The End?Follow

Could this be the end, until EqNext?
1. We know Sony Online has had a great deal of financial failures, layoffs, studio closings.

2. Playstation networks will have priority over EQ. PSN has 70 million registered users. Even the news articles only really mention Playstation. They never mention the rest of the games affected. The only place you see Eq mentioned in the news articles, is on Everquest related sites.

3. Its a risk vs reward. Im sure plenty of number crunchers at Sony, are seriously evaluating the cost of maintaining Everquest 1&2, Vanguard, etc and there is a new added risk they must calculate into their equations. Just how much is Sony spending right now, to find / fix the problem. How much has their name been tarnished by these hacks. How much is the identity theft insurance costing them? Since this event, Sony stock has been steadily on the decline.

Just how much of an investment must Sony make, in order to get all the games back up and running. What is their expected income after they do? What will be their expected rate of return on that investment? Would they have a better rate of return, if that money was invested elsewhere in the company?


Sony's primary concern is their stockholders. They are not getting emotional about a level 90 what ever.

They may get Everquest back up, but then again, they may not. Get it up and running enough, to save face, but not dedicate any future resources to its long term maintenance because the risk is no longer worth any reward.

If something gets shut down, it won't be individual games. There is a very real possibility that SOE will be shut down because of this, but that has a lot to do with how long it takes the servers to come back up. Playstation still has money coming in and games are still playable. SOE is completely shut down and the longer it takes to get back up, the longer it will be before they start generating revenue again. Every day down is two days before they can start collecting subscriptions again.

I started playing Rift with one of those 7 day trials and its not bad. I also tried out world of warcraft and it sucked. Even tho rift is not as good as everquest2 its not too far off the mark. I havnt got to max level yet so I have to wait to see if I get bored and the game and it is still new. However with SOE shut down this may be like a gift from the heavens to a game like rift. Im sure everyday SOE is shut down more and more people will become addicted to other games and lose interest in Eq2.

Im sure there are many people like you that will never switch but if their are not enough of you it will kill the game.
I am keeping an open mind about other games but if I get bored with them back to eq2 I will go.

It isn't a "The sky is falling" scenario.

EQII is an old game, EQ even older, DCUO isn't in the best of states, and SOE has nothing on the horizon until the end of '12 at the very earliest. This incident is going to cost them customers, lots of them, and they have no major influx of new customers anytime soon. If the cost of fixing everything and bringing it back up reaches the point that they can't see the return, shutting down is a very real possibility.

Without knowing SOE's gross income vs. their daily expenses, there's no way to know where that tipping point is. Given that we don't know either of those two numbers we can only guess, but if they aren't up by the end of the month, I would start thinking it's pushing that limit.