Feldon
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.
General
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...
According to the in-game EQ2 calendar, the Chronoportal Events will be returning March 20th at 8:00am PDT and will run until March 29th 8:59am PDT. The Chronoportal events are a series of instances that are meant as a peek into Norrath’s past, taking players to familiar areas of Norrath 500 years ago. In other words, a celebration of the launch of the original EverQuest. For now, we’re calling this unconfirmed as this would mean the Chronoportal event would start the day Brewday festivities end, and would partly overlap with the Bristlebane event. Tip of the hat to Jeehi.
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...
Looks like I’m not the only one who noticed that http://soefanfaire.com/ is now redirecting to http://soe.com/. From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums: Nope, we haven’t canceled anything, nor are we ready to make any announcements just yet. The site is currently down because we’ve been redesigning a lot of our sites and right now it’s just not live. Don’t fret.
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...
From the EQ2 Forums: Double XP Weekend! It’s been a love-filled week and it’s also a long weekend for us, so we thought we’d share our joy with a Double XP weekend! This weekend, from Noon PST on Friday, Feb. 17th, until 11:59 pm PST on Monday, Feb. 20th, we will be running a true Double XP (+100% XP) promotion. The bonus applies to AA, tradeskill and adventure experience this weekend.
From the EQ2 Forums: ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION Vallon’s Tower [Challenge] Players should get the correct message when entering the blue shielded dome in the Vallon Zek fight. During the final Vallon Zek fight, only 2 Vallonite Aces will spawn per wave of adds. Fighters will no longer be hit with Tactical Dilema during the fight. DUNGEON MAKER Fixed an issue with vitality not applying correctly in dungeon maker instances. ITEMS Gnomish Anti-Camo Goggles can now be equipped by any class. LIVE EVENTS Erollisi Hearts a’Flutter: Antonica – The Essences of Erollisi should no longer spawn within unreachable tree...
After getting called to the carpet for a revised Game Update schedule that won’t see new level 90 content coming to EQ2 until April, nearly 9 months since last year’s Game Update 61, SOE has laid out a gameplan for February events. From EverQuest2.com: February Publish Plans – More to Play, Your Way! February is here already, and the team is hard at work on Game Update 63! We’ll have some “behind the scenes” videos for you in the coming weeks to give you a sneak peek at the art of some of the exciting new zones coming up,...
Just a friendly reminder of our friendly reminder, the Goddess Risen event ends next Monday, February 6th to make way for the upcoming Erollisi Day 2012 event.
Dethdlr
Editor’s Note: A week ago, Dethdlr sent me a draft of an article that he had the intention of posting to EQ2Wire at some point in the future. It hasn’t been polished or edited. But in light of today’s announcement, it’s timely and provides an interesting contrast to my article. For many years in EQ2, I was a casual raider. What I mean by that is, I would primarily run group zones with guild mates but from time to time I would join a pickup raid or tag along when another guild needed to fill some raid slots. Several...
During Fan Faire 2011’s “Freeport and Beyond” panel led by EQ2 Exec Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, a slate of exciting plans was laid out. The announcements outlined Game Update 61 (War of Zek), GU62 (Freeport Reborn), GU63 and GU64 which would each contain new Destiny of Velious content, and Game Update 65 slated for August 2012 which would bring about the revamp of the City of Qeynos. Here’s a transcript of SmokeJumper‘s Fan Faire 2011 presentation (watch video here) from 13:58 to 14:36: What we’re concentrating on is making sure that we have not just new content to chew...