Feldon
From Piestro on the EQ2 Forums: On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 5 AM London Time the Splitpaw server will come down for Game Update 63: Skyshrine. Expected downtime is approximately 5 hours. We haven’t heard of “London Time”, and we’re not sure why only the Splitpaw server is mentioned. Maybe Piestro meant to say: On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 5:00 British Summer Time (6:00 Central Europe Time) the Splitpaw, Storms, and Valor servers will come down for Game Update 63: Skyshrine. Expected downtime is approximately 5 hours. We apologize for patching the European servers nearly a full...
International
A Sony Corp. logo pictured at an electronic store in Tokyo. (Yuriko Nakao / April 9, 2012) Although it is my understanding that this has no immediate ramifications for Sony Online Entertainment, which has already undergone two rounds of belt-tightening, and recently signed an exclusive European distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1 which no doubt had financial incentives behind it, this is news that several people have reported in so I’m reposting it. UPDATE: Sony Corp has revised their expected financial losses for 2011 to $6.4 billion. From ArsTechnica: Sony Corp. is planning on cutting loose 10,000 of its employees in...
When the ProSiebenSat.1 deal was announced, it was indicated that some EQ2 servers would be IP locked. Existing EU players would be grandfathered into continuing to play on US servers, but US players would not be able to continue to play on EU servers. The IP locking (SOE was careful not to use this term) applied to the servers. After this announcement went over like mustard-flavored ice cream, SOE went away for 2 1/2 months and came back with a different approach. Servers will NOT be region-locked, accounts will be. So if you try to login to your SOE...
From Brasse on the EQ2 Forums: Friends, We promised that all players would be able to play together, to play on the servers of their choice. This was a huge undertaking, technically, but vital to keeping our players together. Accounts will necessarily be handled separately as games transition. We are working very closely together and we are all are fully committed to serving their customers well. While it will be impossible to address each and every post here, I would like to answer a few.
On January 12, 2012, Sony Online Entertainment announced an exclusive publishing and distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1, a German TV media company whose gaming division Alaplaya has previously known for its pay-to-win browser games. After 2 weeks, we raised some questions about the deal. Yet it would be another four weeks before any official response would come. And if SOE hoped that a vague Frequently Asked Questions about the ProSiebenSat.1 deal would allay fears and reassure players, it couldn’t have had a more opposite effect. Never has the EQ2 playerbase been more united behind one issue than ensuring that ALL...
We’ve got some vague results from SOE’s first in-game poll, notable for having only been distributed to North American players. From Piestro on the EQ2 Forums: A big thanks to all of you for participating in the first EQII In-Game Poll and helping us get to know you better! We were very happy with the number of you who took the time to go ahead and answer our poll questions and we’ve spent some time going over the data. So, on to the results! We know that the majority of you are exploring overland areas, doing quests, and playing...
From Piestro on the EQ2 Forums: Details on our end are still being worked on to make the solution a reality. Essentially we are going to resolve the difficulties on our end rather than region lock. See Brasse and Smed’s statements. How we accomplish this will mostly be technical mumbo jumbo that doesn’t mean much unless you are a programmer working at SOE and intimately familiar with how our servers are architected AND how our account management works. Sharing those details would be more confusing and less meaningful than just saying “we’re going to take care of it”. We’ve...
From John Smedley‘s Twitter: We’ve come up with a plan to allow ALL players to play on any servers they want. More details to follow. UPDATE from Zatozia: Hey there! We have a status update on this topic for you. A solution to keep the communities together is now in the works! We’ll be providing more details about the solution with an official announcement a bit later but we wanted to let everyone know that it was coming as soon as we could. Thank you all for your great feedback on this topic. UPDATE from Piestro: Just to elaborate...
In response to a Change.org Petition which has been making the rounds, and whose 600 signatures were sent to SOE President John Smedley and Mr. Büchtmann at ProSiebenSat.1. In response, SOE President John Smedley had this to say: I think we’ve got it figured out and will announce our plan Monday.
We missed this news on Thursday, but word of Planetside 2 and other SOE games region locking are making it to mainstream media, specifically PCGamer.com: Sony Online Entertainment have announced that the running of many of their games is transferring to German publisher ProSiebenStat.1 Games Group in Europe. Games affected include EverQuest II, DC Universe Online, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Free Realms, and this year’s Planetside 2. While SOE will continue to manage the European servers for their games, European players will no longer be able to play with friends in the US. The two providers will use...
From EverQuest II’s new Community Manager Eric “Piestro” Cleaver who must surely be having a worse week than many of us: Hey folks, There is something I want to clear up. A lot of people are talking about how the EU servers and players are being “sold off”. And that’s very clearly how many people feel and we can respect that. When we’re discussing feelings that makes total sense. We get that it feels this way to many of you. Unfortunately, as language sometimes does, this has sort of run away with itself. It has all sorts of implications...
From Karen Bryan at Massively: With this week’s news about the ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya deal, SOE fans were up in arms, and EverQuest II was at the epicenter of the protest. There were concerns ranging from account security to quality of player support, but the biggest concern was the fact that there would be a barrier between U.S. and European players going forward. I’ve written before about how tight-knit the community is in EQII, and that’s probably why you saw some of the strongest protests originate on the EQII forums. That closeness extends to the EQII development team as well. I’ve...
