ProSiebenSat.1: Multiple Accounts, Authenticators, and Remote Access

Written by Feldon on . Posted in International

As Linda “Brasse” Carlson (@Brasse), Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson (@Qixter), and presumably other SOE staff are at Gamescom this week in Cologne, Germany helping kick off the reintroduction of EverQuest II and other SOE properties to European audiences, we look at the rocky transition DC Universe Online EU players are experiencing in linking their SOE accounts with ProSiebenSat.1.

Multiple Accounts

One of the sticking points in the ProSiebenSat.1 terms-and-conditions which have EU EQ2 players concerned is the prohibition on multiple accounts. Indeed an earlier rendition of the ProSiebenSat.1 Terms and Conditions said this:

For each person / IP only one membership is permitted. Wrong data and / or several memberships of the same person enable ProSiebenSat.1 Digital to immediate termination of the user contract and to carry out the deletion of the account.

Yet players have received various unofficial advise to just create new accounts or new e-mail addresses so they can get their multiple accounts imported over. Indeed, Section 4.4 of those terms and conditions seem to have been recently revised to:

Each User may only create one Account. Each Account will be assigned to one e-mail address. You can use your Account for all games within the Service of P7S1.

UPDATE from Piestro:

We’re continuing to work on this issue (and a few others in the TOS/Privacy Statement). Unfortunately it wasn’t as simple as we initially thought to make the change so it’ll take time. Both we and ProSiebenSat.1 Games definitely understand your concerns and are working hard to address them however. I’ll update when we have more specific information to share.

SOE Authenticators

After months of being told that SOE Authenticators would be usable with ProSiebenSat.1, it finally came out that they wouldn’t work:

Players who have a SOE Authenticator will not be able to use it with the ProSieben.Sat1 Games account. If you purchased an Authenticator, we will refund you the amount you spent.

Players have been able to get refunds on these from the US side of things, but it’s still disconcerting. ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya Login accounts are also used to access their phpBB-powered support forums. While SOE’s creaking proprietary forums seem to be deteriorating before our eyes, they at least have not been subject to widespread security flaws as phpBB has.

Remote Access for Support?

No company is perfect, but one of the strengths of SOE has been its Customer Support department. Once a support ticket gets into the right hands, it’s generally dealt with in just hours, and they have routinely gone above and beyond to restore accounts, resolve billing issues, and so forth. We can’t speak to how this will go with ProSiebenSat.1 as to date they have limited experience with supporting AAA titles. However one red flag raised by users has been the requirement that all Technical Support must be handled by Remote Desktop.

From the ProSiebenSat.1 Privacy Policy:

In case you request any technical support, you will first have to consent to our remote accessing and review of the computer you load the software onto for purposes of support and debugging solely.

This is a serious concern for employees who work at home using personal equipment and VPN to securely connect to their office networks. This is also an issue of Non-Disclosure Agreements as many NDAs include a clause prohibiting other users from having remote access to your computer. While some workplaces provide work equipment (eg. a work laptop), many don’t and instead rely on VPN for security.

The terms-and-conditions do seem to be mutable, and Piestro suggested that we can expect further changes:

This should now be changed along with several other items brought up in this thread. I’m about to verify myself.

Looks like I spoke a bit too soon, the changes have not made it live yet. There are some changes coming however.

Weekend Support and Volunteers

What kind of support have EU-flagged paying customers of DCUO been experiencing over the weekend from ProSiebenSat.1? The number of inquiries seem to be straining the ProSiebenSat.1 support staff, who are mostly made up of volunteers. This quote comes from a member of P7S1 forums named Moonray who was, at the time, tagged as ‘Head of Florensia Techsupport’:

It’s weekend. Minimal occupation during the weekend, and no possibility to check databases.Wait till monday.

This quote apparently raised red flags at SOE as communication occurred between the companies and Moonray is no longer tagged as such when posting on the DCUO EU forum.

Dexella had this caution:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to address one of the CS concerns that has been brought up in recent posts.

There has been an issue with individuals who are not ProSiebenSat.1 official representatives posting information and providing feedback in some of the threads. We have notified ProSiebenSat.1 and are working with them to resolve this issue.

If you are looking for official ProSiebenSat.1 communication, please be aware that their account names will be flagged as such on their forums (similar to how we are “red named” here).

~Dexella

Further update from Piestro:

That person no longer worked for ProSiebenSat.1 Games. Their forum credentials hadn’t been updated. They are now.

