PlanetSide 2 has been very good (or at least very impressive) for quite some time, but no one can deny that it continues to be a work-in-progress. It’s a massive, multicolored jelly bean bowl of coordinated carnage, yes, but when you’re not rolling with friends or a full-blown outfit, the whole experience can be a bit aimless. The solution? Well, SOE seems to think it’s a mission system, but that too is a work-in-progress. The imposingly named Phase One is now live.

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If you haven’t already heard, we’re at war. Eternal war, truth be told, but of a friendly, (typically) only virtually fatal sort with the PC Gamer lot and also everyone else who’s ever played PlanetSide 2. You can enlist right here for a giant community play session that’s kicking off at 12:30 PM PT/7:30 PM GMT, but if you’d rather not risk life and level one limb, there’s another option. You can watch me, a person who has never played PlanetSide 2, attempt to be some kind of war correspondent. On the docket: witnessing spectacular catastrophe firsthand, stumbling around and dying a lot, and then probably interviewing key players on all sides after they’ve emerged from the carnage. I honestly have no idea if this will be any good, but let’s find out together, like a big, argumentative family on a Sunday picnic – only with more, you know, war.>

Update: We’re done! What an insane, nearly overwhelming game. Absurdly strategic and fascinating, though. You can watch the whole thing below.

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The jungle territory of Hossin won’t arrive in Planetside 2 until May but the Amerish region is changing right now>. A major revamp was implemented just before the weekend, adding nine new outposts and redesigning those that were already in place. Most significantly, perhaps, the Lattice System is now in play on Amerish, meaning that conquest of outposts must be conducted along supply routes, as on Indar and Esamir. A more strategic first-person space-biff awaits. There are other tweaks as well, including an increase in resource rewards and improved roads. The appearance of the continent has changed as well. Judging by the before and after shots in the video below, the forests and mountains no longer look like they’ve been plucked from Earth. It’s all a bit more sci-fi.

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It’s the greatest tragedy of our capitalist system that our economy can’t yet support a world in which I just sit around all day and play PlanetSide 2. Instead I need to live with the guilt of never playing it enough, and assuage that guilt by writing about it coming updates. The game’s public roadmap was just updated to outline the next six months of development, and it looks like the massive, multiplayer shooter will be getting a new continent called Hossin in May. (more…)

A modern first-person shooter without a slow-burning, arsenal-amassing progression system is like a clown without big, poofy pants. The absence is glaringly noticeable, and then someone gets arrested for public indecency. PlanetSide 2‘s equivalent of that is the cert system, but in a game that’s just as much an MMO as it is a shooter, that poses some continent-sized content issues. This isn’t Call of Duty. There isn’t a new treadmill to hop onto every year. SOE, then, wants to get off the oh-so-trendy gear-and-guns train entirely with additional, entirely separate means of progression.

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If I didn’t know any better, I’d say SOE wanted to keep PlanetSide 2 all to itself. That would explain why the technicolor dream MMOFPS has been the stuff of mid (and even some high) range rigs’ nightmares since day one. But then, nobody likes the idea of being desperately poor and> all alone forever, so I’m guessing SOE just made a gigantic boo-boo on its priority list. But now, finally, it’s managed to set all of that right with a huge optimization patch. If your machine choked, sputtered, and excused itself from the table (or life) after trying a bite of PlanetSide 2, now might be the time to give it another go.

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… but you should watch it, anyway. In my very casual time with Planetside 2, I haven’t ran into that many egregious technical troubles. I think I must be in the minority, or perhaps even the only person who hasn’t had his game hitch or crash or exhibit any slowdown, because SOE has (virtually) downed tools on a lot of content updates to focus on making the game run better. They’re also documenting this process for the fans in least visually exciting gaming video series, ever>. You know how seriously they’re taking this when they have a game with Planetside 2′s visual oomph but put out a video of people talking in a room. Operation: Make Faster Game’s (O:MFG) first video is below. (more…)