Feldon 
After over two years of drama, with SOE customers feeling cut off, marginalized, and second class just for living in Europe, the grand experiment of German media conglomerate ProSiebenSat.1 managing SOE customers in the EU region is finally over!
When it was announced that Sony Pictures had licensed their entertainment library to PSG to try to be the Netflix of Europe, the writing was on the wall that SOE gamers might be along for the ride. While I do think Sony Online Entertainment eventually made some heroic efforts to try to make this deal work — after a few scathing reviews penned by this and other gaming sites — the deal was likely doomed from the start. ProSiebenSat.1 had never handled a AAA MMO title, let alone three, and the inexperience of its fledgling Alaplaya brand at supporting anything beyond F2P browser games became apparent even before the SOE-PSG transition began.
Much like the ill-fated Ubisoft takeover of EU-based EverQuest Live accounts in the early 2000’s, and despite promises of localization improvements and copious advertising, these deals seem to only ever end up souring the playerbase and having a negative impact on server populations and general goodwill.
As of today, June 18, 2014, new EverQuest II, PlanetSide 2, and DC Universe Online players in Europe now do so with SOE. And as of July 1, 2014, existing EQ2, PS2, and DCUO customers will be transferred back to SOE.
After the jump, the official statement from Linda “Brasse” Carlson on the SOE forums:
To our EU players,
We constantly review community feedback via all channels and want to thank you for your ongoing dialog. We wanted to let you know that Sony Online Entertainment and ProSiebenSat1. Games have jointly decided to migrate all PSG accounts for PlanetSide 2, DC Universe Online and EverQuest II back to SOE in the near future. Please take a moment to read the FAQ, and watch for updates as we iron out the details of the process!
CLICK HERE FOR THE FAQ & DISCUSSION THREAD!
As of today’s date (June 18, 2014), region locks have been lifted. New EU residents wishing to register should do so via SOE hosted sites.
On or about July 1, 2014, we will offer PSG players the opportunity to migrate their existing accounts to SOE account management, in order to continue playing SOE games. All earned status, characters and in-game coin will transfer with the account.
Your payment details and personal information will not be transferred. When a transfer is initiated, only the ProSiebenSat.1 Games account name, character information, Seven Cash balance, and other game-related data will be provided from PSG to SOE, exclusively for migration purposes. You will need to have an existing SOE Station Account or create a new SOE account, subject to SOE’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, in order to continue playing the games through SOE’s service. You will also be required to enter your payment details if you wish to make purchases through your SOE account.
After migration, EU players with existing memberships will be automatically upgraded to SOE All Access Memberships. All EU residents will have the opportunity to purchase All Access memberships at the same rate as the old, single-game memberships, and enjoy all SOE games as well as a monthly 500 Station Cash claim, marketplace discounts and many promotions.
In even more exciting news, SOE Player Studio (EQII, EQ, PS2) is also expanding its scope to include submissions from EU countries, starting with Germany, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Testing of the new tax registration process is already well underway!
Lastly, we want to thank you all for your dedication to the games, your support and invaluable feedback. Please keep it coming so we can make this the best possible experience for you now and in the future.
ProSiebenSat.1 Games
Sony Online Entertainment
Read the Frequently Asked Questions >>
After two years and four months of this nonsense, this image seems appropriate:
Best Birthday gift I got from SOE. I woke up today morning with: omg I am no longer X!! And then I started to check SOE forums and this info was posted.
I was so shocked and completely forgot about depression I supposed to have today 😀
/happy dance
P.S. Just to be clear – I like PSG team as I’ve met them in October and they are really nice people. PSG bought Aeria games so they will stay in the industry. Well some of them, as some of them already left PSG 🙁
This is brilliant news.
As a European EQ1, EQ2 and Landmark player with an SOE account for the best part of 15 years – from my own research, I really wasn’t looking forward to having to go through PSS1 for EQN.
Credit where credit is due, a good job to SOE on getting so much stuff right over the last year.