So are the problems DCUO customers are experiencing what we can expect for EQ2? Customer Service reps on the DCUO EU forums say ‘Wait and see.’:

Don’t just yet compare DCUO to EQ2, we all know full well that we need to do alot of stuff differently for EQ2.So we can’t say yet what will or might be the case for EQ2, you will need to watch the FAQs and what our CMs post.

However I can only assure you again that this migration was done for DCUO only, setting a few basic mechanisms for further SOE migrations to come.As I said when it comes to EQ2 we expect that we have to rethink alot of the basics and edge cases, and also know how strong the EQ2 community is.So don’t just throw us in the trash bin yet, we have yet to migrate EQ2, and a lot lessons learned from the DCUO migration, so stick with us.

A player named Pipsissiwa has been on the forefront of trying to collect and provide information to players on how this potential disaster is playing out. Unfortunately, if you are not in Europe, then you are automatically IP blocked from reading the DCUO EU forums. I have tried without success to read their forums. But read what Pipsissiwa has to say:

I would encourage ANYONE concerned about the transition process itself, and how PSS1 will be treating their customers,  how they deal with tickets and how they approach account problems to read most of the threads in the “Account Related Support” section of the new shiny PSS1 DCUO forums: http://en.dcuniverseonline.eu/forum…rt-f2934/

Of course that does assume you are not of a delicate disposition, as some of it is horrifying and scary reading to anyone who values their account, their toons and a professional level of customer service.

SOE have many faults (please excuse any understatement), but in my personal experience their CS has always been prompt, poilte, helpful, understanding and patient.  PSS1 are clearly aspiring to the exact opposite.

Price Hikes?

Finally, despite ProSiebenSat.1’s widespread use of volunteer support staff (SOE has a full support team on salary), UK players will see a 20% price hike on their accounts. UK players who were paying £8.99 ($14.11) per month for their EQ2 accounts will be paying £10.99 ($17.25).

Reactive, not Proactive

As always, SOE’s response to the entire ProSiebenSat.1 situation has been reactive. “We’re working on it” “We’re seeking a solution” “We’ll have an announcement next week”. At no point has SOE been proactive and gotten out in front of the controversy with a plan to avoid these issues. It’s now 7 months since the deal was announced.

While communication has improved in the last month or two, many players have already left the game, having sworn to have no part of ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya. Guilds have collapsed and friendships frayed. If SOE wanted this partnership to work, they could have done so much more early on to address the issues. In the absence of information, players will fill in the blanks, and we had plenty of examples to choose from between the failed Codemasters-Lord of the Rings partnership and EverQuest-Ubisoft distribution deal which similarly fell apart.

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Comments (51)

  • Sole

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    So Dual Boxxing player, wo have a second account since release of EQ2, will get their Second account deletet, if they transfer to PSS1? Did i understand right?

    Reply

  • Whis

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    As i have no time to visit Gamescom this year i wonder that i didn´t find any note about the visit of Brasse, Smokejumper and other Soe staff or did i miss it ? When they want to push the game why they didn´t announce the visit ? May they want to avoid too much “non fanboy questions” ?

    Reply

  • XK

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    At least the whole thing has not been a total clusterf*ck. Oh, it has? My bad.

    Reply

  • Eschia

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    That limit 1 account per user restriction is the killing blow for many people. What about people who have families who also play EQ2 with them? If it’s restricted by IP, they’re all completely F-bombed.

    Reply

  • bhagpuss

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    There are about a million things wrong with this whole deal as everyone knows, but the whole “only one account per IP address” thing seems purely insane.

    All SOE MMOs have been built around the concept of multiple accounts for as long as I’ve played. Having more than one account isn’t an “edge case”, it may very well be the norm. I managed with just the one account until EQ2X started but now I have five, and I use all of them.

    Added to that, Mrs Bhagpuss, with whom you’ll be surprised to hear I share a home, has two. I’m no network engineer, but don’t people sharing the same ISP and internet connection have the same IP? If so, can only one family member have a PSS1 account or only one flatmate?

    I had already decided I’d have no choice other than to put up with this idiotic transfer if I want to go on playing SoE MMOs, which I do. If I can’t access some of my most played characters because I’m only allowed one account, however, that really will be game over.

