SOE announce in-game events to welcome us home.

This has been an aggravating time for any lover of SOE games. We still don’t really have an ETA for when our games are coming back, but SOE has revealed some of what they’re going to do to try to make things up to us.

First and foremost, all impacted players will receive 30 days of game time added to the end of the current billing cycle in addition to one day for each day the system is down. Additionally, many games are offering a variety of in-game items and special events to welcome players back once our services resume (per the outline below). This is true for both PC and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system based products.

DC Universeâ„¢ Online: Batmanâ„¢ and Two-Faceâ„¢ Inspired Masks and 30 Marks of Distinction
Free Realms®: Free daily items (7 to collect)
Clone Wars Adventuresâ„¢: Count Dooku v2 Outfit
EverQuest®: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Rare Mob Spawns and Double Faction Gains
EverQuest II and EverQuest II Extended: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Guild XP, Loot Bonanza, and City Festivals
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes®: A series of Double XP events
Star Wars Galaxiesâ„¢: Bounty Hunter Statue, a miniature model of Boba Fett’s ship, the Slave Iâ„¢
Magic: The Gathering – Tacticsâ„¢: Four of each of these spells: “Ivory Mask”, “Duress” and “Angelheart Vial”, plus 500 Station Cash
PoxNora®: Limited edition Carrionling, Welcome Back 5K Gold Award Tournaments and two Draft Tournaments, plus 500 Station Cash

For our lifetime subscribers, we’ll grant in-game currency; specifically 20,000 coins for Free Realms, 7,500 Galactic Credits for Clone Wars Adventures and 10 Marks of Distinction for DC Universe Online (in addition to the items listed above).

And finally, our Station Access subscribers will receive 500 Station Cash, in addition to the subscription time and items listed above.

Clearly, the last thing we want is for SOE to put themselves in any further financial trouble. It was only recently that they shut down most of their external studios, with widespread layoffs. The loss of revenue for the past months is going to have been considerable, and it is inevitable that subscriber numbers will have taken a heavy hit when things do get back to normal. So, in spite of how infuriating the last few weeks have been, I am trying to cut them some slack.

“A series of events, including Double XP, Double Guild XP, Loot Bonanza, and City Festivals” is what we’ll be getting over in EQ2. I guess maybe all the city festivals will be active at once, revealing a bunch of Aether Races we haven’t seen yet. That’ll be a lot of fun, and we’ll be sure to make good use of the double guild xp period. I always save up my status items for those.

Their development schedule did not get a holiday during this time. GU 60 still needed finishing off (It’s scheduled to go live itself in a few days), and GU61 is probably well underway, so they won’t have had much time to make anything special for us. However, there might be some old bits and bobs that could be added to the “Welcome Back” festivities, without seriously impacting current development. Some of them may just need a switch flicked.

There have been a lot of great world events over the years that were one-offs, some of which were pretty large. Perhaps, through the power of Chronomancy, there might be some way to sensibly bring one or more of those back during the celebration. The expansion and deity preludes spring to mind. I know I’d LOVE to get the chance to do the D.I.R.T.Y. quests that were part of the Shadow Odyssey prelude.

That’s just a thought really, mostly because I desperately want as many people to come back to EQ2 as possible. I’m a little frightened of what my server is going to look like when it comes back up. SOE needs to do everything it can, within its current capabilities, to make what comes next as awesome and enticing as possible.

"Shin Surprise" by Maltheas Shadowsqueak

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