Tag Archives: PC

Allied Races

With the recent reveal of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight I started thinking about how much I missed WoW. As many MMOs as I’ve played, I still love the high standard of polish that, until relatively recently, I associated with Blizzard games, I still love how buttery smooth the game feels, and most of all, I still love the core lore of the Warcraft franchise.

Raining hell with Gallywix's G.M.O.D.
“Raining hell with Gallywix’s G.M.O.D.”

Against my better judgment, I hopped back into “retail” restarting an unfortunate cycle that I’ve been stuck on for quite a few years now. That is, when a new expansion is announced I get hyped up for it, reactivate my account, and try to catch up on the previous expansion’s content until I get burnt out again, usually just before (or just after) the new expansion actually launches. Case in point, I logged in to discover my “main” still where I left him when I got burnt out at the end of the Battle for Azeroth Alliance campaign, and my new Horde “alt” that I created when Shadowlands was announced that I had created to familiarize myself with the changes to the game before diving back in with my main, left in the middle of a zone less than half way through the Battle for Azeroth Horde campaign. Doh.

This time would be different though. This time I had a goal: allied races. Allied races are a feature that was added to the game with the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Essentially, Blizzard added what would eventually become 5 new races per faction. Most of these new races were more or less reskins of existing races, but alas, as someone who likes to stand out in my online games, I was very interested. Unfortunately these races needed to be individually unlocked through achievements which almost all included lengthy quest lines and/or reputation grinds. Still, I figured I could focus on a few of the ones I was most interested in. That never happened.

With Shadowlands, the reputation grinds were removed and the option was added to simply skip quests that required dungeon content. Nice! I decided I would make it my goal with this return to Azeroth to not unlock one, but all of the allied races.

I wish I had kept a more detailed journal of my progress, as it occurs to me now that this could actually be pretty helpful to a lot of people. I can at least recount the journey in general. First, one small tip. The addon BtWQuests can be extremely useful for keeping track of the multiple questlines required to unlock each races. Even using it, things still got a little confusing for certain quest lines and achievements, so I can’t recommend it enough. You’ll need both the Battle for Azeroth and Legion versions. Anyway, here’s how it went…

All allied races unlocked! A Mag’har Shaman on display.
“All allied races unlocked! A Mag’har Shaman on display.”

First I returned to my main Horde alt. I picked a Hunter for this class specifically because of how easy yet capable they are to play, so this character was the logical selection for getting re-reacquainted with the game without rolling yet another new character. First, I realized that I was already eligible to unlock the Highmountain Tauren due to questing in that zone in Legion with my main. Next I finished off my questing in Nazmir and then headed to Vuldun and more or less finished off the base Horde campaign. The Vulpera were unlocked from that alone. Then I finished the base Horde war campaign plus some of the later war campaigns to complete Tides of Vengeance, and then completed the final Zuldazar quests, unlocking the Zandalari Trolls. I’d already completed Ready for War on my main, and finishing it off for my Horde character meant I also unlocked the Mag’har Orcs.

Finally, the most grueling part of this was heading back to the Broken Isles from Legion to unlock the Nightborne. I had never played through Suramar back when Legion was current, nor had this character ever set foot in the Broken Isles, so I had to essentially start from the beginning and go through innumerable quests with sometimes little to no “breadcrumbing” to follow. I did encounter one reputation gate, which was with the quest “Uniting the Isles” which requires you to get to friendly with all of the major factions of the Legion campaign. Luckily with flying unlocked, it was quite quick to head to each zone and grind quests for just long enough to hit friendly, with only Stormheim giving me any issues. Despite how much effort the “Insurrection” achievement took, I actually really enjoyed the lore behind the Suramar questlines, never mind the unique city itself.

Victorious, I headed back to my old main and went with a similar strategy. I’d go ahead and finish off the base Alliance campaign by completing the last little bits of Stormsong Valley. I’d already earned Ready for War on this character, so the Dark Iron Dwarves were available without any real work. I then finished off the war campaign and portions of the later war campaigns for Tides of Vengeance, then completed the final Tiragarde Sound quest lines to at last unlock the Kul Tiran Humans. Next I learned I needed to play through a good part of Nazjatar in order to unlock the quest to get me to Mechagon Island. I’d never seen either of these zones when originally playing Battle for Azeroth so this was an interesting diversion and I’m tempted to return to finish both zone’s quests, but it didn’t take too long before I had Mechagnomes unlocked.

