Happy Holiday : EverQuest, EverQuest II

I was planning to post something today, what with it being my day off and not having posted since Saturday. Unfortunately, I discovered I didn't really have anything to say, which certainly made for a refreshing change. Rather than go all the way from weekend to weekend in silence and bearing in mind I'm going to be away on holiday for ten days in early June, I thought I might just drop a public service announcement about Daybreak's plans for the coming long weekend.

After years of relying on either Massively(OP) or Wilhelm to remind me of any special events in the Norrathian calendar I finally had the brilliant idea of adding the official EverQuest and EverQuest II news feeds to my Feedly. Still doesn't help me to remember to log in but at least I know what I'm missing.

EverQuest has a straightforward 50% XP bonus on all servers from Friday to Tuesday. Exact dates and details here. There's also a 50% bonus to Faction and to Rares, although I confess I don't entirely understand what that means.

DBG seem to have settled on 50% as the standard bribe treat for players of the elder game. I'm not sure why. It's not quite enough to motivate me to log in when I otherwise wouldn't. It always used to be 100%, which was. I wonder why they changed it?

 XP is already hugely easier to get in EQII, where there are enormous permanent boosts available for regular customers (my main account is set at something like +200% minimum, rising to +400% with Vitality and Loyalty/Veteran boosters), so naturally they're offering the full +100%, aka double XP.

On Live Servers only, that is. As usual TLE (Progression) servers have to peer through the bars of their gated compound at everyone else living the easy life. Well, that's what they wanted.

There's double Status for everyone, too, TLE included. Status is a really big deal for EQII regulars, probably a bigger draw than XP, so that's going to go down very well. Both bonuses start and end at the same times as the ones in EverQuest, which is by no means always the case.

Both games have cash shop offers and sales because of course they do, but EQII is dangling a particularly juicy tidbit: the Year of EverQuest Pack. Among other things (quite a few other things, in fact), this bundle contains a flying mount, a 66-slot backpack, a 100 slot broker crate that reduces all sales taxes and fees to zero and some boots that give a 15% movement speed boost that stacks with whatever run, mount or flying speed boosts you may already be using.

Those are top-end perks and the pack is decent value at the regular price of $34.99, which makes it a must-buy at the reduced holiday price of $19.99. Well, it does if you're already sitting on a mountain of DBC like I am!

All I have to do is remember to log in - although since the low-price offer runs till the end of June I really don't have much excuse for missing it.