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.

This afternoon the first gameplay trailer for the upcoming zombie survival MMO, H1Z1, was released. Check it out!

I know that I'm meant to be talking about EverQuest Next and Landmark, and we'll get to them shortly, but there are a couple more stops to go on the H1Z1 train before we get there. After an inaugural livestream plagued by tech issues, but showing potential, SOE President John Smedley headed once again to Reddit to float a new idea.

Many developers seem to enjoy the semi-structured feedback they can get from the Reddit boards, and Mr. Smedley seems to love it. He's a big ideas man, after all, and they don't come much bigger than this.

Since H1Z1 works with an MMO server architecture it will work a little differently to other games in the genre—with a huge persistent world holding thousands of players and no server resets, the game will operate more like an MMO and less like a large shooter map. This could end up being one of the major selling points for the game, but one drawback of the system is the lack of player run servers with their own rules and personalities.

This is where the big idea comes in. Mr. Smedley wants player communities to be able to define the theme and ruleset for their own server. With enough active support from the community we could see those PVE 'carebear' servers that are continually slammed on the DayZ subreddit, or stricter grouping and faction rules designed to let players know who is really friendly.

Now, I understand completely why players want these kinds of rulesets for the Apocalypse Survival genre, but I would bet my last tin of beans they would be a colossal failure.

Players want these kinds of servers because they're sick of KoS, they want to band together with other people to survive the harsh new world and community is what makes persistent online games great. Ultimately though, the fact is it is these hardships and obstacles that make the genre great. If you don't like it, maybe you just don't like the genre. If it wasn't for the intense paranoia and tales of what happens when two people met in the game, DayZ would never have got the recognition it has, and the genre may never have existed at all.

I could be totally wrong of course; as all gaming experiences are subjective I could be in the minority in thinking that DayZ on an empty server feels like eating dry toast when you aren't hungry, or that playing Minecraft on peaceful difficulty feels like spending a sunny afternoon making confetti with a hole punch.

Are you a passenger on the H1Z1 hype train? If so, you've probably seen all the recent news. Hopefully what you haven't seen is the Sony Online Entertainment livestream, with over 40 minutes of gameplay. Now, mind you, the footage isn't especially exciting...but it's a solid first look.

H1Z1: information is low, hype is high.

To close the gap, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley has taken to the H1Z1 subreddit. Smedley has already started a dialogue on monetization and a discussion on map size. One fan, a_monkie, has compiled a very solid list of recent H1Z1 info. Notable highlights:

On this evening's Game Talk Live daily gaming news livestream, SOE president John Smedley officially unveiled H1Z1. The game is toted as a F2P, persistant world, apocalyptic survivor MMO... or in other words, another zombie-themed game. As reported earlier, H1Z1 is a play on the 2009 H1N1 virus, and from there you can easily extrapolate how zombies have come to be.

During the show, we learned that:

Crickets chirp. Creepy tones crescendo. This is H1Z1.com.

Named after the 2009 hoax of a mutated H1N1 virus, H1Z1.com is a teaser site for one of Sony Online Entertainment’s next projects. What could it be, exactly? Information is low and speculation is high; something zombie-related is a given. According to SOE President John Smedley, we can expect gameplay footage tonight at 5PM Pacific / 8PM Eastern on GameTalk Live (Twitch link).