Clock Ticking on SOE Downtime

The Positive News: SOE is releasing major content patch #4. Not bad, eh?

Then Negative News: The servers are locked.

Rumors are flying as to what exactly happened, but the most reliable sources say the problem rests mainly with one item, the Stein of Moggok. Apparently, not only can it "be rebuilt," it can be resold to NPC vendors for mucho plat. In the neighborhood of thousands. SOE locked the servers as soon as this was discovered. In addition, rare harvest nodes were reportedly popping up like crazy.

Well, I figure SOE is racing against the clock to see if they can get the servers up before people start to get really negative. Remember, as you can see a few posts below, these are the guys who proclaimed "no waiting" to the world. Hmmm, if the servers are locked, that doesn't count as waiting does it? Uh, yeah.

Sometimes I wonder how downtime like this is really handled by MMORPG players. I imagine it's the full gauntlet from flat-out rage from the power players to relief from the guy who really wanted to just chill tonight but was afraid to get too far behind the rest of his guild. And then, perhaps, a few Everquest Widows are happily surprised to see their partners (for some strange reason) propose a quiet romantic dinner tonight.

And then there are those who just blog about it I guess.