MMO giveaway trend continues with Station Access Passes
by Rubi Bayer 
Oct 15th 2009 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Contests, Culture, News items, Giveaways
Now Sony Online Entertainment has teamed up with sci-fi and fantasy blogger Patrick (Pat's Fantasy Hotlist), to offer an extremely generous gift: 20 six-month Station Access subscriptions. Patrick says "As I mentioned a few days ago, in an attempt to bring the disparate factions of the fragmented SFF fandom together, I'm collaborating with the nice folks at Sony Online Entertainment to see if we can bring some SFF gamers into the fold."
"Nice" is a bit of an understatement. Each access pass is worth around $180, and the only thing you need to do to enter is send an entry email. Twenty winners will be chosen at random from everyone who enters by October 25th. Patrick's got full details on his site and SOE has the information as well, so good luck to all.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MATT said on 8:24PM 10-15-2009
Hey, I've got a question about SOE games.
I know that Vanguard only requires you pay the initial $14.99 month to get full access to the game (as I just did that recently). But I'm still not clear on what other games require you to buy the actual disc-based game with an activation code (or just, I guess, an activation code by itself).
Does anyone know which SOE games require what? Basically, should one sign up for Station Access, what games (besides Vanguard, which I know about) would IMMEDIATELY be available to play with that initial $29.99 fee?
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Andrew said on 8:38PM 10-15-2009
All of the games are immediately able to be played from the get go once you sign up. This includes add on packs.
MATT said on 9:00PM 10-15-2009
Wow, I had no idea.
So on the bottom of the Station Access page, this blub is meaningless?:
"(Station Access provides subscription access only. Software is sold separately.)"
CCon99 said on 9:58PM 10-15-2009
As far as I know, you have to still purchase the software for each game. A game like SWG will cost around $20 USD, but it will include every expansion pack released to date. They used to sell a software bundle of all the station access games, but I think that was discontinued.
The pass is actually a known ripoff if you don't play 3 or more of those games, it's actually cheaper to subscribe to 2 separate SOE games then it is to get their pass for 2 or less games. At one time it was actually a really good deal, but like all things SOE they got greedy and ruined it. They raised the price claiming they had to because they were adding Vanguard to the pass, but funny how the price didn't ever go down when Matrix Online was shutdown making the pass less valuable.
ZombiBambi said on 8:01PM 10-16-2009
Yes, the blurb is meaningless. You should not have to buy retail games to start playing -- just paying the monthly fee is enough to unlock it. You can download the games from within the station launcher and just go from there.
When I had a station pass, I was playing SWG, PotBS, EQ, Matrix Online (RIP), and PlanetSide, none of which I had ever bought a retail copy for (I had purchased both Vanguard and EQ2 previously).
I know with EQ, you only get expansions up to a certain point (not sure how it works with EQ2), but I'm pretty sure SWG came with everything.
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