“I’ve said before that while 2012 was the year that Planetside 2 launched, 2013 is the year when we’re opening up the afterburners and aiming for the stars. After a well earned rest the team is energized and ready to get back to ‘kicking *** and fixing bugs. And we’re all ou–‘ er, oh yeah, okay, we’ve still got some bugs to fix.”

Those words come courtesy of Planetside 2 creative director Matt Higby. They serve as a preface to a post Higby recently wrote on the Planetside Universe forums which details the upcoming patch scheduled to hit the MMO at some point before the end of January. The list of changes and alterations made by SOE in this addition are pretty sizable, so let’s take a look at the list and see what jumps out at us:

Higby additionally claims that the patch includes “lots of bug fixes,” though after reading the above bullet points we’re far more intrigued by two particular entries: namely the addition of a new submachine gun and those listed changes to the game’s user interface.

The first point stands out for one simple reason: Planetside 2 has been lambasted by fans since its debut for including too few weapons. SOE has long claimed that it would be adding weapons and vehicles to the game as time goes on, yet to date we’ve seen little progress on that front. The addition of a new submachine gun to each of the game’s three factions won’t upset game balance and is unlikely to make other weapons obsolete, yet it shows that SOE is dedicated to expanding Planetside 2 for at least the foreseeable future. Plus, new toys to shoot at other virtual soldiers are always welcome.

We see those UI changes, by contrast, as an indication that while SOE has publicly banned any and all modifications to the Planetside 2 client, at least it realizes that people will always want to expand and improve on a game’s default user interface. Any changes SOE makes will likely pale next to the alterations that could be achieved by a third-party modification, but at least the company is throwing players a bone by changing the game’s UI to be more user-friendly. We’d still prefer the option to mod the game, but at least this is something, right?