Station Access Price Rise
Gang, you're supposed to up the subscription price after you add a new title to the lineup. You want to count the new Everquest Progression Server? That's really stretching it.
Station Access is a monthly subscription which covers a bunch of SOE games for one price. You can check out the list of games here. The price has been upped to $24.99 from $21.99 for an increase of $3.00.
I think it's a little cocky to increase the subscription price on a range of titles that has been around the block a bit. I think Tanarus predated Pong. You do get EQII, which is the one "premier" title on the list, in my opinion. And SWG, Planetside and EQ are certainly playable and have active communities. If you want to count MXO on that list, up to you. I'll let you know when I try it.
I'm not out to kill the Access subscription - it's a great option and I don't think it's a bad deal if you fit the profile. Planetside certainly gives you different gameplay as a break from EQII. And I do know some people who really enjoy playing SWG and EQII in equal measure or even staying in touch with their friends in EQ. It's not a terrible lineup and if you're making good use of at least two or three of the titles on the list, I think the $25 a month is fair enough. If you're a monogamous, one MMO kind of player, you would be wasting your money.
Aggro Tip (TM): Stop charging people for the software for your older games. No one wants to fork over $19.99 for Planetside. It just feels wrong. And the Station Collection is a bit overrated as I pointed out here. You can still sell it to have a retail presence but drop the price a bit.
The way to go? Charge the $25 a month. But when people subscribe for at least 3 months, give them free downloads of all the software (or at least everything but EQII). Count yourself lucky to get the subscription fees and forget the software sales. I think you would attract a lot more people to the program that way and end up making more money in the long run.
posted by Aggro Me at 8:00 AM
10 Comments:
Good grief, they're upping the price?
I just had it for the extra character slots on EQ2. Also played some SWG for a little while. It was a decent deal since I was splitting the cost with someone who shared the account.
But now that's out. This is ridiculous.
I think an even better option might be to make the Station pass cover an "X" amount of subscriptions! Say 3 (for example). If you buy station pass and want all 3 subscriptions to be for EQ2, you can have 3 EQ2 accounts for the $25!
Also make it so that if you buy an expansion it covers all 3 of the accounts, instead of needing to pay $40 every account! Or the same if you want 3 SWG accounts, or a combination of any of the included games!
I think it is crap, and will be merging my two accounts. In the end they will lose money from me. No offense, but EQ2 is the flagship, we didn't ask for all these other games to be thrown into Station Access, not do I care to be paying and extra $3 because I can now play the NGE on a cripped SWG that I really don't care to play anymore? I will most defintly be talking about this on this weeks podcast. I think it is a bunch of crap. I have the money, an extra $36 a year really isn't that big of a deal to me, but please, this sucks for the eq2 players. We gain nothing.
Heh. They are charging more and the last game they added was MXO?
Are they on crack?
I was using it for SWG before the NGE, but after NGE didn't care to play SWG anymore. Kept it anyway becuz it had more character slots.
Now, I have all 10 slots filled. Of those 10 characters, I've got 2 that I could cut in a heartbeat. But the others. . . . .hmm. But for $10 a month for characters that I really don't play all *that* much. . . yahm, I'll be downgrading for sure.
I'll be downgrading for sure. really i cant see anyone playing so many games. i play EQ2 about 2 to 4 hours a day. i work and i do have a life away from my pc. i did like the extra char slots, but everyone dies even Avatars! way to go SOE
The Station pass is a great idea... now if they would just follow it up with low cost ($5-10) digital downloads of the games it might be worth it.
Hm, I must be the only one here who had a station access pass before EQ2 even came out.
Anyway, Aggro, if you look hard I'm sure you can find just about every MMO downloadable somewhere. A lot of times when SOE runs their promotions and have a downloadable version, they just leave the link up there. (Case: my friend still has a link to download the EQ classic client from sooo many years ago)
In fact, all you really need is the launchpad to get a game, it will download the entire game (read: replace missing files)
Anyway, I myself play both EQ2 and Planetside regularly. If I were to buy them seperate it would be $28 a month for both anyway. Still saving money. Throw in the fact that my friend back home 2-boxes his EQ1 character and mine from my account, thats three games that I am getting use of it from.
I guess I don't really understand why people would use the all-access pass for just the extra EQ2 characters, but then again, I'm not an alt-aholic
I saw the Station Collection for sale for $24.99 at my local Fry's Electronics. Right price for me.
Well, I think they should have another option for EQ2 only players. There is a huge thread in the forums asking to be able to puchase extra character slots, a la carte, for $1 similar to Station Players features. If enough people request it I think they might offer it. You never know. Also, if you're just playing EQ2 and paying a 6 or 12 month subscription you can get 2 accounts (12 characters) for only $26 or $24 a month. So that's also an option.
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