SOE revise All Access Pass, Planetside 1 going free-to-play this April

It's not all bad news in the court of Sony Online Entertainment. Following the announcement that four of their MMOs - Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online - are soon to be Old Yellered, the MMO makers have revealed the existence of another: the original Planetside. To clarify: the 2003 predecessor to the impossibly huge Planetside 2 is going free-to-play this April. If you're worried about microtransactions, don't be - an SOE FAQ reveals that "PS1 has no Marketplace and will not see further game development".

SOE have also announced that they are to revise their All Access Pass "on or about" April 2nd. Come Spring you'll be able to pay a monthly fee of $14.99 in return for "top-tier membership" to every SOE game all at once, including EverQuest, EverQuest 2, DC Universe Online, Planetside 2, and EverQuest Next and Landmark when they roll around. That's...a lot of MMO. Existing single-game subscriptions will also be converted automatically to All Access Passes.

SOE president John Smedley mentioned plans to transform the original Planetside into a free-to-play game back in May , so it's good to see those plans are finally about come to fruition.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.