Now that I have played Planetside, I'm not sure PS2 can work.

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by basti

60 hours? Dude, you have no clue what planetside is yet.

This. Find yourself a position in your computer chair on Sunday afternoon EST and start playing. By the end of the night you'll see a poplock and more massive fights than you find in the least-gay 64-person e-sports twitch shooter.

And that, my friend, will scratch the surface. It will be about four percent of what Planetside was in its heyday.

Planetside 2 is going to kill everything else.

[Malorn]

1) You are looking at the decrepit and decayed hollow shell of Planetside. Making any conclusions whatsoever on PS2 based on the current state of PS1 is neither fair nor accurate.

2) A whole 60 hours? I think I've put in at least 6000 hours into Planetside, back when it had a strong population. The design and ideas of PS1 far exceeded its time and there was nothing else like it. There were a variety of reasons why it didn't succeed as well as we might have hoped, but make no mistake - not only can PS2 succeed, but it can make the MMO-FPS genre breakout.

3) You did make a great observation about population being important to the game. It is a player-driven game, but it is far from the first. I would stress that this is even moreso why improving the pacing of the game is vital and F2P elements absolutely critical. Those free players will keep the game alive and with energy, just as the "fodderside" program did around 2005 or so, only it would be more prominent and do so right from the beginning.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by Malorn

1) You are looking at the decrepit and decayed hollow shell of Planetside. Making any conclusions whatsoever on PS2 based on the current state of PS1 is neither fair nor accurate.

This.

Another key point is this is a totally different time in gaming. It's more main stream and far more people have access to online gaming than they did back then. Add into that the free component that they have talked about and there is some massive potential here for a HUGE game if it's done right.

Technology has come a long way, comparing PlanetSide today almost 10 years later to PlanetSide 2 in terms of population is really apples and oranges.

[kamikava]

I had a dream about planetside 2 last night. The tanks were made of lego and the sniper rifle had burst fire.

It was awesome.

And that was only beta.

[KinSlayer]

I figure they'll have East/West Coast servers again which means a as prime time dies down on the East Coast I get to switch to the West Coast and catch a few more hours of prime time!

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by kamikava

I had a dream about planetside 2 last night. The tanks were made of lego and the sniper rifle had burst fire.

It was awesome.

And that was only beta.

Lol... I can picture a tank blowing to pieces a few blocks at a time, with whole blocks pinging and whizzing off in all directions! PhysX FTW. Lego rocks! (Lego Universe went free to play this week btw).

Well, thank you guys for your assessments. You've brought up some good points, like how gaming is more mainstream now, the age of PS1, the one-man all certs, and the free to play model. It's reassuring, because PS1 is such a fun game! I'm kind of sad that I never tried it way back when I had a station pass in 2004-2005, but I was into other things. It is what it is.

I really hope that SOE uses Sony's resources to their advantage with Planetside 2, because the opportunities for merchandising, co-advertisement, and promotions (like trailers on Sony Pictures films) are there to be capitalized upon. The one thing PS2 needs more than anything else is people, lots and lots of people. It's scarey to let so much success rest on the fickle, transient nature of gamers who apparently don't have a lot time to play games any more.

[basti]

Originally Posted by KinSlayer

I figure they'll have East/West Coast servers again which means a as prime time dies down on the East Coast I get to switch to the West Coast and catch a few more hours of prime time!

I would actually suggest to only have central servers. This way your guys prime time is longer on the servers.
Same with europe. No german/french/whatever servers, just all central in europe and english, with only the client in different languages. Longer prime time on the servers is better than switching. ;-)
World server would be best, but that wont happen to release.

[vampyro]

The only way PS2 fails is lack of advertising. Sony is pretty bad at advertising their games. Do they want to make this into a flagship name? That remains to be seen. It would make sense if they did.

[Talek Krell]

I think they'd be wise to. It's an open, almost untapped market in which they probably have more in house experience than anyone else, and an existing playerbase to kickstart the game with.

[Mezorin]

Originally Posted by kamikava

I had a dream about planetside 2 last night. The tanks were made of lego and the sniper rifle had burst fire.

It was awesome.

And that was only beta.

Holy shit that was freaky, *I* had a PS2 dream last night too. I was fighting on the VS side, and they had a 5 man hovering infantry fighting vehicle along side the mag riders. Crazy indoor fights, crazy outdoor fights, but I was a poor newbie with just an assault rifle and back up handgun though .

[Graywolves]

I had a dream where Higby kidnapped my friend and I.

It was like Saw.

[Haro]

I remember when I was telling friends about how I loved planetside and I thought they should play. They started giving me strange looks as soon as I said "subscription." Now, millions of people pay for Xbox Live or World of Warcraft, and now there are a lot of f2p games coming out. Times have changed a lot, and things are much more encouraging for a game like Planetside. Also, remember the planetside you are playing is around 8 years old. I consider the fact that the game still has players to be a testament to how well it could work. Not many games have that kind of record, especially not shooters.

[Krowe]

Originally Posted by basti

60 hours? Dude, you have no clue what planetside is yet.
Post again once you started understanding what you are talking about, but you wont ever, because you have never seen the way the game was intended to be: 3 or more pop locks.

This.

Believe it or not, the population level changes in online video games. Its not some static number on a list.

[Kouza]

Planetside one now is an acquired taste... Back in the day.... It was awesome, when you had those people.

[Lonehunter]

Originally Posted by Huma

The game your playing now is a ghost town compared to what it once was.

Exactly