Just Another Manic Monday
Although we are unsurprised — restoration of services even by the end of the week now seems unlikely — we bring you the latest news from SOE’s Facebook page as of May 9, 1:55 p.m. PDT:
SOE services will remain offline today. We continue to work diligently to bring things back as quickly as possible and appreciate your continued patience.
Tags: account security, compromised accounts
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Comments (35)
isest
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Not not surprised at all. In fact sosdd, not today our eq2 friends. Ugh want to paste a picture of Piccard doing a face-palm.
I would like to know what is really going on, sure seams like a lot of downtime for a hack job.
Anybody calls the not today as great customer communication, i have to wonder about your version of reality.
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Quesera
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Time to go check out a new game, I guess. I’m starting to lose interest in playing my toons as this goes on.
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user2983
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Whats really going on? The security issues were probably extensive and they’re recoding a huge portion of their network software. SOE aside, if PSN is really down until the end of the month I can only imagine how much that is going to cost Sony. I wouldn’t be surprised if game publishers start suing Sony for the downtime since it’s undoubtedly affecting the sales of games with online play and DLC. And this is coming right after that whole LG lawsuit and the recent release of the 3DS which is probably cutting into Sony’s portable sales.
Going to be a terrible fiscal year for Sony’s gaming division. I just hope EQ3 doesn’t get scrapped.
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Schnooky
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EQ3?!?!
I’m not even sure if EQ2 survives this train wreck. Their legal exposure here is quite possibly far in excess of their online gaming revenue. What does that tell you?
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freudrick
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The wife and I are gone. We went to LOTRO for now. It’s not a matter of what they are having to do to get it right. It’s the fact they are not letting us know what is going on. The vast majority of its clientel are adults and are savvy to what they are doing. So instead of alienating scores of consumers ( those of us that supply your paychecks ) fill us in on what you are doing and not blowing smoke up our collective asses..we are not children. Hope the hackers involved get their fingers chopped off and hope SOE learns what to do to treat us like adults.
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Anaogi
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Time to find folks with the money to form a consortium and buy the properties and assets from SOE.
‘Everquest 3, brought to you by the Far Seas Consortium, LLC’…yeaaaahhhhh…
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Murfalad
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Well I can understand if legal and other things are getting in the way of SOE communicating more on what is going on.
But some contact from the dev team would be good, maybe even a question and answer session on Zam plus one of those video things on the Stickem facebook video channel would be cool.
It does not need careful scripting or anything, just fill in some of the blank time while we wait for EQ2 to return.
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LordNimmo
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this is so lame wtf are SOE doing drinking coffee all day long …the least they could do for there customers is give us more info on whats going on not telling us to be patiencent over and over….at this rate i can see myself stop playing again yea its been a week but come on SOE fix the mess ye have caused and give us more info on whats going on.. its not like its goign to hurt yea. no ETA’s no dates of any of your services, i can see a lot of people stop paying for everything and then who will fund your pockets ?? … and the fact that ye havent given anything new about whats going on is pretty lame tbh your main eq2 site remains unchanged for the past 6 days all we seem to get is a few FB messages saying be patienced were still working on it.
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zyk
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I like how they posted they’re working “around the clock” yet failed to give us any updates Saturday or Sunday, they must have been working extra hard then.
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coh
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FYI. City of heroes kicks off its free week tomorrow to returning members. Not as good as eq2, but will pass time
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angelicbabe1
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whatever……….
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angelicbabe1
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what are you actually working on? your coffee breaks or what? like everyone else says more updates the better … hurry up and quit giving us the run around
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Kalako
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ETA. That’s all we want. 7 days is a long time away from a MMO you play every day.
ETA? Just be honest SOE. Don’t keep us guessing. Being honest to us and announcing you’ll have our servers up in; whatever, a day, a week, a month Will mean more to us than the constant “no ETA reports”.
Just be honest with us. That will do more than just fobbing us off with daily “no update” messages.
ETA! And an honest one! PLEASE!!!!
/rant over. Just missing the game 😉
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Siva
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Ya know, I’d rather have them say be patient, than give me a date that service might be up again, and not fulfill that deadline. I was pretty close to bloodrage when I couldn’t log into PSN after 2 weeks. It sucks it’s down, I’m going through withdraws like most are. But I also have faith that they’re doing whatever they can.
I started playing Rift a few days ago, and I have to honestly say, it makes me miss Eq2 that much more. There’s nothing else like our game out there. So I’ll hold my ground and wait for Sony to pick their shit up and wonder what kind of incentive they’ll give us for coming back. I’m hoping double xp… week.