The Kul Tiran druid forms are some of the coolest.
“The Kul Tiran druid forms are some of the coolest.”

As with the Nightborne, I now had to head back to Dalaran to start the Legion Argus quest lines. At least this time between having played much of Legion previously on this character and having just completed some related quests on my Horde alt, I was able to head to Argus without too much effort. I hadn’t been to Argus before now, and always being intrigued by the Draenei, the Naaru, and the Light in general, I was looking forward to this, but found myself rushing to grind through these quests without too much investment in the story, unfortunately. Finally, completing most of this story granted the You Are Now Prepared! Achievement, unlocking both the Lightforged Draenei and the Void Elves.

Once you meet the requirements to unlock an allied race, you still need to do a questline associated with each one kicked off in the embassy in the capital cities of each faction. In some cases these are quite quick, while in some others they’re fairly involved, but none are difficult. Some, like the Vulpera’s for example, were quite fun, while others will be essential for lore nerds. Once completed you’ll unlock the race, their associated achievement, and be given their race specific mount. With that…

Success! So, what will I actually do with my new found power? Well, more alts of course! I actually had vague plans to play through some old campaigns a second time with some variety of Mag’har Orc, and a Lightforged or Dark Iron Paladin could be fun, but my immediate plans were for a Kul Tiran Druid and a Mechagnome Monk. In fact, I already started my Kul Tiran Druid and headed into the Legion campaign so I could jump right into the Druid class hall, which I’ve been enjoying immensely so far. When it comes to my Monk, I’ll likely bring him through the classic Catalyst zones since that particular ridiculous race and class combination seems hilariously incongruous there.

One thing is for sure, over a year and a half later and I still haven’t even stepped foot into Shadowlands yet. Maybe I’ll keep up with tradition and wait until just before Dragonflight is released. *shrug*

Halo Fest 2020 – Spartan Strike

I bet you thought this was going to be about Halo 5, didn’t you? Nope! We’re talking about the 2015 sequel to Spartan Assault, Halo: Spartan Strike! As with Spartan Assault, I didn’t know much about Spartan Strike before starting Halo Fest. Less so, in fact, given that it’s not even available for Xbox, sadly having never managed to make the leap from its original Windows and mobile versions. I honestly wasn’t even sure I was going to cover it because of that, but given how relatively small of a time commitment these games are coupled with the fact that both of them frequently go on sale on Steam for literally only a couple of bucks, I decided just to go for it.

Point holding in the steamy jungles of Gamma Halo.
“Point holding in the steamy jungles of Gamma Halo.”

So, this is the first time I played a game on PC for this series. That wouldn’t be too notable, but given that it’s a twin stick shooter and I’m playing with keyboard and mouse instead of, you know, twin sticks, it seems pertinent. Actually, the keyboard and mouse control scheme is totally fine; you move, change weapons and grenades, and interact with your keyboard, and target and fire with your mouse. The limited directional movement is a little awkward, but other than the lack of an analog stick for speed (which occasionally resulted in what I assume is a bug where my character would get stuck walking despite there being no way to make him move that slowly on purpose) it’s simple and intuitive enough. In fact, I think I might have preferred it – I felt more like I was playing a hybrid RTS, something like Dawn of War 2, than a twin stick shooter. My only real complaint was an inability to shoot for a few seconds after throwing a grenade most of the time. I don’t know if this was intentional or a bug, but it was jarring in either case.

Graphically, relatively little has changed since the previous game. I think the it looks just a bit more detailed than Spartan Assault, but that may have to do with the more interesting locations these operations are set in than anything technical. Outside of the action, Spartan Strike keeps the combination of motion comic style cutscenes narrated by the Infinity’s AI Roland for each operation while each mission is presented by a map and a text blurb that describes the scenario. While the mission briefings are somehow a step back, losing much of their flavor, the artwork used in the cutscenes this time around is pretty damn awesome. See the Promethean Knight screenshot below for an example. The soundtrack receives an upgrade too. It’s almost like the developers realized they actually hired a competent composer in Tom Salta after the first game’s reviews (and his excellent work on Halo 2: Anniversary) and decided to turn him up in the mix a bit. I found myself really noticing and appreciating a lot of the music here, perhaps a first since 343 took over the franchise.

