The Station Launcher has been an invaluable tool for players to connect with their friends across all of the SOE games as well as organizing the games that they play. It is still in beta, but major improvements have been made to make your experiences with the Launcher even better!

A new release update of Station Launcher was launched today, Monday, February 9th. It features improvements based heavily on feedback from the Station Launcher forum - especially for the functionality around the Friends network.

Here is a rundown of what you can expect in this update:

* “Inactive” Characters – A large number of players have reported that the Friends network contains characters that have long been abandoned. While we’re working with the game teams to purge these from our databases, we’ve also enabled the client to mark a character as “Inactive”. An inactive character will not be logged into the Friends network nor will it be displayed on the Friends panel. This can be controlled on the “Preferences” dialog, under the “Friends Privacy” category.

* Context Menus on Friends panel – You can now apply actions to characters and their friends on the Friends panel by using the right mouse-click, or “context” menu. For Characters, one can change the state and visibility of that character. There are also shortcuts to add or ignore a friend of that character. For friends, once can initiate a chat session, edit the label, ignore or remove the friend. You can apply most actions to multiple selected characters or friends as well. Remember, when you remove a friend within Station Launcher, you also remove them from your in-game friends list.

* Join Friend in Game – When you find one of your friends is online in a particular game, you can select “Join [friend] in [game]”. This action will launch that game with the appropriate character/server selected.

* Server Name for Character – When your characters are displayed in the Friends panel (on the “By Character” tab), the server name will be displayed as well. This will help differentiate customers who have characters with the same name on multiple servers of a particular game.

* Server Name in “Add Friend…” – The server name has also been added to the “Add Friend” dialog.

* Improved Scanning Performance – Before a game is launched, the Station Launcher will scan the game directory to make sure that all assets are up to date. The performance of this process has been improved.
* “Exit” Menu Item – There is a new menu item under the “Account” menu on by the Games and Friends panel. This will allow one to completely shut down the Station Launcher application. Previously, this was only available as on the context menu of the icon in the Windows system tray (lower right corner).

* Automatic Re-Login – There is an item on the “Preferences” dialog (under the “Log-In / Log-out” category) that will allow one to “Automatically log me in”. This is normally used for when the application is started. If the network is disconnected (and this setting is enabled), the application will try to re-login when connectivity is restored.

* “Disconnect” on Friends Panel – Instead of “Log Out”, the Friends panel now has a button called “Disconnect”. This will disconnect the account from the Friends network without causing a complete “log out” for the application. This is the same as marking all characters as “disconnected” (in the menu at the bottom of the panel).

* Update Notes instead of “News” – When you launch the Station Launcher with the “game” command line argument (e.g. “--game EQ”), the Update Notes pop-out for that game will automatically open. Previously, the “News” pop-out would open.

* Direct to Try/Buy/Activate - When you launch the Station Launcher with a “game” command line argument (e.g. “--game EQ”) to a game which you do not have a subscription, you will be automatically taken to the “Try/Buy/Activate” screen.

* Return to Game Select - Previously, the application would always display the “MMO” tab when going to the Game Select screen, even if one was returning from a Game Update screen from the “Strategy” tab. This bug has been fixed - you will return to the correct tab.

* Support Links - The Game Support links from the Help menu have been updated so that they point to the correct address.

* Pirates of the Burning Sea - The Update Notes and support URLs have been updated for the Pirates of the Burning Sea. Arrrrrgh!

* Feedback - The “Feedback” menu item in the Help menu points to our perpetual “How are we doing?” survey, instead of directly into the Station Launcher forum.