Verant have created a huge playing area for Planetside; absolutely huge. There are thirteen continents on the planet’s surface, each one is a massive 8km by 8km in size, further more each continent has ten smaller ‘skirmish’ zones (or warzones if you prefer) and a block city for each empire. This makes the playable area massive, whether or not it will be too sparse has yet to be seen. Verant have also made it clear that they are trying to remove nearly all load times, as they would ruin the packed style of the game somewhat. I can’t see how they really plan to do this as the game can’t pre-load the whole world; you would be waiting six hours before you even started! Though perhaps something for you ‘Cray’ owners… They must have a cunning way devised so that the game will load when you are not in peril or immediate danger. Still, it’s another huge task they have got to cover.

This leads me to my only true worry about Planetside... with around 3500 players to a server, will my little 56K modem keep me up to date or will I be lagging behind like a 95 year-old chronic asthmatic in a marathon? Verant say that the players will be spread out over a large area, lag and slowdown should not be a problem. Well, given the freedom that Planetside promotes, I can see problems if a large battle should break out and everyone rushes in to have a bit of a tussle. ASDL/Broadband players should be fine, but what about slow coaches like me? Well, I shall leave it in the capable hands of Verant. If they say they can pull it off, there is hope.

So, are we all ready for this MMOFPS? Well we better be, there’s a very good chance that it will be taking over all our spare time (that’s the time when you stop playing DAoC and have to sleep, folks), as the next phenomenon. Until the summer then, and with fingers crossed, we wait.

‘All hail The Terran Republic!’

Sorry...

By Ben Jackson