PlanetSide was a massively-multiplayer online first-person-shooter video game published by Sony Online Entertainment and released on May 20, 2003. PlanetSide chronicles the efforts of three factions as they fight for territorial control over ten different continents on the planet Auraxis. Players take on the role of individual soldiers fighting for one of the three factions within the game, and can specialize in various fields such as combat vehicle crewman, infantry, invisible infiltrator or a variety of combat support roles; such as combat medic or combat engineer. The game is played primarily in a first person perspective, with the option of third-person. Unlike most shooting games, in which small-scale matches take place in essentially an instanced map, PlanetSide battles can involve hundreds of players in a single fight. PlanetSide battles concern control over territory and strategic points, and can cause repercussions to all three factions. To date, PlanetSide remains one of the few MMOFPS games ever created. A sequel, PlanetSide 2, was released in November 2012. Rather than a direct sequel, it is a "re-imagining" of the first game. On January 24, 2014 Sony Online Entertainment announced that the game was going to be free-to-play in April 2014. The game was officially launched as free to play on April 29, 2014, after several delays. On July 1, 2016, at 4:00pm PT, Planetside servers went offline permanently. PlanetSide holds the Guinness World Record for "Most players online at one time in an FPS war game," which was set when 6,400 players were active at once on the game's Emerald server. It once broke the record for "Most players in an online FPS battle" as well with 600 players (now held by the game's sequel, PlanetSide 2). Plot After exploring through a deep space wormhole, the Terran Republic, a highly centralized oligarchic galactic government which had unconditionally ruled humanity for the past thousand years, discovered a single habitable planet. Not only was this planet suitable for the sustenance of life, but it also already possessed many native, highly developed, and staggeringly familiar flora. The Science Institute named this planet Auraxis. Taking a keen interest in this aberration, the Republic quickly sent expeditions through the wormhole to explore and colonize the planet. Shortly after arriving, the colonists discovered the remains and technology of a lost and ancient alien species – the Vanu (or Ancients). This technology proved to be so complex and powerful as