Turrets and vehicle weapons no longer overheat. Great for me but not so much for these Covies.
“Turrets and vehicle weapons no longer overheat. Great for me but not so much for these Covies.”

Gameplay wise, Spartan Strike doesn’t veer too far from what its predecessor did. Only, between the mysterious Lt. Kwon keeping us company Cortana style (seriously, who is this person?) to the missions feeling both a bit more varied and a bit closer to a mainline Halo game in complexity, I actually enjoyed Spartan Strike just a bit more. The only downside to this added complexity is that without any way to save your progress during these missions, despite their relatively short length, dying near the end of one can be frustrating. Of course, there are the conventional changes too: more weapons, armor abilities, and vehicles, not to mention more enemies with the introduction of Prometheans to the mix. Despite all of the complaining I did about them in Halo 4, I actually really like the way the Prometheans and their gear were implemented here. It’s not all good news though. While they addressed something I complained about last time by finally introducing the Warthog to the game, the poor thing feels uncharacteristically slow and handles like a cinder block. Come to think of it, the Ghost is rather slow too, so perhaps this is some kind of a limitation of the engine?

Like Spartan Assault before it, Spartan Strike’s story takes place sometime after the end of the Requiem Campaign from Halo 4’s Spartan Ops and is framed around Spartans aboard the UNSC Infinity using a TACSIM training simulator to experience historical battles, only this time they’re extra secretive ones. OooOOooh! The first episode takes place during the events of Halo 2 while the rest take place around the events of Halo 4. In a big departure from the first game, you’re playing an anonymous SPARTAN-IV rather than a named character. In fact, in the first operation your character is standing-in for the squad of ODST who actually originally took part in the mission. Well, it is a simulation, I guess?

Guess whose back!
“Guess whose back!”

That being said, given that the story we’re actually focused on (the one being told via these simulations) takes place out of chronological order, I’ll go over the plot here. While I try to be somewhat vague with these summaries they do still contain spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid them.

The Story: In 2552 during the Battle of New Mombasa ODST squad Alpha-Five recovered a Covenant datapad containing details about a Forerunner artifact called the Conduit. Using the information on the datapad to track down the location of the Conduit, the team were able to eliminate a Sangheili Field Master and his retinue and acquire it. In the process of Alpha-Five transporting the artifact to safety, the Prophet of Regret’s carrier, the Solemn Penance, executed a low orbit slipspace jump over the city to devastating effect with the squad lost and the Conduit presumed destroyed. Five years later, researchers aboard Ivanoff Station detect what appears to be the Conduit’s signal on the surface of Gamma Halo. In response, the UNSC dispatches a SPARTAN-IV Headhunter to investigate. Discovering that Jul’Mdama’s Covenant faction is also on Installation 03, the Headhunter tracks the Conduit to a Forerunner facility called the Altar where the Covenant are using it to open slipspace portals to allow their Promethean allies to invade the ring. After a number of fierce skirmishes, the Headhunter is able to recover the Conduit and safely transport it off of the ring. Not long after, an urgent message is relayed from scientists at an ONI research facility in New Phoenix. The Covenant had activated the dormant slipspace portal the research facility was built around, with Covenant and Prometheans now pouring into the facility and surrounding city. Researchers believe that by using the Conduit they may be able to force the portal closed. Rushing back to Earth, the Headhunter is able to work with UNSC forces on the ground to secure access into the facility and ultimately halt the invasion, although the Conduit was once again lost in the effort.

I don’t have too much feedback to give about the story this time around. It’s fine. While there are aspects I don’t love (such as the Conduit’s all too convenient ability to teleport itself) I personally like that they’re trying to wedge the story into the existing events we know and love from the mainline campaigns, even if it does feel a little contrived at times. I mean, after enjoying Spartan Ops I’m definitely up for any inclusion of Jul’Mdama’s Covenant faction! I also believe this is the first time we’ve seen Spartan Headhunters featured in a game. Neat. As with Spartan Assault’s story, it’s really nothing too groundbreaking and while it might not do much to expand the Halo universe, it at least feels appropriately Halo-y and (as far as I know) doesn’t wreak havoc with the existing canon.

Obligatory tank screenshot. This time, starring the voluptuous M850 Grizzly.
“Obligatory tank screenshot. This time, starring the voluptuous M850 Grizzly.”

