Greetings Norrathians,

Over the course of the next week you will be hearing a lot from SOE about EverQuest II. It's coming along extremely well, and it's something that we as a company are very proud of. We hope that when it is released you'll feel it lives up to its distinguished heritage.

All the talk about EQ II will lead many of you to ask the logical question:

What about EverQuest?

The simple answer is this: We are going to continue to support EverQuest. As a matter of fact, we have two new expansions in the works. The first one's coming this Fall, and its focus is on dungeons! Many members of the EQ team are already hard at work on it. We've increased the size of the EverQuest team to add more amazing things to the game, to further expand places you've explored before and to continue to update the game on a constant basis. Our goal is to make sure EverQuest remains a dynamic game that continues to grow for years to come. We recognize that you've spent a lot of time in EQ over the years--so have we. Making this world exciting for you is our passion.

We are also working hard on making EverQuest a better experience. One of the ways we're doing this is by improving the way we communicate with you. From this point on you will see a constantly updated Web page that shows what we're working on for the next patch, and what's down the road a little further. This can be found at http://eqlive.station.sony.com/updates/

Above all else, we want you to know that our commitment to this game is very real.

The goal behind EverQuest II is not to replace EverQuest, but to offer a new experience with new ways to play.

I've had the privilege over the past few years to see how the EQ and EQ II design teams have worked together to make sure EQ II has the heart and soul of EverQuest, but is still different enough to attract new people to the MMORPG genre, and even bring back some players that have moved on to other things. We think that many of you are as excited about EQ II as we are. If we do our jobs right, you'll feel like EQ II is a remarkable gaming experience that you'll want to play for many years to come, and that it's not just "EQ with a new graphics engine." The designers have found some great ways to link the two games and to make the games actually affect each other. You'll hear more about this in the very near future.

So, would you rather play in EverQuest II's Age of Destiny? Or does EverQuest's Age of Turmoil still have plenty of exciting things you want to do? Our goal is to make that decision simple! Having spent so much time in EverQuest, you might feel torn between which game you want to play more. We realize that many of you will want to play both EQ and EQII, so we're introducing the SOE All Access™ subscription. It allows you to play a large mix of our most popular offerings for only $21.99 per month. Our Legends customers will receive this same access to our games at no additional charge. This makes it affordable and easy to play SOE's games, including:

EverQuest® (both PC and Mac version when it's released)
EverQuest II® (when released)
EverQuest® Online Adventures™
PlanetSide™
Station Pass™ Games (Infantry™, Cosmic Rift™, Tanarus®)
Please note that Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided™ will not be a part of this package, nor will partner published games be included. You will also need to buy the retail version of any game you don't already own.

We think the SOE All Access subscription is a great way to play our games for one low monthly price. If you add up the value of all the games in this package individually, you can see that this subscription offers significant savings. This low price will allow you to check out EQ II, but still play EQ. We don't want your decision on which game to play to be made based on cost, but rather on the kind of gaming experience you're looking for. We're offering a lot of great quality games in this package just to make sure you feel like you're getting your money's worth. You'll be hearing more about this subscription over the next week.

We'll be putting up a link on EverQuest.com that will contain all of the pertinent information about the SOE All Access subscription in the next few days, so I urge you to visit www.SOEAllAccess.com.

We at SOE would like to thank you very much for your continued support.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment