Here I was expecting identity theft of players or something really bad.

Instead its something that may be mildly upsetting to someone who is not me. Hell, if this were in WoW (IE something I actually play.) I would still dismiss this as no big deal.

Though I guess the significance is that because Everquest 2 is a bit more niche than other MMOs if they have a pissed off fan base it could really hurt that game. Hmmm.

Well, naughty naughty. Daddy spank.

explodingman

A similar thing happened in WoW. Only once were players given the opportunity to switch from a PVE to a PVP server (thus bypassing the danger of leveling up on a PVP server). Oddly enough, one of the transfers available allowed the guild Fires of Heaven to make that transfer. Fires of Heaven, of course, being the guild run by WoW designer Furor aka Alex Afrasiabi.

That caused an uproar, because it went back on a previous Blizzard policy. But it wasn't so blatant because it was open to everybody, not just that guild.

That is, until the administrators got caught individually transferring another character after the trade deadline was over. And of course, this player was a member of the guild Fires of Heaven.
[www.wowinsider.com]

knulpm

I've hated SOE since the starwars galaxies changes. Never touched their games since,and never will again.

gitrooman

@Darkest Daze: Yeah, I guess I just spend a lot of time at MMO news sites so it surprised me. But I guess MMO's aren't exactly popular around here.

kyosen : pears are the best

^It's a couple posts down, user name of the team member is Froech or whatever. *Hits imaginary edit button*

Ortega

Ah, I think this link should work

[forums.station.sony.com]

If it doesn't, lemme know. But yeah, it's funny how they only helped one guild...

Ortega

@kyosen : pears are the best:
Well I remember how people kept making this game sound like it would be the 2nd coming before it was released and then once it came out, no one ever heard of it again. So I can believe he didn't know this game was still around if he doesn't know anyone who plays it. I personally haven't heard of anything to do with this game since it was released.

Darkest Daze

I saw that a day or so ago from someone's blog posting, and I read that one of the people from EQ2's SOE team or whatever posted on the fansite and actually tried to point the finger of blame at the community, since they were only trying to "reward long time players of Test" or something. I'll hopefully remember where I saw it shortly.

Ortega

Bring out the UBER banhammer.

ghnvt

@Atheist Jew: You weren't aware people played EQ2? O_o

kyosen : pears are the best

I didn't realize people actually played this.

Atheist Jew

@mossberg: quoted for truth

Onizuka-GTO

Maybe they were so desperate to get players playing, that they just migrated people from the test server to the dead main servers...

Scazza

@JeffPaine: Actually, that's not quite true. The TOS is binding on SOE until they change them ... if that makes sense. It's basically a covenant that can be changed by Sony at any time, however the user must be given notice of the change before it takes effect.

If the story is true, some enterprising young [strike]leach[/strike] lawyer will start up a class-actions suit.

jayntampa

I've played dozens of SOE games.

EQ, EQ2, SWG, PS, and was a Live events character for Matrix Online (I want my 2 years back!) all have forced me to quit drama, cheatting, or just plain degrading of games.

SoE, We ruin MMOs.

Huginn

@JeffPaine:

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am sure Police and lawmakers are NOT above the law.

/wink

If the TOS is a legal binding contract, then they (SOE) by law, has to follow it themselves.

EnigmaNemesis

My old guild had a dev in it that revealed a good number of raid tactics in EQ2.. and a semi-celebrity who pulled strings with certain instance timers. This isn't anything new.

kyosen : pears are the best

required kotaku cynical comment

People are still playing EQ2?

Molbork

umm correct me if I'm wrong but if SOE wrote the terms of service then they're free to bend the rules of the terms of service also

It's their game after all

Sure people might not be happy about it but hey, if SOE did it then there's really nothing that can be done

JeffPaine

Destroy!

Maldron

This happens in EVERY MMO, just a lot don't get caught, or nothing happens.

EnigmaNemesis

I would think after the fallout that occured when EVE's developers did something similar, others would have thought twice before taking such risks.

