Between April 17 and April 19, 2011, the PlayStation Network, the online service powering the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles, was compromised. Hackers were able to retrieve the personal/customer information of some 77 million PlayStation Network accounts, including as many as 10 million credit card numbers on file for those customers. This was largely viewed as a retaliatory strike against Sony for their prosecution of George Hotz (GeoHot) who publically posted the PS3 Root Keys allowing owners of PS3 consoles to install their own choice of software, including the much ballyhooed Other OS feature which was prominently featured on the outside of the PS3 box, and which allowed users to install Linux on their PS3.

On April 22nd, we were assured that SOE was not affected by this break-in. However, with today’s press release (posted just over 1 hour ago), the curtain surrounding today’s Downtime has been pulled back, revealing that Sony’s woes now fully extend to the SOE Customer Database as well. SOE games, forums, and websites were not taken down in an ‘abundance of caution’, but because the entire customer database may have already been compromised/stolen by hackers.

The press release indicates that customer names, e-mails, and other personal information, including hashed password (which generally CANNOT be decrypted) may have been taken, as well as the bank details of up to 10,700 European customers, and credit card information for another 12,700 European customers from an old 2007 database, however credit card information was stored in a separate database and at this time it is being stated that this was NOT compromised.

Impacted customers will get 30 days free service and 1 day extra for each day that SOE services are unavailable. It is unclear when SOE services will be restored, but realize that the PlayStation Network is now entering it’s 13th day offline (since April 19th), preventing anyone from playing all  PS3 games online, including the popular Portal 2 and its much-advertised cooperative play.

Bloomberg.com posted a story earlier this afternoon suggesting that SOE’s services were down due to a “second attack”:

Sony Online Entertainment, a unit that makes role-play games, suspended service after discovering a hacker gained access to its systems in the second such attack on the parent company’s entertainment networks.

However in speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Michele Sturdivant, a Sony Online Entertainment spokeswoman denied the claim.

Sony Corp. has shut down a second online videogame network amid an expanding investigation of a computer attack that may have compromised the personal information of millions of users.

Sony Online Entertainment, a San Diego-based subsidiary that makes multiplayer role-playing games mostly for personal computers, said it temporarily shut down services on Sunday evening amid concerns a hacker had possibly breached its security.

Although we still have no confirmation or reason to believe that there has been any kind of security breach affecting SOE servers or customer accounts, and we are personally going to just wait and see what is announced, Amnerys has posted on the EQ2 Facebook announcement suggesting that concerned customers can contact SOE Customer Service:

Any players that have concerns regarding their account status and security should contact CS at 1-858-537-0898 (10am – 7pm PST, Mon-Fri).

and:

Please use the following phone numbers for your international area. Remember that these numbers are not toll free and are considered long distance from within each country.

Players using the “Outside France” phone number will be subject to International fees. UK: (44) 870-600-0267 – DE: (49) 180-500-7774 – FR: Inside France: (33) 825-120-549 – Outside France: (33) 171-230-495

Note some customers are getting a recorded message encouraging them to call back “next week”.

We’re sending extra cookies (and coffee) Ima’s way.

While there’s nothing new to report about SOE games, services, websites, and forums being down since 2AM PDT, there is growing coverage of this issue around the web.

Thus far, there has been no additional information posted on any SOE website, SOE Facebook, EQ2 Facebook, or the Twitter pages of any SOE employee or EQ2 team member.

News sites around the web:

• GamesBeat
• PC IGN
• BBC News
• Barron’s

And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that EQ2Flames is experiencing record traffic, with some 4,000 members online at times seeking news about the SOE Downtime. Some visitors are experiencing a busy message (indicated by ‘Database error’).

All attempts to reach SOE websites are redirected to http://maintenance.station.sony.com/

EQ2Wire’s interpretation of this announcement is this:

ALL Sony servers are now under security review due to the PlayStation Network breach, and in the course of that investigation, flaws in SOE’s public-facing servers were found. We have no reason to believe there has been an intrusion into SOE services, as they are separate from PSN servers. Of course news could come to light stating otherwise, but at this point, it seems that problems were found *before* they were taken.

UPDATE: It appears that SOE’s entire customer database, excluding credit card info, has been compromised.

We’ve just seen these server messages:

Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down for a brief update at 03:30AM PDT Monday, May 02, 2011. Please find a safe place to log out before the server comes down. For more information on scheduled downtimes (link).

and:

SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down immediately for a update. Please plan accordingly to be logged off during this time. Thank you!

As of 11:30am CET (2:30 PDT) it seems the Login servers are down or inaccessible.

UPDATE: As of 11:50am CET (2:45 PDT), SOE Login servers are down affecting switching characters or logging in.

UPDATE: As of 11:55am CET (2:55 PDT), SOE forums are offline.

A player asked why the Character Sheet (Persona Window) received yet another revamp with yesterday’s update. SmokeJumper had this tidbit:

[While players] didn’t ask for a new character sheet, but they *are* asking for something that will be solved after this change is in place. Here’s what got fixed with this change:

• Your multiple homes are now listed in the “Housing” pane. (Previous to today, you could only own one house, so a list wasn’t necessary. It is now.)

• It puts us in a much better situation to add more categories in the near future to take care of “inventory clutter” issues by creating new categories and taking those items out of your backpacks. This is a very common player request and we’ll be attacking a bunch of that soon.

Game Update 60 has finally reached Test and there is a lot of content here, including 3 new heroic dungeons, 3 new x4 raid zones, and a new x2 raid zone, a new Battleground, as well as major changes to PvP. Also look out for several changes and tweaks to classes, as well as a hard-to-miss huge nerf to Dirges, with Chimes/Cacophony of Blades no longer interrupting.

“The Children of War”

The Fortress of Drunder has emptied of Rallos Zek and his armies as they pass into the Plane of War to prepare for their eventual march on the Western Wastes. The Demi-Gods, Tallon and Vallon Zek, are subjugated within its towers, ignorant of Rallos’ grand scheme. Only Sullon Zek, the Maiden of Rage, is aware of what is to transpire. Trapped within her own tower, she has taken great risks to seek out worthy and daring heroes and guide them into the walls of Drunder.

Now it is up to you to grapple the Minions of Zek and battle your way through events that will gain you amazing allies and set into motion a war that will end all wars!

After the jump the full Game Update 60 Notes as they appear on Test (subject to change between now and May 17th):

There are going to be a lot of questions about how the new Multi-Housing works in EQ2, so I suggest reading the extensive FAQ posted on EverQuest2.com about it.

South Qeynos Prestige Home Access

One concern about the Neriak Opera House prestige house on Test was that the stage did not have any stairs to reach it, requiring feather fall or other floating to reach it. Also, the seats of the theater were oddly shaped, possibly trapping players. Haohmaru has checked in a fix (and provided a screenshot):

We have added stairs to each end of the stage. Hopefully we can update your homes before GU60, if possible.

We also fixed an odd issue with the lips on each seating rung. You could get stuck under the small overhang for no apparent reason.

Today’s update includes just a couple of bugs caught on Test:

HOUSING

• Prestige Home deeds are now Heirloom.
• Fixed a bug that would cause a guild to lose refund status when moving guildhalls.
• Fixed a crash bug.

If you haven’t already heard about the revamped Persona Window coming in Game Update 60, it takes what we got in Velious and polishes it up to a mirror shine. The Velious Persona window seemed half-finished to us and, apparently, to Rothgar.

Going live today, the new Personal window is a big improvement over the large paradigm-mixing one we got with Velious. It actually behaves a bit more like 2 separate windows again, with Stats (and all possible traits about your character) in a toggleable sidebar, while your Equipment, Mounts, Faction, and other character progression information now takes up roughly the same space they did pre-Velious.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey, folks,

We left the HEIRLOOM tag off the prestige homes. (It’ll be added to them tomorrow.)

So for today, if you were planning to buy a bunch of one type of house and then transfer it to all your different alts, please don’t do it that way. Or if you do, please realize that the HEIRLOOM tag won’t be present until tomorrow.

For today, please just realize that each character can only own one of each type of Prestige Home. If you buy more than that, you won’t be able to use them.

As of tomorrow’s hotfix, you’ll be able to transfer any duplicates to other alts, if you so desire.

What’s a Prestige Home? After the jump…

Fr0m Zoltaroth on Twitter:

Servers should start opening shortly just finishing up internal smoke testing.

Naturally this would be the first batch of servers which were updated.

SmokeJumper has been providing frequent updates on today’s installation of Multihousing into EQ2:

Hi, folks,

Today’s housing feature has to do a lot of massaging of the house database elements. This takes a considerable amount of time (a bit like a world merge, actually).

This means that when we take servers down, they will be down for 2 or 3 hours while we do that process. We should have all the servers up by mid-afternoon sometime (Pacific time).

The servers that are currently running are Antonia Bayle, Barren Sky, Harla Dar, Guk, Everfrost, Unrest, and Crushbone.

The next batch will be Splitpaw, Butcherblock, Nagafen, Freeport, Permafrost, Oasis, Crushbone, Valor, Storms, Sebilis, The Bazaar and Vox.

