain trade skill recipes rely on magic spells used to make normal items into magical items. To make creating these magical items a little more convenient, we will be introducing new Imbue, Enchant, and Thicken spells that create five magical items rather than just one. These spells require five components and take longer to cast and use more mana, but they should make creating these items much more convenient. Newbie quests will be added for Erudites, Trolls and Ogres. New characters, especially if played by new players, need some time to get acquainted with the area surrounding their starting city. One of the best ways to get those characters out into the world is to send them on quests. We have been introducing new quests for new characters to each of the starting cities. The next update will include quests for young Trolls beginning in Neriak, Ogres in Oggok and for Erudites starting out in Erudin, completing the updated newbie quests for all races. Area of Effect spells that do not affect your group in PvP will also not affect your Raid. Taking on large tasks on a PvP server can be complicated by the fact that Area of Effect spells damage your own raid and not just the monsters. It makes sense that since these spells do not affect your group on a PvP server, they should not affect your raid. We've updated character creation descriptions. Players will now be able to right-click the class, race or statistic buttons during character creation to see a detailed explanation of the item clicked. This will help folks when making decisions about what they want their character to be. Also, as a heads up to players that have created their own user interfaces for EverQuest, these are the interface files that we expect to change next week. EQUI_Optionswnd.xml UQUI.xml EQUI_charactercreate.xml