Degenatron

@Vancha

1. It's not 2002 anymore. Anything higher than a 50ping is an "HPB" these days.

2. Don't hurt your arm patting yourself on the back. If you think SOPA or ACTA are dead, don't bet on it. They've been shelved until no one is looking - that's the way Congress works. As for Net Neutrality - pfft, you think Hollywood has a lot of money to throw at Congress? That's nothing compared to the Telecommuncations industry. Money talks whether you like it or not.

3. Nations seperate themselves. This moves makes good logistical sense. It allows SEo to license to IP out to a third party and let them take on the tasks of managing the infrastructure and localizing the content.

The bottom line comes down to "How much money are all of you willing to pull out of your pockets to maintain the status quo. Just because something was free yesterday doesn't mean it's going to be free tomorrow. You can expect that if SOE reverses course on this, then it will end up hitting us all in the pocketbook eventually. Costs get passed down.

Am I REALLY the only one who sees this as a good thing?!

I have absolutely NO problem with SOE splitting the playerbase along international boundries - in fact, it's long-time overdue. It also speaks to a more realistics and sustainable long-term plan.

"OMG D-Gen! How can you be so STUPID?!" is probably what you are thinking right now.

Allow me to explain: I don't play EQ, or SWG, or any other the legacy MMOs from SOE - save ONE: Planetside. Why? Because it's a twitch-based FPS. A game which relies on low pings. With Planetside 2 on the way, this is GOOD NEWS to me. It means that the players I'm going to playing with and against aren't going to be stutter lag-monsters.

There is another factor that no one is taking into account: The end of Net-Nutrality. It's coming. Faster than people think. And what it means to service providers (like SOE, Netflix, Blizzard, who transmit massive amount of data to and from central servers) is that to control their costs, they MUST limit transcontinental communications. As SOE's games go Free-2-play, they are going to be spending tons of cash just to allow players to connect to their servers for free.

So, SOE has a choice: Go F2P and split their markets - or charge subscription fees on the order of $30~$40 a month. How's THAT sound? Not so good, huh?

Frankly, this is why people sometimes have to be MADE to do things: Because they just want what FEELS good now, not what's actually best for them, especially when it requires looking at future consequences. And now this community outrage is backing SOE into a corner, which will eventually force them to NOT take the needed steps now when it can mitigate our costs and disruptions - and will instead maximize the suffering of the community, because THAT'S what the community "wants".

"This job would be great if it weren't for the customers." - Sony

It looks interesting. I'll keep an open mind and give it a try.

It is rather disconcerting to hear the dev talk about "buying armor piercing rounds" from a cash shop. Sounds a lot like WoT Gold Ammo to me.

And the random spin on which player character you get? That’s not going to get people to stay very long if they can’t choose a class that fits their play-style.

Nice meaty interview Jeff! Keep ‘em coming.

D-Gen

@Jef Reahard

Haters are gonna hate and Trolls are gonna troll.

Some comments don't deserve a reply.

Personally, I appreciate the art of dropping quotes into posts and using their original context to enhance the intended message. Unfortunately, not everyone can grasp the connection.

Keep up the good work!

@Dumac

"Not being able to get rid of your enemy" goes both ways. It a;so ensures that your team cannot be eradicated from the field of play. People never seem to grsp both sides of that equation. Being vanquished is the kind of experience that causes people to log off.

Conversely, there IS a "Victory Condition", and that is to drive the enemies back into their base and own bases. The trick is that you don't get to just "call it a day" once you've won. You MUST put guards on the boarder to stop the enemy from resurging back into your territory.

People seem to think that the only fun availible in an FPS is to attack. And while I agree that crushing your enemies and seeing them driven before you (and hearing lamentations of their women) is super-awesome, it is not what's really Best In Life. What's REALLY best in life is to stand your post on the wall and destroy the onslaught of barbarians, holding the line, and defending your homeland. There is a "Victory Condition" that I sincerely hope will be possible in PS2 (unlike PS1).

"Wave after wave of Persian attack will smash against Spartan shields. Xerxes' losses will be so great, his men so demoralized he will have no choice but to abandon his campaign." - King Leonidas

First, let me say that this is THE GAME I've been waiting for. For the last six or seven years I've wondered why no one else tried to emulate what SOE had achomplished. When PS2 was officially announced and that it was stated that current subscribers would get a first shot at the new game, I went emmediately to SOE, repurchased Planetside and renewed my subscription. For those of you who like math, that means that to date, I've paid just over $120 just for the POSSIBILITY of getting into the PS2 beta. Yea, it means THAT much to me.

I did play again and I was pleasantly suprised by what I found. A decided lack of BFRs on the battlefield. Unlike Jef, there was a very specific moment in the history of Auraxis that made me leave and not come back. It was the moment I rolled out of a base in my lightning to see SIX enemy BFRs standing on the horizon and no a single sole in a tank, or a buggy, or on foot. I was promptly engaged and destroyed within seconds, and to me, that was the death of Planetside.

Everything Jef mentioned in "The Bad" was never a problem for me, although he echos the sentiments of many who played and left the game. Planetside requires a special mentality: "It's not the destination, it's the journey that counts." That applies to many of the complaints. For example, the bases in ps1 ARE repetative (every Biolab looks like every single other Biolab), but the way in which each attack played out is never the same (some will debate that on a macro level, but I'm speaking from the micro perspective). I can garantee that if this was a problem for you in ps1, it will be a problem for you again in ps2. At some point, you will have seen every single base (even if every single one has a different layout) and you will have fought over "the same old ground" hundreds of times. It is inevitable - the "New" will wear off.

