Classic EverQuest’s latest producer letter is not going to shock anyone who read Daybreak’s full roadmap back in January, but it does have a few novel bits worth a note.
Daybreak Head of Studio Jenn Chan outlines festivals and server unlocks for the rest of spring, but the real meat is in the new time-locked progression server details. “The new TLP server ruleset will be Expanded Start with Resource Hunter, Encounter Locking, Legacy Characters, and True Box,” she says. “True Box will be removed when Planes of Power unlocks.”
True box, for those who are currently wondering, is where you are technically allowed to play only one account on a PC, though obviously people have spent the last decade devising workarounds like, you know, just having a ton of PCs.
The server will start with the first three expansions unlocked and level-locked to 50, with Iksar and Vah Shir playable from launch (that’s the “expanded start” part). The server will bump the cap to 60 around half a year in, with Planes of Power 12 weeks after that and then later expansions coming regularly after that, just compressed to level 70. The server will also come with random resource hunt bonuses and EQ’s typical name reservation system.
Chan breaks down the rationale for all of these decisions: She says players have asked “for some years” for more expansions unlocked early, that the cadence has been selected to keep a healthy population longer, that the hunts are meant to bring the community together in unusual zones, that the Oakwynd TLP server’s success sealed the deal on encounter locking, and that the devs are “big fans” of the legacy character ruleset.
Finally, Chan reminds players that the game’s 26th anniversary celebrations aren’t over yet; you have until April 20th to grab your freebies, and there are new missions coming later in April too.
Worth noting is that Daybreak is hiring for kind of a lot of positions right now, including a game director.