So be patient with us a bit. Multiple House Ownership and Prestige Homes will be here today!

As to the question of exactly when the servers will be up (with +hours corrected):

Mid-afternoon sometime (Pacific time)

Add +8 hours in the UK and +9 in Germany to any Pacific Time estimate we give. So mid-afternoon our time is something like midnight or later in Europe.

Update as of 9:00PM GMT+1 (noon PDT):

Crushbone is one of the servers that will come up in the first batch in an hour or two from now.

Here are your update notes for today, April 28, 2011. They include the introduction of Multi-housing. Thanks to Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM for the formatting:

HOUSING UPDATES

• Each character can now own up to 10 houses of any combination (as long as he or she meets the house prerequisites).
• House purchases are now based on alignment rather than citizenship.
• The marketplace house item limit increasers now only apply to a single house. Additionally, the marketplace house item limit increaser will no longer stick with your house as you move from house to house, but it still stacks with the tradeskilled house item limit increaser.

More information and FAQ can be found here on the Official Forums.

It is our understanding that Game Update 60 will be hitting Test and Test Copy today. Domino‘s post is not a confirmation, but taken with other posts, strongly suggests it:

Most likely early afternoon (PST) but times may vary depending on a variety of factors. There will be an in-game broadcast to warn you.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Hi, folks,

Today’s housing feature has to do a lot of massaging of the house database elements. This takes a considerable amount of time (a bit like a world merge, actually).

This means that when we take servers down, they will be down for 2 or 3 hours while we do that process. We should have all the servers up by mid-afternoon sometime (Pacific time).

In a thread about the new Character Sheet coming with Game Update 60, Rothgar got a bit sidetracked by players asking for a bit easier time when rearranging hotbars and the icons on those hotbars. These changes will take effect when you are in Window Rearranging Mode (press F10):

I’m going to make the opacity of the windows 90% when arranging windows so its a little easier to see through them.

As far as hotbars go, the icons will be visible but disabled so clicking anywhere on the window will allow you to position the window. If you hold the SHIFT key, the icons will become draggable, even if you have dragging disabled for that window, allowing you to reposition the icons.

From the EQ2 Forums:

All U.S. servers will come down for a hotfix at 7am PDT [15:00~18:00 GMT] on Thursday, April 28, 2011. The Splitpaw server will have its also have its hotfix the same day at 3pm London Time. The expected downtime for all affected servers is three hours.

Update Notes are not yet available.

For me, since DoV came out, the “hot zone” hasn’t seemed to be very “hot”. I’ve said this in a few threads and have seen others chime in with different theories on why they seem that way.  There may be fixes to this coming our way in GU60.  Details after the break.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

I don’t have the ETA yet, but we are making the purchases and we’ll get the hardware replaced on the servers that have not yet been upgraded (Guk, Everfrost, Unrest, Butcherblock, Permafrost, Oasis, and Splitpaw).

It’ll take some time to get these changes implemented (takes a while to order them, get them delivered, and then installed at the various data centers), but we’ll update you with details when we know more.

They’re coming!

Continuing last week’s news that Harvesting is being changed to have a faster speed, Frizznik has posted a new thread with a summary of the changes coming to Harvesting Tools:

The other thread was getting long, so I wanted to create a new one so folks could easily find the changes to them, and to let you know some new developments.

Woodworker made tools are changing.  There are no longer seperate tools for each harvesting type.  There is now one tool at each tier that gives harvest time reduction and double harvest chance.

• 20: Ash Harvesting Kit: 2% Double Harvest, .1 second reduction in all harvesting times.
• 30: Briarwood Harvesting Kit: 4% Double Harvest, .2 second reduction in all harvesting times.
• 40: Teak Harvesting Kit: 6% Double Harvest, .3 second reduction in all harvesting times.
• 50: Sandalwood Harvesting Kit: 8% Double Harvest, .4 second reduction in all harvesting times.
• 70: Redwood Harvesting Kit: 10% Double Harvest, .5 second reduction in all harvesting times.
• 80: Compact Redwood Harvesting Kit: 13% Double Harvest, .5 second reduction in all harvesting times.

If you have any of these tools, when you log on after this goes live, those tools will auto convert into the new Harvesting Kit.  Woodworkers now only have one recipe to make the Kits rather than skill specific tools.  The only writ to make tools was in the 70-79 range and I changed it to only ask for Kits rather than single tools.

SOE Games, Sites, and Forums have been down for at least 4 hours now.

Ashlanne posted on the SOE Facebook page:

All SOE Games, Sites, and Forums are down due to emergency maintenance. We will have them back up as soon we can. We apologize for the inconvenience.