Finally, I have to mention Operation E: Brother’s Keeper. This the last operation in the campaign but it can only be unlocked by beating every mission in the game with a gold star rating. As with Spartan Assault, there is no difficulty level in Spartan Strike, rather you’re awarded a different star rating at the end of each mission depending on your score. The easiest way to ensure a good score is by earning medals, and the main way to earn medals is by chaining kills. Considering this is a game all about mowing down masses of enemies, that’s not a huge ask. The first time through the campaign I got gold stars on probably 65% of the missions, and half of the ones I didn’t, I was extremely close to. Irritated by needing to replay missions to progress, I almost didn’t bother with the last operation at all, but not focusing so much on the “Assault Ops” challenges I found that most of them were a cakewalk to get gold on the second time around. Those that weren’t, I just spent my pool of otherwise unused credits on “score boosters” for. The operation itself though? The action was fine, but instead of a “real ending” or some kind of epilogue, the story was an odd, pointless retread of the rest of the campaign. Maybe if it were a hidden bonus rather than taunting you from the mission select menu I wouldn’t have cared quite so much.

So despite enjoying my time with the game slightly more than with Spartan Assault, I’d ultimately have to come to the exact same conclusion about it. That is, Spartan Strike is a decently executed, reasonably fun game that isn’t a bad way to spend 5 or 6 hours, especially if you particularly enjoy twin stick shooters and/or are a big Halo fan. However, at the end of the day it and its predecessor were more like experiments than an essential parts of the franchise. Now, at long last we move on to Halo 5…

Planetside (Part 2)

Continued from part one

Auraxis, as it looked before The Bending.
“Auraxis, as it looked before The Bending.”

When talking about how to get to the action in the last article I made passing mention of connections between warp gates and “spheres of influence” so let’s expand on that and go over the all-important map. In addition to those empire sanctuary islands, Auraxis was made up of ten continents of similar size and various biomes. Those continents were connected to each other via the same type of warp gates that connected some of them to sanctuary islands. Each continent was a massive, expansive land of a size and scale that is pretty much unheard of for an FPS game. While it might blow other sandbox FPS games out of the water in size, the world is pretty empty, with the only real points of interest outside of the occasional bridge or bunker being the facilities and the small guard towers near them, which are ultimately what we’re fighting over.

Ceryshen's continental map. Mostly controlled by the TR at the moment.
“Ceryshen’s continental map. Mostly controlled by the TR at the moment.”

Like the connections between continents, each facility was connected to at least one other facility on the continent, forming a “lattice” structure. The “lattice links” between these facilities were important in defining the battlefronts – your empire could only attack an enemy owned facility it had a link to, either by facilities you’ve captured, or by a warpgate connected back to your empire’s sanctuary or another continent you control. Thanks to these defined battlefronts, battles were mostly concentrated around these areas, helping keep the player population from being spread too thin. The continental lattice also provided benefits from facilities of certain types under your control. For example, if you were at a friendly facility that was connected to a tech plant your empire owned, you could spawn more advanced vehicle types from its vehicle terminals. This added a little bit more strategic consequence into decisions about which facility your empire should attack, and in what order, whether it be to gain those benefits or simply take them away from your enemies.

As for the sphere of influence, this was simply an area around a facility or a tower that was “controlled” by the empire that owned that facility or tower. This area could not be directly dropped on (as mentioned) and enemy Combat Engineers couldn’t fill them with their own deployable equipment. The area also more generally functioned roughly as a mini “zone” in the traditional MMORPG sense, so things like how experience points for battles over the control of these facilities and the scope of the “broadcast” chat channel were based on these areas. In between these areas was, as mentioned, not a whole lot, but all of this other space was ripe to be turned into massive combined-arms battlegrounds as forces moved between facilities and towers, and the terrain was just varied and interesting enough to lead to some cool battle scenarios. I have vivid memories of battles around Searhus’s massive volcano crater’s rim, and the epic fights around the many long chokepoint bridges spanning bodies of water all across Auraxis are legendary, for example.

A nice, quiet VS tower, just waiting to be taken.
“A nice, quiet VS tower, just waiting to be taken.”

