14 DAY TRIAL // John Smedley, who is the leader of Sony Online Entertainment, has admitted that the upcoming Planetside 2 has been in many ways inspired by the CCP developer EVE Online.
The executive told The Mittani, who is a community liaison for CCP, that, “My Eve experiences have been some of the most amazing of my gaming life. I am a true PVP’er at heart and I’m not a big fan of rules. EVE provides the perfect environment for a person like me.”
Smedley then went on to detail some of the influences that EVE Online had on Planetside 2, stating, “The concept of Cert Points and the notion of gaining them offline came straight from there, although our system gives you points that are flexible and we also give you more experience when you’re online than off.”
The developer also mentioned the resource system for the new MMO, which apparently was similar to that of the strategy game Starcraft at one point, but has since then evolved towards that of EVE.
The similarities with the CCP MMO will be even clearer when Planetside 2 allows gamers to create bases and exploit the rarer resources.
The fact that players will be able to choose where to create their new bases and what resources to extract and then sell develops an environment of freedom that will allow the community to narrate its own storylines, with limited input from the SOE developers.
Planetside 2 takes place on the planet of Auraxis, where they are able to join one of three corporations and then use a variety of weapons and vehicles to engage their enemies.
At the moment, Planetside 2 is in closed beta stage and Sony has said that it plans to get the MMO out on the PC before the end of this year.