All Good Things - PlanetSide Universe

Over ten years ago I started a little website called PlanetSide Universe. Little did I realize back then how many amazing experiences this seemingly small thing would give me. I’ve had the pleasure to build some friendships that will last a lifetime and meet so many people I never would have met without this game.

It’s with a heavy heart that I report today we will be “Soft Closing” PSU. What does this mean exactly? This means at least one new thing:

IRC and Voice Chat will be migrated to Discord - join us on the PSU Server! https://discord.gg/0gtnFrsSwOjDGZz0

A few services will go offline and the site itself will cease to be updated.

IRC will be shut down effective January 1st
TeamSpeak 3 will be shut down effective January 1st
News and Updates will no longer be posted on the front page.
Twitter and Facebook pages will only exist to occasionally retweet and reshare news.
The Wiki will remain online but will not receive new functionality or official updates.
Advertisements will be disabled

What will not change:

The site itself will remain online, our stat and character pages will continue to function.
The forums will remain online due to the requirement to have a forum account to claim characters and create signatures.

The reasons I have decided to do this are many, I’m not going to delve into them all here but in the comments if you have any questions please post them up. There’s a few people that are hugely responsible for the success of this website over the years and I can’t possibly list everyone. If you aren’t here and you have contributed I extend my personal thanks.

John Smedley - this one is a no brainer. John was instrumental in helping us out through the years and always willing to listen to my personal feedback about the goings on in the game and community. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but I consider John a friend and I’m not sure if we would still be here today without him.
T-Ray - I don’t even know where to begin with this one, T-Ray over the years from the original game up until he left PlanetSide 2 was always in our corner and obviously is one of the coolest dudes I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Matt Higby - Always supportive of our site and always willing to sit down for a face to face interview or live Q&A. I’ll never forget the first time I met him and he told me how much he loved PSU and how it was a huge source of feedback during pre-release of PS2. Him and T-Ray were the best dev duo of all time.
Adam Clegg aka Arclegger - Clegg was always around to support our live streams, help us to promote our events and post on the forums. During our few trips out to San Diego he showed us the ropes of what really goes into game development, the tools behind the scenes, the discussions and more. I count Adam among my friends and will continue to stay in contact with him.
RadarX - Community at SOE/DBG have always been awesome. I never felt afraid to vent my frustrations with current events to Radar and ask for advice. He helped so much over the years in so many ways I can’t list them all.
Dave Georgeson - Dave was the first developer who I ever reached out to on PlanetSide, and it was Dave who got us linked up with SOE. He’s been hugely supportive to us over the years and if not for him we probably wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of years.
Gryphon - This site would be nothing without him. He was the coder behind the scenes who pretty much built this entire website. forum integrations, signatures, character pages, news, content pages.. everything. He worked so many tireless unpaid hours to help build this site over the years. Most folks in the community didn’t know him well, but without him you wouldn’t have 95% of the features on the site.

Last but certainly not least, Jennyboo. She’s supported not only PSU but me throughout the years. She’s been around through all the good times and the hard times. She’s one of the most amazing people I know, and she has the ability to talk to literally anyone. So many of the connections we have made over the years were thanks to her.

This is just a short list of people - there are sooo many more.

And with that thank all of you for continuing to support us over the years. I will still be on Discord as mentioned previously and Twitter as @CDLHamma, just don’t be surprised when there are very few PlanetSide related tweets. I’ll also continue to follow the forum moderation notices for spammers and forgotten passwords.

Thank you all for your continued support over the years, we’ve had some great times.

44 comments

2015-12-08 05:35 PM

Latest Comments

2015-12-22 01:05 PM

Ghryphen

Re: All Good Things

[emoji50]

2015-12-22 01:38 PM

powdahound

Re: All Good Things

And sorry for all that horrendous code I left behind.

2015-12-22 01:44 PM

Ghryphen

Re: All Good Things

I've only cursed at it a little bit while adding my own horrendous code.

2015-12-23 01:57 PM

Hamma

Re: All Good Things

Thanks powda! The early days were pretty interesting. Lots of winging it - I learned a lot and met so many awesome folks.