    Reply

  • Whilhelmina

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    Well, at least the pricing doesn’t change for Euro… we stay at 12.99€ (16$)… *sight*
    But I’m pretty certain all the other european countries not using Euro will have the same problem as the UK… aka $ to € conversion fee + € to local currency conversion fee instead of a single one… Yeah for pricing.

    But hey! We can be happy ! Piestro says “they’re working on stuff(tm)”!

    Reply

  • Azzaroth

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    If they cant handle this shit until the conversion goes live, SOE and PSS1 can stick their whole EQ Series including new EQ Next where the sun dosnt shine. If they wreck this, i would guess they will lose about 50% of their remaining EU coustomers.

    Reply

  • Ragefighter

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    “Each User may only create one Account. Each Account will be assigned to one e-mail address. You can use your Account for all games within the Service of P7S1.”

    Sounds like you can just get another email to make as many accounts as you want.

    Reply

  • Halz

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    I’m surprised people in Europe are putting up with SOE and PSS1’s shit, the way they have treated EU players is pretty piss poor.

    Hopefully the EU players just kick Everquest to the curb and go play something else and avoid the mess that has been created.

    Reply

  • Seffrid

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    Thanks for this update, Feldon.

    What it doesn’t mention, of course, is that SOE have now announced that other titles including EQ and Vanguard will also now be included in that deal, and so the cancellations are now hitting those games as well as EQ2. Players are exceedingly unhappy at being sold off in this way, and American players are rightly concerned at the effect on the viability of their guilds and servers.

    What also needs to be understood is that it is probably less than 50% of the EQ2 population and less than 1% of the EQ population that actually knows about this deal! Once people click on a SOE launcher only to find that a window pops up telling them to create a ProSiebenSat.1 account in order to continue playing the game will we really know just how disastrous this is going to be.

    Some of the citical issues will doubtless be resolved, but almost certainly it will be a classic case of too little, too late.

    Reply

  • kal

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    If I lived in Europe I would be outraged if this happened to me. Even the brightest of optimists can’t feel good about this deal.

    Reply

  • Adri

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    If they don’t change the policy for the 1 account per ISP me and my family who also have played eq2 for years together will quit it.. Only bad thing is we have 3 gold accounts in our house all paid for 2 more years wonder what happens because we wont be able to log them in. You would think that if u paid for a subscription with a company and you have to agree to their terms if they change the rules later and block your ISP they should then have to refund you for a service/inconvenience if you cant use it. Even if we still wanted to play 2/3 of the gold accounts that were paid before they even started this merger cant even log in. Thats like prepaying for your telephone service for 1 year then 3 months into the contract they say um we sold your number to a new company without your consent and if your current living area you cant make calls. I just hope they fix this issue. Anyone know any non-Sony games that are good?

    Reply

  • skippydippy

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    The mind boggles at this deal,it did back in january now it just makes you want to scream.

    Reply

  • Lath

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    How an account is labeled as EU ?

    If i use proxy from EU i m labeled EU then ?

    Reply

  • Lath

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    My account is more than 12 years old, if my nationality have changed in this time how can i change it ?

    How EU player can still play to EQ2 without deal with PSS1 ? Dont say they just have to leave, it’s not a solution. It’s a THE END.

    Can i buy SOE US account and move my toon to this account ? (do proxy help ?)

    IF So Start to sell US labeled account guys 😉

    Reply

  • Feldon

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    Seffrid posted on the EQ2 Forums:

    So now we learn that Moonray on the PSS1 forums is a former Alaplaya employee, not a present one.

    I can only assume that Moonray is a former Alaplaya employee, but that he wasn’t a former employee when he wrote the customer support replies on the DCUO forum. I assume he ceased to have that status when the unprofessional nature of his replies was pointed out by us to PSS1 via SOE.

    Why do I think that? Because surely, if he was posting for some time without current employee status including inviting players to PM him their account details (1) that would have been picked up earlier and (2) once the issue had been identified and resolved there would have been a board acknowledgement of it together with a request for anyone who had PM’d him their account details to contact the company and ensure their account had not been compromised.

    I accept Piestro’s claim that it isn’t always possible to pick these things up immediately, but the real test is how a company deals with them when they are picked up, and in this case there appears to have been no real attempt to deal with it, or its potential consequences, other than by the removal of Moonray’s signature status from his posts, with no board explanation of what had happened and no attempt by either SOE or PSS1 to check whether people had given their account information to an unauthorised person and if so with what consequences. That is a gross failure of data protection requirements is it not?