Outside of traveling between them, there were other reasons battles might take place in-between facilities that were directly linked to how taking over facilities worked. Let’s start from the beginning though. Each facility had a relatively small structure called a “tower” just outside of its sphere of influence. There were a few varieties of towers, with some having gun turrets, others having landing pads, but they were all close to identical on the inside. Dominated by a wide staircase wrapping from the basement, which contained spawn tubes and equipment terminals and was protected by a “pain field” to keep would-be enemy spawn campers at bay, up to the roof, with a control console near the top. There was not much to these towers, but they were key in how facility captures worked, as they allowed an attacking force to quickly gain a nearby foothold from which they could respawn and attack the main facility. Unlike facilities, control of the towers would instantly change once the control console was hacked, plus, not being tied to the lattice system, they could be hacked by anyone, at any time. Intense battles in and around towers weren’t uncommon, but they were also some of the more common places for great smaller fights to occur.

Tower fights could be bloody affairs. Get that loot!
“Tower fights could be bloody affairs. Get that loot!”

So, you hacked the door to a tower, made it up (or down, if you decided to land or drop on the roof from an aircraft) to the control console. You hacked it, and control of the tower went to your empire. If there were enemies around, they’d notice this pretty quickly and might immediately begin mounting a response to attempt to take it back from you. In the meantime, you and your allies could you set your sights on the facility itself. While there were other options for tactically deploying around a facility you were attacking, most notably a vehicle called the Advanced Mobile Station (AMS) which could be parked and “deployed” to cloak itself and act as a mobile spawn tube and equipment terminal, ownership of a facility’s tower was definitely a much more solid foothold.

Hacking a VS controlled facility's control console.
“Hacking a VS controlled facility’s control console.”

Taking a facility worked similarly. There were several different facility designs and layouts, but they were all surrounded by high, castle-like walls with turrets which would act as sentry turrets if unmanned, with only a few entrances on foot – either the large arched gates on either side of the courtyard that allowed vehicles in and out, or via the locked backdoor of the facility. This is where a Galaxy dropship is especially handy, allowing a full squad of troops to effectively bypass the outer defenses of a facility, dropping right into the courtyard or onto the upper levels of the main structure itself. Regardless, assuming you were able to make it into and through the courtyard, you’d make your way into the main facility and eventually find its control console room, usually fairly deep within the complex. Unlike the rather exposed control console of a tower, the control console of a facility was in a small, dedicated room that was much more defensible. Assuming you were then able to get in there and hack the control console, you’d then have to wait for a 15 minute timer to tick down before control of the facility finally changed. During that time, of course, you could expect a defense to mount if there wasn’t already one – enemies would drop in via HART from their sanctuary, arrive by various methods from nearby facilities, and enemies killed in their attempts would respawn there. 15 minutes can feel like a damn long time.

Arson
“Arson setting a bunch of Boomers (remote mines) to destroy a generator.”

One strategy that was often employed to help ease the burden of attacking a facility was purposely draining the facility of power. Every interactable device in the facility – equipment and vehicle terminals, spawn tubes, turrets, etc. ran on power provided by the facility’s generator, which was in turn fed by a supply of Nanite Technology Units (NTUs.) This power was drained much more quickly by the facility’s auto-repair systems, which would slowly repair any of these devices when damaged or destroyed. Once a facility was completely drained of NTUs, it would lose power and turn neutral, meaning no defenders could respawn there and it could be hacked freely once power was restored. Another version of this tactic involved blowing up the generator itself which would immediately cause the facility to lose power until it could be repaired, but this would also alert everyone that it was under attack as well as requiring it to be repaired before the facility could be back up and online. Still, it could be very effective to strategically take a facility’s generator down to deprive your enemies of the lattice linked benefits they’d get from it. Regardless, these strategies could allow small, coordinated groups to run special ops style “back-hacks” to assault facilities away from the frontline and take them over without much resistance.

An ANT refilling the NTU silo at a neutral facility
“An ANT refilling the NTU silo at a neutral facility”

One really cool element of the whole facility power system was that if a facility did run out of NTUs, it could be refueled. There was a special vehicle called an Advanced Nanite Transport (ANT) which could be driven out to a warp gate and deployed to fuel its tank, then driven back to a facility and deployed near its NTU silo to refuel it. Making NTU runs after a facility had been drained wasn’t usually too exciting, but making an emergency run during a huge battle could be edge of your seat intense. There were various ways to lessen the chances of your ANT run ending in a glorious, extra-large explosion, such as driving with an escort or even a whole convoy for protection, or using a Galaxy or Lodestar to haul one around in the air, but regardless, a well coordinated assault OR defense often involved accounting for the availability of NTU refuels.

