Well, I thought I'd try the free trial of WOW while waiting for EQ to come back up... so far, they've gone down for updates 2 days in a row/11 hrs. each (my two days off, of course)! The 1st one, I knew about. The 2nd one, they just bumped everyone out without a word. At least SOE gives you fair warning when the system is coming down.

Also, graphics on EQ are so much better; as is the mapping! Not to mention, they're more expensive.

So, all in all, I'll play WOW til EQ comes back online. I'm just hoping it's SOOON!

I have been following this whole situation on Facebook, Twitter, here on Zam and anywhere Google, Bing and Yahoo will suck information off the web for weeks now. I hear folks on these various mediums cursing Sony for not having the games they paid for up and running for their playing pleasure. I hear folks saying Sony had better make all this waiting worth some significant double XP, station cash or some cheesy free particle effet on this piece of gear or that. I hear folks saying saying Sony deserved to get hacked because of how they handled the whole Hotz situation. I have been playing EverQuest for over a decade now, running as many as six accounts at a time with a total investment of (near as I can figure given the variance in rates over the years)nearly $10,000.00 out of my own pocket. I love the game! I have to admit that I get a little bent when a four hour patch takes twelve hours, I get a little bent when when the servers come down for an emergency patch that address' an instability that doesn't seem obvious to us as players. I even get a little bent when a GM isn't available for days on end to deal with the plat farming *** hats that perma camp the gear I need with outside macros. But in the end I LOVE to play EverQuest!

But it seems to me that something has been lost in all the emotion and hype that is surrounding this event. IT REALLY ISN'T ABOUT THE GAME at this point. Over 100 million accounts have been breached here, if each and every one of those accounts had only been open for a single month (and we know this is a light number) at an average cost of say $12.00 then that means Sony has taken in 1.2 billion dollars in that single month!

Okay, so the question looms..."are we, as their clients, worth so little to them that they can't spend a portion of that sum on ensuring our security"?

Already this blunder has caused me real finacial damage, cancelling and re-issuing credit cards and bank debit cards isn't free, in most cases the bank charges a $15.00 to $35.00 fee. In my case I have used three different cards over the last couple of years, so wham bang I am out $75.00 right out of the gate. Sony says they will make it up to me with a free month, whooo hooo now I am only out $65.00!

This is an EPIC FAIL on Sony's part and there is no two ways about it. You can't take in that kind of revenue from your client base and turn around and say "well its really isn't our fault, we were the victim of a criminal action". I thought thats what we were paying you to prevent...did you think we just wanted to play video games for the fee we pay you? REALLY?

Then you are going to string us along, and I could give two squirts of **** about the game aspect of this. At first it was "no credit data was lost", then it was "well only 10,000 or so credit accounts were breached...but they were from an outdated server" and most recently its "oh sorry...its really over 12 million credit accounts that have been compromised"! Which is it? Are these three Security Consulting Firms you've contracted so inept? Was your system security so horrible that you placed over 100 million people (thats almost a third of the entire U.S. population!) at risk? REALLY?

Like I said it relly isn't about the games any more, I want to know why this happened.

Edited, May 10th 2011 11:52pm by Painterman

Edited, May 10th 2011 11:55pm by Painterman

Edited, May 11th 2011 6:48am by Painterman

I am sorry to admit I've been using the same password for years.

No change password after 60 days warnings
No warning to password complexity

We who work using computers at our jobs will get a monthly reminder about password settings.

That would be a very secure feature to add in to the password reminders.

I could have used the work reminders to change my EQ password but I am lazy and took it to the extreme using same password for years.

Edited, May 10th 2011 11:53pm by namdaruluclin

LFM Raid: SOE HQ @ 11 p.m. CST. Target: Server On Switch Guardian Boss. +10 dkp on-time bonus, guaranteed loot and +5dkp/attempt. 90/1500 AA/no keys. PST for invite.

that bundle of world of warcraft has been laughing at me everytime i walk thru the pc section at the mall... tempted to try... HURRY UP SOE!!!

I would just like to hear some sort of real response on the situation from one of the devs or game designers. Where are they, why can't they say anything?

Something like: "Guys, I really feel your pain, and I promise we are going to make things right for you. We miss it as much as you guys do. During this downtime we are working on bug fixes and content to improve the game once it's back up."

Just some kind of repsonse that shows they really care about their game and us would be so refreshing. When we get the same generic post on Facebook everyday it makes me feel very unwanted as a customer.

There is no way the EQ team has a gag order, they can say something to let us know they really care about us.

Edited, May 10th 2011 9:56pm by Ravenlock

Well this is really saying a LOT! The first few days EQ was down there was a post every 2-3 minutes. After a week, it died down to about 1 post every 10 minutes or so. Today I noticed that there are very few posts at all, and most of them are from the same handful of people. SOE is already losing their audience... or at least we are losing interest in our obsession.

This is definitely a bad sign...

I've been playing Allods Online F2P waiting for EQ2 to come up. What is refreshing is that this is not an American/Asian game but a Russian MMO. It's refreshing to play a similar type of MMO with some cultural changes thrown in.

The architecture in the game is stunning and if you roll a female character you will see some really pretty underwear (There is a quest where you need to go and whip some soldiers with birch branches in a sauna and your toon is stripped down to some very sexy lingerie)

I would kill for EQ2 to adopt the Z and T key in that game, they are amazingly simple ideas but would make any MMO wonderful.

UPDATE,________________________: According to Facebook, "We thank everyone for their continued patience as work continues on SOE services. They will not be up today,______________, but we are working as quickly as possible to resolve this."


Canned message time."Fill in the blank today Mary it's your turn".

See you tomorrow when the day is over for the canned message update.


Good Day

So, any bets on servers being up and functional by this weekend?!