    Either way it is an own goal by two companies trying to sell us the idea that this wonderful deal is all about giving us improved customer support.

    Reply

  • Feldon

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    Moldylocks posted on the EQ2 Forums:

    Since day 1 all the SOE message hype has been about how beneficial this deal would be for the EU community. Player concerns regarding PSS1 have been loud and many, with extremely negative testimonials from people who had dealt with them in the past. Brasse came in with fluffy assurances that all would be well, that PSS1 staff were being trained to the performance standard that EQ2 players have come to accept. There was a general /head pat that all would be well, so sleep well kiddies and don’t let anything worry your little heads.

    Now we are seeing the raw truth of PSS1. It has become a grotesque unlayering, week by week, of what this company has to offer: its buried TOS clauses, how customers are dealt with, and the complete bungling of account management causing character and in-game item/monetary loss.

    On top of that, its the same lip-service:

    We’re working hard on that to come up with a solution.
    We’re in discussions and its complicated, with lawyers involved. We’re doing our best.
    We understand the issues and realise how hard this must be for everyone.
    Please be patient. Its going to take time to work through this.

    If you go back to the very first feedback thread, you will see the same or similar comments on all the community concerns from then to now. Nothing has changed. Nothing is resolved. Outstanding concerns, like the recent ones, get shuffled along and then disappear. Its a waiting game until transition time when you aren’t SOE’s problem anymore, you are PSS1’s.

    So, DCUO has transitioned. Wasn’t that a smooth and glorious event. I bet every one of those EU players feels like it was as beneficial as SOE touted it to be.

    What my overall concern is, is that this nightmare is still rolling on. Despite thousands of negative customer feedback replies, despite the completely mismanaged round of the first transition, and, now, despite the EQ1 community outrage (at all of this happening to them even though Smedley stated they would be excluded)..SOE is still continuing with the PSS1 deal.

    Words haven’t stopped this. Threats of account cancellation haven’t made an impact. Actual cancellations don’t seem to be enacting change.. What’s left?

    The answer is SOE seems to be making wide-sweeping changes with complete disregard for their customers. Someone is making tough decisions to try to improve the corporation, and the “soft” aspect of community doesn’t come into the equation. The sad part is, while decisions have to be made for the greater whole and survival of SOE, we aren’t numbers: we are a community. And, apparently to them, this community is disposable.

    Reply

  • Feldon

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    Seffrid and Moldylocks, that’s a rock solid analysis of the situation. I hope you don’t mind quoting you.

    Reply

  • Lath

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    In EQ1, the same thing happened long time ago with ubisoft.
    Result, i got login issue for some dark reason, ubisoft (who had CS) telling me it was SOE fault. While SOE told me to see with Ubisoft…
    For more than one month i was not able to log in.
    And ubisoft was way better than pss1 can be…. with CS.

    I feel like account got stolen with no possibility to recover it. Lost server/guilde/friend and game and toons.

    And plus they ll have my personnal data with no secure. When i see how SOE got hacked so easily…. From one hand they put more security and they sell us to a
    company who dont even understand this word ?

    from the link you provied :

    http://en.dcuniverseonline.eu/forum/account-related-support-f2934/

    “Can’t cancel my membership”
    “PrePaid card don’t work”
    “Pro 7 lost my money!”
    “Help me cant play! ;(”
    “Support tickets not being answered!”
    “loosing every hero i make”

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    Something that should be mentioned … I just checked the german boards and even there I don’t see much CS activity.
    And right now there are still people who can not link their accounts – rendering them unable to play since the transition.
    In addition their websites don’t function well with firefox – then the next day the don’t function well with IE. The transition websites are bogus (since day 1 – but they obviously don’t care despite bugreports) and so on …

    people buy things from the marketplace and never receive them. support doesn’t respond for a week and longer.

    Funny enough – they happen to post patch notes and all that – but support? Nada.

    Reply

  • Lysanthir

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    Not usually that emotional a gamer but this is rather gutting. Last night I got a mail apologising for not notifying me of the change from a non standard soe email address so I went looking for what it was about presuming it was a scam…. to find not only is it true but they’re raising my subs cost by 20% according to this thread. Hadn’t played in 2 months as it was so will just let the yearly sub lapse as they’ve considerately changed the recurring nature…

    Reply

  • Seffrid

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    “Saffrid and Moldylocks, that’s a rock solid analysis of the situation. I hope you don’t mind quoting you.”

