We had the opportunity to get PlanetSide 2 information straight from the team. Read on for all the features!




Sony Online Entertainment unveiled PlanetSide 2 at the Fan Faire community address
last night, and we had the chance to attend a follow-up press
conference with members of the team to get more details on the upcoming
game. SOE President John Smedley and PlanetSide 2 Creative Director Matt
Higby emphasized that the game is a true MMOFPS full of huge battles in
a persistent world. “The number one design goal is to deliver on
massive warfare,” Higby said.

Keep reading after the jump for a rundown on all of PlanetSide 2’s features!

UPDATE: The day after this press
conference, the PlanetSide 2 team answered questions from players at a
Fan Faire panel. After you've read this article, be sure to check out our overview of the PlanetSide 2 panel for even more details!

Pricing structure and launch date

Let’s get this out of the way right now: SOE is not
talking about the launch date and pricing structure yet. Smedley hinted
that “there will be a free component to it,” but that’s about it. He
also announced that they plan to publicly release their three-year plan
for the game so players can provide feedback. “Most MMOs go out with an
expansion at a time. We want to give players an idea of what we're
thinking,” he said, noting it’s going to be a sandbox game.



Battle for territories and resources on huge persistent maps

The core gameplay for PlanetSide 2 is about holding
key territories and controlling resources, which will be used to
accomplish goals such as upgrading weapons. Players will be attempting
to capture every piece of a territory on several continent maps to gain
resources for themselves, as well as their empire and outfit (guild).
“Resources are sort of a new impetus for content and combat. They’re
more of a motivation for players to be fighting,” Higby said. Resources
are spread out, so you might have to travel around the continents to
find specific ones.

Higby emphasized that the game is set in a
persistent world. “That territory you capture is yours until you take it
back,” he said, which means battles can last for days or weeks. He also
mentioned that “the amount of players that will be able to fit in a
PlanetSide 2 map and have meaningful interaction and gameplay is going
to be much larger."

When asked if there will be instances, Smedley
enthusiastically said, “hell no!” He also said they want the framerate
to run extremely well on low-end computers. "We want to achieve speed.
We’ll take speed over beauty any time,” he said.



Empires, classes and skill trees

Players will have their choice to join three
different empires, including Terran Republic, New Conglomerate and Vanu
Sovereignty. Each empire will have a different tactic and strategy,
which adds to the game’s customization options.

PlanetSide 2’s classes and skill trees go hand in
hand. Players will be able to unlock diverse combat roles by advancing
through the skill tree, including several classic roles from PlanetSide.
As players unlock new roles, they will be able to switch between them
at will. Each combat role, vehicle and weapon will have extensive skill
trees, which will allow players to unlock weapons, attachments,
equipment, specialized skills and more.



The skill tree will feature a time-based unlock
system, similar to EVE Online. Players can select the skills they want
to level up and queue for 24 hours worth of skills. Based on your
activity, the speed at which points are added to your skills will
increase. This rewards active players for playing the game. So why add
offline skilling? The team wants to make sure that players are able to
keep up with their friends. It also helps ensure that big battles can
happen since everyone is getting upgrades.


Weapons and vehicles

Players will be able to access more than 20 basic
weapons, which can be customized to players’ preference or purpose. The
game will have a total of 15 vehicles, with two unique vehicles per
empire. Players will be able to customize each vehicle, unlocking new
skills and features. “The vehicles are all simultaneous,” Higby said.
“We can have a grasslands map where tanks are the way you capture
territory. Likewise with air vehicles. We could have mountainous terrain
and now the conquest gameplay is about air vehicles.”

Miscellaneous details

• The game will include an extensive mission system. It will give new
  players initial direction, and veteran players the ability to coordinate
  assaults.
  
• According to Smedley, the team wants to “take the good parts of
  PlanetSide and make them better, and get rid of the bad parts." He
  mentioned that one of the bad parts about PlanetSide was the inability
  to spawn wherever you want.
  
• Smedley said the game will be a sandbox, similar to Star Wars
  Galaxies and EVE Online. Smedley mentioned player-run towns and a
  dynamic player economy as examples of sandbox features.
  
• The PlanetSide 2 story is a "reimagining of PlanetSide," Higby said,
  noting there is definitely a backstory. The empires will have lore tied
  to them.
  
• SOE wants fansites to be able to mine data from PlanetSide 2.
  
• Players will be able to communicate with their squads both through keyboard and Vivox voice chat.
  
• Smedley: “Skill is key!”
  

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the first PlanetSide 2 gameplay
trailer that was released last night at the community address:

Game has been released
It is f2P so for those interested in this FPSMMO feel free to check it out

your playing it?

It's a shooter game a la battlefield but bigger and persistent
Anyway I messed with it for a bit, but shooters just can't keep me entertained

I actually just started up The Secret World myself, 2 days ago
Short term it's very entertaining, no levels, awesome missions, I like the way setting up skills works
Long term I don't think they have it fixed yet, but too soon for me to say, it sure gonna last me a couple of weeks and probably longer

I actually like this game.
They got a nice class system, you can always change your class on those terminals and adept to certain situations.
I like to play the engineer class, they got those dirty claymore mines and always make me smile when someone gets blown up by it :p
But I gotta say this game can sometimes be very frustrating, pretty much like any shooter game.
Anyways, it's a nice game to kill some time!

Yeah it's a great game if you like shooters/battlefield.

Although some mmo tactics work here as well
Like you can zerg things unlike other shooters, due to the amount of people and the sizes of the map.
(so if you suck big time at shooters you could still get stuff done, but don't think the game would last long for ya)

i like this game as well but it definitely needs a guild or at least friends playing together to keep it interesting. can we turn aeth into a fps guild!?