I cancelled my old credit card and my recurring subscriptions, like my old Virgin cellphone account I couldn’t unsubscribe from, and Station Pass, finally ended. I looked at what the Station Pass offered me and… well, out of all the games SOE offers, I only play EQ2. Station Pass is a phenomenally poor value for me. This was brought home to me last week when a co-worker was talking about starting a character in EQ2, since Lishian and I are always talking about it, and he wanted to know if I was paying $15.00 a month for it and I said, no, I was choosing to spend even more.
I took my son’s account off Station Pass last time this happened, now my second account is off. I will probably keep my main account on so until I see if Pirates of the Burning Sea is worth paying for (and if I have time to play another MMO).
But for now… well, I always intended to cut down on my Station Pass subscriptions since they raised the price unless they added some value to those who play just one of their games… which they have not. Their EQ2 Players stuff is extra, they no longer make Adventure Packs (which were free to Station Pass members), the only game they currently offer of AAA quality (in my opinion, and at this time) is EQ2, and though I miss my EQ1 characters, I only log them on to take screenshots for my blog header and that just isn’t worth $15+/month to me.
I’ll be back when they add value to it.
9 thoughts on “One less Station Pass member.”
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I’m totally with you on this one. Once they raised the price, the value was gone. I’ve been an SOE apologist and critic, and for me the Station Pass never made sense, as I tend to play the daylights out of one game to the detriment of the others.
As far as PoTBS goes, I played the stress test last week and was underwhelmed. NDA prohibits sharing details, but unless there is a whole lot more to the game that I didn’t have time to see, it wasn’t that exciting. That, and the fact that every other character was named some variation of “Jack Sparrow.”
For me it makes more sense to pay for games as I play them, and then unsub. If I want to play, simply resub and go from there. It works out to a lot less money in the long run for me, even if I am subbed to 2 of their games at once.
Oh bummer. I’ve been thinking the same recently.
I have Station Pass because I played both SWG and EQII pretty regularly but this past while I’ve been less and less motivated to go into SWG more than, what, once a month? EQII is, for me, just more fun and by far the more ‘finished’ product. The ‘extras’ SP offered have become less attractive over time and I’m having to think really hard about whether I really *need* access to MxO, or Tanarus(?) or those other ‘free’ gamelets.
Just hoping that we’re not voicing what a lot of others are thinking. For once I really want to be in the minority and not see SOE lose numbers.
I like the idea of the Station Pass in spirit, but I think it more often costs more than it’s worth. I don’t know about you, but I tend to only play one MMORPG at a time. I’m not a hardcore player by any means, but I do enjoying grouping and being active in a guild. Even on a casual level, these things take a decent time commitment. I think the only way I could juggle my style of gaming between two or more games is if I became a shut-in and sacrificed all RL relationships and responsibilities–or if I won the lottery and could spend 1/3 of the day at my computer rather than at work.
Well, I *do* want to support SOE. But they have to add enough value. Just having five or more MMOs on their docket isn’t going to magically give me more time to play MMOs. There’s things they could do to make it a better value — like give those EQ2 Players perks to Station Pass members — but that alone isn’t worth $15/month. Early beta access to new games/expansions? Discounts on Sony products? EBook subscriptions for their Sony Reader? Yes, I KNOW the software/music side of Sony doesn’t have much to do with the hardware side, but why should I be concerned with that?
The station pass will miss you.
I dropped my station pass when I stopped playing Vanguard, and instead picked up the second account, since all I was using station pass for at the time was the extra character slots. If Vanguard changes or peeks my interest again I’ll probably drop an account and get station access again, but in the mean time, well, soe’s still getting my money, just in a different way I suppose, lol.
Applause ! From my perspective (like the blog posts don’t tell the story) Station Access is a phenomenally bad value, and bad idea.
Then again I’m amazingly cheap.
I would be happy to pay for station access if I would get, I don’t say the games, but at least the expansions for free for all the games in the list.
With station access you can theorically play different games. But do I want to play EverQuest 1 if I don’t have the expansions? Or SWG, or planetside?
And if we start counting the price of a station access subscription + the new game boxes (like POTBS) + some games expansions it starts to be really expensive
Well, the fixed price for expansions is an incredibly major source of revenue for companies. We’ll never get those for free — not from SOE, anyway. A box of EQ1 with all expansions up to the latest one, Secrets of Faydwer, is only $30, I think? It’s not that high a price to pay for more content that any dozen people could ever see. I might even do exactly that for my one remaining Station Pass account.
The question of “value” is tough. What’s worth it for me may not be worth it for you. But currently, Station Pass is a good value mathematically ONLY if you already pay for three or more of their subscription games separately already, or were planning to, OR if you need more character slots in EQ2. So for that person who still dabbles in EQ1, plays EQ2 regularly, is keeping tabs on Vanguard and looking forward to Pirates — that’s the person for whom Station Pass would be a great deal. There’s bound to be a number of people doing just that.
I’m not like that, but I would do Station Pass if they added value in some other way. This is SONY. There are HUNDREDS of ways they could create synergy with their other businesses. They have music publishers, movie divisions, games divisions, and of course their hardware. They aren’t separate companies — you don’t see SOE doing games for the Xbox or the Wii, after all, as they would were they truly independent — so if SOE could leverage the big SONY power in some way to make the Pass a potentially good idea even if you played just one MMO… total win.