Well, the dust has settled, and it appears that EverQuest is back to stay (or at least until the next security breach because the folks over at SoE didn't bother to update!) To read Sony's announcement regarding the restoration of services, click here.
Sony has also publicized their "Make It Good" program, henceforth known as the "Make It Not Really All that Great" or "Make It So-So", they announced the following programs to attempt to make up for the fact that the servers were down for almost two weeks:
* In addition to game time, current Station Access subscribers (with accounts in good standing) will receive 500 Station Cash.
* EverQuest®: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Rare Mob Spawns and Double Faction Gains
Now before those of you that insist on carrying the We <3 Sony banner no matter what start your protests, consider that none of the above do ONE BIT for those of us who you know, actually played their game when it was up, and are max xp with most if not all our quests/missions/tasks/etc complete.
Let's get real: The biggest loss that the 12 day outage represents to a good many people is the LOST OPPORTUNITY to clear our lockouts again. So, one really successful, winning solution to this issue would simply be to offer 1 piece of Sanctum raid gear to EVERY SUBSCRIBER. Quite frankly, as a member of a guild that has completed the expansion, if you give it to casual people. Wouldn't bother me in the slightest, and a gesture such as this would be an EXTREMELY good way to recapture good faith amongst your followers while costing you nothing. In fact, most people wouldn't even care anymore and you'd be unlikely to lose any EQ customers even though you failed to protect our personal information, and in some cases our credit cards and BANK ACCOUNT NUMBERS -- which is, in my opinion, perhaps the most eggregious affront of the whole thing.
Also, take care of your international customers. They suffered perhaps the worst breach, yet your only identity theft protection program is for your American customers. Surely Sony and SoE can do better then an embarassingly poor solution to a serious problem.
The Apocalypse is over... EverQuest has returned.
Raids will resume on Monday. Double xp, faction and increased rare spawns until May 22.
May 12, 2011
We thank you for your patience as we continue to work around the clock to restore our game services. We know this has been a frustrating time for you and appreciate your understanding as we work to confirm the security of our network.
In light of the recent outage of Sony Online Entertainment's game services due to April's cyber-attack, we are committed to compensating our loyal player base for the inconvenience caused by the data breach and lost game time while we improve our security measures.
We are currently in the process of an extensive upgrade to our network to further protect your information from future attacks. It will likely be at least a few more days before we restore our services, and when we come back online, here is what you can expect for each of our game services.
To read the remainder of this update, click here.
In light of this update, we are cancelling raids for the weekend, and will revisit the issue on Monday, provided there is new information available. Also, for our US residents, Sony is providing identity theft protection (IRONIC considering the worst security breaches took place OUTSIDE the US.). For more information about that program, click here.
No new information has come forth today. Therefore, cancelling raids for tonight, Thursday May 12. Will make a decision tomorrow regarding the weekend once an update is released, if any is.
No raids tonight as posted before (Wednesday), we'll see what comes tomorrow. we're still accepting requests into our facebook groups, look us up, just be sure to let us know who you are when you send in the request or friend me!
With no new information from Sony, and the information flow seemingly cut off today, we are cancelling raids for today, Wednesday May 11th. It is looking unlikely that the servers will be up before the weekend, but its pure speculation at this point...
we're still accepting requests into our facebook groups, look us up, just be sure to let us know who you are when you send in the request or friend me!
As stated yesterday, raids for today, May 10th are cancelled. Stay tuned for more information as we can find reliable sources.