For many, the damage is already done, but here are some updates… From John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment via Twitter: We are working on a plan to insure we don’t split the communities up. More info to follow. From Brasse on the EQ2 Forums: As we approach the weekend, we wanted to share that we are working on a plan to keep our communities together with the ProSieben deal. Again, we thank you for your patience – we’ll provide more information as soon as it is available. From Protagonist, a Manager at Alaplaya, CEO of ProSiebenGames, via...
From Ark’s Ark: As you know by now, SOE is selling its European players to a company called ProSiebenSat.1. OK, technically, they’re selling them the exclusive rights to run the games within Europe (including the UK), but that includes all the characters on the European servers, and the details of anyone with a character there. The value of the playerbase has certainly been accounted for in the deal, and so we have been passed like chattels to a new master. So who are they, these folks that we suddenly find in control? ProSiebenSat.1 is a German media conglomerate. Their...
From Jef Reahard at Massively: Sony Online Entertainment has finally responded to the ProSiebenSat.1 brouhaha. Director of Global Community Relations Linda “Brasse” Carlson gave beleaguered fans a faint glimmer of hope with a forum post last night that basically said the controversial deal isn’t quite a done deal.
From Moria on the EQ2 Forums: Dear Mr Smedley. You don’t know me, personally, and I don’t know you. However, I know your work.. and I admire it. I remember Keys to Maramon on the Amiga, I remember 989 Studios and I remember Verant software. I remember your pride in the development of Everquest, and being a beta player, you often replied to our posts on the forums and discussed mechanics, objectives hopes and fears with us. I remember how much you cared about the community and the way that the company and the players together were making waves...
ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya has established a temporary forum and thread to discuss the ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya-SOE deal. Here’s the announcement from Coldor, Alaplaya’s Community Manager: Hello fellow SOE- and Alaplaya-Gamers, with this board we just created a temporarily catch basin for all your questions regarding our new partnership between SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) and ProSiebenSat1 Games. This will not be the final billboard-solution for the upcoming SOE-Games. With the following launch of DC Universe Online all SOE-Games will get their own dedicated websites with appropriate designs and a fresh billboard for you to use. We are looking into a bright gaming future here...
From the Alaplaya Forums: What we did (long time ago): When a user made a wire transfer and put a wrong or unreadable accound id on the sheet we could not put the money on the account. We had “just” the name of the user who made the wire transfer. If this name was not existing in our DB we asked the user to contact us. It was a service which was in favour and by demand of the users. As wire transfer could take quite long from some countries this list helped the users to get a status....
A player named Trevynoae with an account going back to 2004 posted about a phone call he had with ProSiebenSat.1 on the subject of this SOE deal. Normally we do not run with single-source news, but with the dearth of information coming from SOE, we’re going to post this: – There will be no Alaplaya-accounts – but there will be a region lock. We will log in via our SOE account on the alaplaya-page. (*looks confused*) – EU Players will be able to create new SOE accounts and will be able to play on the US-servers there. – EU...
Here’s another fantastic comic from CheesePirate which has been banned from the SOE forums and SOE’s Facebook page. What other proof do you need that SOE does not want our feedback?
Even if you don’t personally use Twitter, it’s worth following people in the EQ2 community to get their instant impressions on different subjects… Arkenor: Anyone with a character on a European server has just been sold to a company they’ve never heard of, without their permission. MMOYeti: SOE have once again thrown up the finger to Europeans. Our US guild member who played on euro times can not now join us in eqnext… we now have a US guildie that (if we play) eqnext he will be unable to join us. MMOYeti: @j_smedley Ah you always give me a...
If you want to know what’s been going on at the EQ2 forums, the quickest way to sum it up is this — I have been banned for the first time ever from the EQ2 forums for “excessive negativity”. ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya — A Company Unfit for SOE Customers Six weeks ago, an exclusive distribution deal affecting all Europe-based SOE customers was announced with a German TV media company named ProSiebenSat.1. Within minutes of the announcement, players discovered that ProSiebenSat.1’s gaming division is called Alaplaya, a company known for IP Region Locking, publishing the personal details of customers in violation of...
The news that SOE will be dividing the EQ2 community by Region, in order to secure a lucrative distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1’s Alaplaya gaming division, has gone over like curry-flavoured ice cream. Besides the outrage at splitting up a community whose strength has been players hailing from all over the world, SOE seems to have neglected some of the more mundane technical and historical details. We’ve collected a few: U.S. players who play EQ2 during the daytime have always had the option of grouping with players on Splitpaw (UK) where it’s afternoon/evening. European players paid upwards of 30 Euros...
The ProSieben-Sony Online Entertainment distribution deal announced over six weeks ago has finally got some Frequently Asked Questions answered: ProSieben FAQ in French ProSieben FAQ in German ProSieben FAQ in English Can players still access the U.S. servers? Under the new partnership between SOE and ProSiebenSat.1 Games, European players of the above mentioned SOE games will be able to play via ProSiebenSat.1 Games’s service and will not have access to U.S. servers. However, existing EverQuest II players in Europe that have played on U.S. servers before the transition will be allowed to continue playing on those servers through their...