CidHighwind Master Sergeant





Re: The Planetside Stories Book Project

I posted this on Reddit as well, but I wanted to let everyone know that this project is still very active, and that I am still looking for war-stories from any and all. I currently have 21 war stories and about 16 pages worth of material (minus one page for the Forward as seen below.)



The following is the Forward from the book. I hope you enjoy. Constructive suggestions are always welcome.



The Forward: "The Moments Too Difficult to Capture"



Ask any Planetside veteran, and they’ll most likely tell you that they have the greatest memories of any first person shooter while playing Planetside. Ask them what that memory is, and more often than not, they won’t be able to put it into words. This has, unfortunately always been a curse that plagued both the game and its population for years. To have a game experience so visceral, so real and so full that its player base had difficulty explaining why their friends should join them short of their friends experiencing it themselves. At the same time though, it was not impossible to achieve an effective description. As a result, I began to think back on the times when people were successful. This book has come about as a result of trying to find those descriptions. To try my best to capture the memories of Planetside veterans in a way that those who never experienced the game can understand and relate to. To permanently enshrine those moments in text. To provide a way for others to experience Auraxis through the eyes of those who were there. It may be foolish, and it may, eventually, prove to be an impossibility, but it would be nigh criminal to not try.



With Planetside 2 announced and beta seemingly coming within the next few months, if not sooner, the urgency of this piece is even greater. Very soon, the original Planetside will likely die off, and, hopefully (and vaguely sadly), be replaced competently by Planetside 2. Here, we arrive at the second goal of this piece. To expose exactly what Planetside 2 can be. One of the true, but unfortunate facts about the original game was that it was too good to be true for its own time. Unlike Everquest, which seemingly hit just as the market for MMORPG’s was opening up, Planetside hit the FPS market like cold-cuts before sliced bread. It was ambitious, it was brilliant, it tasted great to those who experienced it, but there was nothing there to support it. The internet couldn’t truly handle the huge battles, and subscription gaming wasn’t yet widely accepted as viable to the online gaming crowd. Even so, Planetside began a unique revolution in online gaming. The MMOFPS is something that had never truly been tried, and hasn’t been replicated since. Tribes had attempted something similar, but not to the degree that Planetside was as much a tactics sim and a war sim at the same time. The Call of Duty and Battlefield series have successfully filed in what was once the Doom, and Quake niche. Planetside doesn’t fit into either of these camps. It spawned empire loyalty, it spawned real comradery amongst the factions. It created a war. One that had real implications to its participants, despite it’s never ending cycle of exchange. No fight was ever actually the same, and unfortunately, only a few thousand individuals ever got to experience it.



When one considers the size of the FPS market, console or otherwise, the Call of Duty and the Battlefield series are what most gamers think of. Millions of copies of these games are sold, and yet, when someone bumps into a fellow Planetside veteran, those conversations are less about the great round they had, and more about the entirety of an nine year saga. These are nearly real life war stories. Events that mean something beyond the three or four hours they were played in. They are stories about individuals who contributed to the larger cause. Imagine for a moment if a Battlefield or Call of Duty type crowd, while personally recognizing the contributions both of these series have made to the FPS genre of course, were exposed in mass to the gaming experience that was Planetside. The idea of teamwork and tactics, combined with the massive scale and persistence of a real war would make ‘modern warfare, or ‘bad company’ sound like a joke. And why not? Why can’t Planetside 2 become this game? There is no reason. And when one recognizes this fact, it becomes very clear that another Everquest moment may be in the making. With technology finally up to par with the ambitions of the game, and the market for online gaming moving towards free models, combined with a ravenous market for FPS games, the idea of an MMOFPS takes on a ‘this is next’ type of appeal.



But enough about where the series could potentially go. This book's purpose is to provide veterans a way to look back on their war. It is also supposed to provide those who don’t know what they missed a way to contextualize their own desires, and to realize that the Planetside series is what is next. I personally hope that this will generate enthusiasm for Planetside 2, but genuinely only wish to accurately capture the moments as presented to me. As a result, the following will simply be a collection of war stories, no matter how long or short, complex, or simple. Stories are mildly edited for spelling and grammar errors as seen. Beyond that, this is the story of Auraxis, as seen during Planetside 1, seen through the eyes of those who were there – the veterans – the moments that are, at times, too difficult to capture. __________________

Acosmo: "Higgity Higgity Higgity" Last edited by CidHighwind; 2012-02-19 at 01:46 PM .