Amaury is still settling into the new household, so no Sands of Sound tonight. Hoping to get squared for next week, with a possible extended showtime to make up for the lack of tunes.

Amaury and girlfriend have safely settled in back home in southern Indiana! (YAY!)

Unfortunately, Am has picked up a lovely bit of sick from the cross-country travel. (BOO!)

So there will be no official Sands of Sound tonight while the recovery / unpacking happens. Looking to make a triumphant return next week!

Peace out!

Due to some suddenly occurring real-life issues of a serious nature, Downrange will be going on hiatus for at least the next two weeks, possibly longer. Sorry folks, nothing I can do to avoid it.

Listeners are of course still invited and encouraged to send in those thoughts, opinions, and future show ideas to torryn@onlinegamingradio.com …don’t let my being out of commission for a bit keep you from making your voices heard!

Sands Of Sound will not be on tonight. Finals start in earnest today, the girlfriend will be flying in, and the last-minute push to a Friday departure for the cross-country style move will take place!

Sands should be back next week as the hope is to be largely settled in and re-familiarized with the time zone.

Play nice, everyone… And we’ll see you literally on the other side (of the country, that is…)!

Tune in NOW! You know you wanna!

This happened today. And this. And also this.

Expect to need to change your password on first login. Also expect logins to be rough, due to the number of returnees inundating the servers.

Also reported via folks already in: ALL City Festivals are active. As are Moonlight Enchantments. Till May 22nd, if the press release is correct.

But there you have it.

For those of you that (like me) may have gotten tired of waiting for SOE to update their page with any new information on the ongoing issues from the hacker attack…

SOE finally updated their page with new information on the ongoing issues from the hacker attack (didn’t see that coming, did you?). You can find the link… Right here!

While the opening dialog is nothing new (“Thank you for your patience…” “WHAT F**KIN’ PATIENCE?!?!”), the meat of the story is in the midsts of it all: The unveiling of SOE’s “Make Good” Program. It outlines what the returning players (because they’re expecting all of us to come back, right? … RIGHT???) can expect once their favorite game(s) is/are back online. For the bulk of us, it involves:

• 30 days of game time added to the end of the current billing cycle in addition to one day for each day the system is down (which amounts to 10 days by my count as of the moment of this post).
• A series of events, including Double XP, Double Guild XP, Loot Bonanza, and City Festivals (For us of the EQ2 / EQ2X persuasion).
• 500 Station Cash, in addition to the subscription time and items listed above (For Station Access subscribers only).

There are also details about the Sony team-up with Debix to offer affected customers identity theft protection (U.S, territories only at this point; non-U.S.ers, your equivalent is allegedly in the works, depending on local laws).

Our other hosts are likely to be commenting on these items themselves, but I’m curious: Are you satisfied with the (eventual) Sony response? Are they offering too much / too little / the Goldilocks “just right” amount of compensation? Has anyone gotten any e-mails from Sony, either in regards to this, or the PSN intrusion? Has this whole debacle even turned you off into coming back… At all?

I welcome your comments… Keep ‘em civil, clean, and thoughtful… Remember Torryn’s thoughts on the best ways to “bitch”!

I’d hate to sic the Ranger on you!

… But in all seriousness, Sands will not be heard tonight due to the continuing adventures (and misadventures) of your intrepid DJ prepping for a cross-country move. Sands will be on next week at its regularly-scheduled time.

In the meantime, SOE has posted this news via their Facebook feed… This is something to keep an eye on, and if any additional information manifests itself, you can rest assured that OGR will be on top of it:

“All SOE games and sites are still offline as of May 11th and will not return today. Thank you again for your continued patience and support as we diligently work on these issues. All houses requiring rent will have one month added free to help offset any costs incurred during this outage. More information on SOE’s “Make Good” plan to come!”

Sands of Sound with Amaury are on in a half hour. Today’s show will be more talk than usual, with the SOE debacle looming large.

Be prepared accordingly with a good book, sleeping pills, and / or your favorite booze!

We at Online Gaming Radio are proud to introduce the newest members of our family!

I’d like to welcome 2 new members to OGR. Alan “Brenlo” Crosby and Christie “Kiara” Renzetti. They’re soon to begin a new show dedicated to the way too addicting for the goodness of mankind, Rift.  ~Leonai_Art

Brenlo and Kiara will be working on our new show, titled “Halfling Stew with Brenlo” which will be a mish mash of MMO Gaming Goodness, with touches of Rift for flavor. Featuring occasional guest insights and no hamsters.