The morning brought rain, grogginess, and people in my MSN window asking, "Hey, how come EQII is down?"

Uhhh, dudes. Do I LOOK like a server tech for SoE? I can barely operate my coffee maker, on a good day. I had to get the kind without the led clock that would perenially flash 12:00.

I have no idea what's up.

EQII is no worka. Can't get past the launchpad.
The EQII forums is no worka. Network error.

You can amuse yourself by listening to Strongbad's foray into techno music, "The System is Down", while browsing various sites, looking for a clue, and coming up with conspiracy theories.

An alternate option is to clean your kitchen, do some laundry, walk the dog, go out for lunch...

As for me, I decided to pester GRIMWELL, only to find out that he was stabbing in the dark as well (literally, what a mess - never wake up a Community Manager on their so-called "day off"). He is actually driving in to work to see what's up, because well.. THE SYSTEM IS DOWN! He can't even get his own email.

Poor guy. At least I don't have to drive for 40 minutes to get to my cubicle here.

;-)#
Brasse


TIMELINE:

* On Friday, Feb 22, there were issues, which were apparently resolved. Sort of. For a while at least. Official EQII forum post by Gnobrin.

* Saturday, Feb 23: Some time in the morning, everything, and I mean everything went down, encapsulating SOE in a shell of "no touchie!".

* 12:15pm EST - EQII forums are back up. They just came back up, so we don't see hundreds of "what did you ebil people do to my game omg my life is ruined i had the whole day off now it's wasted and i want compensation" posts yet. They are coming.

* 12:19pm EST - EverQuest launcher and game are UP!
Grimwell contacts me and says it is all because he actually got in the car and started driving. I want some of that hoodoo when I can't get my VCR to work.
People in game say glibly that they were online the whole time and didn't notice anything wrong. They also harvested all my rares and took my l337 loot drops, I bet. Buggers.

* 12:33pm EST - Grimwell offers:
"This morning we experienced a brief network outage that affected all SOE games and websites. Crack SOE Network and Operations Ninjas flashed to the scene and worked their kung-fu furiously to get things back in action for you. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused, but things look to be under control and stable pending any other giant monster attacks on the server room. Thanks for your understanding.

No hamsters were harmed in the restoration of network capacity."