    I don’t mind at all for my part, Feldon, but it’s Seffrid not Saffrid ;)!

    Hey, you’ve just given me an idea for a new character name :)!

    Reply

  • Antares

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    Hi all

    The problem with all this issues is, these are under the radar of the gaming press and public. P7S1 is a German company, and the German consumer organization has some special legal power compared to other countries (EA had to change the Origin TOS, Blizzard is at time in trouble because of D3 always online nature written in fine print).

    It would be nice if the German players report the issues here:
    http://www.surfer-haben-rechte.de/cps/rde/xchg/digitalrechte/hs.xsl/schwarze-schafe-melden.htm

    Reply

  • Rugrat

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    I got fed up with trying to follow this saga by about Feb. I realised that the deal was so far off being realised that I should wait and see what happens before transition to PSS. I just got the warning email that says it’s imminent (30-60 days) so I thought now would be a good time to catch up on things.

    What I have read so far fills me with absolute dread. Not even sure that I can face bothering to play now, let alone after transfer 🙁

    Reply

  • Flatley

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    Oh come on folks! It’s all good according to Smedders!

    Makes me f*cking sick. Can I call him a see you next Tuesday in this forum?

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    @Antares: Working on that. If quite a few germans bring that to attention they might give it some priority. At least … PSS1 is a german company – so at least part of the deal has to follow german rules. And if it is only the cancellation of the sub and bullying us into a contract we do not want …

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    oh – and just to let you folks know – the mods are running wild again now on the eq-boards. they don’t just remove parts of postings that they deem illegal per their board-rules … no … they remove whole postings that had important information in it.

    Reply

  • Seffrid

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    Agreed Trevyn. They removed my last post on the EQ2 board for a reference to the fact of moderation (I didn’t comment on the merits of moderation)when a similar comment on the EQ board wasn’t only left up but Piestro responded to it. I suspect they didn’t like the rest of my post but didn’t have a legitimate reason to remove it for that. I’ve referred them to the other instance and asked them to review the decision.

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    This more and more becomes laughable.
    Meanwhile I filed in my complaint at the verbraucherzentrale and also made them aware that soe and pro7 try to keep all that under the rug because they deny us the right to tell each other what institutions exist that might give you proper advise on what to do.

    If those “not so clever” mods wouldn’t just delete postings but at least edit them – the thread on the eq boards wouldn’t be broken already.

    Although – to be honest – after the insulting comment from Smed on twitter that they will go on regardless what we say … I already have the text for my tickets ready demanding to get the remaining time on my accounts credited back to the cc or bank account.

    With announcing that eq will not transition (although they never said it will NEVER transition) I upped 4 of my accounts – and had i known that a few weeks later they will change their mind … i wouldn’t have done so.
    And they better not tell me they didn’t know. We all know that they think “the eq community is more resistant to change” and so they wait with such stuff longer.

    I didn’t expect the EQ communitie’s reaction that heavy – but of course – it is a good thing how upset folks are over there now 😉

    Reply

  • Steve

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    Anyone remember the heady days back in 1999 when SOE wasn’t the stinking POS evil company they are now?

    Reply

  • skippydippy

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    Yeah a couple of my wifes posts where given the mod treatment idiots they really are

    Reply

  • milliebii

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    Thank you SOE for providing my weekly dose of Schadenfreude, it lightens my heart every time I see one of these threads. So glad I left the game and moved on to another game where Customer Support actually means supporting customers.

    Reply

  • Vortix

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    When you have a new product or brand that you want to push, do what every other corporation would do … hire a new CEO to purposely run the old business into the ground and disenfranchise everyone about it’s former greatness.

    Strange how they’re raising prices when they don’t suffer the same costs of business … maybe they’re propping up a failing or unprofitable service, or else about to release some CEO’s doomed pet project.

    Obviously, the transition was a mistake, full of problems. Money doesn’t care, though.

    Reply

  • Flatley

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    Another cause for concern, raised over on the EQ1 boards:

    http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?start=180&topic_id=188272

    Quote:

    Got another gem for you, chatting to a guildie tonight they told me that ProSieben do not meet PCCDIS compliance so it is actually illegal for them to accept or make online payments for the UK.

    What’s the score on this, then?

    Now they can remote onto us illegally? Please, this cannot be true, can it?

