Does anyone remember their first hour?

[Mastachief]

Retail release.

I remember loading gauss with gold ammo and footzerging half the length of solsar before a kind harraser driver stopped and picked me up.

Took me a couple of months to figure out gold ammo = useless, who would have thought armour piercing ammo was worthless against people wearing armour........... soe logic.

[Kashis]

My first hour was filled with glitched doorways, lasher spam and my love of the pounder max and its unfathomable anti-infantry direct fire mortars in anchor mode.

[Greenthy]

Let's see:

entering the (VS) VR training, swarmed by people ('03). Getting damaged by non-prepped nades falling at the feet of players, getting damaged because somebody behind me thought he could shoot one of the drones...

[SuperMorto]

I remember this and i remember it well. 3 people in a CC and nothing for 20 mins hehe!!

[noxious]

The following occurred in beta, so some time in early 2003 I suppose. I certed to drive a Marauder and a high school buddy of mine got into the gunner seat. We rolled out through one of the warp gates. I can't remember which continent we went to, except that the ground was green. I think it was Cyssor, but I don't know if that was linked to the TR sanctuary back then.

At any rate, we started rolling down one of the roads from the warpgate to a tower. The sense of scale was already amazing, and I could tell the game would be special. We started approaching a trio of NC soldiers. I don't know what they were doing there, as we weren't at the tower yet, but we obviously weren't going to wait around to ask questions. I circled around them and my gunner did the only good thing a person can do with a member of the NC; he exterminated them.

Unfortunately, that is the end of what I remember explicitly. We continued on to the tower and dismounted to go in, but I can't remember what happened after that. I suppose the fact that I recall even as much as I do after nine years is a testament to how impressionable that first experience was.

[Hamma]

I remember it vividly. It was when I previewed the game in San Diego and played along side the devs, I owned Smed and won the box set of Band of Brothers.

[WarbirdTD]

On May 22, 2003, I made my first and favorite character on TR Markov (WarbirdTheDisturbed). I think I managed to walk into the HART shuttle and dropped as close as I could to the biggest hotspot I could find. The base was Enkidu, Ishundar and we were about to be attacked by the VS. I ran into the base, thinking, "Woah, this game is huge! Look at all the places I can go in this base!"

So, occupied with exploring a massive base under attack, I managed to get up to the roof and out to the walls, just in time to see a VS quasar max running full speed and jumpjetting up on top of the wall. It shot my face off.

After respawning in the base (another new experience and exploration opportunity) I managed to get outside just in time to see a ton of our Prowlers and Reavers arriving at the base and pushing the VS back out. The courtyard filled with vehicles as we prepared to take the fight to the enemy, and I jumped into a passenger seat on a Galaxy. And so I experienced my first Gal drop and tower cap, and became hooked for years.

With Planetside 2 quickly approaching, I hope that I can pass along that kind of experience to the next generation of Planetsiders, because it is absolutely unmatched by any other game. That is why, as an officer in my returning clan/outfit, we will be focusing on Airborne Infantry hotdrops.. It really might be the coolest part of the Planetside experience.

[Gloworm]

I remember my first hour like it was yesterday even tho it was a good 7 years ago at least! We were sitting on one hill spawning from a few AMS's while the NC were on the hill opposite us spawning from a few of their AMS's.

Snipers and max suits everywhere, and me running round with my suppressor with gold AP ammo trying to shoot things, i think that entire day i never got one kill, but i loved it just the same!

[Neurotoxin]

Straight to VR as soon as I could find it. First hour was probably spent in there.

[Caldaren]

A co-worker had told me about the game, and an EQ guildie had bought it, so I jumped. Came home after work on a Tuesday, installed the game and patched on my 56k modem, picked the same server as the coworker and decided I wanted to be a ranger type character...long distance living off the land sniper type. This was late-may 03, I think? maybe early June?

Drop into combat from the HART with my agile armor + sniper rifle, and can't figure out where anyone is, landing on Esamir, and I see action half the continent away.

