Star Wars Galaxies Joins SoE’s MMO Subscription Package

Officials from Sony Online Entertainment (SoE), have announced that LucasArts’ Star Wars Galaxies has been added to the company’s Station Access plan. Subscribers to the plan are able to access all SoE massively multiplayer games for a flat $21.99 fee per month. With the addition of Star Wars Galaxies on February 1st, Station Access users will also be able to play EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide, EverQuest Online Adventures (on PlayStation 2) and the three original Station Pass games Cosmic Rift, Infantry and Tanarus. Station Access provides the subscriber with a single account that grants access to each of the SOE-published MMO titles the player owns. Users still have to purchase box copies of each game before playing them, though, and the service is not currently available outside of North America. Nevertheless this kind of increasingly powerful 'all you can eat' bulk subscription is exactly the type of move that many analysts have been expecting from large MMO publishers. The only surprise is with the choice of Star Wars Galaxies to join the pack. The game has been somewhat critically controversial, and with such a strong license, might expect to stay as a stand-alone subscription. In related news, Norwegian-based MMO creator Funcom has announced plans to extend the free subscription offer for PC MMO Anarchy Online through the end of next year. Through this deal, which was first announced last month, new users get a whole free year’s subscription to the base game (which does not include expansions). When first announced, even Funcom themselves worried that the additional strain on the game’s servers could cause them to rescind the deal. This new announcement suggests that either the game is more robust then they expected, take-up of the deal has not been as much as had been hoped, or simply that the company is making the additional financial costs into account because it believes that players will stay and pay for extra expansions.