Sociology of Planetside - The Great Divide

[RageMaster]

A couple of good friends and myself were recently discussing PlanetSide over a reefer outside on the porch when the conversation turned from the simple subject of game physics, to the potential social system that the game rules will create.

Let me elaborate. I'm an ex-college student with a fair understanding of sociology, psychology and computer games (having qualifications in all but one) and this is what is currently raging through my mind.

All the reviews up untill now, what does it tell us? Pretty much nothing we havent read already, we know about the guns, the vehicles the spawn-rules, grief-rules and factions. We're all hard-core fans of this up and coming MOG. What reviews cannot tell us is what the PlanetSide community is going to be like, after all its a beta, and the playerbase for the game currently is limited to Sony's employees.

Inherently the game splits the playerbase into three, and stops them from talking to each other. Instant in-game segregation. The opposition is out to cause you and your faction grief, and you and your faction are out to cause the opposition grief. Your muted to them, they're muted to you, the only way you can communicate is through kicking the she-hite out of each other. And bearing in mind that you're punished for shooting your team members you have a game that instantly fashions 3 completely seperate communities along with their own celebrities, websites, voicecomms servers, IRC channels, forums, messageboards and tactics. We'll still have forums for communication with the other factions, but I reckon a half-year after the game is released, those messageboards will be all flame. You can keep your planetside.stratics.com in your favourites, but I guarantee if you play this game alot you'll spend much more time on a faction based website.

I'll be joining the Terran Republic. I know Ill be chatting as much as possible with players on my team, and I know I won't make that much of an effort to contact other teams (even outside the game). So my community is my faction. Everyone on my faction has two common enemies, enemies which can and will only try and kill us over and over.

3 very close knit, individual communities having one huge war. I believe factions will learn to properly hate other factions, hell my friends are calling the Varu the VC's in conversation! Comraderie honour and a sense to impress piers will thrive in each faction, stronger than most people might think. You will celebrate victories, mourn defeats and give rise to hero's and legends within your own community.

MMOG communities have always been some of the strongest communities on the internet in my opinion. But I think this will reach a new height with PlanetSide.

Put simply, I can think of nothing that brings people together like a common focus of true hatred.

-RageMaster