For 45 minutes I hoofed it cross country, hiding behind trees and expecting at any time to die. The tension mounted, and then I finally saw my first Vanu taking a tower. I hid behind a tree, scoped up, took a shot...and then saw him not die, and got swarmed by mossies, reavers, and magmowers.

I respawned in Sanc, and realized this wasn't going to be your standard FPS. I was hooked.

[MCYRook]

2006, about 6-8 weeks into the Reserves fodder/trial program, my friend told me that he was playing this "Planetside" game since you could now play it for free for a year. I'd had practically no experience with online gaming, but Planetside sounded like the kind of game I'd always wanted, so I gave it a try as well.

He told me that NC was the empire to join (otherwise my choice would've probably been TR, rapid-firing guns ftw!!!), so I made one and somehow joined him at a fight on a snow continent, must've been Ceryshen.

We were at a tower that was near, but not quite at the center of the action of the nearby base fight. (In retrospect, I think it was most likely Igaluk South Tower.) I mainly tried to pick off targets from the various outside levels of the tower, ran around the rocks outside, fired Phoenixes at grunts like a pr0, and pecked at enemy Prowlers while avoiding them seeing me.

Other vivid memories include slooowwly sneaking around friendly mines at doorways as I didn't know they wouldn't blow up on me, taking out some of those nasty Spitfire Turrets (and being disappointed to not even get any kill stats or XP rewarded for that feat), and getting hopelessly lost inside a base after spawning there and trying to find my way back up top.

At the end of my first day, my K/D ratio was 1/4. And I was totally hooked.

[Firejack]

For me Planetside started in beta a few weeks before launch in 2003.

Randomly running around for 30 minutes or so I ended up on Ceryshen only to get lost and fall to my doom off the cliff. I spawned at the North Akna tower and ran to the base. Finding the back door I opened it to be greeted by a long corridor... with a sniper at the end. I was completely clueless and died about 4 times before logging off thinking it wasn't that brilliant a game.

Later I came back and again running around randomly I ended up on Ishunder. For the first time I saw more then two people. There was about 30 other clueless people running south so I followed them. Approaching Girru from the northeast I found myself part of a massive Vanu footzerg. We had an AMS and the tower and there must of been 100 people attacking the base with explosions and gunfire everywhere!

In a moment I knew this was the best game ever without question.

[Zorachus]

My first hour in PS I loaded aboard a Galaxy full of other noobs and the pilot flew out over the ocean and dumped as all in the drink. Welcome to Planetside.

I didn't then but now I think it's funny

[Raymac]

It was Late May 2003, and I was talking about video games with a co-worker friend. I was playing quite a bit of CounterStrike at the time, and I had cut my MMO teeth with Everquest a couple years earlier. I remember the conversation word for word. I lamented "I wish there was a fps like CounterStrike, but in a huge world like Everquest with tanks and planes and stuff. Wouldn't that be cool?" He replied, "I think they have that."

My jaw dropped and I stopped dead in my tracks. "Wait, what?"
"Yeah, it's called Planet-something."

I immediately looked it up on the computer and then went to Best Buy after work that day to get it.

I still clearly remember sitting there in front of the computer as the game was isntalling, reading through the manual, trying to decide which empire to join. I considered myself a bit of a rebel, so the choice became clear. NC it was.

I've been laughing reading these stories, because I had a similar experience once I got in the game. Ran around sanc. Loved music. Went into VR. Loaded up on gold ammo.

It's funny. I don't remember my first fight, but I do remember my first "real" fight. It was on Amerish. We were pushing on Cetan from Ikanam. The fight lasted for hours and was a back and forth brawl. I remember fighting tree by tree. Trying to push up both flanks, and up the middle. It was such an epic experience, I knew gaming would never be the same for me. I was hooked, and no other game has come close to delivering that epic feel. No other game until Planetside 2, that is.

[outsider]

day 1 of open beta

did the training, someone in TR Sanc was screaming to get to whatever base, took the HART.
landed near the base and saw 30 Barneys running towards me.
felt my gut drop.
Did some quick math ... realised I didn't have enough bullets and took off!!
didn't stop running till I saw a TR MAX

So anyway after the MAX killed me ...