Sure there have been issues and hiccups, with games being sunsetted and this ongoing saga which must have taken a great deal of effort on the part of Brasse and other SOE execs to get resolved, I have a feeling they knew fairly early on they’d made a bad decision that was going to be difficult to pull out of, but hats off for getting it sorted.
SOE’s overall ethos towards its player base and customers in the last year seems to be much improved and quite admirable, and I’m sure its an attitude that in the long-run will pay dividends for them. A win-win situation all round.
here here… credit indeed where it is due. Those who dabbled in Landmark Alpha will have seen this even more. While Landmark is not for me I found out pretty quickly, I happily let them keep my £100 despite offers of a full refund no questions asked, as for once, I felt the company deserved my support 100%.
What does surprise me on the PSB debacle though, is the amount of folks who left the game who have contacted me asking who still remains as they are thinking of coming back due to this decision. I honestly thought anyone who left citing this as the reason, was simply blowharding an excuse… apparently not.
Now lets see EQN ffs Soe… before I get dragged into yet another game that I find lacks anything new.
After over two years of actively fighting SOE over this, bans and all sorts, finally it is over. I don’t need to say much else, everyone knows how this little Ratonga felt about the PSS1 deal.
At least now I can stop banging on about us European players and start moaning about game changes like everyone else 😛
I hereby declare this V-P7 Day, in honor of the reversal of this ill-considered and ultimately doomed experiment.
Welcome home, old friends.
Well all I can say is it’s about time! Can I tell SOE I told you so, well a lot of us told you so.
Everybody yeah rock your body right – Europe’s back! All right! :=)
Thanks a lot, now I have to watch that music video at work and hope no one looks at me funny.
YaY !
Come on in..we have cookies.
shambles from start to finish
Welcome home, EU friends… especially the Dwarves. Elfinks can come too, if they bring beer.
Please make SURE you read the FAQ and respond with any specific questions you may have about the migration – we did our best to anticipate the most common queries but I am SURE there are more.
;-)#
Brasse
Hello everybody. Not only Europeans players, Quebec also is concerned 😉
Feldon ticket french translated at this url : http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/retour-des-joueurs-pro-sieben.html
best regards
Wow, that was surprising news 🙂 I’m very happy for all the “rest-of-the-world” players 😛
Let’s hope, that SOE will increase marketing efforts in Europe to keep and rise the player base of our beloved games…
Here’s hoping they listen to the players before going through with this kinda bologna again. XD
It wasn’t just the people getting sold off/out that were upset when this whole thing started. A lot of us north american peeps had friends on those servers.
LMAO
SMDH
OMFG
That is all.
Oh Hallo Feldon!
Sadly, for me, it’s too little way too late. I’m long gone and don’t miss EQ2 anymore; SOE have lost this customer so here’s the bird to them.
However, for all of you still enjoying the game, this is great news so good luck in your endeavours!
Been away form the EQ2 scene for a long time now, I even had to shelve my Schrödinger the cat riding ShadowKnight. :'(
This is the best bit of news I have seen in a while.
Now I just need to get my DC:UO account unbanned (no clue what happened there, maybe a “feature” of the un-transfer) and maybe I can play the 2 bits of DLC I just bought on steam.
Maybe I can luck-out and have my original characters be there again, PSS1 managed to “loose” them in the transfer.
Joy.
It looks like I must now be the “proud” owner of 2 SOE accounts.
The original one for “everything”, and the DC:UO one for the PSS1/PSG Nightmare-Incarnate that was my time with forced localisation.
So what do I do with the DC:UO DLC I bought on steam? Add it to the unwanted second account or wait and see if SOE thinks up a fix to the situation then apply the steam codes on my “main” account.. .
Just glad that PSG only ever got access to my DC:UO account, I would have hated for my EQ2, PS1 and PS2 time invested to be in this situation, DC:UO was always a diversion rather than a community I invested in.