SOE All Access (the artist formerly known as Station Access) has been re-re-released, this time as the company standard. Abolishing separate subscription models, All Access offers membership to most of Sony Online Entertainment's titles. Like before, current subscribers can enjoy full membership benefits on EverQuest, EverQuest II, DC Universe Online (PC) and PlanetSide 2 (PC), while Landmark, H1Z1 and Dragon's Prophet are slated as "coming soon" to the fold.

All Access team lead, Mark Tuttle, recently posted reasons why he thinks "All Access is Awesome" over on the official forums. Short version:

• Subscription is $14.99/mo (less with multi-month plans), same as a single game cost before
• 500SC/month is now redeemed on welcome screens (or in the SC store for EQ)
• 10% off Marketplace purchases; members may receive special promos so opt-in to emails

Now through May 11th you can upgrade to a reduced one-year subscription: the first year is $99 (charged instantly with one year time added right away), then the next time you renew, the one-year rate returns to its normal $119.88. Check out the full All Access FAQ for detailed information.

Sony Online Entertainment has announced downtime for all its games and services on Tuesday, April 29, 2014:

Attention players: in order to roll out the new All Access membership plan, we will perform a maintenance beginning at 12:01 AM PDT on Tuesday, April 29, 2014. The downtime for this maintenance will be extensive and we will update you as each individual service becomes available. This will impact the following SOE services:

• All SOE Games
• All Official Forums
• Account management
• Commerce functions, including purchases

The downtime will be "extensive" with a current uptime ETA of Noon PT. You can read the All Access Program FAQ, which was last updated April 25, 2014, here. 

Today Linda "Brasse" Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment, updated the SOE All Access FAQ.  This update changes the launch date to "on or about April 23rd." It also includes information about Dragon's Prophet, ProSiebenSat.1 Games customers, and clarification on the 10% Marketplace discount.

You can check out the updated FAQ on the Station Forums here. Updates are noted in purple.

Today Linda "Brasse" Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment, updated the SOE All Access FAQ. As previously announced, the new and improved All Access plan is slated to start April 16, 2014. Today's update includes information on multiple month purchases, Silver membership (EQ/EQII), multiple game memberships on one account and multiple memberships on different accounts, and EQN Landmark info. 

You can check out the updated FAQ on the Station Forums here. Updates are noted in BLUE.

John Smedley swooped in earlier this month, reverting some unfavorable changes to memberships and announcing his desire to only keep a $15/month All Access plan to their games, doing away with the individual game subscriptions. Over the past week he's taken to Twitter, keeping everyone apprised of what's been going on.

Continue after the jump for a compilation of his updates!

Subscription for All Access is being lowered to $14.99/month, and the previously announced change to Station Cash bonuses for Gold Members is being done away with. The monthly 500 Station Cash bonus will stay in place with the only change being that members will have to actively claim it each month.

This information and more comes from another update by John Smedley (by way of the EverQuest Forums, by way of Reddit):

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback. We listened.

Here are the basics of our revised plan. Please note - we have not had the time to do estimates of the work involved, and also we're continuing to listen. so this isn't baked just yet. Do not expect that this is all going to happen immediately. We plain don't know yet. we're doing that meeting tmw.

1) We're lowering the price of All Access to $14.99

2) We're going to make it so every subscriber to all our PC games an all access member. Basically there will be one SOE membership for our PC games. Please note there are some minor restrictions around our kids titles (simply put - if you're a 12 year old who signed up for FR you won't have access to the adult games so we'll likely leave the lower priced kids offerings as separate subscriptions for under 12 for the same low prices).

3) We're keeping the 500 SC included with the subscription instead of going to the "pick an item" system. We heard you. You didn't like the change. The only change we are making is that we're now going to make you claim it monthly. You can still hoard it though I realize this is a bit of a pain but honestly it's the best compromise we could come up with that solves the problems I mentioned in the other thread.