Three-way mega-battle FPS MMO PlanetSide 2 is about to unveil another big update. The Shattered Warpgate will introduce hazardous storms to one of its maps and some new equipment, but most importantly, a campaign.

Its big update back in March, Escalation, bought thousands of players back, but where that was focused largely on organised groups of experienced players, Rogue Games’ Andy Sites declared that “our goal for The Shattered Warpgate was to improve the experience for a much broader audience”. Central to that goal is a series of campaign missions, and a host of smaller side quests that will reward more of PlanetSide’s many playstyles, even if all you’re interested in is driving around for a while.

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Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. That s the sound of your alarm, it s Delay o clock. PlanetSide Arena, the battle royale made from the bones and skin of quite-large multiplayer shooter PlanetSide 2, has been delayed. It was supposed to zip straight to a full release next Tuesday, January 29. But developers Daybreak send word that it s been knocked back a couple of months. To needlessly keep up the alarm clock metaphor, they woke up and slammed the snooze button. But, ach sure, don’t we all?

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The sci-fi generals of Planetside 2 s never-ending conflict will be waging a new kind of war early next year. Planetside Arena is a battle royale shoot-the-lads that will launch as a full game on January 29, developers Daybreak are telling everyone today. It s going to have a shrinking battleground, reworked guns, spacebucks, jetpacks, orbital strikes and big group matches that see 250 boots-on-the-ground shooting at 250 other boots-on-the-ground. Also, everybody has a quad in their pocket that they can whip out whenever they want and drive across the hills.

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The endless open-world war of PlanetSide 2 will add a fourth faction who switch sides, mercenaries who will fight for whichever proper faction has the fewest active players on the battlefield. The robotic Nanite Systems Operatives sound a neat idea, keeping the war lively while also reducing faction queue times and giving lone wolf players an option to always play on their back foot and fight fight fight. You’ll need to pay the MMOFPS’s optional subscription service to play as a mechanical man, mind.

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It’s been a while since I’ve dusted off PlanetSide 2 [official site], admittedly. When I last played Daybreak’s mega-scale FPS for any length of time they had only just recently introduced base-building to the game, with the resoruce-carrying ANT units returning from the original PlanetSide. With the release of the massive Critical Mass update this week (the first major overhaul of 2017), they’ve introduced sweeping changes to the balance, including how infantry and vehicles interact, but most notably changing the overall flow of the game and concluding the battle for each continent with one last massive all-in fight.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Pew pew pew. Zap zap. EXPLODE.> Those are the sounds of Planetside 2 [official site] which is a videogame you may have heard about. … [visit site to read more]

Construction arrived in PlanetSide 2 [official site] this week, letting players build their own little bases. If you’ve been hoping to build a quiet little get-away spot, put up a shed, set out a few lawn chairs, fire up the barbie… yeah, that won’t happen. Especially given the sort of people pootling around, tooled up and looking for trouble. No, this is warconstruction, letting players build little warbases as waroutposts and even to help contribute victory points to the free-to-play MMOFPS’s wareffort.

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Ridealong is our regular feature where Brendan travels deep into game worlds to meet, question and journey with the inhabitants that dwell within. This month, he visits the war-torn plains of Planetside 2 [official site] and meets the commanders still fighting for prestige, glory and XP in a war that can never be won.>

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Light a candle for the genre, it’s basically done. Oh, it’ll keep ticking along, of course. This month we’ve seen Black Desert Online, there’s others on the way, and there’ll always be some audience for both the mostly Korean-born clickers and the occasional new idea. Personally I’m hoping for City of Titans to scratch that superhero itch that Champions Online sure as heck can’t, and for Shroud of the Avatar to bring back some of that Ultima magic. (Take a shot.) But as a genre to actively watch for cool stuff? Stick a fork in it. Sony- sorry, Daybreak was pretty much the last great hope of breathing life into it in any form remotely close to how Everquest did it back in the day, never mind giving it back the cultural clout from World of Warcraft’s heyday.

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