First off, Hackers brag about everything they do. It may be in there own little chat room, but they are bragging.
Anonymous knows who hacked the Sony system. Like every other hacker that has access to the chats.
They are planning a 3rd attack. That info came from a hacker chat room.

Anonymous, will help out and rat on the other hackers. The reason they will do that is because, Anonymous are great people that just hack into other peoples systems to help them out and do good things for them.

Hackers cause problems for everyone. The only good hacker is a jailed hacker.

I am sure that Anonymous is loving all this free advertising.

Not too surprised that the SOE network is still down. When they called in security experts to access the damage, my estimate was that it would be down for 2 weeks. Should be fun to see if it comes back up on the 16th of May if I have accessed the time interval corrctly.

i dont remember Verant being like this

I been playing for a little over 12 months i play evry day 5/6 hours I am Single with no children i found the game was an excellent stress relife therapy at the end of my working day and good fun in my spare time in an attempt to find anothere outlet i have spent all week trying to download free trials of other games as a fill in while its off line i have been unable to accsess any of the two i tryed lord of the rings or dungens and dragons my luck cup seems to have run dry i feel SOE could be more upfront and honest but i agree its the hakers that annoy me most as to compensation how will it affect me I subscribe for 12 or 18 months at a time on both my accounts guess i am screwd all ways round to add insult i am UK so were allways the poor cousins to you guys sigh (excuse the spelling and gramer am dixclesic)

Sony posted a mesage on their customer support page "We will be closed until May 8th due to national holidays"
This is not the time for a holiday people!

PSN users are getting a one year million dollar insurance policy against identify theft as reported in http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/7554048.html - whether the SOE users are going to get that isn't clear. So are we?

It was inevitable that Sony got hacked in a major way. For instance, look at how long it took them to react to the threat World of Warcraft posed to Everquest. Sony is not a nimble, raptor-like company; it is a giant, bloated, sluggish behemoth that takes a long time to respond to any threat. One can even look at the nature of Everquest to see this borne out. The game is an electronic version of the classic dungeons and dragons games that are ultimately based on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Who could choose a more conservative topic upon which to base a video game. Also, none of this is a recrimination of the corporation or my attempt to make Sony look bad. I think we can all agree it is just the reality of the situation.

After carefully studying its operating policies, would anyone expect Sony's networks to have excellent security? There are people who play Everquest and like to solo, and it does not hurt the game at all. People can solo, group or raid in any amounts they like, and it does not change the social aspect of the game. Actually, it generally tends to make the game stronger to allow people greater flexibility. What does change the game is trying to force people to group, because it causes people who either do not have the time or desire to participate in a large raiding guild or spend large amounts of time looking for groups to quit the game. One would tend to assume from all this that if Sony cannot respond to basic player desires that it probably cannot be flexible enough to understand and implement sound security policies when computer security is such a complex and multi-faceted topic.

All this is good evidence that Sony pays little attention to the wants and needs of customers. This is, again, not meant to be insulting to Sony Corporation. It comes out of a very conservative business strategy and a desire within the corporate culture for control and ultimate stability, but it tends to alienate customers. Customer service is likewise done in the easiest and cheapest way possible. The situation has gotten much better recently, but incidents where people traded items and they disappeared were often attributed to player mistakes. etc. This was sometimes true, however, it was not always. And customers are easily alienated when they are accused of being dishonest any time something unexpected happens.

Something else I do know for sure is that this fiasco is going to cost Sony a lot of customers for the Playstation Network and Sony Online Entertainment. My guess would be at least 15% initially, and then how high the percentage goes will depend on how they handle it after that. The major problem Sony has is that it took World of Warcraft stealing all its customers to get the bugs and major issues that affected Everquest game play fixed, and this Everhack is going to cause a similar situation. Sony only ever reacts when so many customers are ready to quit playing Everquest that the survival of the game is in jeopardy, and then only the tiniest concession is ever made.

There are a lot of people who are going to leave Sony's games over this theft of personal information, and the initial estimates on the financial liability Sony is going to face for this is $1 billion dollars. Couple that with Sony's dismal financials at the moment, and it is going to give the customers who stick around a lot of leverage over what Sony has to provide to keep people shelling out for games, expansions, etc. Sony cannot afford to throw away a single source of revenue at the moment, and making the least possible gesture is going to cost too much at the moment.

A few days of free play time is not going to save this situation from possibly expanding to the point where it bankrupts Sony Corporation. They are going to have to make some real in-game concessions to keep people paying for their games. It has nothing to do with who is angry about what or how much people hate to miss out on game play. Sony is simply going to have to give people items in game, extra experience and anything else they want to keep them paying. Free credit protection and added security is going to help, but those things do not make for good entertainment and sell games. A good start would be to do the top ten or twenty things people beg for in emails or feedback and see how much that helps. It might even save Sony in the end. Also, for anyone who wishes, it would probably be very worthwhile for the player base to get together and demand items in game and that the game be changed to better suit player's needs. A large block of customers could probably get a lot of grievances addressed while this situation is fresh and a possible source of financial ruin for Sony.

Morning all

Considering what has transpired this past week in the real world is EQ being down that major of an event?

There are other things to do during this time:

Take your kids (Or go solo) out in to the real world-To a neighborhood park-to a little league ball game-to the library-to a freebie tour of a local historic area-play a board game, help out at a soup kitchen, do some baking/cooking, rent a movie, introduce yoursel/ves to your neighbors, etc.

You would be suprised just how fast you forget that EQ is down.

Yeah I am disappointed Eq is down. Was planning on playing this weekend after being out of town all weekend but I will explore other activities.

As for who I am upset with:

IT IS THE HACKERS.


Why?

Cause they have NO respect for other human beings. They think it is fun to break into a system without any regards as to who it will effect.

They definitely knew just how many people it would effect-they knew people pay to play this game-They knew the players would be upset and did not care.

Players are telling others here to get a life (I can understand some being addicted to the game) BUT why aren't the hackers being told to do the same?

Hackers are the real culprit/s here, NOT SOE.

I would rather SOE take a month (If needed) to insure our (The players) privacy than bring it up now and have us (Yes US because we are the ones being directly effected by this) go through this again.

And no I do not work nor ever will work for SOE (I love the career I have).

(Keeping fingers crossed they catch AND prosecute the hackers).

The ETA for server's going online is no longer in the hands of the tech folks.. It's been handed off to top executive's who have to deal with several factors.. Political, legal, insurance company (The one that's dealing with the $1 Million per user ID theft policy), and finally the pissed off customers..

30 days free, 1 day for each day they are down. Fine.

Everquest poll not EQ2....don't play that one.

Is it enough. yes / no

What would the players like SOE to do for them In Game.

Double XP Day(s)

Double XP Potions

Store cash 1000 for $5.00

Patch in a God Mode, so I don't die again.

Anyways, the Idea is get a poll on what the players want in game for all the downtime.

That seems better then how many hours a week do you play MMOs.

Also hes banned now too