As reported earlier this year, SOE are today launching their revised All Access Pass. It's a unified service that, for $15 per month, gives subscribers "top-tier" membership across all SOE games. As part of the transfer, individual subscriptions are being dropped; meaning Planetside 1 is now free-to-play. Or will be, at least, once they finish their maintenance period.

Currently, the All Access membership covers EverQuest, EverQuest II, DC Universe Online, PlanetSide 2, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and will include EverQuest Next, Landmark and H1Z1 when they launch. There are caveats to that list, though, as revealed in SOE's lengthy FAQ.

"Your DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2 accounts will remain with ProSiebenSat.1 Games and will not be transferred over," explains the FAQ. "You will not be able to start new characters in DCUO or PS2 on your SOE All Access account for these games." For players in the EU (including the UK), that's a big deal. PlanetSide 2 and DCUO are arguably SOE's biggest draws at least until the release of Everquest Next and Landmark. That they're not included for subscribers in ProSiebenSat.1's territory makes for a far less attractive package.

For more on the All Access Pass, head to SOE's subscription micro-site. At least, do when it's back online.

SOE's Player Studio program allows players to earn money submitting new EverQuest or Planetside items for consideration by each game's developers. It comes from the same set of ideas as Valve's Steam Workshop - the notion that any body of players has enough talent within it to substantially expand a game if given the chance, and that this expansion can be tied to economic incentives that benefit everybody.

Player Studio hasn't quite hit Steam Workshop numbers yet. Nobody's posting six-figure salaries for making Planetside 2 hats. But it's growing - this video posted by the Planetside 2 team last month talks to creators who are making thousands of dollars through the system.

Player Studio is currently restricted to players in North America, but this is going to change. At an EverQuest Next Landmark event in London on Monday SOE announced that Player Studio would be available in Canada, Germany, France and the UK "on or before" the 31st of May. More countries will follow as SOE navigates the labyrinthine tax laws involved in paying players for their contributions.

Player Studio could end up being huge, particularly when it's incorporated into Landmark - a game that doesn't require you to learn external tools to make saleable new things. At the moment, though, the fact that it's a smaller program is one of its strengths. As competition in the Steam Workshop gets more intense, it's harder for new creators to to get noticed - and even less feasible for Valve to take a curatorial role in ensuring that only good stuff makes it to the top. I admire the way that SOE have been working directly with their community with Player Studio so far, and hope they keep it up as the program grows.

Virtual reality, SteamOS, fiber broadband, 4K displays, holodecks (you know, maybe) the next five years of PC gaming will radically transform our immortal hobby. What new experiences will the PC games of the near future provide? How will technology surprise us? This April at PAX East 2014, we'll look into that glowing future with the innovators and PC gaming stakeholders shaping it.

"The (Incredible) Future of PC Gaming" panel will be in the Albatross Theater and livestreamed to the world at 12 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, April 11th. Moderator and PC Gamer US Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti will be joined by Oculus VR Founder Palmer Luckey, PlanetSide 2 Creative Director Matt Higby, Nvidia Director of Technical Marketing Tom Petersen, and Cloud Imperium Games Founder/Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts.

The panel will discuss the topics above and more, concluding with an audience Q&A. We'll remind you again as it approaches in the meantime, watch our panel from PAX Prime 2013, which featured Chris Taylor, Jon Mavor, Dean Hall, and Chris Roberts.

Courtesy of ASUS, we're also giving away a top-of-the-line ASUS G750JM gaming laptop during the panel. Be there for a chance to win.

LIVESTREAM: watch the panel live on "PAX EAST 2" at http://www.twitch.tv/event/pax.

Click here for a rundown of all of our events at PAX East.

Image via Reddit user chipay.

Planetside 2 s latest update riled up members of the player community when it appeared that pop-up ads had been introduced to the game. In reality, a pop-up message notification was sending out offers for SOE s premium membership, and a server error was causing the offers to be sent out several times every hour. Now, SOE has disabled the message notifications and membership offers completely while it sorts out the problem.

Players first reported the issue in forum threads like this one, where a Redditor reported that pop-up message notifications were arriving in the in-game inbox every few minutes. "It's understandable that you want people to spend money on the game, and perhaps if you're sitting in the warpgate a pop-up ad isn't quite so bad," user Nighthawk043 wrote. "But when I'm flying a liberator, in the middle of a dog-fight, I don't want to have to close these ads." Worse, other players wrote that the pop-ups take control of the Y and N keyboard keys so they can no longer be used for in-game actions and instead only respond to the membership requests.

"This system has been in the game for a while, sending offers for discounts on and Membership to specific players who qualified," creative director Matthew Higby wrote to the SOE forums this afternoon. "What we've recently added is the ability to call out specific in-game events as they occur in order to bring further awareness Yesterday, we also had an issue with the servers restarting for several hours after the Game Update, which was resetting who should receive notifications, and subsequently causing players to receive them FAR more often than we'd ever want."

The frequency of the pop-ups aside, it s unfortunate that SOE approved an advertising strategy that so blatantly interferes with the game. While it s good to see that the developers are responding to the issue so quickly, the team should have been more careful with any changes to how they pitch premium services to players. Pop-up ads like these hurt the player experience and give free-to-play games even games as good as Planetside 2 a sour reputation.

Written by Tim Clark

Looking for an exit strategy from your dead-end job and have a keen eye for show-stopping sci-fi helmet design? Perhaps you should consider a side gig making user-generated content for PlanetSide 2. We spoke with the game s senior art director, Trammel Isaac, who told us power users like CoffeeOutlaw are already making thousands of dollars designing and selling new looks for existing items and equipment in the game, through SOE's Player Studio program.

A few caveats before you start doodling your dream visor. Player Studio is currently only available to US-based players, and only items that are approved by SOE's art team will be made available for sale through the PlanetSide 2 marketplace. That vetting process typically takes a matter of months, although if you decide to target your creativity at a more obscure item type hood ornaments for vehicles was the example we were given there's more chance your masterpiece will be swiftly greenlit.

Note also that these aren't new items with unique stats and capabilities, but fresh skins for existing kit in the game. Since the program begun in July last year, SOE has received more than 2000 designs from users, of which some 469 are now available for sale so it's just shy of a 1-in-4 ratio in terms of the average likelihood of pieces being accepted.

So could anyone hope to make a full-time living as PlanetSide 2 fashion guru? "Yes, that's what BeastBuster is saying", says Trammel Isaac, senior art director on PlanetSide 2. "He's in school right now, and he's treating this as his job. He comes home from school and he puts in five hours a day, and tries to make something new every day. His stuff is selling, so he's doing pretty well."

How well? Try $12,000 since SOE released Player Studio, $9,500 of which came in the last quarter. (You're paid quarterly as a PlanetSide 2 item artisan, and take 40 percent of the net amount made from each sale.) It may not be quite enough to retire on, but it's certainly not bad for a college kid. Obviously, SOE's artists will only approve content that's a perfect fit with the PlanetSide 2 universe, and even then, the team will do a final polish pass on the submitted designs before your items are ready for purchase.

Isaac is enthusiastic about the user-generated content rather than seeing it as any threat to his own team's work. "It's a joy to have those guys making that stuff," says Isaac, "because when they get into forums and they start creating things, it makes my job easier." Surprisingly, some of the most successful creators such as Arctorn, another college student are entirely self-taught. "He's really good," says Isaac. As for how to get started, Isaac recommends: "Watching videos online, tips and tricks from people in the forums, and a lot of trial and error."

If you're looking for further inspiration before breaking out the virtual sewing kit, check out this video of some of the coolest stuff that's been made so far. Hmm, would crotchless camo space marine chaps sell?

Virtual reality, SteamOS, fiber broadband, 4K displays, holodecks (you know, maybe) the next five years of PC gaming will radically transform our immortal hobby. What new experiences will the PC games of the near future provide? How will technology surprise us? This April at PAX East 2014, we'll look into that glowing future with the innovators and PC gaming stakeholders shaping it.

"The (Incredible) Future of PC Gaming" panel will be held at PAX East in Boston (exact location still to be determined) and livestreamed to the world at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, April 11th. Moderator and PC Gamer US Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti will be joined by Oculus VR Founder Palmer Luckey, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley, Nvidia Director of Technical Marketing Tom Petersen, and Cloud Imperium Games Founder/Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts.

