I Am Always Touched By Your Presents, Dear : EQ, EQ2, DCUO

SOE made a practice of recognizing real-world (mostly American) holidays with in-game bonuses, giveaways and general merriment. Daybreak Games have been doing their best to carry on that tradition. The upcoming July 4th celebrations offer good reasons for current and lapsed players to log into all of DBG's MMOs.

EverQuest has a 76% bonus both XP and faction and rare mobs have a 76% higher chance to spawn. See what they did there?

EQ2 has double XP and double currency, specifically the Ethereal coins that send all active players into a summer frenzy every year. (Incidentally, don't ask me why that link goes to the French version of the EQ2 website. It just does!)

Those bonuses apply to all players, free to play and All Access alike, but AA Members also get the benefit of a 25% reduction on everything in the cash shop. I already splurged on tracking scrolls.

Double XP weekends are relatively common but these both do a bit better than that, although weirdly not quite as well as each other. The EverQuest offer runs from 12:00 PM PT on Saturday, June 30, 2018 until 12:00 PM PT on Thursday, July 5, 2018, which I wish I'd noticed sooner. The EQ2 version started and finishes later, 12:01 AM PT on Monday, July 2, 2018 until 11:59 PM PT on Sunday, July 8, 2018.

For DCUO Daybreak have chosen to focus on paying customers. There's nothing, so far as I can see, for F2P players but July 2-8 is something they're calling Member Appreciation Week. Maybe it's the Bizarro World version of Developer Appreciation Week, which I don't believe has happened this year, or at least not yet.

Whatever it is, it comes with a very attractive giveaway, a free CR 170 Character. If you wanted to buy a CR170 in the store it would cost you $45, apparently. I don't claim to be fully up to speed with DCUO's combat rating system but I believe that's akin to the recent giveaway of  Level 100 characters in EQ2.

What's more, you can apply the boost either to an existing character or a brand new one. I made a new one. I tried to call her Atomic Kitten but of course that was taken.

This has been a public service announcement. We now return you to your normal scheduled programming.