We did a mass grant of anyone who has ever played ps1 or ps2 with free time in ps1— John Smedley (@j_smedley) May 21, 2013
The decade-old massively-multiplayer shooter will shed its subscription soon, SOE boss says.
With the popularity of SOE’s massively-multiplayer shooter PlanetSide 2, it’s easy to forget that it once had a younger, ground-breaking brother. Yet nostalgic, or even curious players are often deterred from checking in on this aging shooter by its archaic subscription fees. Speaking from his personal, Planetside-branded twitter account, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley talked about opening up this classic for all. In a series of tweets, he casually announces that plans are in the works to convert the original game into a F2P model. Oh, and if you’ve spent any time in either game, you should have free access to the original as of now, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary.
“We did a mass grant of anyone who has ever played ps1or ps2 with free time in ps1“, Smedley tweeted late last night, “we weren’t ready to announce it yet because the database grant is still ongoing and won’t be done till [tomorrow] morning. So please if you didn’t get flagged chill. We are trying to do something cool for everyone and we were going to tell people when it’s done. But people saw it and others broadcast the info. Please don’t complain 🙂 we aren’t raising your taxes we are making a game free. This also gives us more time to make it f2p. So enjoy starting [tomorrow] late morning.”
The news arrives as the massively multiplayer shooter reaches its first decade of existence. It launched as a subscription shooter in the promordial age before World of Warcraft took the MMO throne. A multiplayer shooter with more players than Battlefield 1942 was just as technologically impressive back then as it was mind-blowing to play. That said, there are more than a few differences between it and its sequel, as any vet will gladly tell you. The pace is slower, the vehicles are more important, and your soldier caps out at a paltry 34 certification points. The game’s website seems to be locked in internet amber, as it loads into a dial-up destroying intro video and talks about downloading the game via the defunct Direct2Drive service.
No timeframe has been given for the F2P conversion, but according to Polygon, current players can expect to receive six months of free game time in Planetside 1 as part of the anniversary celebration.
