EQ1 - SOE Previews New Station Launcher : EQ1 EverQuest 1 News

SOE recently hosted a "Game Day" in New York City, where they unveiled not only the Secrets of Faydwer expansion for EverQuest, but a new Station Launcher feature.

The new paradigm for gaming is community building, and the previewed Station Launcher hopes to promote community across SOE games, as well as cut down logging in time by offering simultaneous patching for all its games.

Player Profiles for All Games
Using the the station access concept already in place ($29.95 for access to all SOE games), the new Station Launcher will streamline access to all SOE's games. All SOE games features will be run through the Station Launcher, and as part of that, a player can create a persistent profile that will show characters and names for each game that a person plays. As part of this feature, the Station Launcher will also show where your friends are logged in at any given moment, so you can keep in touch across games. Cross-game tells are also in the works.

Simultaneous Patching
The Station Launcher will also allow for simultaneous patching of SOE games. Instead of logging in and waiting for a game to patch, the new Launcher would have patched each game for you while you were away as the patches became available. No more waiting on long patches (or even short ones) when you log in.

A couple of nice features designed to encourage people to play other titles in the SOE library, without worrying about lengthy patches on log in, as well as the ability to sustain friendships that are often lost when players switch games.