Having spent a few years watching gaming news I can safely say it’s rare that gaming companies admit they made an unpopular decision or announcement. Blizzard giving in to massive playerbase pressure over RealID is one such incident. A similar event is the news that SoE’s deal with Pro Sieben Sat, to transfer wholesale the EU playerbase, has been drastically amended.
After last month’s announcement that EQ2 would not transition according to the schedule but be delayed (with no new date given), and a visit by SoE’s John Smedley to PSS in Germany, now we have it official – existing EU players will be able to stay with SoE. The option to migrate will be there but (hopefully) no forced migrate to PSS will now occur. However new players with no existing SoE account after the launch of Planetside 2 will have to register with PSS.
All the details are on EQ2 Wire‘s excellent EQ2 newsfeed.
This is of course a very positive development, it may mean in the longer term future that I return to EQ2 (my gaming plate is full enough for now). But I do think this change took far too long, SoE & PSS1 took way too long to rethink this, 10 months of negative ‘feedback’, players constantly pointing out the legal and security holes in the deal and finally it gets resolved. Just how many accounts have been cancelled, how many once loyal Euro players have already made a new home in some other MMO?
