Introductions

Hey there internet, and welcome to Making Planet Fall, my new blog. My name is Rob. I'm a gaming enthusiast, Planetside newbie, and writing hobbyist - and this blog is a combination of all those things and more! 

Now, like I said, I'm pretty much a newbie to Planetside, truth is, I only just found out about the upcoming game about a month ago. But I know a good thing when I see it, and I've been so captured by what I've seen (for a variety of reasons we're going to explore,) that I just had to write about it.

Infantry Online

I may not have played Planetside 1, but that doesn't mean I didn't know about it. Back about ten years ago now, you could have found me playing one of SOE's first games, a little title called Infantry Online. Now Infantry was a top down, isometric, multiplayer game, built on affectively the same principles as Planetside. In fact, if you look at the class system Planetside 2 is making use of, it's pretty much taken right from Infantry, with entries like the Infiltrator, Engineer, Heavy Assault all appearing verbatim, with similar rolls and abilities. Basically, Infantry was the spiritual predecessor to Planetside. But ten years ago I was in high school, and as awesome as a persistent world MMOFPS based off one of my favorite games sounded, a pay to play game was a hard sell back then, and I didn't bite. It's more than ten years later now though, the gaming landscape has changed, and I'm thinking Planetside 2 is uniquely positioned to take advantage of those changes.

What does this mean for anyone reading my blog? For starters, it means that my opinions on PS2 aren't going to be affected by my fond sense of nostalgia for the original, and from where I'm sitting, that's looking like sort of a big deal. See, when I found out about PS2, I was hooked right from the start. I began to consume every scrap of media I could on the subject. I started with the official web page, and their press release videos. Soon I found myself watching the GDC gameplay footage, SOE community videos, press interviews from GDC and PAX, even some pretty obscure personal interviews. Before long though, I had run out of the juicy stuff, and I began to dig around for community sites. Now anyone who has looked for a Planetside community site will tell you, there's really only one, and that's Planetside Universe. But the PSU community is sort of a double edged sword. See, every last one of these guys are veterans of the first Planetside, and that lends them a lot of practical experience, but it also subjects them to a huge historical bias. Even at that, the PSU community is unrivaled for it's quality news and discourse on all things Planetside, and it's definitely worth your time, just don't be surprised if some of the members over there cry foul when they see some of the new gameplay innovations SOE is building in.

The Lightning

So where do we sit right now? Planetside 2 is currently in it's Alpha state, but even at that, it's looking gorgeous. The Beta seems to be lingering just over the horizon, and the developers are priming for E3 next month. Speaking of which, I've never seen a development team like this one, and they are without a doubt one of the reasons I've gotten so thoroughly hooked. As I said, I'm a gaming enthusiast, and I keep up with all aspects of the hobby, including production - and never before have I seen a dev team so involved with their community, it's really something else. Later on I'm going to take some time to talk about these guys in greater detail, because frankly, every game should be so lucky to have a team of people who take such evident pride in what they're doing.

It's an exciting time for Planetside fans, and I'm thrilled to have such a content rich subject to write about. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be refining the layout, and nailing down a format for my posts - currently I'm thinking a regular weekly article, with news updates in-between for anything worth sharing. So if you're like me, and you just can't get enough of Planetside 2, keep an eye on this blog, and hopefully I can help keep you informed - maybe even entertained, as we all wait patiently.

That's it for me today folks, I'll be back soon. Take it easy!

- Rob