TL;DR: I’ve decided to end the Instant Action Podcast for the foreseeable future.

Greetings fellow Auraxians. It has taken a lot of soul searching to come to this realization, but I am no longer enjoying Planetside 2. I am also no longer enjoying creating the podcast. As a result, I have decided to end the podcast for the foreseeable future. The website is paid up through May 2021 so I don’t want to say I won’t be back, but as of right now…It’s done.

Before I go into the why’s I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone at Rogue Planet Games, Daybreak Games and SOE previously for all the support they have given me over the years. I have countless good memories from my interactions with both the Developers (past and present) and the Community of Planetside 2. I also want to thank everyone who listened to the podcast and those who donated to keep my personal costs as low as possible. This truly was a labor of love and wouldn’t be what it is without everyone’s support.

As the podcast sunsets, my shows have been downloaded almost 83,000 times. With an average show time of 40 minutes, that’s more than 3.3 million minutes that listeners have heard my voice. At almost 83,000 downloads, that means on average my shows have been listened to by over 300 people a week. It’s humbling when I think about it. Funnily enough, my most downloaded show remains my interview with BuzzCutPsycho.

So, how did we get here? In 2019 I was riding the high of visiting Daybreak Games Studio in San Diego. I had met with all the members of the Planetside 2 Developer team and felt like I had developed a good rapport with them. I was in contact with Nick, Wrel and Drew on a constant basis and was really excited for the future of both Planetside 2 and the podcast. I don’t want to lay too much blame, but the layoffs in October were the first time I ever felt like ending the podcast. If you’ll remember, I had a scheduled interview with Wrel the day the layoffs occurred. That interview never happened. (Edit: Not Wrel's fault! There is no way I would have done the interview the day all his co-workers got laid off. It's my fault for not rescheduling.) From that point I harbored some resentment with Daybreak Games management (Edit: not Andy or the current Dev Team) for what they had done to people I considered friends. I faithfully continued the podcast because I still truly loved what I was doing. However, and this was completely my fault, I didn’t try and foster the same relationships with the new Development team.

Fast forward to the Escalation Game Update. As you all know, I was invited to the closed Discord group to provide feedback for Outfit Wars and Escalation in general. I brought a lot of players into the fold from various outfits on Emerald that I believe directly attributed to the success of the Escalation Game Update. I’m very proud of this and I can truly say that I hadn’t been this excited for the future of Planetside 2 since the layoffs. However, that resentment stayed in the back of my mind the whole time.

It is worth noting that the Escalation Game Update spawned some healthy competition to the Community scene. Arshee has definitely taken up the banner for Planetside 2 and I couldn’t be more happier for his success. Streamers/YouTubers like Cyrious, FaberOne, Camikaze78, Mofker, Ahorn, WinterGaming, Myian and Aeflic all continue to produce amazing content and streams that bring new players to the game every day. Shoctorr & Aeflic now have a podcast and Deeg just released a great interview with Wrel. What I’m trying to say is that any void I might leave will continue to be filled with great content.

So that brings us to today. I played Planetside 2 for the first time in 2 weeks last night. I didn’t have fun. Maybe all I need is an extended break, I don’t know. All I do know is that it’s time for me to take a step back. I’m not an emotional person, but today is going to be a hard day.

o7

-Deringer