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Planetside For Free
Eurogamer reports that Sony Online is moving Planetside to a free play for a year deal, somewhat similar to the Anarchy Online pricing scheme. From the article: "Access to the massively multiplayer FPS will be limited in terms of BattleRank and CommandRank. 'Essentially, new players will be able to have access to any part of the game but they will be limited on the diversity of their arsenal,' said developer Enrico Pallazzo in a recent forum post outlining various new additions to the game." Limited free play in an environment with ads. I guess I'm glad they're trying new options.
Basically the game is now old and boring and we need more players ;-)
Let me clarify: what I've heard is "up to BR 8." When you get out of training, you should be at BR 4--that means you pick up four points along the way.
I think a guy down there posted a better recap. The point is that you are limited in no way except the number of certs (and not being able to access expansion content--I assume on that, though). There's also command rank, which I think you can progress in from CR0 (no bonus) to CR2 (some bonuses). Paid members can get up to CR5 (which I hear takes _forever) but has some very nice bonuses. Of course, what's the point of _everyone_ being a CR5? Too many bosses and not enough fighters--people just want to lay orbital strikes.
More bitching follows:
For a game where teamplay is so important, I see a lot of people who doesn't seem to get the concept. I see veteran pilots complaining about a new anti-air light scout fighter, saying how it'll ruin dogfights. Well, my take is that you aren't up there to dogfight. You're up there to either bomb the crap out of people on the ground, to scout, or to shoot at other things in the air. When I hear "dogfight," I think of folks going up and looking for other fighters to swerve and loop against. My impression is that the anti-air fighters will be more useful for shooting down heavy transports, bombers, mobile repair transports, and that sort of stuff. As is, I don't think there's any aircraft in the game whose _purpose_ is anti-air--there's a bomber, a dropship, a light scout (which can dogfight, but doesn't appear to be intended to do so), a groundpounder (always seemed like a Warthog sort of thing to me, useful for camping outside of doorways rather than shooting down aircraft), and a mobile repair/transport craft. They're also adding in a gunship (think Spectre gunship from, say, C&C Generals), but I didn't hear much about that one, and I imagine it could chew through a few aircraft as well. I imagine that the air game would center around: flying transports/dropships, defending transports/dropships, hunting ground units, or defending against flyers hunting ground units. I don't see how just cruising around looking for individual pilots to dogfight really helps the team. I hear similar things about snipers: "snipers are only good against other snipers." Well, then, what's the point?