Hello thar SOE!

I've been playing Planetside for quite some time now. 3 whole years! I've taken a few breaks here and there due to life driving it's car through my living room, but i've enjoyed myself for the most part. Well, that's a lie really, maybe about the first year was 100% spot on. The rest was basically a stress test gone wrong. But before I get into that, let me just start from the beginning.

When I first heard of Planetside, my friend would constantly talk about it. Day and night he would just go on and on and on and on about how great it is and I need to check it out. Well, at the time I had a really crappy laptop that was basically only good for surfing the web. Well, flash forward 2 years and I have an actual PC. A decent PC. I'm cruisin around the net when it hits me...."Planetside! Yeah, he was totally into it...why not?!"

I go to the site, and the first thing I see is "Join the Reserves Now!". I dove in head first and I was taken away on a cloud made of awesome and win. The moment I knew Planetside was for me was as follows:

I was a cloaker just 2 days into playing. I'm in the courtyard of Ixtab on Hossin. I'm sneaking in VERY slowly (as to not draw attention to myself), and I decided to pan around and check out the action. It was like nothing i've ever experienced. Full population lock! 399 players all fighting for Ixtab. The NC were holding the base, the VS are to the south, and the TR to the north. Liberators are carpet bombing the courtyard, what seems like every weapon in the game is going off at the same time, vehicles and aircraft exploding, the sounds of dying troops all around me. Now up until this point I had seen everything there is to see. Except for 1 thing. I'm sitting in the middle of all this, then beams of light are shinning on top of me with this strange sound. The next thing I know, everything (including myself) is totalled in one fell swoop. The Orbital Strike. Pure insanity and wonder all in 1 package.

That was the moment I was in love with the game. For the next year, you couldn't convince me to stop playing, much less go outside and see sunlight. I was putting in 18 hour sessions and crashing on the bed, only to dream about playing more.

Now, it has come to my attention that Planetside isn't what it used to be. I realized this after the 2nd year of playing. Not only was the game a mere shadow of it's former self, it has taken on an almost impossible thought. I don't enjoy playing that much anymore. But still, I continued to play. Putting my faith in the game before my frustrations and anger.

Today worried me though. I received an email from SOE concerning Free Realms. It said that Free Realms has hit the 2 million player mark, and that they are getting prizes. Now, I tried Free Realms simply because the COMMERCIAL (we'll get to why this is capitalized in a few) I saw said I could be a destruction derby driver. I was a bit thrilled. It's free and I can go around playing destruction derby? "Sweet" I thought. But it's not that simple. You can't just jump in and do what you want. You have to go through tutorials and all kinds of weird and down right patience testing steps just to get there. So I stopped playing instantly.

Now, I didn't know SOE was behind the game until about 1-2 weeks ago. I thought "Wait...what?". How could this be? Here I am, a fan of THE greatest game of all time. Dedicated basically 3 years of my life, just under $540, and had the GREATEST experience with ANY game EVER. And those stupid commercials i've seen on TV for a free "do what you want game", have taken presedence over MY game? Because 2 million players have joined, they're getting a bunch of free items, yet the players who have been here since launch (6 year vets), didn't even get a simple merit badge that could be literally, drawn up in paint in 1-2 mins?

What gives? We (the Planetside community) have been asking for even the smallest inkling of advertisement for our game, we've made the commercials for you (see: fan made videos), we've begged and begged and begged and begged...for even small banners on websites or ads in magazines. We've taken the back seat every year to Everquest 1 & 2, Star Wars: Galaxies, The Agency, and many others during the Fan Faires, we've dealt with major develpment and staff changes which have hindered not only the progress of the game itself, but the players as well. And this rinky dink, kiddish, less than 3 months old, and may I say....filthy "do what you wish" aspect of gaming gets more advertisement and development than Planetside has had in it's 6 years of existance?

What exactly is going on here? I know I sound a bit rantish and just another clone of the community here....but do we not have a valid point? What's going on with the company? There's games coming out that are trying to emulate Planetside, and they all so far have failed to impress. Planetside IS and will ALWAYS be the greatest FPS ever to have seen launch. You could make MILLIONS off this game and please ALOT of the gamers out there. But you choose to completely ignore it and focus on other projects? Why?

Isn't there ANY intra-office chat about Planetside at all? Is there ever talk about this game within the company? What are the plans here? I understand that the best guild in Everquest left and basically created WoW. But does that give you the right to halt all progress and try to emulate their success?

So I implore you, and issue you a challenge. If you can get.....10 seconds of air time on a decent network (one with a good amount of viewers. Like Cartoon Network or any others that play the Free Realms commercial), i'll provide you with a commercial. Something simple, short, sweet, and if you ask, non violent. If it doesn't work, shut down the game. If it does work, hire some more staff, and get working on fixing, advertising, and generally supporting Planetside.

I still enjoy playing Planetside. But at this point it HAS to be in short bursts. Otherwise I want to impale myself.

Anyway. Please consider this post, and try to understand that the players are frustrated. Not because we want to rant or diss the staff in any way. We just want to enjoy our game. We're players, we're supporters, and we're paying just to play. I think we AT THE VERY LEAST, deserve an explanation or some sort of scheduled updates on what's going on and why.

Thank you for your time,

A concerned player.

If a dev reads this there might be a chance... doubtful though. I'd always like to see more updates

ZulthusVS wrote:

If a dev reads this there might be a chance... doubtful though. I'd always like to see more updates

not even I read it, and I come here about 71823742 times more than the average dev.