    Reply

  • Katz

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    I went back and read your first article on this again, back when you and cheesepirate got banned.

    Have you all noticed how the forums are not very active anymore? I think many have given up and all that over moderation has chased many away.

    I know for me…I have lost loyalty to the game. I think they don’t value loyalty anyhow.

    Reply

  • Wanda Clamshucker

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    @Feldon: (Moldylocks here) I don’t mind you quoting me at all. Its always fun dancing around the edges of acceptable criticism over there and waiting pensively to see if your post will get deleted, or receive a 3 day vacation.

    Honestly, I can’t believe this clown show is still rolling out. I mean, really. What rational business leader would let this continue? I’m not necessarily talking about Dave and Smed. They can continue with their late Friday night Rusty Trombone (google that) practices for all I care.

    I’m talking about the people that pay Smed, that pull his strings and dance him about on their well polished floors while drinking sake. But, maybe that is the sad, pathetic reality. Smed and his greasy sidekick are just meaningless, Western means to an end: the complete F2P transition to mirror the lucrative Eastern market.

    The failure here resides in the lack of understanding of the Eastern MMO people to their Western market. Smed and Dave are just so corksoakingly unequipped, professionally, morally, and ethically, to represent anything other than what will fast-track them both to their hedonistic post-midlife dreams. They are fed well, are given strict directions, and its a strict line-marching to the end goal that the SOE community has been critically watching unfold, like a slow-motion train-wreck.

    I thought there wouldn’t be any word needed to explain my utter disgust at how this has been handled, yet, much to my surprise, the SOE/PSS1 deal continues to evolve in such grotesque dimensions. I’m honestly flabbergasted. And disgusted. Can one say that word often enough? Not in this case.

    Reply

  • Seffrid

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    I mentioned above that I had asked SOE to review the removal of my post given that not only had they left a similar post up but Piestro had been happy to respond to it.

    I don’t know if they did review it or not, but either way the outcome is that I have been banned :)!

    So much for the Land of the Free, it seems like we all live in China now. Such heavy-handed enforcement of intolerant forum guidelines isn’t doing SOE any favours in relation to this deal. They need to step back and exercise some commonsense discretion and tolerance at a difficult time for both the company and its long-standing customers.

    Reply

  • Pipsissiwa

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    Wow, did I pick the wrong weekend to try to get away from it all and go and sleep in a camper in the middle of nowhere (with no usuable moblile internet connection) at a music festival! Getting myself to speed, will post properly tomorrow (and do a summary for the poor, poor EQ1 peeps)!

    Peace and Solidarity

    Reply

  • Pipsissiwa

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    And TYVM Feldon for your article! We need to get all this info to as many players as possible, especially since SOE don’t seem to be bothering.

    And yes, the dancing around the mods over on the official forums is crazy. I put ‘Holy Sh**’ and the whole post got deleted, yet Piestro happy replies to and even quotes someone who put’ f**k’. And the mods dont read half of what they delete – I got banned (which got overturned when I complained) because a mod failed to read my whole post and just assumed my quote of PSS1 CS was my own comment, despite being in quotes and clearly described. Shows how rude the CS person was tho. 🙂

    Right off for a long bath and a sleep in a real bed. I’ll post properly tomorrow.

    Reply

  • G

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    I’m surprised people in Europe are putting up with SOE and PSS1’s shit, the way they have treated EU players is pretty piss poor.

    That is why most of us Euro players have been jumping off the sinking ship, starting the second after the P7S1 deal was announced. first one i saw going was a German (!) girl in my previous guild getting all raged up because she didn’t want anything to do with that amateur operation called ProSieben.

    I’m not sure if i can continue to be guild leader, i fear that SoE and P7 will screw that up. No word on what will happen on the day of the move, if we will be FORCED onto other servers or not.

    The mute monkeys at SoE should get their shit together and start informing players on exactly WHAT will happen and what consequences are being forced down our throats.

    Trust is, it will be fine” is an moronic statement that comforts no one.

    Reply

  • Seffrid

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    Players who have transitioned on DCUO are apparently finding that they cannot now post on SOE’s forums, contrary to assurances previously given that European players will still have access to those forums – read-only access is not what was implied.

