GENCON, Indianapolis, IN - Aug.,10, 2006 - Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced that it has acquired key assets of Worlds Apart Productions, a premier independent developer of online trading card games. Key employees of Worlds Apart will form the core of the new SOE-Denver, integrating into SOE's worldwide group of studios stretching from San Diego to Seattle, Austin to Taiwan. The acquisition will strengthen SOE's position as a leader in the online gaming space by allowing the company to extend the depth of its gaming offerings.

"This is a way to expand SOE's business into a very attractive market that is consistently growing at a fast rate," said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. "With this acquisition, we've expanded the range of online games that SOE can offer, as well as offering entirely new play mechanics and activities that could be built into both current and future titles."

"The team here in Denver couldn't be more pleased to become part of the Sony family," said Scott Martins, director of development, SOE-Denver.  "We're really looking forward to building on the synergies between our team's technology and design experience and SOE's properties and infrastructure."

Based in Denver, Colorado, Worlds Apart Productions has been building and operating online games for 10 years. Specializing in online digital property games and role-playing games, Worlds Apart has accomplished a history of steady growth and successful, well-designed game titles that offer deep game play and attract strong player communities. Worlds Apart's Star Chamber received the honor of placing 9th in Computer Game Magazines Top 10 Computer Games for 2005 as well as "Best Independent Game" of 2005. 

The company's Collect! Trade! Play! (CTP) Platform is a cost-effective infrastructure for the development of online collectible-object based games. It offers a modular, data-driven development and prototyping environment, as well as rapid time-to-market for full commercial releases. Worlds Apart uses CTP as the foundation for the translation of paper trading card games to online form, as well as for the creation of original properties.

SOE-Denver's core technologies have far-reaching potential, such as the ability to integrate board or card games into existing SOE online games, as well as the creation of new games altogether. SOE live game development teams will begin meeting with SOE-Denver to be introduced to their technology and begin exploring ways to integrate this valuable resource into SOE games. The Worlds Apart Productions brand may continue to be utilized by SOE in future releases.    

About Sony Online Entertainment    

Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) is a recognized worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online games, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers around the globe. SOE creates, develops and provides compelling entertainment for the personal computer, online, game console and wireless markets. Known for its blockbuster franchises and hit titles including EverQuest®, EverQuest® II, Champions of Norrath®, Untold LegendsTM, and PlanetSide®, as well as for developing Star Wars GalaxiesTM: An Empire DividedTM, SOE continues to redefine the business of online gaming and the creation of active player communities while introducing new genres on various entertainment platforms. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, with additional development studios in Austin, TX, Seattle, WA, Denver, CO, and Taiwan, SOE has an array of cutting-edge games in development. SOE is owned by Sony Pictures Digital and Sony Computer Entertainment America.

SOE, the SOE logo, EverQuest and PlanetSide are registered trademarks of Sony Online Entertainment LLC. Untold Legends is a trademark of Sony Online Entertainment LLC.

The top three dates and locations for next year's SOE Fan Faire are:

• March 9 - Orlando, Florida
• March 13 - Denver, Colorado
• June 28 - Las Vegas, Nevada

The new Station.Com site is live today! We have Casual Games, Mobile Games, Puzzle Games, and of course our PC titles!!

Check it out now!

Users may experience errors through out the day as the site will be receiving periodic maintenance. Please report any errors you encounter to webfeedback@soe.sony.com. We thank you for your patience.

Fire up your graphics-editing programs, folks: It's almost time for The Matrix Online in-game advertising contest! We'll be making an official announcement soon about how you can have your own ad displayed on billboards inside the Matrix. However, we wanted to give you a "heads-up" so you can get your synapses firing about what you'd like to do.

We'll be asking for advertisements in the following categories:

During final testing today, we discovered an issue with the /ccr system that has to be resolved before releasing Update 46 to the live game. Unfortunately, that requires us to reschedule Update 46 for Tuesday, August 29. We believe that will give us adequate time to fix and test the issue.

We will be keeping the critical mission release dates the same. So the first mission will be available on Tuesday, the second will follow that Thursday, then the rest will release each consecutive Thursday after.

I apologize for the delay, as I know how much you all are looking forward to this update. In the meantime, updated notes have been posted on the Update Notes forum. Something about Death Effect fixes...

Sincerely,

Dan "Walrus" Myers

After we sent out the original buddy key emails, many players reported not receiving them. Along with that, a large number of players reported wanting more keys because they'd given away all they'd gotten.

So, we're going to send buddy keys out again to everyone on The Matrix Online opt-in list. This announcement is the "heads-up" to give everyone time to make sure they are opted-in for emails from us.

To opt in for emails from The Matrix Online:

• Click the My Account link at the top of the forums
• Click Email Newsletters on the top of the My Subscriptions page
• Make sure the checkbox is selected next to The Matrix Online
• Click the Make Changes button

While you're on that page, you may want to click the visit the Registration pages link and make sure we have your correct email address.

We will wait a week or so to give everyone time to make sure they're opted-in. If you're a subscriber who missed out on buddy keys the first time, make sure you opt-in now! Your friends will thank you.

Servers will go offline Thursday, September 14 at 4:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (1100 hours GMT) for system maintenance and application of Update 46.1 Hotfix. The total maintenance period may last as much as 4 hours, due to updates to company-wide systems.

