December's Letter From the Producer announces Hate Rising as the second part to EverQuest's Call of the Forsaken expansion. Also highlighted here are Frostfell events and a heroic adventure update:

Hello my favorite Norrathians!

I wish all of you a most memorable and safe holiday this year. Many of us are getting ready to take a small break between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but before we do, I wanted to drop you a note on some of the great things we have in store for EverQuest leading into 2014!

Currently we have a great promotion going on to determine the next Race/Class Combination to be created in EverQuest for the 15th Anniversary in March. In August, at SOE Live in Las Vegas, we announced that we would invite our community to help determine the winner. That’s what we’ve done, and the voting so far has been intense. The Semi-Final Round just started today with two Dark Elves squaring off in one bracket, and in the other we have a Wood Elf Beastlord being sized up against and Iksar Beserker. If you would like to be part of history and help determine the next Race/Class combination, GO VOTE NOW!

Just around the corner in January, we will be launching Call of the Forsaken: Hate Rising. In Hate Rising, you will be able to continue your adventure with all new Heroic Adventures, new raids and missions; new equippable gear across group and raid content, and a nice set of rare items you’ll hardly believe.

Also, a big change will be coming to our Heroic Adventures. We have scaled our existing Heroic Adventures by level, so you can play this exciting content earlier. So that means if you are level 85 and you haven’t played Call of the Forsaken yet, you will now be able to receive the tasks and quests from the quest givers. A little side note on level spread for missions: stay tuned for some more information from Prathun in the very near future on what we’re hoping to accomplish!

Call of the Forsaken: Hate Rising will go into an Open Beta early January. If you participated in Beta for the expansion, you will be able to enter as soon as we launch. If you did not participate beforehand, don’t fret. We’ll have a timeframe in January that you’ll be able to apply and get in very quickly, and soon discover how an iconic EverQuest character will play a large role in Norrath over the next year.

That’s next year, but before this year ends, we have some exciting Quests and Missions as part of our New Years events that kickoff on December 26th and last through the middle of January. You can speak to several friends in the Plane of Knowledge to get started on the 26th!

Finally,,I want to thank you all for playing EverQuest and being part of our gaming family (and some of you even closer than that)! A reminder that our 15th Anniversary is just around the corner in March and we have planned a lot of GREAT STUFF for you and for the Year of EverQuest! Read more on my November Producer’s Letter if you haven’t had a chance yet.

Be safe, have fun, and I hope you have extra time to game this time of the year!

See you in game!

Thom Terrazas
AKA Phathom