    If unresolved this will cause a major headache for players who don’t want to post on a PSS1 forum where most of the posters don’t speak English, where the forum support is either non-existent or again non-English, and not least when the player is playing with US players who are on the SOE forums. Guild recruitment is just one area that I can foresee being scuppered if full access isn’t enjoyed by everyone on the official forums.

    I hope that this is just a temporary unplanned glitch but with this outfit you no longer know. Although there’s supposed to be a mechanism for logging in to the SOE forums with your PSS1 account that apparently doesn’t work either.

    This raises the whole question of the continued viability of your Station Account as well as seemingly raising additional complications for those on All Access accounts.

    Reply

  • Seffrid

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    Nub has posted rather a useful, not to say amusing, analysis of the PSS1 deal on the EQ board:-

    “Well, you read the FAQ that Piestro posted that contains millions of lines explaining ProSiebenSat.1 and Sony will work closely together… and that’s about it. So I bring you a FAQ based upon my own analysis.

    Q: Who is ProSiebenSat.1?

    A: It’s a German holding company for media (mainly Television) companies. They are in the business of buying TV/Radio and Production companies and get their main revenue from selling ads.

    Q: Why is ProSiebenSat.1 buying EQ and other Sony Games?

    A: They are not buying the games, they are buying the customers.

    Q: Why is ProSiebenSat.1 buying EQ customers?

    A: TV is suspected to be on the way out and video-on-demand and other online services seen as the future. ProSiebenSat.1 is building an infrastructure through their “Digital & Adjacent” division. Buying customers is far quicker than recruiting from scratch. When you have one customer playing EQ in your portal, you can also try sell him other services, or get him to explain to friends/family about the portal and how to use it.

    Q: So ProSiebenSat.1 isn’t interested in EQ?

    A: Not at all. Just like Sony in Japan isn’t the least interested in EQ. Sony Online Entertainment, the tiny division within Sony is very much interested in EQ, but not Sony executives in the Ivory Tower.

    Q: So what will happen with EQ after ProSiebenSat.1 buys it?

    A: Several things will happen but it wont happen overnight…

    1. They will make EQ players “beta testers” of their digital portal for consumer-products online. I.e. get accounts to work, and incorporate buying other things (like TV/Radio/Music) via that account. Somewhere in here there might be (as Microsoft calls it) “Premium Content” meaning that the user is locked out from parts of his computer (via new login/patcher) to control how he access mediastreams and other things he may have bought.

    2. European players who not really keen on ProSiebenSat.1 and doesn’t enjoy “premium content” ideas, will leave for other games. There many free games out there today. What Sony doesn’t realize is that EQ is alive for the same reasons most other upstarts fail.

    * EQ got a community (old friends, new enemies, acquaintances and people you vaguely think you remember… and 12 years of Internet webpages. It all makes for a community). New games don’t have that.

    * EQ got content. With each level increase, and old quests being made obsolete, or impossible to do as you can’t get 3-6 people of suitable level for task, a lot of content also “vanish” but EQ been around so long it’s still King when it comes to content.

    This is why EQ is alive, but it doesn’t matter though if the service provider tries to feed you “dog food”. A lot of European players will leave and it will never recover. ProSiebenSat.1 doesn’t care if 50-75% of all the players leave, they buying customers, and if they end up with just 25% using and betatesting their portal, it’s all fine and dandy. Sony doesn’t care either if customers leave it’s too small for them.
    Sony Online Entertainment cares if customers leave and they will be in meetings with ProSiebenSat.1 on a monthly/quarterly basis discussing how to stop the trend. ProSiebenSat.1 will ensure SoE they doing everything they can and they have great plans, but in reality they don’t give a sh*t… because it’s all about the portal for future services. EQ is already dead in their eyes.

    3. In the far future… maybe SoE will launch future games under their own umbrella? Maybe this is the end for Sony as a big player in the European market (just as the Asian market had it’s own MMORPG niche since the days of Ultima and early EQ with far more subscribers than EQ ever had). SoE will *not* buy it back because ProSiebenSat.1 wont sell. They aren’t interested in the game, they want customers… and that means they want to keep having the exclusive right to sign subscriptions, be it 100 or 100.000, it’s all subscriptions and services they offer in their annual report to shareholders and how they build a future on the Internet.

    Q: They talking about content developed for European players?