2015-12-23 05:56 PM

Mastachief

Re: All Good Things

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.

2015-12-25 03:34 PM

Aaron

Re: All Good Things

Hey, just want to say thank you for the site. I always came here to find the most relevant news concerning Planetside. I loved the dedicated community. It's really what made Planetside what it was.

2015-12-28 09:16 AM

SuperMorto

Re: All Good Things

Originally Posted by Hamma

Thanks all!

It's unlikely this will 100% close unless something crazy happens.

What level of crazy are we talking here? I've been known to do crazy, a lot!

Be a shame to see this website go. Not only did it allow me to show my passion for PS1, it allowed me to go as far as I could with loving PS2.

Great site I remember all the names. And wont forget any of it regardless of what SOE done to me.

Ill never forget both games, PS1 more than PS2, but still amazing times on both.

Best of luck Ham & Jen and the rest, its amazing what differences a few years can make.

2015-12-28 05:42 PM

Hamma

Re: All Good Things

The site will still be here just a bit slimmed down

Thanks for coming by Morto - good to see ya. Thanks for the kind words

2015-12-29 12:39 PM

SuperMorto

Re: All Good Things

Originally Posted by Hamma

The site will still be here just a bit slimmed down

Thanks for coming by Morto - good to see ya. Thanks for the kind words

I'm guessing by the posts I've read that the game hit some bad times? I hate to say it, but even when PS2 was in development it seemed it was going in the wrong direction. We all saw it, we all commented, we tried to tell them. But as big companies do, they never listen to the communities that know best. PS2 just wasn't enough like PS1 (very addictive game). Anyway hope all goes well for the future. Ill keep popping back showing my face.

Good luck everybody.

Oh and good luck in 2016.

2015-12-29 02:49 PM

Hamma

Re: All Good Things

PS2's success can be argued either way, whether it be the game development decisions or the marketing related decisions. I think there are a lot of reasons it wasn't as successful as it could have been. I don't think it would have been any more successful had it been a clone of the PS1 feature set.

My decisions are mostly personal to slim the site down. Though a big part of it is most of the folks I built relationships with at SOE are now gone for one reason or another. And I think the day of classic fan sites are past. It's nearly impossible to compete with all of the instant gratification available out there (reddit, twitter, etc). The things that made us strong are essentially available to anyone with an internet connection now.

2015-12-31 05:44 AM

ringring

Re: All Good Things

I'm not sure it's fair to say PS2 has hit bad times. It's hit a point when populations are declining but my sense is not that badly and not more than PS1 did at the same stage (if you bear in mind that only a proportion of PS2 base are paying customers while all were in PS1).

I think from comments on reddit that PS2 has been a disappointment to SOE/DBG but then so was PS1.

It was a disappointment to me, even though I played enough to get a BR100 and a bit more, it never had the magic of PS1 and I know that opinion is widely shared.

However many people do like it a lot so good luck to them.

2016-01-01 10:49 AM

Hamma

Re: All Good Things

It's sad to me because it could have been so much more. There was so much potential. I think it's far from a failure personally but man could it have been so much more.

2016-01-01 12:35 PM

Hamma

Re: All Good Things

TS3 and IRC have been shut down and the forums and front page have been slimmed down a bunch, I've also disabled advertisements. See you guys on Discord and occasionally here on the forums

We will continue to monitor the forums for reports as well as the contact e-mails and Twitter/Facebook when issues are experienced. There will also be a bit of downtime and maintenance over the next few days to further consolidate services.

https://discord.gg/0gtnFrsSwOjDGZz0

2016-01-12 01:34 PM

Gimpylung

Re: All Good Things

Thanks for everything Hamma and Jenny.

The VS dogtag Jenny sent me after a stream giveaway about 3 years ago is still in my possession

Thanks for that, I was always impressed that she actually sent it considering I was a third of the way around the earth.

Thanks for your awesome contribution to the PS community through these many years. You will always be my benchmark for fan run community sites.

2016-04-30 06:15 PM

walidbigboss

Re: All Good Things

lol what