On Saturday, Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale tweeted that, starting next week, both EverQuest and EverQuest II players can expect "some kind of bonus" every day until the games' expansions launch. She also followed up on a couple of player questions regarding these bonuses:

@EQKelvani: "TLE excluded I presume?"
@TheWindstalker: "In most cases. We will look at doing sales and stuff."

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@EQ2Wire: "[until] Launch (Nov 10/17ish) or Preorder (Oct 1st)?"
@TheWindstalker: "Until launch, not pre-order...so sometime after October."

Daybreak will perform a general maintenance beginning at 6am PDT on Thursday, September 17, 2015. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is two to four hours, depending on the service.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Game logins for all Daybreak games
• Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games
• Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes.

Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance.

~The Team at Daybreak

EverQuest II is also having a one hour update during the maintenance, at 7am PT. Here are the patch notes:

ITEMS
Chest of Wondrous Booty will now display the correct items that it rewards.

QUESTS
Rum Cellar and Fabled Echoes of Faydwer missions have been added to the Mission Timer Window.

Executive Producer Holly Longdale popped onto both the EverQuest and EverQuest II forums yesterday to post a teaser announcement of the upcoming official announcement for both game's expansions. EQ players will be getting 15 new raid zones, new and updated zones for level 105, and two new level agnostic zones: the original versions of Plane of Fear and Plane of Hate. Expect new AAs, spells, Heroic Adventures and more. EQ2 players will receive a new overlands zone, x2 and x4 raids, as well as Advanced Solo and Heroic dungeons. The deity system revamp is coming and a couple of new item types will be introduced. Neither game teaser mentioned any level cap increases.

Continue reading after the jump to see Holly's entire posts!

Daybreak will perform a general maintenance beginning at 7am PDT on Tuesday, August 11, 2015. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is two to four hours, depending on the service.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Game logins for all Daybreak games
• Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games
• Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes.

Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance.

~The Team at Daybreak

Yesterday afternoon, Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale discussed the current progress of the EverQuest team's plans. The campaign expected out later this year is still in development, with the team continuing to also work in monthly bug fixes and improvement updates. The Ragefire and Lockjaw servers will have transfers enabled later today, and soon Ragefire's voting timer will be modified to a quicker pace. The team is also looking at a special rules server (potentially a "no boxing" progression server) to come out this winter. Crash issues are being looked into, while CS is working through petitions due to a failure on the Lockjaw server this past Monday.

Read the entire letter after the jump and leave your feedback on the official forums.

Daybreak will perform a general maintenance beginning at 6am PDT on Tuesday, July 28, 2015. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is two to four hours, depending on the service.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Game logins for all Daybreak games
• Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games
• Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes.

Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance.

~The Team at Daybreak

Earlier tonight, GamesBeat broke the news that John Smedley has stepped down from his position as President and CEO of Daybreak Game Company. This move comes in the wake of recent DDoS attacks and the subsequent deletion of Smedley's social media accounts (most notably on Twitter and Reddit). According to Daybreak's spokesperson, Smedley will be "taking some time off from the company" before "transitioning to a different role to be determined."

To take up the reigns of President is COO Russell Shanks, who has been with the company since its inception. Continue reading after the jump for some personal commentary on this development from former PlanetSide 2 Creative Director Matt Higby.

UPDATE July 11 8:45am ET: Games are accessible but very laggy. Smed finally apologized on Twitter last night: "..sorry to say more DDOS. I apologize for the issues we are having. I have to own pissing them off and I'm sorry. Just sorry they are taking it out on you, our players."

UPDATE July 10 5:45pm ET: Nothing official has been said in a few hours, but we're seeing occasional (and rare) reports of players being able to get into their game of choice. However, those managing to get into the games are experiencing heavy lag. Hope everyone has good plans for spending their Friday evening elsewhere!

UPDATE July 10 2:15pm ET: Not much has changed. From Daybreak on Twitter: "We are continuing to resolve issues from a Distributed Denial of Service event. We will provide updates as available."

UPDATE July 10 11:30am ET: Looks like Daybreak spoke too soon and the outages are happening again. "We are experiencing issues again which may result in lag, disconnects, or inability to access games, forums, or websites. The team is aware." Since official forums may be inaccessible, keep up-to-date with Daybreak's Twitter or Facebook pages.

Yesterday evening, Daybreak Games experienced DDoS attacks that caused players to be unable to login to any of the games, and those who managed to stay in-game to experience a lot of lag. Around 9:30am ET today the EverQuest II twitter account stated that all games appear to be back up and running.

If you are looking for further details on what occurred yesterday:

• Smed mentioned Daybreak being DDoS'd here (and here on July 10)
• EQ2Wire did a nice summary of everything that snowballed up into the attacks here and here (longer explanation)
• Smed went to reddit to vent

E3 doesn't stop when its doors are closed for the day. We snagged Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale at this year's Daybreak after-party (and again this week in a follow-up), chatting about some recent changes that hit EverQuest's progression servers as well as the upcoming progression servers and merges for EverQuest II.

Daybreak Game Company unveiled its new logo and website last week, giving a fresh face as it looks toward the future. We chatted with Daybreak President John Smedley and the Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing Laura Naviaux yesterday evening about the origins of the company's new name and logo, Columbus Nova, the future of its fan convention, and more.