Sony Online entertainment will perform maintenance beginning at 6:00 AM Pacific on May 15, 2012. Maintenance is expected to take approximately 90 minutes. This will impact the following services:

• Logins for all SOE games will be affected.
• Commerce transactions, including purchases on SOE websites and in-game marketplaces will be unavailable.
• Forums will be read-only.
• Account management will be unavailable.

Here's our handy Time Zone Conversion Tool to help you plan!

Source: Station Community Forums

SOE pre-paid cards are now available at EB Games® Canada!

Celebrate Victoria’s Day by buying the SOE $15 Pre-Paid Card now available at most EB Games Canada stores and get BONUS 500 Station Cash® when you redeem your card in-game or here this Saturday 5/19 - Monday 5/21!

Free Realms is three years old! It's been an awesome three years and there's a Birthday Bash going on!

Log in today, April 28, and get a FREE Birthday Cake hat! And there are also four new pinata pets in the Marketplace. 

All of Sacred Grove is in a tizzy getting ready for the big celebration. Queen Valerian is holding a special cake bake-off in Sanctuary, where the best chefs around will compete for the honor of serving their special birthday cake at the final Birthday Bash. You can participate in daily quests to help out with the party preparations.

But watch out! Accidents that happened in a robgoblin's kitchen are leading to chaos, and some cakes are mysteriously missing around Sacred Grove. A monster called Cakenstein is on the loose trying to ruin the tastiest part of the celebration. Do your part to stop Cakenstein from spoiling the Birthday Bash!

The Birthday Bash runs through May 24, 2012, so log in today to join in the festivities!

According to EverQuest.com you can get triple Station Cash all day today, Saturday, April 28, 2012. The Station Cash can be tripled through any means excluding SMS (text messaging). Retail SC cards are included in the promotion. This offer is valid until 11:59pm PDT tonight, so act fast!

UPDATE, 3pm PDT: EQ and EQ2 servers are confirmed up! However, expect to see a lot of "Login Rejected" while zoning, but you should be able to immediately log back in.

UPDATE, 3:25pm PDT: EQ2 EU servers are reported to be giving a "fatal error" when attempting to login.

NOTE: This information has changed multiple times since originally published. This is the official maintenance notice as of late Sunday evening:

SOE will be performing maintenance beginning at 00:01AM Pacific on April 23, 2012. This will impact the following services:

• Logins for all SOE games will be affected from 00:01 AM Pacific to approximately 23:59 PM Pacific.
• Commerce transactions, including purchases on our websites and in-game marketplaces will be unavailable between from 00:01 AM Pacific to approximately 23:59 PM Pacific.
• Account management will be unavailable starting 00:01 AM to approximately 23:59 PM Pacific.
• Forums will be read-only starting at 00:01 AM to approximately 23:59 PM Pacific.
• All Games will be unavailable starting 12:01 AM to approximately 11:59 PM Pacific*

We apologize for this interruption and will resume all affected services as soon as the maintenance is completed.

Here's our handy Time Zone Converserion Tool to help you plan!

Source: SOE Forum Announcement

During the downtime you are welcome to join us in ZAM's IRC chat. Feldon of EQ2Wire also has set up a ZAM IRC java applet that you can use (will autojoin the #EQ2 channel).

To celebrate the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Free Realms, the Birthday Bash event has made a return! Speak to Camilla in Sanctuary to get started and earn cool birthday presents along the way.

Cakenstein has been spotted in Sacred Grove again, trying to ruin the celebrations. Team up with your fellow players and save the day! Each time he is defeated players who participated can loot a treasure chest filled with assorted goodies.

All players that log in during this year's Birthday Bash will receive a free Birthday Cake Hat (pictured right). Come celebrate on Free Realms!

Several SOE games are having "Friday the 13th Sales" in their respective Station Cash Marketplaces. Login and browse the sale tabs to see the deals or follow the links below:

• Clone Wars Adventures: Holoprojectors
• DC Universe Online: Select "Spooky" Guises and Exobyte Data
• EverQuest: Polymorph Wands; LoN booster packs
• EverQuest II: Heritage Armor Crates; LoN booster packs
• Free Realms: SC Style Cards

Sales are available from 12:01am PDT through 11:59pm PDT on Friday, April 13.*

* Time updated from the original announcement being modified to match the emailed announcement.