The same can be applied to the concept of an "End Game". I was one of the few who staunchly opposed the idea of an End Game. The reason is simple, I can imagine losing. Whenever someone bemoaned the lack of an end game, it was always from the perspective of a potential winner - driving the accursed enemy before them, chasing them back into their sanctuary, and engaging in a whole-sale slaughter, eradicating that enemy "forever". No one ever thought about what it would be like on the other side of that equation, crushed out of existance by sheer numbers as disenchanted allies logged off and being forced to choose whether to join one of your sworn enemies or just log out until the servers reset. And the idea of the scheduled reset of the server has all of the appeal of having a fully loaded baby diaper mashed in my face. That's NOT what MMOs do.

The goal should always be to fight. Why are we fighting? To kill the enemy. I never needed anything more than that.

As to "The Worrisome" I have to admit the I too was deeply concerned about the F2P model. I came to terms with it in an apiphany that seems so simple now. I'm paying a subscription fee now for PS1; I'll simply roll that into PS2 as either a "purchasing budget" or the "premium account". Whatever they do, I'll adapt to it. And once my personal piece was made with it, I saw the logic in the F2P - Planetside NEEDS bodies on the field. The best way to do that is to get them in for free. I'm OK with that. The Free-Scrubs will be crushed under my well-polished NC boot.

And to the "controversial" choice of the dev team to go with a Class-Based system. I'd like to toot my own horn on this one for calling it in 2004 with this post on the Planetside Forums:

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps/posts/list.m?topic_id=300103099

In it, I discussed the need for the PS Dev team to reverse their course of making the game "more deathmatch" and turning it back to Specialization-based Squad interdendence, chiefly by cutting the then maximum cert points from 23 down to 12. An idea that was generally hated by most (you'll see if you read the thread) but that I STRONGLY feel is absolutely needed to extend the replay value of the game as a whole. This move from an extremely soft-class based game in which every soldier is a carbon-copy swiss-army knofe into a more hard-classed game which forces specialization and interdependance is a GOOD thing, even though many will disagree with it until they experience it. Most see this as a "your taking things away from me" issue, and not a "you're providing me with a wider range of infantry target types that have much more easily recognizable silouettes" thing. The difference is Quake vs Team Fortress 2. In quake, they all look the same and could be packing anything. In TF2, you can tell at a glance what type of foe you are looking at and have a rough idea of what they'll be carrying and their attack style. The latter of the two work far better in a team-base tactic driven FPS - especially one with hundreds, if not thousands of players on the battlefield at once.

Get your popcorn ready, it's gonna be one heluva show!

@Unshra I totally agree with you about the idea that Sony should be pushing this engine out to the world. It looks FANTASTIC! The shot of the night-time straffing run by the VS Scythe with the light-sourced ordinance is jaw-dropping.

I can't help but think "What OTHER games would be amazing if they feature huge open world enviroments with a thousand players simultaniously connected in a single instance....geez, what game WOULDN'T be more awesome?" But SOE, if you are looking for some especially low-hanging fruit, I'd say look no further that the luke-warm reception given to Test Drive Unlimited 2 (a game I personally LOVE). Among the many complaints from the die-hard fans of that franchise was the 8-player capped, client instanced online play. I see huge opportunity there for an SOE title that could easily one up (two up, three up) TDU2 simply by creating a huge enviroment with hundreds of drivers online together at once. Add in a F2P model based around car customization and you're looking at a cash-cow. (Hint Hint Sony)

But back on topic, this video makes me scream "MOOOOOOARRRRRRR!" at the screen. SOE has something special here and I can't wait to get my hands on it! Big thanks to the SOE PS2 Team for working so hard and making a faithful redux of a game we love so much. And also big thanks to Sony for having the vision to back this project. And finally, big thanks to PSU and Jef for beating the bushes to find these delicious tid-bits of ingame footage!

D-Gen

Plantside Universe scored the first in-game footage of PS2 during their Podcast. While the video is low quality FaceTime video from an iPad, it was still drool inducing to those of us who are eager awaiting PS2.

Linky goodness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-tkfJV62ao

Definitely news worthy imho. The Forgelight Engine is looking like it may be a beast. If it delivers on the promises made by the Devs, I can see it revolutionizing the entire MMO Genre.

I enjoy GA quite a bit. My favorite aspect of the game is the PvE content. While the missions can get a bit repetative, they hold their fun especially in the high-level missions and a good team.

The PvP matches were always just "Meh" to me. They weren't BAD, but they weren't especially good either. It just felt like TF2 modded with a "spacemen" theme. I kept expecting my medic to yell "Get on zee point, dummkopfs!"

Hi-Rez did an excellent job of balancing out the classes and matches and the only thing that would really bring you down is the competency level of your team.

I still enjoy the raids most of all. They really get people talking in the vox and working together - much like the way Left 4 Dead made people communicate with one another or fail miserably.

If I had only one mojor complaint, it's that Hi-Rez promised massive open worlds with more than just a few players instanced in them, but then turned around and said "Oops, that's impossible! We're going to make Tribes now." It pointed to Hi-Rez's lack of long term planning for the title, and felt to many like they were abandoning the title shortly after release (which isn't true - they have continued to produce large amounts of content - just nothing that would support what I call "Massive" gameplay - yea, I'm one of THOSE guys.) Tribes looks good, and I hope they do well with it. I only hope they look farhter down the road than they did with Global Agenda.

One other nit-picky complaint about Global Agenda is that it didn't feel very GLOBAL. There was an oportunity to really stretch their legs in the level design department built right into the name, but they never strayed away from the 3 main environments: Desert, Ice, Future City. Maybe someday they will have Domes in different parts of the world with totally different enviroments surrounding them and missions to go with them...but I'm not holding my breathe.