Why, so they can pay Sony to run the game just like they used to? When erant DID have a hand in EQ, there was no shortage of complaining about what a joke Verant was and how they treated their customers like crap and didn't care and how they were always dropping the ball. People complain because they can and your statement just proves it. If you are that pissed off, quit playing. If you don't quit playing, you forfiet your right to say stupid things like "blow me sony".

And on what grounds? What do you have to say about them that makes them any different than any other company?

You have to understand that they are a "creative software company" with a massive staff of overinflated egotistical programmer types who are more interested in Hollywood titles like producer, assistant producer, etc. These types of programmers would never be able to cut it in a real mission critical software development environment because they lack a key personality trait…self-discipline and attention to detail. Just look at the horrible inconsistencies in the code SOE develops from the inconsistent look-and-feel of their website to the lack of standards and consistency in their XML code (the UI code we can actually see - imagine what we can’t see).

Simply looking through the UI XML code you can see inconsistent programming styles, standards, etc. It’s like a hundred different programmers with a hundred different ideas programmed that stuff. Just look through the game itself, it’s filled with inconsistencies and lack of adherence to programming standards.

Why are they so bad at these estimates? Because the company has and always will be a “seat of the pants” “cowboy programming” operation with little to no discipline, attention to detail or real understanding of real time programming operations/standards.

They said 7 hours from 1am pac time. Its now 10am pac time. Nowhere near 13 hours.

When you posted it was an hour past the time it was expected the servers would be up. Almost always the servers are down an hour to two hours longer than expected. Anyway, who cares? It will be back when it's back. If it takes awhile petition for time on your account due to the down time. While it's down do something else. There are things on TV right now I'm sure and XBox 360 or PS3 can get you a temporary fix =)

Certainly wasn't posted on the EQ board until the evening before.

You're mixing things up. They made it faster for patches for EQ, and increased the number of things that could be patched without taking the servers down.

Today is SOE wide maintenance, which has nothing to do with the systems you note. They do this type of maintenance maybe 2-3 times a year.