    A: ProSiebenSat.1 is probably going to try find ways to sell their other services to European players. If “content” is being able to loot an advertisement for Video-on-demand and ability to watch the first 30 min of some movie for free… then yes, they gonna add content. If you mean classic content as we used to see it, no! There will be no content. ProSiebenSat.1 and the “Digital & Adjacent” division is *not*, and let me repeat this.. they *not* interested in developing a game, they just want you to subscribe through their portal for online services so they can learn how to sell things online.

    Q: Is ProSiebenSat.1 support going to be better/worse than current?

    A: Their support is going to be merged with support for other online services like video-on-demand. This is great if you not only have a question about EQ billing but also need to know what version of “Premium content Manager” you need installed to use their services. If you want in-game support who actually knows what EQ is, you probably out of luck.

    Q: Is there anyway around this?

    A: No, Sony saw a golden deal to sell off customers, while still having them as customers. This means that if you live in one of the countries affected, there is no way you can go around this, except by changing nationality to American (or Japanese I suspect will work fine too).

    Q: So, I’m just sold off like a slave after being a loyal customer since 1999?

    A: Yes! Neither Japanese or Americans care about Europeans, so live and learn, and stop sulking. When the time comes, just exit gracefully.

    Q: Where can I learn more?

    A: You can learn *a lot* about ProSiebenSat.1 by going to their website and download the information for shareholders and traders. It contains their plans, hopes, and a lot of fancy talk to make shareholders think their stock is the best thing since sliced bread. (All companies do that in case you not used to analyse these types of reports.)”

    Reply

  • Antares

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    Above post fell victim to the censorship (Not complete, the follow up post that is agreeing is still unchanged there). This shows they are really good with putting the small fires out, before growing to a uncontrollable firestorm that escapes the SOE world.

    What we need is a shitstorm that is going through the press (compare that that with the mass effect 3 ending controversy, it didn’t stayed in the gaming media it was a topic for weeks in the blogs on Forbes).
    This shitstorm is well contained in two threads on the EQ2 forums. If we want to organize us, we need a forum that is not under SOE and P7S1 control.

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    that posting from Nul obviously got eradicated from the boards without a trace.
    Now we also have reports that support denies to return your status to soe customer once you leave pro7 area.
    Pro7 has their own items in marketplace (player-reports: a pro7-cape).
    Pro7 still have their transition website and login-website NOT working properly.
    Obviously billing issues are handled by volunteer-staff and they are still hiring!

    to be continued 😉

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    by the way – us players suggested to see if a class action lawsuite could be arranged. unfortunately i have absolutely no insight in how the us-law works 😉

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      by the way – us players suggested to see if a class action lawsuite could be arranged. unfortunately i have absolutely no insight in how the us-law works

      Here’s how a class action lawsuit works:

      Lawyers get millions. Customers get a check for $0.39 or maybe a coupon for $5 towards more Sony Online Entertainment products.

      Reply

  • Trevyn

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    lol … think first – write second …
    @Antares: Isn’t that what eq2flames is for?

    Reply

  • Whis

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    Did anyone visited SOE at gamescom and can tell something about it ?

    Reply

  • deman

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    The “contact us” form doesn’t appear to be there on eq2wire, so posting here instead:

    From official forum

    http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=521718

    Hail Denizens of Norrath in the UK and EU,

    I just wanted to stop in here on the EQII Forums to give you an update the current status of the transition of our EU players to ProSiebenSat.1 Games. Having recently completed the transition for DC Uiniverse Online, we’ve learned a great many valuable lessons and identified a few areas where we’d like to improve the processes. We’re currently using that information and the feedback from player experiences and are working to improve the process further for players in future transitions.

    To this end, we have made the call not to make the transition for EverQuest II players during the time frame noted in the previous CS notification email.

    As soon as we have more information on a new schedule for the EQ2 transition, we’ll let you know here, immediately. Further, when we settle on a new date, all EU players can expect to receive a new CS email notification, well in advance. As a side note, and again as a result of valuable player feedback, we were able to fix the issue where some EU players did not receive the initial CS notification email.

    Thank you all, and see you in game!
    Warmest regards,
    Brasse

    Reply

  • Trevyn

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    And something that makes sooooo much sense *lol*:

    We will absolutely have a ProSiebenSat.1 panel at SOE Live! They are sending over quite a number of their team to participate in the event, and it will be a great opportunity for folks to get to meet them and ask questions directly.

    source: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=1710&topic_id=516732#5788323

    makes much sense to me – yeah. I have been at fan faire quite often in the past years – the few europeans I met …

    Reply

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