Hotfix items include:

• Death Effect bug fix
• Concealment/stuck in Sneak after Interlock fix
• Merovingian Archival Mission Ticket 1.1.1 available again
• Fix for a Sneak exploit
• Changes to Pandora's Box missions to reduce lag in the International District

Full patch notes will be available in the launcher when systems come back online. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

 Forums will be unavailable due to maintenance on Wednesday, September 20 beginning at 8:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time (1530 hours GMT). In addition to changes being made to improve database performance, the following issues will be resolved with this update:

• The left bar of the user profile no longer shows information for the user viewing the profile.
• Bug causing duplicate posts due to lag has been fixed.
• Posts in forums a user doesn't have permission to view no longer show in a player's Messages Posted screen.
• Topic and subject lines are now correctly filtered for language violations.
• The append signature checkbox no longer defaults to checked if a user's profile indicates it shouldn't.

Due to one or more persons using an apparent hole in the forum registration system to abuse the forums, we have had to set the lowest level of access, "New Recruit" to be unable to post for a period of time. We will look for a better solution to the overall problem and apologize for having to make this change to stop forum spamming.

Because of how the earned forums ranks are set up, it is possible that some higher ranks may experience some access issues, as we had to go through every rank and reset their permissions directly. If you find you are missing functionality you have had previously on the forums, this may be the cause. We apologize for any inconvenience and will continue working on better solutions for this unfortunate issue.

We performed a little cleanup on the forums today we thought you should be aware of.

First, the Archived Forums section was added for preserving old information that is no longer relevant. The old Archive Construct--threads we want to keep but no longer need to be prevalent--is now under the Archived Forums section. In addition, the External Playtest forums were also moved there, as we do not currently have an External Playtest Server.

To keep things a bit cleaner, the Archived Forums section is collapsed--like the World Forums. Click the title and you can see the forums placed there.

Second, the Combat Revision 2.0 Feedback section has been renamed Feedback Forums. The forums there are still useful, but since CR2.0 is now the game, there's no reason to keep calling it that. All the current feedback forums still exist in the renamed section.

Servers will go offline Friday, October 6 at 4:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (1100 hours GMT) to apply Update 47 to the game. The game will return to service after approximately 2 hours.

Please keep in mind that Update 47 contains a rebundle of the Slums/Barrens area in order to fix some issues with White Hallway maps. That means this update will be approximately 34 MB, depending on the most recent update on your PC.

Well, now here's an ancient thread dug up out of the past. While it may be new to some, I believe the exact contents have appeared on the MxO forums at least three times. (Giveen has a long memory.)

If you choose to rate MxO versus an action game, feel free to do so; although it's comparing apples and oranges. Solo action games will generally always look better than MMOs due to the programming structure of the different forms of games. Some enjoy action games more, some enjoy MMOs more--it's about choice and preference.

If you have negative things to say about this game, that's fine. Please couch it in a constructive manner, however.

We believe we found the problem--the updated mission information didn't go out with the Update. We've uploaded that data and are restarting the servers; they should be back up in about half an hour from this update. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve the issue.

Servers will go offline Thursday, October 12 at 4:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (1100 hours GMT) to apply Update 47.1 Hotfix to the game. The game will return to service after approximately 3 hours.

This hotfix is to resolve the following issues:

• Players not able to upload old event items since Update 47
• Item and Ability buffs not being removed when unloaded

On Monday October 23 from 10:00 AM - 11:00 Pacific Standard Time (1700 hours until 1800 hours GMT), we will be performing routine maintenance on the login servers for all SOE games.

During this time you may experience a failed login attempt. If this happens to you, simply try to login again a second time.

We will be restarting Recursion soon to try and resolve the ongoing buddy list and email issues. We apologize for this unscheduled maintenance and will return the servers to service as soon as possible.

Servers will go offline on Thursday, October 26 at 4:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (1100 hours GMT) for implementation of the Halloween Event Update. The game should return to service after approximately 1 hour.

A Note on the Zombies

We know that there are a number of broken combat animations for the zombies. Unfortunately, we weren't able to fix them in time for the Halloween Masquerade. Because of the fun we think they'll add to the event and that they'll only exist temporarily, we decided to go ahead and add them, anyway.

We hope you all enjoy the 2006 Halloween Masquerade.

-The Matrix Online Team

Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday, October 29 at 2:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (0900 hours GMT). When the clock strikes 2:00 AM, we switch the clocks back to 1:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. Pacific Standard Time is -8:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time. Please adjust your schedules (and clocks) accordingly.

Oh, one good thing has come of the delay. Behold!

A bit buggy, but already working.

Forums will be unavailable Tuesday, November 7 from 10:00 until approximately 11:30 AM Pacific Standard Time (1800 until 1930 hours GMT). This update is to resolve the following issues:

• Duplicate post message issue (users are seeing a duplicate post error)
• Blank subject lines cause error (editing a subject to blank would cause an error)

Servers will go offline to end the 2006 Halloween Masquerade tomorrow, Tuesday, November 7 at 4:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (1200 hours GMT). Some features will begin to turn off around 1:00 AM, with the rest ending after the servers come back online.

We hope everyone enjoyed this annual holiday event. And, in the meantime, go kill more zombies!