My final analysis of Planetside

[Kikinchikin]

As some of my friends and teammates know, my subscription ran out March 20th. I am not renewing, so I will be retired for a while. I hope to come back at another time, but several things are prohibiting that from happening. Anyway I figured I would post my final analysis of the game and note the problems, so that, if they are fixed, I can come back and enjoy Planetside like I used to.

From the day it was released, Planetside broke new ground in gaming. It was my favorite game right off the bat, and still probably is my favorite game ever. The scope of the battles, the opportunity to participate in massive multi outfit operations and missions, and the inventiveness of the vehicles and weapons all make it a superb game, and one that I will never forget.

However, it seems that as the "Golden Age" of Planetside began to end (end of summer to mid fall in my opinion) a host of problems began plagueing me and my experience. This started with the end of my outfit 7th Legion, but the main hit came when Core Combat released. Apparently my computer's performance either dropped or the game requirements rose, because I began experiencing awful lag. Although it was playable at that time, it certainly made me angry. Then came the server merge. Of course the merge happened the day after I attained CR 5. This angered me too, because I had worked hard to get it, and I wanted it to be special. But when the merge occured, the number of CR 5's on emerald increased dramatically, thus taking away from the "specialness" of being a CR 5.

It went downhill from here too. I had great fun from November to mid December, when my best friend bought FFXI. I too got it for Christmas and became hooked on it, as well as Call of Duty. It seemed Planetside was being relegated to third of the three, because the other two were new and because of the afformentioned problems. Plus the lag was getting even worse.

I stopped playing more or less in January. I only logged on three or four times that month. Every time I came on, I noticed more and more things that were detrimental to the game. The organization was gone. There were no more raids, just zergs. I longed for the days of the summer when the TR had done so well organizing operations and such. I guess those days are more or less gone now.

I logged on twice during February to find that the lag made theh game unplayable. I could no longer even be on the same continent as the main fight. And with the server merge, I couldn't even find a small battle. It was then that I decided Planetside would have to go. I logged on 3 days ago, said goodbye to my friends, and took a last look around at the game. I will miss playing Planetside, as it has many more positive attributes than negatives, but I simply cannot play with the lag. I also miss the organized playing, and am saddened by the influx of new, less tactically minded, players. On Thursday I figured I would give it one more shot and asked if someone wanted to help take Searhus. I got my first hate tell then. It didn't suprise me, even though I had never gotten one previous to that. The playerbase as a whole seems to be going downhill in intelligence.

In conclusion, I will always remember Planetside as being one of my favorite games, and I hope to return in a few months to play again and fight alongside my friends again. Until then, farewell. /salute.