14 DAY TRIAL // Fans of the popular massively multiplayer online first-person shooter PlanetSide 2, from Sony Online Entertainment, are in for a big surprise. The company has revealed that the much-anticipated Hossin update is on its way to the PC version of the game.
PlanetSide 2 Director Matt Higby has made the reveal on the official Sony forums, telling that the Hossin update, which has been in the works for over two years, will be released soon for the PC version of the shooter.
“If we wanted to finish Hossin without sacrificing the quality level we’ve established, it would probably be three months before it was ready to go live – we don’t want to wait that long, and we don’t think you want to either. Right now, about 50% of the bases on Hossin are ‘done’ to the point that we’re completely satisfied with the quality of the level design and visuals,” Higby says, letting PlanetSide 2 players know that Christmas will be hitting in July this year.
“About 25% of the bases are first pass – you’ll be able to recognize these bases by their naming scheme, and another 25% are bases which are more or less staging areas, or stamped bases, identical to each other – this is an outpost we know works well, so we’ve put them in as placeholders. We expect these bases to function correctly, provide all the necessary utilities to make the game work – they’re just not 100% up to our standards of level design quality quite yet,” he continues.
The game has a pretty vast scope, featuring large-scale battles for territory control between as many as two thousand players per continent, engaging in skirmishes on foot or in air and land vehicles.
“Over the next few months, the level design and environment art team is going to continue to iterate the bases on Hossin and every couple weeks you’ll see more and more of the continent getting completed and patched to live,” Higby concludes.
PlanetSide 2 is also making its way to Sony’s next-gen computer entertainment system, the PlayStation 4, and will retain its status as a free-to-play online game. The game has already been out on PC since 2012, and there is no word on when PS4 owners will be able to join the action, apart from “sometime in 2014.”
In any case, we’ll be on the lookout for more info about when the Hossin update will go live and when PlanetSide 2 will be released on the PlayStation 4, and keep you posted.