Ah, it’s good to be back. Things are slowly getting back to normal with SOE, and I managed to fit in a little time in EQ2 to go over my housing plans. Pictured above is the library of my Norrathian Museum (on the Antonia Bayle server, if you want to visit it’s a Mistmoore Craig Estate located in South Freeport under the name of Stargrace). I managed to track down five “new” (to me) player-written books, which puts my collection at 423 to date. I’m hoping that as things become even more settled players will find inspiration once again and I will be able to find even more books to add. Remember as always if you’d like to donate a book to my museum you can contact me directly in game and I will supply the blank books as well as some coin for your effort.
Most (but not all) SOE games are involved in a grand ‘welcome back’ program that is currently running. For EQ2 this includes the following for players:
From May 14th until May 23rd at 9am PDT players can enjoy double xp, double guild xp, a loot bonanza, all city festivals and moonlight enchantments, and the Aether races. Players will also get 45 days of free game time (for active and non-active subscriptions) and 500 station cash. They’ve extended any RAF accounts that were active during the outage, and are compensating any time that may have been lost from the research assistants. They’ve also covered rent for one month for guild homes and regular homes.
Some players are demanding more, and that this is not enough. Personally, I don’t blame SOE for the down time. Places get hacked and it was just incredibly unfortunate that this time it was a widely used platform. I think that they are taking a lot more heat for their lack of communication to players then anything else. For example we received no emails letting us know that things were back up and running. No explanation on what was really going on, or how long anything would take. I understand it’s a bit of a sensitive matter especially if there’s legalities involved with tracking down whoever did this – but alienating your customers just makes a sore spot even worse. You have to keep them as informed as you possibly can and I don’t feel that “sorry, we’re not coming back up today” is keeping anyone informed. Just my opinion, of course.
I am glad to see everyone back to their respective games, and incredibly thankful that I can get back to scratching that housing itch – especially since multi housing just released not that long ago.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!