Still, I guess you can't change human nature.

Sugoi

@mossberg:

Well said

Ergophobia

oh dear, they've been bad bunnies :(

ZinkO

That'll teach em to play EQ2 wait...............

eternalplayer2345

mossberg

ooo naughty naughty

NunChuckJimi

Furor was possibly the single biggest element behind WoW's immediate success over classic EQ, since his blog was tremendously popular and slowly evolved into a campaign for emigration from one MMO to another. Sony helped matters along with ham-fisted expansions.

Asterra

@kyosen : pears are the best: What a coincidence. My old EQ2 guild was widely accused of having acquired raid tactics from a GM (false, but the guild was tops and thus was universally reviled), and did in fact take advantage of a GM's mistake to clear a new zone before access was actually by-the-rules acquired. The latter episode I personally shared no qualms about, as 1) legitimate access was a catastrophe of time-wasting luck, 2) all loot was offered for deletion (and accepted), and 3) the final boss, who we did defeat, was thereafter made less difficult to kill.

Asterra

@knulpm: Oddly enough, one of the transfers available allowed the guild Fires of Heaven to make that transfer. Fires of Heaven, of course, being the guild run by WoW designer Furor aka Alex Afrasiabi.

Furor was a designer for WoW? He was also guild leader of Fires of Heaven in EQ1.

As a current EQ2 player, I don't really care about this. Uber guilds have been getting preferential treatment since EQ1, so it comes as absolutely no surprise that people are getting preferential treatment in EQ2.

Doshu

SOE can suck it for all I care. Theyve screwed up too many good MMORPGs that it'll take an act of God for me to trust them again.

Raynre

I played the beta before EQ2 was released, and the game was dead before it even got on shelves. Seriously place was empty, surprised it even has any subscribers. Look at the WoW beta, and you couldn't move without walking through another player. It seems this is a bigger deal because of the smaller amount of players. If this happened in WoW, which if I am to believe the above posters it did, most of the player base wouldn't even know about it. I know I didn't and I played it from open beta to BC, and am picking it up again now. But because of a smaller amount of players actions are heard by a larger amount of the population, so this may be a big thing.

Chewbenator

I know alot of people that play Everquest. It's pretty popular just it kind of gets overshadowed by wow i guess. Haven't played it myself don't wanna get dragged into an mmorpg again ;)

myd12

@JeffPaine: Violating the terms of service shown to consumers is technically fraud. The people are paying for what they thought of as a fair game, after all.

rdj

@Sugoi:
"I would think after the fallout that occured when EVE's developers did something similar, others would have thought twice before taking such risks.
Still, I guess you can't change human nature."

That implies that Sony can learn.

yonderTheGreat

SOE dicking over customers? *NO*WAY*!!!!!!!!!

yonderTheGreat

@yonderTheGreat: Oh, Sony can learn all right. They just have a tendency to forget those lessons quickly, much to their detriment. Of course, they aren't alone; Nintendo is well on their way to regaining the monumental levels of self-importance they had in the 80s and which led to their (relatively) poor performance until this generation.

Sugoi

Im an EQ2 player, and i dont really care either way. i expected something a lot worse than this, but eh. doesnt really affect me. now if they had been transferred to my server, id be pissed, since my server's population is about 3x more than they expected to be this time after the expansion.

Chanaluss

@Molbork : Yes..WE DO continue to play, as the game has made leaps and bounds over it's launch, and has proven ot be one of the better MMO's out now (deeper and more engaging than that other big seller...WoW...huh?)

Anyways...this has really proven to be a big cry baby fest from those who feel cheated...how can you feel cheated in a PvE environment, when you can accomplish the same goals eventually. The real issue is people are always looking for a way to rail against SOE as they are still broken up over SWG. Some people just can't let go..
Could you imagine if you kept screaming at that girl that broke up with you 5 years ago? Believe me...the restraining order is still in effect...
Cheers@

openedge1

"Because really, when have a bunch of humans ever got together and there not been corruption?"