Similarly, there was also a system added early into the game in which some facilities had a special device called a Lattice Logic Unit (LLU) which needed to be physically carried to another facility after a successful hack to complete the change of control rather than waiting out the timer. There were all kinds of conditions and limitations to who could carry the LLU and how – what vehicles they could ride in, etc. The LLU was, of course, a bit of a MacGuffin. It’s real purpose was to generate more battles outside of facilities similarly to those that could take place around ANT runs. While I don’t know how successful this ultimately was, I do recall being involved in some particularly intense battles that revolved around trying to protect or assault an LLU carrier.

A squad of NC Lightning tanks engaging.
“A squad of NC Lightning tanks engaging.”

As a quick aside, both of those systems seemed to be there to introduce more opportunity for fights to happen outside of facilities and, of course, using numerous vehicles. While it was common to use vehicles of all sorts to travel between facilities, which is when the most epic vehicle battles took place, and using certain vehicles like Galaxy dropships for infantry drops, AMSes to setup spawn points, and ANTs for refuel runs were very specific but common use-cases, running vehicles that required multiple crew members, like main battle tanks and the fearsome Liberator bomber, along with running multiple vehicles together, tended to be something more of a distraction to my outfit. Something we did for fun, but not something that often felt like it was contributing meaningfully to most battles. Likewise, running the lighter Mosquito and Reaver aircraft seemed like it was used for more quick transport and scouting behind the lines, and solo hunting of enemies. While all of these vehicles could be effective in combat in the right circumstances, due to the way facilities were structured and facility capturing worked, their effectiveness as “force multipliers” was limited.

So, as mentioned above, once you controlled a facility, the lattice link to other connected facilities opened up, expanding the front and allowing you to move on to more facilities. This went on (often involving struggles between all three sides) until eventually one empire controlled the entire continent. This temporarily locked all of the facilities on the continent from being captured, so efforts would usually move to one of the next connected continents. So on, and so forth. Honestly, this larger strategic part of the game was one of the weaker areas of Planetside in my opinion. There wasn’t any real purpose to taking over a continent, or indeed all of Auraxis. Unlike similar MMORPG territory-control based PVP systems, you’re not establishing your own strongholds where you can build housing or shops, or new areas to craft, hunt, or run dungeons, and there’s zero permanence to any of it. Planetside, it seemed, gambled on the fun of the actual fights being enough to inspire players rather than any end goal or rewards. This couldn’t have helped Planetside’s subscription base – it really only took a month or two of playing the game to have seen everything and have it totally figured out, and unlike most MMORPGs, there simply wasn’t enough variety of other diversions to keep players who were bored or just needed a break from cancelling.

A massive TR force gathers at a warp gate.
“A massive TR force gathers at a warp gate.”

I didn’t really mention the concept of “zerging” at all, and I should, because it comes up a lot in discussions around Planetside. The “zerg” was an obviously Starcraft-inspired term used to describe the largest masses of players, and “zerging” was the act of joining one of these groups and following them from enemy facility to enemy facility, overwhelming enemy resistance with sheer numbers. Most of the time these huge forces would inevitably meet, meaning that on every contested continent, there was usually at least one incredibly huge, lag inducing, ridiculously chaotic battle. Following the zerg was a way to guarantee access to Planetside’s largest fights, and more importantly, the experience points that came with them, but to many of us this was less exciting than smaller fights, special ops missions, coordinated vehicle runs, and numerous other experiences the sandbox nature of the game could provide. Getting online and following the zerg every night was the entire game to some people, and unsurprisingly, many of them quickly grew to consider Planetside as rather repetitive and dull.

A group of NC Lodestars hauling Vanguard main battle tanks behind enemy lines.
“A group of NC Lodestars hauling Vanguard main battle tanks behind enemy lines.”

That about wraps up my lengthy overview of Planetside’s gameplay. As mentioned, I played the game pretty steadily for its first year or so. In that year, development felt a little slow, especially given the monthly fee we were paying SOE for the privilege, but in reflection it wasn’t too bad. The Liberator bomber was added, along with a dedicated anti-air vehicle called the Skyguard. The aforementioned LLU system was added. They expanded hacking. They added platoons, which could be used to combine 3 squads into one larger unit. They also added the Lodestar, which I’ve mentioned a couple of times now. I do have to wonder just how many of those additions were holdovers that didn’t quite make release, but regardless, content is content. Actually, looking back, one of the issues I think Planetside’s development team had with adding new content to the game is that it was essentially already fairly well designed and balanced upon release. Anything all that interesting that they added to the game was sure to irreversibly alter that balance. Speaking of…

Core Combat's caverns looked like nothing else in the game.
“Core Combat’s caverns looked like nothing else in the game.”