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Cininz
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How many days does it take to break an addiction?
http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/173
lol
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Jimako-Guk
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holy crap what a bunch of whiners some of you are.
if you are quitting/threatening to quit – good. Dont let the door hit your ass on the way out.
for those who are demanding ETAs/wondering why its taking so long – keep on whining, im sure it will help speed things up
Most likely what is going on here is out of SOE’s hands. Im sure with each day they want the servers back online, but i believe its not their decision to do so. Remember even the FBI is involved. Security audits can take a long time. With something like 25 million SOE accounts stolen i can appreciate the amount of time they need to get this right. And i dont expect anythion
Oh, and for those going to LOTRO. Its a horrible game. have fun with that
thanks!
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Starwoman
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Speaking as someone who works in customer-facing technical support (for another industry), I think it’s either:
(1) The analysts have a pretty good idea when the servers are going to be up, but they are being prevented from telling us by lawyers who don’t want to be sued if they don’t hit that date or by marketing types who are afraid of the lost business if that date is too far in the future (yes, I know it’s lost business the other way too),
or (2) They have no idea how long it’s going to take and, being the data driven types they are, they don’t want to make up a number.
Either way, I’m pretty sure Sony wants my 30 bucks a month and that they aren’t just sitting on their hands.
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Lathain
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on MMO 3h = one day… so 7 days = 8 Weeks = 2 months…
Too much ? enough for make forget why we want play a game with a so bad designed itemization and so many craps in it. Why wait more ? that have left enough time for test 2 or 3 mmo… and honestly it’s not hard to find game with better itemization, and no station market in your face while you have an active subs.
F2P and montly subs is evil combo they get 2 times the monay for do only one job than obviously they dont do. (took the week end of while server is down since 4 days is inacceptable)
At the question : what do for get more fresh blood.
Answere : what about … work ?
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Cylaa
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Don’t know if anyone has read this: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/05/sony-epsilon-are-no-shows-before-congress.html but there’s been alot of news about it.
If Sony refuses to answer to Congress, I highly doubt their going to answer us. What it seems like to me, is that the CEO is highly embarassed and rather than stand before the world, he would rather it be hushed and ignored. Giving that theory, it could be that there is a company wide hush-up; say one word to the public and you are out of a job. Not a good time to be unemployed. SOE has usually been up front with it’s player base, I think this could be a company-wide silence order, so blaming the dev’s for their silence is counter productive for little people.
I miss my EQ2…*twitch*…but I’ll be okay *slams coffee*….really…*twitch*
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Kallinia@Nagafen
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I resubbed to WoW and remembered after a couple of minutes, why I quit over 5 years ago ……..
Then I got desperate and bought Rift (which I promised myself NEVER to do) and after playing a little over an hour last night, I must say, this doesn’t look too bad. Will see within a week or two, how it plays out. It’s actually possible, I will stay (which I didn’t think was possible only a week ago). Wondering how many others find something else they consider sticking with even when servers are back up…….
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Azraki
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for all who are interested in RIFT – there is a free 7-day-trial now via refer-a-friend:
http://www.riftgame.com/en/products/ascend-a-friend/invite.php?voucher=YXNXMQQ2E3WLE9WTHJKH&utm_source=manual&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ascend_invite
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Pink
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Comment’s by Lathain scare me,Mommy please make that strange man stop talking to us hes frightening all my friends.
QUOTE BY Lathain
At the question : what do for get more fresh blood.
Answere : what about … work ?
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alan`
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Honestly i think it could well be the end of may before they turn the servers back on,i would assume that PSN is the sole focus for Sony at the moment and that the SOE servers are not much more than a sideline,granted a sideline that showed them more holes in security than they originally thought.
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Pink
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Age of Conan ROCKS THE HOUSE but most people didn’t actually have the skill to play it.Fun.com overestimated the the skills of online gamers and payed they price.I love sitting atop of a mountain looking miles into the distant valley some days are a little misty some days blazing hot, waiting for my next victim.If you are traveling alone in AQUILONIA you may want to ready your shield as a rumor has it a mysterious ranger lives there he was named a mass murderer many years ago he slaughtered thousands of innocents forever banished to the wastes and branded with a murderers iron.All the city’s refuse him entry and now he has to take what he needs from travelers.On some days he watches the travelers for 10 minuets crossing his valley heading to their city’s and ponders what life would have been like had he chosen differently.Some people say he has one friend a bear shaman called Taru rumor has it they battled for 3 days and no victor was found they both dropped weapons and decided to call a truce Taru brings him supplies from the city when he passes so its said.If you by chance happen to see a man called Scope greet him kindly with a nice word and maybe you will live to talk about the meeting around the fire of an Inn with a stout mug of ale while your friends laugh and call you a story teller.
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Murfalad
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I think SOE is just as important as PSN, but its unrealistic to believe that they’ll pick one new system for SOE and a different one for PSN with SOE’s system being up and running sooner.
So whatever time it takes for PSN will be the same sort of time for SOE to get up and running, since SOE makes money from people being online I’d say its a priority.
Bad news for sure, but I think now its realistic to expect full resumption end of may, if there is any prospect of getting EQ2 up and running without the full service being there remains to be seen.