Kzero wrote:

What gives? We (the Planetside community) have been asking for even the smallest inkling of advertisement for our game, we've made the commercials for you (see: fan made videos), we've begged and begged and begged and begged...for even small banners on websites or ads in magazines. We've taken the back seat every year to Everquest 1 & 2, Star Wars: Galaxies, The Agency, and many others during the Fan Faires, we've dealt with major develpment and staff changes which have hindered not only the progress of the game itself, but the players as well. And this rinky dink, kiddish, less than 3 months old, and may I say....filthy "do what you wish" aspect of gaming gets more advertisement and development than Planetside has had in it's 6 years of existance?

 Im there with you man,  the poblem is, SOE never has and never will know what to do with planetside, its the red headed step child of SOE, Freerealms is new and shiny and they have put alot of money into devolping it,  so ofcourse they are going to be pushing it, honestly its nice to see them advertising period, even if its not the game i wish they would, maybe when they see how many people a little tv time brings in they might start thinking about doing the same for their other games,

What exactly is going on here? I know I sound a bit rantish and just another clone of the community here....but do we not have a valid point? What's going on with the company? There's games coming out that are trying to emulate Planetside, and they all so far have failed to impress. Planetside IS and will ALWAYS be the greatest FPS ever to have seen launch. You could make MILLIONS off this game and please ALOT of the gamers out there. But you choose to completely ignore it and focus on other projects? Why?

Make that the greatest MMOFPS and ill agree, Quake 3 stills gets my vote for greatest FPS.. as for focusing on other projects, same as above, Planetside is old, they think we who still play it are just a cult following and there is no real market for it....maybe they are right, planetside never went viral like i thought it would have....oh god in 20 years we are all going to be attending conventions, dressing up in max costumes and building plastic lashers in our garages, fantastic....

Isn't there ANY intra-office chat about Planetside at all? Is there ever talk about this game within the company? What are the plans here? I understand that the best guild in Everquest left and basically created WoW. But does that give you the right to halt all progress and try to emulate their success?

 Im sure they talk about it now and then, but the reality is Planetside is old and busted, we love it but unless it gets alot more susscribers we are just going to have to live with the little bit of love we get from the few loyal SOE employees who spend what ever extra time they have working on the game...What do you mean left and basicly created wow? as in went to blizard and worked on WoW? and  i thought the whole EQ2 "Drow" thing was the first time somthing like that happened..

ZulthusVS wrote:

If a dev reads this there might be a chance... doubtful though. I'd always like to see more updates

I have no doubt they read these forums, they just dont EVER responed, as stated in the rules of conduct...

Most people are too impatient or too stupid or just can't handle Planetside.

What we see as a glorious pile o'  killin' , they see as too hard.

They play one day on a trial acct (without bothering with such annoyances as learning how the game works), get no kills and they are gone.

Of course, outside of free trials and the old "reserves" system there has been no marketing at all and almost nobody will pay 15$ to try a game so the original playerbase dwindles while the only new players are few and far between - usually here by word of mouth from a pal.

Meanwhile SOE watches Blizzard wallow in money.

Put this all together and you get what we have.

Just hope they have a sequel coming...or something.

If not, I'll end up dusting off my old Wingman and playing Allegiance again.

Progfrog wrote:

 

Of course, outside of free trials and the old "reserves" system there has been no marketing at all and almost nobody will pay 15$ to try a game so the original playerbase dwindles while the only new players are few and far between - usually here by word of mouth from a pal.

Meanwhile SOE watches Blizzard wallow in money.

 

I dont count reserves and free trails as marketing, it was a step in the right direction but makeing a demo system for a game does nothing if you dont tell people about it. Freerealms shows a new trend for SOE they are joining the rest of the industry in demographic marketing,  they are finaly realizeing that the viral success of the orignal everquest was a freak occurance and that if they dont advertise their games then they will continue to have great games like planetside only break even instead of being the cash cows they should be. At this point i believe the fate of planetside rests in the success of FreeRealms, if FreeRealm and its marketing model works well and brings in the money they are hoping for, SOE may dicide to look retoactively at marketing their other games. If FreeRealms dosnt do well, im guessing SOE is gonna be in a bad way,  they obviously sunk a huge amount of money into FreeRealms, and with no recent big hits they might just be looking for ways to be saving money soon, and while i doubt they will shut down PS completely, we do get a lilttle bit of dev, CSR , and GM supoport (even if its hard to see somtimes) that could very easily be cut... 

2ndRealStinky wrote:

Progfrog wrote:

 

Of course, outside of free trials and the old "reserves" system there has been no marketing at all and almost nobody will pay 15$ to try a game so the original playerbase dwindles while the only new players are few and far between - usually here by word of mouth from a pal.

Meanwhile SOE watches Blizzard wallow in money.

 

I dont count reserves and free trails as marketing, it was a step in the right direction but makeing a demo system for a game does nothing if you dont tell people about it. Freerealms shows a new trend for SOE they are joining the rest of the industry in demographic marketing,  they are finaly realizeing that the viral success of the orignal everquest was a freak occurance and that if they dont advertise their games then they will continue to have great games like planetside only break even instead of being the cash cows they should be. At this point i believe the fate of planetside rests in the success of FreeRealms, if FreeRealm and its marketing model works well and brings in the money they are hoping for, SOE may dicide to look retoactively at marketing their other games. If FreeRealms dosnt do well, im guessing SOE is gonna be in a bad way,  they obviously sunk a huge amount of money into FreeRealms, and with no recent big hits they might just be looking for ways to be saving money soon, and while i doubt they will shut down PS completely, we do get a lilttle bit of dev, CSR , and GM supoport (even if its hard to see somtimes) that could very easily be cut... 

Agreed.

I didnt mean to imply that the free trials were marketing.

They are simply the means by which we get friends to try it (word of mouth).

If Tanarus is any measure, PS will be around for a long time (as is) even if Gemini is as empty as Werner.