The game’s first and only paid expansion, Core Combat, also came out at around this time. Core Combat added several huge underground cavern maps to Auraxis. These could be accessed via warp gate-like areas called “Geowarps” that were limited in their availability. The main appeal of these caverns was a shift to more CQB-inspired infantry combat, as the caverns featured a lot of cramped areas, a lot of verticality, and relied on teleporters and ziplines for traversal since vehicle usage was limited. While most of my outfit mates were excited about the concept, I don’t think I was alone in being fairly underwhelmed by the cavern-based combat experience. There was at least a reason to go down to the caverns, and that was the new facility module system. You could obtain and charge-up a “module” in a cavern which could then be brought back to the surface and installed at a facility, giving it a particular new benefit, which also extended to any other connected facilities your empire controlled. These benefits were things like adding an energy shield to the otherwise open gate entrances in the walls of your facilities, granting players faster movement speed and reducing spawn times to a facility, and allowing them to pull some of the new “ancient technology” vehicles added with expansion, such as the extremely useful Router (a deployable teleportation system) and the Flail (long distance artillery) from the facility’s vehicle terminals. I totally appreciate a lot of the ideas they were trying to implement with Core Combat, and cavern runs could be a fun diversion for smaller squads, but it ultimately felt like too much of a distraction from the core systems of the game, and a bit of misstep.

A TR BFR stomping across the battlefield.
“A TR BFR stomping across the battlefield.”

Still, even more was added later into the game’s life. Beyond things like bug fixes and numerous UI enhancements, they added new vehicles, such as the Fury ATV and new empire specific versions of The Deliverer troop transport. They added a merit/accommodation system and other improved ways to view and track your stats. There was “The Bending” patch that replaced one of the continents (Oshur) with several new smaller “Battle Islands” which each had its own special rules and restrictions, which was kind of neat for variety’s sake, but they also made each continent its own planet, changing the global map to a interstellar map in a rather stupid move. Then, in perhaps the most controversial thing to ever happen in the game, they added huge mech-like vehicles called BattleFrame Robotics (BFRs) which absolutely shook the game to its core. I had mixed feelings about BFRs myself. I mean, the panic instilled by being on foot when a towering BFR stomped onto the battlefield, leaving a path of destruction in its wake, was a totally new addition to the dynamic of the game, and was only topped by having a friendly BFR show up shortly thereafter and watching them go toe-to-toe in an epic scrap. Regardless of how much SOE “nerfed” and otherwise altered BFRs after first introducing them, a vocal part of the community completely hated their addition for reasons ranging from reasonable concerns about the balance and indeed the entire overland combat meta being altered, to simply hating the idea of “unrealistic” mechs being added to their sci-fi vidja game. Boy…

There was more after that, of course, as the game stayed online in one form or another until 2016, but the last time I stepped foot onto the virtual battlefields of Auraxis was around the time the BFRs were finally close to resembling being balanced. I’ve said it before, but Planetside was a special game to me – one where I got really into gaming with a community, and where I made friends I still have today. It was a unique game too, that, like so many online-only games, is sadly now gone to us outside of some unofficial preservation efforts. It’s also survived by Planetside 2, of course, and while Planetside 2 was influenced heavily by the first game and does a good job of respecting what it established, they’re also very different games. It may end up being quite an effort, but I’m hoping to compare and contrast those two games, as well as talk more about Planetside 2 in general, in a future article here. Stay tuned!

Pictures taken from my old NC outfit, The Praetorian Guard’s, archived website, JeffBeefjaw’s Imgur album, which looks quite similar, but from the TR perspective, and some newer pictures acquired while playing around on the PSForever server. Unfortunately the two former sources don’t really show any ACTUAL combat, as few people captured full time back in the day so most screenshots were of points of interest, outfit photo ops, and just dicking around rather than normal gameplay. I also had to grab the original world map, the Core Combat cavern, and the BFR pictures from wherever I could find them.