March me away to the station

Another busy weekend meant little gaming (apart from a bit of the now-obligatory Guitar Hero). While out and about, I did manage to catch up with the most recent Virgin Worlds MMORPG News podcast, which covered Pirates of the Burning Sea being published by SOE. Not having bought any rootkit infested CDs, or been a Star Wars Galaxies player, I don’t have particularly strong feelings one way or the other towards Sony and hadn’t paid much attention to the original announcement, but Brent on Virgin Worlds mentioned the inclusion of PotBS and The Agency, a fun sounding (as much as all games sound fun long before they launch) espionage-type shooter, in Station Access.

Station Access, I’m vaguely aware, is some sort of package subscription deal for SOE games, but I didn’t know any specifics. Unfortunately the logical place to look, the Station Access site itself, is blocked at work for its games-related content, so I trundled off to my favourite not-blocked information source, Wikipedia. Some people get rather snippy about Wikipedia, pointing out that it covers something like Doctor Who in as much depth as the Spanish Civil War. That’s patently nonsense; obviously Doctor Who is covered in much greater depth than the Spanish Civil War, but even so there clearly isn’t enough emphasis on ephemera/”geek stuff” as I couldn’t find anything about Station Access there. I could wait a few hours, and investigate properly at home, but where’s the fun in that? From what I can divine, at the moment Station Access covers Everquest, Everquest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, The Matrix Online and Vanguard, all titles that I’ve vaguely considered trying at one time or another. SWG, The Matrix and Vanguard haven’t exactly enjoyed the unqualified success that might tempt me to start now, though, and although the general EQ2 “vibe” is very positive, I’m not sure I really fancy another fairly traditional fantasy MMO at the moment. Adding Pirates of the Burning Sea to the list is good, but probably not enough to warrant full Station Access subscription over just PotBS. Chuck in The Agency too, though (if it turns out to be half decent) and that’s a really rather tempting package (presuming it’s available to UK subscribers, they don’t shove the price up again several times in a year, yada yada).