The panel will discuss the topics above and more, concluding with an audience Q&A. We'll remind you again as it approaches in the meantime, watch our panel from PAX Prime 2013, which featured Chris Taylor, Jon Mavor, Dean Hall, and Chris Roberts.

Dammit, Planetside 2! Every time they release a new continent-wide update, they upgrade the chosen landmass to utilise the redesigned Lattice system. What they mean is a linking series of attack avenues, designed to focus the flow of battle and create natural chokepoints for large-scale battles. What I always think of is lovely, tasty pastries. I'm hungry now, so thanks a lot SOE.

Other than the delicious lattice, Amerish has also been spruced up with more detail, optimised performance and repositioned bases. You can see a full round of the changes in the new update trailer.



With this update, released last Friday, all three of Planetside 2's current continents have been updated with the Lattice system. The long-awaited fourth continent, Hossin, is now expected to arrive in May.

With Planetside 2's World Domination Series Preseason 2 event now well underway, the game masters at Sony Online Entertainment are already announcing rules tweaks to counteract what the developer calls "some undesired player behavior." It seems battles in the massive MMO shooter haven't reached the desired white-hot level of intensity since the WDS Preseason kicked off on Friday.

Leading up to the Preseason, SOE changed player scoring for capturing and defending points among the game's three factions. Even though overall player deaths are up, one side effect of the scoring change has been a drop in the average number of times a player dies during individual capture skirmishes, according to SOE. This fact points to a "significant reduction in fight intensity," according to a new forum post about the issue by PS2 developer Malorn.

"We believe this behavior stems from players avoiding fights in favor of easy and guaranteed WDS points for captures, and that the defense rewards are not lucrative enough to motivate players to defend territory," Malorn writes. "This was not one of the goals of the system and we apologize for the negative impact it has had on your gameplay experience."

To combat the distasteful sight of unmotivated soldiers, SOE is working on a hotfix to be deployed in the "next few days" that it believes will make it more lucrative to defend territory. As PCGamesN has reported, some players are observing giant, "zerg"-like groups of soldiers wandering the PS2 continent looking for easy captures and the accompanying point rewards. Intensity, spectacle, and crazy momentum shifts have always stood out to me as the calling cards of a good PS2 match. Anything SOE can do to balance the game in favor of close fights, useful tactical maneuvers, and teamwork rather than mindless blobs farming capture points is a good move in my book.

The WDS Preseason event runs through February 28.

It's not all bad news in the court of Sony Online Entertainment. Following the announcement that four of their MMOs - Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online - are soon to be Old Yellered, the MMO makers have revealed the existence of another: the original Planetside. To clarify: the 2003 predecessor to the impossibly huge Planetside 2 is going free-to-play this April. If you're worried about microtransactions, don't be - an SOE FAQ reveals that "PS1 has no Marketplace and will not see further game development".

SOE have also announced that they are to revise their All Access Pass "on or about" April 2nd. Come Spring you'll be able to pay a monthly fee of $14.99 in return for "top-tier membership" to every SOE game all at once, including EverQuest, EverQuest 2, DC Universe Online, Planetside 2, and EverQuest Next and Landmark when they roll around. That's...a lot of MMO. Existing single-game subscriptions will also be converted automatically to All Access Passes.

SOE president John Smedley mentioned plans to transform the original Planetside into a free-to-play game back in May, so it's good to see those plans are finally about come to fruition.

Sony Online Entertainment has been pretty good about updating Planetside 2. As part of its Operation: Make Faster Game (OMFG) it released Performance Update 01 and 02, which addressed a very long list of balancing and performance issues. But players had to wait for them for a long time. This week, SOE announced that rather than huge, infrequent updates, starting this year it will release smaller weekly updates.

We'll be more rapidly respond to bugs and balance issues in the game without having to rely on hotfixes as much, Planetside 2 Creative Director Matt Higby wrote on the game s official forums. We'll also be able to release new content more frequently and consistently. Each individual update will be smaller and more focused, with fewer moving parts that can break, which we hope will greatly decrease the number of bugs being introduced when we update. As part of this new policy, SOE will also update and playtest on Planetside 2's Test servers a lot more often.

Higby assured the community that SOE is still working on bigger features and content, and that they ll be slotted into the weekly schedule as they re ready to be released. He also said that the first couple of weekly updates will be smaller than they will be in the future as the development team emerges from a holiday haze.