Sony have released three trailers (captured and laid out for your interrogation below) detailing the factions in their free-to-pew MMOFPS Planetside 2. Crudely speaking these are the red dudes, the purple dudes, and the blue dudes. But it’s more subtle than that: the blue dudes also have some yellow detailing, while the red guys actually have a lot of black in their uniform. Also, there’s some kind of underlying political battle-philosophy. My battle-philosophy is that I’d rather die wearing shiny purple war-trousers.

What’s yours? (more…)

These days, when an MMO maker declares its intention to carry on until the day the sun reveals it’s actually been a giant Pac-Man the entire time and devours us all in one fell wakka, it’s easy to be skeptical. Extremely skeptical. But PlanetSide 2 seems to be off to an especially strong start, and no one ever got anywhere – except maybe off the edge of a cliff – by being shortsighted. And so, in a blog post outlining his three-year plan for the truly massive MMOFPS, CEO John Smedley explained that “we’re thinking about a game we plan to have running in 2025.” Which, as you may have noticed, is a bit more than three years from now. But that comparatively short span is the part SOE’s really> focusing on, and by the end of it, Smedley’s hoping for player-owned bases, harvestable resources, seamless oceans between continents, NPC armies>, and tons more.

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As you may have noticed, Jim’s been quite taken by PlanetSide 2. And when Jim gets taken by something, we at RPS make a policy of paying attention - even when that thing’s not some form of megalomaniacal game journo kidnapper. But, in spite of the supermassive time black hole’s distinctly PC lineage, mods have always been out of the question. Obviously, adding weapons and new shades of purple willy nilly would destroy the game, but what of simple interface tweaks and usability apps? Turns out, they’re also completely, 100 percent off-limits. But why? Well, the short version is – somewhat predictably – cheating.

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I thought I’d just drop into Planetside 2 on Sunday afternoon. Four hours later…>

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I’ve been playing lots of lovely fresh organic Planetside 2. Sometimes during this process my eyebrows were raised. Sometimes they were furrowed in a frown. Other times they were sort of neutral. And other times still they were gyrating up and down like tiny face-wings.

What does this mix of expressions mean? I’ll tell you>. (more…)

Do you have plans for this evening? Do you have plans for any evening in the next, um, forever? Well, cancel them, because it’s time for war>. RPS wants you – yes, you, with the hair and/or complete lack of it – to enlist today and help us fight the good fight for all that is free and purple in PlanetSide 2. Can you do that? Can we count on you? Because we don’t have the budget for a bunch of rah-rah-rah propaganda posters and videos. Sometimes, instead of eating food, we just eat pictures of food. But we do have this launch trailer. Well, for now, anyway. I can’t promise I won’t eat it.

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