You've been asking for it for a while now, authors, and Dolby has finally had the time to implement it:

You can now set the display order of the images. Thumbnails will be selected by either the lowest display order number or the earliest image date if there is no display order set.

Please see this post for full details.

The plans of Gorothúl, sorcerer of Dol Guldur, begin to be made clear as ancient evils stir again in the depths of Khazad-dûm. Small fellowships must form to combat this emerging threat before the hopes of the Iron Garrison and the Elves of Lothlórien are ended by the darkness. The story of The Mines of Moria continues with new quests and challenges!

• Battle a new pestilence in Dâr Narbugud - a 12 person raid, and challenge six unique encounters for high-end raid rewards.
• Retake the ancient Halls of Crafting from Mazog's Orcs and the Black Uruks of Dol Guldur in a new 6-person instance.
• Join a party of three to bring life back to the gardens of Moria in The Mirror Halls of Lumul-nar or solve the puzzle of the great water works in Nâla-dûm - The Water Wheels.

For an overview of what's in Book 8, check out the Book 8 Spotlight at lotro.com! Visit the LOTRO Lorebook to view the full release notes.

Of particular and immediate interest to our community:

User Interface
• Item roll displays are now limited to 2 rows of 5 items each. Any available items beyond that will appear as you act on the visible items.
• More UIs can be skinned, several fixes have been made.
• The client now has a /ui command that can be used to save the current layout of windows to an xml file and then load this layout.
• To save a ui layout type: /ui layout save <name>
• To load a previously saved layout: /ui layout load <name>
• In both cases the name is optional and if not specified it will just save to a file called Default_ appended with your current game window resolution. (e.q running in 800 x 600 results inDefault_800_600.layout)
• The error message and broadcast message UI boxes are now moveable via the "Ctrl+" UI mode.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the display of the queued skill border on quickslots for disabled skills. This was especially apparent to classes with reactive skills which they may have queued knowing their executing skill would fulfill the requirements of the queued skill.
• More UIs can be skinned, several fixes have been made.
• UI Skinning reorganization of panels (backed by the SkinDefinition.txt file) has been fixed. You can now reorganize the elements within panels.
• Fixed a memory leak with skinned assets
• Fellowship invite messages will now expire on teleporting or entering an instance.
• Items will no longer erroneously be bumped from your inventory into the item overflow.
• The Ornate Yew bow will now update skill duration tooltips properly.
• Effect icons will once again pulse when they are running out of time.
• Elements in a Barter NPC's list will no longer stop graying out once they are selected.
• When examining an Item Advancement class item, the view of your equipped class item will now display title effects on it properly.
• Housing furniture will no longer have their names erroneously truncated in their tooltips.
• Fixed an issue where the housing maintenance UI seemed to not be updating properly.
• Partial mitigation tooltip values from block, parry, and evade found in the character journal now include the values gained through additional modifiers, such as legendary item relics.
• The tutorial hint for traits now blinks on the trait menu button.

Game Update 52 also known as "Monument and Might" is now live! This update includes many changes to the game and has changed some of the default interface. I have posted a compare for your viewing pleasure. It doesn't look like much (if anything) has changed since my test server compare.

Full GU52 patch notes
UI Compare GU52

The much anticipated Game Update 52 for EverQuest II is on its way. The Update is scheduled to be released on June 16th. This update does have some interface changes so I do suggest that you take a look at the test compare I posted.

If you are interested in more than just the interface changes below is a list of some highlighted features this update will bring to the game.

• Research Assistants will allow you to train your spells up to higher grades one at a time! Find out more about research assistants.
• More than 80 new quests in the Rise of Kunark overland zones!
• Player-Written Books - Leave your permanent mark in Norrath by writing and distributing your character's own books! Read Rothgar’s blog about user-written books!
• All-new Emperor’s Athenaeum group quests!

Also check out the Monument and Might Video SOE has posted.

I may be a little late posting the updated compare on the 16th due to some traveling but hope to have it up very soon after. However if things don't change much from now until the 16th the test compare will work.

A patch to EverQuest was released yesterday (6/10/09) and that patch brought some changes to the user interface. I have posted a compare of the xml changes here.

The patch also brought some other nice updates:

• Some items from the Seeds of Destruction expansion have had right-click effects added to them. Additionally, the power of some of the clicks on the highest end Secrets of Faydwer items has increased slightly.
• Poisons have had a small change to make them slightly harder for NPCs to resist. The PvP resist rate remains the same.
• New titles are now available for players who have done exceptionally well in the group version of the Dragons, Dragons, Dragons event.

Full 6/10/09 Patch Notes

Okay guys, some of you have volunteered to help before, and we now feel we are in a position where we are ready to accept it. So, this is a call for some volunteers. We are only looking for a couple (we think) but we will have to evaluate it as it goes. This is what we are looking for:

1) A couple people to help with the actual programming of Minion, most specifically people that can help with bug fixes and/or improvement of heuristics. They will need to have the following;

- java programming experience (familiarity with OSGi a plus, but not required)
- strong backround in Object Oriented techniques, including typical design patterns
- familiarity with version control systems

2) Someone to help keep an eye on the bug tracker - confirming issues, marking reports as duplicates, handling feedback, etc.

If you have the time, interest and knowledge to be able to help, please post your interest here.

Thanks guys.