One day I was in the caverns and got a message from someone on the enemy team. He told me they’d stolen a TR tank and asked me if I could get them some ammo.

wtf? You stole one of my team’s tanks and now you want me to get you ammo for it? What do I look like?

I was in a good mood. I told him no. If I’d been in a bad mood I’d have told him yes, arranged a meeting, then shot him. Bring him some ammo… Goddamn bluebies.

So, there’s a bit of a fight down there that goes on for a while. In the end, my team has 1 spawn point left and it’s me vs 7 enemies. I don’t know where the rest of my team went. (Cowards!) Eventually they get me down to where they’re camping the last spawn spot. I die, I spawn, they immediately kill me, repeat.

One of them sends me a tell, “You should have given us the ammo.”

Let me tell you a little secret. I’m a vindictive bastard. So you ask me for ammo like I’m some kinda bootlickin traitor to my team, then you gloat. Oh hell no. Bitch.

So I tried to escape the spawn camp. Go this way, die. Respawn. Go that way, get a couple steps, die. Respawn. Repeat about 10 times. Tenacity is my other hobby. Every attempt was a 30 second wait to respawn again, but I wasn’t going to let people like that take my last spawn point for free. I could have left and gone somewhere else, but they had to open their mouth, so now I’m in Vindictive Mode, so I’m going to keep trying to kill them for as long as I can.

And the 11th time worked! The 11th time I made it. I got out of the door with a pixel of life left and did the Forrest Gump run through twists and turns and when I finally looked back, they were nowhere to be seen.

I made my way to an equipment terminal tucked away in the netherlands of the caves and got suited up. Healed up? Check. New suit of armor? Check. Machinegun? Check. Rocket launcher? Check. Extra bullets and medkits? Check.

This has to be one of my personal favorite Planetside memories. It was total Rambo: First Blood.

Thing is, most Planetside players don’t like the caves. I don’t know why, really, I guess because they’re so complex. I like them, though. A lot. I spend a lot of time down there. They’re MY caves, goddammit. Someone’s making fun of me in my caves? Spawn camping me and sending me gloaty tells in my caves? Horseshit. Get the fuck out of my cave.

So I carefully picked my way back towards the spawn point. Turns out, they’d gotten confident and had split up to look for me.

Found a guy. Killed him.
Found another guy. Killed him.
Found a guy in a MAX suit (super heavy armor, like a small tank with feet). I ran away…. he chased me. To a big mannable turret. Which I jumped into. Then killed him.

Now you gotta figure to the rest of the squad, this must be alarming. You know there’s only 1 enemy left and he just barely got out alive. There’s 7 of you, it’s not a problem, right? Then on your squad HUD you see Bob’s health meter drop to 0 and “PecosBill [picture of a gun] Bob” on your text. Then Frank’s health meter drops to 0 and “PecosBill [picture of a gun] Frank” scrolls up.

And since there’s 7 of you, you didn’t bother to bring up the portable spawn station, so your closest respawn point is half a mile away.

So this has gotta start to worry you after the 3rd or 4th death. Some guy you were making fun of just a second ago has gotten loose and is killing your whole squad one at a time and, as Rambo would say, he’s comin ta git you.

I worked my way back and managed to kill 6 of the 7 guys who were spawncamping me, 1 by 1. One more kill and I’d be able to resecure the base.

Sadly, the 7th guy got me. I guess just like all the movies, every team of villains has to have that one guy that’s actually good.

And they’d captured the last spawn spot, so I couldn’t spawn anymore. They’d won.

But I bet they’ll think real hard about asking another Terran Republic member for free ammo.

We’ll give ya ammo alright…

DocHoliday – TR/Markov

Played PS for many years and finally quit because I had nearly every base and every island memorized. PS is my favorite game of all time – bar none. I hope PS Next keeps all the great aspects of the original and builds in even more content. If so, I’ll happily play PS Next for years!

Those who never played can never really understand or appreciate the nail-biting tension of PS at the beginning. Man, you had to pay attention or you were dead – period. And if you left your toon unattended for 30 seconds in a hotly contested base fight, you most likely than had to choose a respawn point when you returned because you had been killed.

My favorite memories were massive bridge battles that were unbelievably chaotic and base defenses that lasted for hours even if we (the TR) had a massive population disadvantage on the continent.

I served with some great players – most more talented than me. But I did my part, and I was proud to have served. And I’ll sign up again when they offer the new Planetside.

Back to the OP tho, he did forget to mention one thing – the game was well unbalanced, especially with the nerfs. I did join PS in 2005 or so and at that time, Vanu (the purple swarm in the article) did suck so heavily, that we had to really outnumber enemy in order to conquer a base. If Vanu sucked like that during the sanctuary f..k-up, then you can’t wonder every single Vanu logged.

I played for 4 years as my one and only online (or any other) game. Sturmgrenadier ( aka SG) rolled into PS with hundreds of members. Although that one game was not the first ( or even second) for SG, it definately defined us as a guild. The “I was there” for PS is so overwhelming within SG, us PS crusties are well known for lasping in to talk of “the good ole days of PS”. Even today with just a mere suggestion that PS Next is being thought of, has caused us to create a portal location and has brought back old SG members long lost to wandering the net looking for the next game that could rekindle that glory.

My big thought is that PS was nearly two games, there was playing PS solo which probably sucked, and playing with an oufit ( guild) which made PS second to none in the experience it created.

A bud of mine and I had an awesome strategy for that tunnel – pop in a plasma grenade or two to get ‘em burning, throw in a bit of lasher spam to make ‘em run after they try to hunker down in cover, and then someone shoots ‘em in the back with a sniper rifle to finish ‘em off. Pretty brutal, but very effective.

Yeah, we were jerks. ;)

Since then, I have witnessed 3 more sanctuary locks on the New Conglomerate side. I have played Planetside for 6 years and continue to do so today. I still love the game, even with all its flaws.