For me, I’m currently in WoW since I used to play it for 3 years, I remember too why I stopped…
Maybe I’ll give AoC a go since I’ve always wanted to experience that game since unlike Rift they actually made an effort in the graphics and gameplay department to implement something they thought was better, as opposed to copying WoW just to make it comfortable to ex-WoW players.
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melpheos
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Something is strange… There is very high chances that the attack went thru the website portion of SOE and not thru the game servers.
The game server serves only authentication method and of course the game communication.
I highly doubt that you can do anything with the game server beside eventually getting username and hashed password so why aren’t they putting back the game servers ?
This does not make sense
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Striinger
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I guess it’s no sweat for me. It’s given me a chance to play Dragon Age 2.
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Tarb
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I tried rift last night just for about an hour so i have yet to really get into it but it totally reminds my of a combination of WOW and LoTR, ill play it until EQ2 comes back or until the free month runs out whichever comes first but I wont be staying.
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Grimmond
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Starting playing STO (star Trek On-line). It’s not bad and most of the missions (quests) can be done solo. So far the game is good, the mechanics are sound, the missions (quests) are well written and engaging, the loot is passable but they are not giving away the farm. I am having a good time and will probably stay.
Feldon … any chance of a STO Wire ?
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Crescent
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Anyone here with any experience in accounting practices and the legal ramifications of it?
SOE continuous to bill their customers on the regular cycle where the customer has no regular means of canceling their accounts beside the customer service phone# which is not toll free for european customers as far as I know. So, for the sake of the argument, canceling your account is not possible at the moment (at least not with any info from SOE sites but only secondary sites).
They promise you free play for 30 days and every day the system is down. Ok, just fine, but this does not account for people who planned on playing for one more month and than canceling. What about customers who would not be able to take advantage of the free 30-days because of work, vacation, anything? This doesn’t seem to be a fair compensation and downright illegal.
It looks to me that SOE keeps their balance sheets in the green for now with the full knowledge that it is going to be deep red in need of some major bail-out money from Sony after the servers are back online?
Again, not sure about hose kind of accounting practices but it looks fishy to me.
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James
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This isn’t a question of “accounting practices”. This might be a failure to deliver products or render services, however. I do not believe they are doing anything illegal, with the respect that they are breaking some law.
You can always call your bank and tell them to block that biller from charging your account, you can also contest the charges.
As you pointed out, you can call the customer desk, which may cost you a little in long distance.
Without a doubt, they will most likely book a loss for the quarter, but depending on how much cash they had available, and what sort of credit facilities they (being SOE) has in place, they might not need an injection from the parent.
Lastly, if the parent was to provide some form of financing, whether it be through credit or equity is there decision to make and certainly not illegal.
It’s worth pointing out here that SOE is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a very large multi national conglomerate which sells products in practically every sector.
One other thing, balance sheets are neither in the red nor in the green. They just are. Income statements show a profit and loss. My guess is they will take an immediate loss in revenue, and they will probably also mark some of their intangibles (such as brand value) with impairments.
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Crescent
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SOE being a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a very large multinational corporation just begs for speculation of what Sony Mgmnt is going to decide in the long run. There was an estimate that the data disaster as a whole will cost Sony about $1.24Billion. http://www.welt.de/print/welt_kompakt/webwelt/article13362394/Sonys-Spielenetzwerke-bleiben-vorerst-offline.html
If Sony is going to eat this loss, seperate the losses between PSN and SOE, and will hang on to a subsidiary of a subsidiary like SOE is really the question. Keeping the balance sheets in profits might be just a way of shopping the SOE brand around?
In a way I would almost like this idea to such an extend that I would even take a 6month downtime for EQ2 in order to get this game into someones hand who might really care. But who am I kidding.
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James
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Again, company’s book profit and loss on their income statement. There are three major financial statements. The balance sheet is always zero. (Liabilities + Equity) – Assets. If your assets shrink, then your equity also shrinks.
(cash is an asset and comes in from the income statement)
It’s normal for businesses to declare losses after extraordinary events. They even have a line item for it called “extraordinary event”.
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isest
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Comment 32 6 month downtime at that point you will have 0 player base. Nobody is going to wait that long.
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Murfalad
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Sony would only sell SOE if the IP was worth more in someone elses hands then in theirs, I don’t think we are at this point with SOE myself, although bad feeling from NGE and other developments happened it seems a long way away from anything that drastic.
Its possible though that they might repackage up their divisions though, perhaps dividing the PC and PS3 games from SOE, although that seems messy and unlikely too.
I doubt that SOE keep debts and surpluses too, as long as whatever happens here does not outweigh Sonys overall profits then I can see this not being a longterm problem.
As for who would wait around 6 months, looking at the competition for my MMO time think I can promise that there will be at least one person still waiting for EQ2 🙂
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