Erm... Kotaku, for one, is not corrupt. :)

.....

Right?

VictorStillwater

Personally I would be shocked and appalled. But then again, I don't play MMORPGs anymore. So thats about as far as I go with my opinion.

Devs shouldn't have the power to grant in game items to players. Period.

Scuba Steve

@openedge1: It's easy to feel cheated in a PvE environment. The amount of effort and time put into completing raids before other guilds can amount to quite a bit and if another guild is aided by devs then it destroys that competition. The driving force behind MMO's is doing things first. Not for all, but for the vast majority. Atleast in the more hardcore MMO's which is what EQ2 has more or less become regardless of how it started.

Too bad they'll never beat T5 content IMO.

kyosen : pears are the best

Wow...if you are going to be a dick and respond like that...why bother responding at all. Being a holier-then-though sarcastic cock isn't going to win him any points.

VendettaUF

You can't pull the wool over the eyes of EQ2 players... I don't see the problem of this as long as the characters were scrubbed as Bruce said they were. It is not unusual for SoE to reward players in this kind of way. Long time players often get invited to beta test new expansions and invited to beta new MMOs as well.

Cueil

And that's why I no longer play any SoE owned games. Screw them all.

xiphos

Nothing like bad press to drive up subscribers!

radink

I was playing on Test until I read the first "official" SOE response.

[forums.station.sony.com]

There has been quite a bit of discussion recently about something we were doing to show kindness to some valued members of our testing community who have been working diligently to improve EverQuest II for the last three years.

What we did was take a group of characters from the test server, scrub them by hand of all test gear, and any 'privileged' equipment, titles, etc, and grant their wish to continue to play as a group of friends, on a live server.

Had we been aware that being a little extra kind to these folks would cause such an uproar, there is no doubt we would not have taken this step. However, due to the current situation, I find myself apologizing to you for allowing this situation to occur.

We are in the process now of removing the characters that we copied to the live servers. Obviously, we overstepped the bounds of kindness in attempting to thank these people for their efforts in testing, and we are working to rectify this situation before the end of the day today.

Thank you,

Bruce "Froech" Ferguson

Senior Producer, EverQuest II

Vjeszczi

Does every branch of Sony make it a goal to get bad press? They (sony) have this amazing ability to make it hard for everyone except the most die-hard fanboy to support them.

TheRemedy

I wonder how many Blizzard devs play Warlocks....

ProjectThanatos

Been playing eq2 since a few weeks after launch. This doesn't bother me at all. As has been said above, the eq2 devs regularly do nice things for people that help them out. These people have been playing on the test server for a long time that means they've worked through more bugs and experiments than anyone who plays on the regular servers.

People just hate SOE so much that they blow everything out of proportion. This is nowhere near as ugly as the eve scandal from a while ago.

BungFoo

Why do I care about this? It's not because I feel gipped. I don't really care if uberguild X get special treatment. End of the day, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. What bothers me is that they broke their own TOS, which they claim is a legal document. Ergo, they commited a breach of contract with every single EQ2 subscriber by performing this act. That is serious. If they get away with that, I will be pissed. Sure, they purged the characters. As I've said, I don't care what happens to this guild. That doesn't change the fact they violated their own contract. If I sold gold in EQ2, I wouldn't be able to give the money back. No, I'd get my ass booted, no second chances.

Aside: EQ2 is a much better game now than it was at launch. It's almost a completely different game.

thenino85

Who cares?

I mean, if they're all in one guild and such, if they want to break their own rules.

It is like a police officer speeding when not on-duty.

If it isn't affecting PvP, if they want to reward their followers with Kotaku Kash +30, who cares?

Cad06

Back when I played EQ1, I was in an uberguild. Eventually I rose enough in the guild that I came to know the dark secret: our main tank had an instant-cast hate generating item that he got from a gm buddy.

rateoforange