Planetside

[bamcgee]

Anyone taken the plunge on this one yet? It's now available for free in the final weeks of beta testing.

After messing around with it for a few days, I'm pretty impressed. I'm not a veteran of Everquest or other persistent online games, so this was all pretty new to me - maybe I'm easily impressed.

The graphics were decent to good, there were some good weapons variations, the balance was there.

On the critical side, the game was almost too big. Without a vehicle, going from place to place was a slow, boring process. However, you can't drive a vehicle until you get experience and purchase a certification. You can't get decent experience without joining a squad, but nobody wants a weak-kneed newbie like myself on their squad. I didn't see anyway I could request to join a previously created squad - I either had to be asked or start my own. So I would just select "instant action" and enjoy watching my little fella get blasted.

Plus, the game might have leadership from a squad setting, but any good army needs an executive staff. It seemed nobody was playing with an eye towards the rather complicated process of taking over the continent. It was more a series of individual battles within facilities. I don't know how it could be done, but somebody needs to play as a general, set up waypoints, priorities, etc.

Anybody else tried this out? Would you pay a monthly fee for it? Any handy tips for new players?

[sabotai]

I've tried to try it, but the wait at fileplanet is always too long...

[Nyarlahotep]

A bunch of guys from my SWG guild play it. I didn't really like it enough to spend much time with it.

[Neuqua]

I'm going to try downloading it now. I need to garner up some kind of MMORPG experience as I await the arrival of SWG.