As noted over at Massively, SOE has now put in writing what they announced at E3, a new version of the all-games-for-one-price plan, Station Access, priced at $19.99 a month down from $29.99 a month.
The plan, renamed to SOE All Access, is up on on the SOE web site.
And it has some nice new features, including a price break for subscribing in longer time increments, something previously denied Station Access subscribers.
There is even a spiffy new chart, and I love charts.
All Your SOE Subscription Options
You will note that Star Wars Galaxies is not listed. That was expected. You can still play, but it is in wind-down mode and won’t be accepting new subscribers soon.
And the chart itself is a bit odd in my opinion. They put free to play games in their own box, which I understand, but that does create a visual gulf between them and the All Access Pass. And it is my experience that anything that can cause confusion will cause confusion and somebody is going to walk away from that chart convinced that All Access does not give them Gold access to EverQuest II Extended or member access to Free Realms.
At least they have removed the goofy Station Access Savings Calculator from the site. Now they just need to make the URL redirect some place useful…
Addendum: Extra character slots are not part of SOE All Access.
If you are a current Station Access subscriber you get to keep you extra character slots as long as you remain subscriber, but anybody taking up All Access will no longer get this benefit. Station Access used to give subscribers 2 extra EverQuest, 4 extra Vanguard, and 5 extra EverQuest II character slots. Those will now have to be purchased with Station Cash.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
It looks an awfully bare cupboard now:
– 2 kids games
– 2 fps mmos that flopped
– a 12 year old game that looks more dated than pacman
– a 7 year old wow clone
– a game notorious for being the worse launched ever in an industry full of bad launches and which is officially in maintenance mode
and Pirates of the Burning Sea. Which is normally free.
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I’m hard pressed to find anything other than EQ1 that I’d like to play, and I just don’t have the urge to play even EQ1 more than a couple times a month… so sadly it’s simply not worth it *sigh*
Maybe EverQuest Next won’t suck or just be a WoW clone…
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While i agree that there’s not a lot of stuff there that will appeal to any one person, you have to keep in mind that at least, with the new pricing structure, you get a subscription to all their games after the first for the price of a third of a single subscription. I’m seriously thinking about that offer as someone who likes to play EQ2 quite a bit here and there (enough to warrant a subscription at this point in time), and likes to look into EQ and Vanguard every now and then. The latter two never were worth a subscription to me at full price, and recently not even worth the Station Access at the old price tag. At the new one though… it’s tempting.
Shame they had to remove some really nice perk with their price slash though :( The extra character slots were handy.
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Agreed with other comments; there’s simply not much worth playing there; but, then, that’d be the case regardless of station access changes. Dropping the price doesn’t tempt me to drop money on them, because the only game I’d really enjoy on that list (Vanguard) is dead and shall remain that way forever more.
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Echoing the above – I enjoyed EQ1 for about six years and EQ2 for six months. I have only the mildest of inclinations to go back to either, (especially since I wouldn’t have access to most of my EQ2 characters unless I paid extra) and no desire at all to play any other SOE game covered by this deal.
Given all that, even $19.95 is more than I’m willing to pay.
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I haven’t seen anything about other benefits that used to be part of Station Access, like the monthly free Legends of Norrath booster pack.
For me, keeping cross-subscribed to both versions of EQ2 plus EQ, plus my almost inevitable “one last look” into SWG makes it worth it for now. We’ll see how I feel in a month or three.
I doubt I’ll buy into DCUO nor endure downloading Vanguard yet again.
I did go make an account on their Clone Wars game just to see it. Mini-game central describes it I guess. You get your own room and can see people in lobby areas.
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Don’t you get the free boosters with a normal subscription now? I’m almost sure I got some last month when I was subscribed to EQ2 only. In fact, it seems I got a lot of them piled up, presumably even during the time I wasn’t subscribed, which surprised me. I’ve slowly gone through opening a couple here and there, so I’m not quite sure whether I got some last month or just didn’t remember the number of no-yet-opened boosters correctly when I opened it one day and thought “that’s more than last week”.
Speaking of Vanguard, I’m glad I still have a copy somewhere on my disk. I wonder where you can even download it these days.
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I’m delighted. I’ve been paying for two SA subs since SA subs were invented and I barely use any of it nowadays. I’m paying for instant, on-a-whim access to any of the 100+ characters Mrs Bhagpuss and I have created and enjoyed over the last decade-and-some.
I thought it was good value at $29.99 – it’s superb value now.
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Stabs, praytell how a game released 16 days before wow was is a wow clone? Many of the features that make it a wow clone ar simply mmo staples and were there at launch before wow was launched. Many of the features were improvements to eq1, which pioneered mmos.
lol worthy
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@Loki – Well, EQII was pretty different from WoW at launch, so technically it cannot be a clone. But SOE has certainly spent a lot of time adding features that showed up in WoW before EQII. I remember an EQII at launch that had no mini map, no markers over quest giver’s heads, no PvP servers, no battle grounds, and no rested exp as examples.
To me, EQII plays quite differently than WoW. But you have to admit that SOE has been trying to appeal to the WoW audience since launch and subsequent exodus of players from the game, many of whom went to WoW.
And EQ was an early MMO, but I am not sure I would use the phrase “pioneered.”
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