Daybreak will perform a general maintenance beginning at 6am PDT on Thursday, September 17, 2015. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is two to four hours, depending on the service.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Game logins for all Daybreak games
• Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games
• Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes.

Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance.

~The Team at Daybreak

EverQuest II is also having a one hour update during the maintenance, at 7am PT. Here are the patch notes:

ITEMS
Chest of Wondrous Booty will now display the correct items that it rewards.

QUESTS
Rum Cellar and Fabled Echoes of Faydwer missions have been added to the Mission Timer Window.

Daybreak will perform a general maintenance beginning at 6am PDT on Tuesday, July 28, 2015. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is two to four hours, depending on the service.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Game logins for all Daybreak games
• Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games
• Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes.

Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance.

~The Team at Daybreak

UPDATE July 11 8:45am ET: Games are accessible but very laggy. Smed finally apologized on Twitter last night: "..sorry to say more DDOS. I apologize for the issues we are having. I have to own pissing them off and I'm sorry. Just sorry they are taking it out on you, our players."

UPDATE July 10 5:45pm ET: Nothing official has been said in a few hours, but we're seeing occasional (and rare) reports of players being able to get into their game of choice. However, those managing to get into the games are experiencing heavy lag. Hope everyone has good plans for spending their Friday evening elsewhere!

UPDATE July 10 2:15pm ET: Not much has changed. From Daybreak on Twitter: "We are continuing to resolve issues from a Distributed Denial of Service event. We will provide updates as available."

UPDATE July 10 11:30am ET: Looks like Daybreak spoke too soon and the outages are happening again. "We are experiencing issues again which may result in lag, disconnects, or inability to access games, forums, or websites. The team is aware." Since official forums may be inaccessible, keep up-to-date with Daybreak's Twitter or Facebook pages.

Yesterday evening, Daybreak Games experienced DDoS attacks that caused players to be unable to login to any of the games, and those who managed to stay in-game to experience a lot of lag. Around 9:30am ET today the EverQuest II twitter account stated that all games appear to be back up and running.

If you are looking for further details on what occurred yesterday:

• Smed mentioned Daybreak being DDoS'd here (and here on July 10)
• EQ2Wire did a nice summary of everything that snowballed up into the attacks here and here (longer explanation)
• Smed went to reddit to vent

Daybreak has announced that the Recruit Reward program has been discontinued. As posted on the official forums:

Hail Norrathians!

In July of 2013, the Beta for the Recruit Rewards program launched. This program allowed anyone with a then-Station Account to earn special items by inviting friends to join them in their favorite games.

Over the past two years, we have gathered a lot of excellent information and feedback about this recruitment program, on everything from system set-up and maintenance to the types of rewards that were found most desirable.

At this time, we have decided that we are going to end the Recruit Rewards Beta and will not be continuing with the program in its current form. Though we will not be launching Recruit Rewards, your feedback remains valuable to us as we explore the development of other new and different programs here at Daybreak.

What if I sent out invitations that weren’t accepted yet? Since the Recruit Rewards Beta program is now closed, the invites will no longer work. Please encourage your friends to create an account at www.daybreakgames.com and join you in game!

What’s going to happen to the rewards I already earned? Nothing! Those are yours to keep and enjoy; previously granted rewards will not be wiped or removed from your account.

But I was so close to the next level of Achievement rewards! Is there anything I can do? Since the program is now closed, you will not be able to earn any additional recruits towards your achievement. However, to say thank you for your participation in the Beta of this program, if you achieved Delegate Level (Tier One) or higher, we will grant you the in-game items available at the next highest tier in your primary game.

How are you determining my primary game? Your primary game is determined as the game where you chose to receive your first achievement reward (Delegate/Tier One Level) after successfully recruiting two friends who made at least $10.00 worth of qualifying purchases.

I have another question or issue with my Recruit Rewards account that isn’t answered here. What do I do? Please contact our Customer Service team at help.daybreakgames.com.

Thank you again for participating in and providing feedback about the Beta of Recruit Rewards.

In a surprising newsletter this evening, Storybricks announced that it will be closing its doors.

Mostly known for their recent work on EverQuest Next's AI with Sony Online Entertainment, the studio cites that the decision was their own and "Sony Online Entertainment (now Daybreak Games) bears no fault for it. Sony Online Entertainment had been up for sale for a long time so our exit had no connection with the Columbus Nova acquisition."

UPDATE: Linda "Brasse" Carlson confirmed there will be no convention this year. "For those asking about SOE Live: we are taking a hiatus from our annual Live event to shift our focus to our exciting transition and the future of Daybreak Game Company."

This morning, Sony Online Entertainment announced that it was acquired by a company called Columbus Nova and will be rebranded as "Daybreak Game Company." SOE will operate as an independant studio and will even branch out into the Xbox platform.