The servers are finally back up, although not without some glitches. Many people are/were getting timeout errors. Be patient - Sony should get things fixed soon.
Sony has announced some compensation for the downtime:
It looks like we may have a long wait until we get our games back. Withdrawal has already set in ...
The recent hacking of SOE points out the dangers of not taking security seriously enough, and putting too much information together in one place. They didn't have just one game compromised, or even just one gaming platform. This breach has potentially compromised every platform and game SOE has online as well as it's servers. It has put customers at risk of identity theft.
SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES THEFT OF DATA FROM ITS SYSTEMS
Breach Believed to Stem From Initial Criminal Hack of SOE
Tokyo, May 3, 2011 - Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment announced today that their ongoing investigation of illegal intrusions into Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE, the company) systems revealed yesterday morning (May 2, Tokyo time) that hackers may have stolen SOE customer information on April 16th and 17th, 2011 (PDT). SOE is based in San Diego, California, U.S.A.
I'm not sure about my readers, but I am sure having fun playing on the Fippy Darkpaw progression server. I think it is a good thing to have the time locks and voting before opening expansions. I can't believe we have level 50's after less than a week. Experience isn't that easy to get. One thing that is sure - it seems to be popular with a lot of EQ players.
Some bug fixes today as well as a couple of changes that should help (see highlighted items). Also, basic information has now been entered for level 88 spells.
Information on level 86 and 87 spells has been added. Information on drops and quests for these spells still needs to be added. The vendor information for the rank 1 spells is listed, however.
The House of Thule expansion is now live and with it comes a level increase to 90, some new zones, new Alternate Abilities and spells, larger backpacks and bank, and player housing. There's been a lot of grumbling in the mage community about how this expansion doesn't do enough for magicians and we've lost ground to other classes - but then there seems to have been grumbling with most all of the past expansions as well.
There's always been a lot of speculation on how many subscription MMORPG games that can survive, and with so many new games coming to market it seems we may already be well past the saturation point. While the recent server mergers in Everquest may worry some that the game is in decline, there are clearly still a lot of people willing to pay money every month to play this game that has been around over 11 years.
Today's patch had a few things of interest to magicians:
