I read quite a bit of those reviews about Planeshift on this forum, and sadly, I have to disagree with many. Planeshift is a great game.

I'd like to tell you what makes me reach this statement.

I played many online games, Eternal Lands, World of Warcraft, Shadowbane and Planeshift. In my point of view, Planeshift is better then each of them. Though I have to mention that Planeshift is not a game suited for everyone. If you are looking to become the strongest and the best, this is the wrong game for you. The game has no winners, nor loosers. Planeshift has a great community and many of those players are active roleplayers. That's a major difference between other games. In Planeshift,  the naming rules prevent the usage of names that disrupt the roleplay feeling ("KingC00l", "Legolas202" etc.).  1337 is actually an offense. That's something I haven't even found in the roleplay servers of WoW.

Another aspect of Planeshift that fascinates me is that it is totally free. No advertisements, no shop. You will gain no advantage if you have more real cash then others. The Planeshift Dev team is doing a good job improving the game. Though the devellopment of Planeshift goes a bit slow for certain persons (Which is not true, you just need to look at the history of the project), you need to take into consideration that Planeshift is free and the Devs use their free time to add aspects to the game.

Another aspect that was mentioned on these forums is Planeshifts newbie-unfriendlyness. Sadly, this is partly true. Planeshift is a difficult game to start and much harder to learn then Wow or EL. However, after a couple of hours, you should have realized how it works. An advise of mine: If you want help in game, try not to speak out-of-character and make sure that you have actually read the manual.

I recommend you to try and play this game if you are looking for a great roleplaying game.

Actually, there are a large number of Planeshift players who play the game with the intention of maxing out every skill for exactly the purpose of being the strongest and the best. Some people have told me that the reason Planeshift is attractive is that, since so few people play it, it's very easy to be among the most powerful players in the game.

Talad promotes uncivil behavior.

It helps to be said that PlanetShift is the only open source MMO that I know of.
As the OP stated in his post, the game is made by people all around the world who contribute by using their spare time to improve the game, a bit like it happens for Linux.

This game might not be WoW or EQ2, but considering is not made by professionals it is not a bad game, I ve seen many more commercial games worse than this one.
It is not the game for me but it could be a decent game for some people, in particular the role players.

Originally posted by Tuxide

 

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Originally posted by pstruth
Actually, there are a large number of Planeshift players who play the game with the intention of maxing out every skill for exactly the purpose of being the strongest and the best.

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Maybe there is, but that doesn't mean they don't roleplay. I haven't seen too many people that strictly powerlevel without RP, and even they have some role to play in the world. Besides, it still takes forever to level in all of the good stuff, like weaponcrafting and casting spells. I've only heard of one person who maxed everything in the game (before they added additional levels to skills) and he is a GM now.

Tuxide, I wasn't comenting on whether or not such individuals are attempting to roleplay.

Talad promotes uncivil behavior.

Originally posted by ste2000

It helps to be said that PlanetShift is the only open source MMO that I know of.
As the OP stated in his post, the game is made by people all around the world who contribute by using their spare time to improve the game, a bit like it happens for Linux.

This game might not be WoW or EQ2, but considering is not made by professionals it is not a bad game, I ve seen many more commercial games worse than this one.
It is not the game for me but it could be a decent game for some people, in particular the role players.

planeshift development is nothing like linux development. Please don't put that in the same boat, its insulting to us linux distro developers.

Originally posted by maveric007

Originally posted by ste2000

It helps to be said that PlanetShift is the only open source MMO that I know of.
As the OP stated in his post, the game is made by people all around the world who contribute by using their spare time to improve the game, a bit like it happens for Linux.

This game might not be WoW or EQ2, but considering is not made by professionals it is not a bad game, I ve seen many more commercial games worse than this one.
It is not the game for me but it could be a decent game for some people, in particular the role players.

planeshift development is nothing like linux development. Please don't put that in the same boat, its insulting to us linux distro developers.

Pardon?
I fail to understand your point.
But before I answer, would you mind describe why is different from Linux developement, but more importantly why that would it be insulting to you or any Linux developer?
I don't want to make a fuss out of a misunderstanding.

I'm not going to get thick into this as its been very deeply discussed throughout these threads. However the closed source practices of "what I call mandatory" chunks of planshift and the fully open source practices of 90% of your linux distro developers are at complete different sides of the open source development spectrum. Maybe in short terms its a difference of wanna be corporate development and community development.

Originally posted by maveric007

I'm not going to get thick into this as its been very deeply discussed throughout these threads. However the closed source practices of "what I call mandatory" chunks of planshift and the fully open source practices of 90% of your linux distro developers are at complete different sides of the open source development spectrum. Maybe in short terms its a difference of wanna be corporate development and community development.

Well I was trying to simplify for non technical people by saying that Planeshift is developed as open source like Linux, because some people fail to grasp the fact that this game is no profit software and is made by gamers for gamers, the same phylosophy the Linux consortioum adopt for its products.
Although I am aware that the project manager is a bit dodgy, and he is trying to own the copyrights for the game.
Anyway obviously, I didn't mean that is developed exactly like Linux.

Make sense, I just didn't want people thinking there are allot of projects out there being developed in this manner. I just ain't so.

Talad promotes uncivil behavior.

Donari, I thank you for your post. A bit of perspective within all the debate. People seem to get hung up on questions immaterial to thread topics quite often.

I agree that PlaneShift is a unique role playing environment and we do try our best to foster roleplay as much as we can without being heavy handed.

Are there other types of players? Yes, of course. Our hope remains that over time all players gravitate toward role playing, while also engaging our features so we may get feedback on improvements to engine.

Those who use our features and come as guests in the test-bed that is planeshift rather than with some sense of entitlement generally tend to stay and contribute much to the community as a whole.

By doing such things as participating in the forum, the irc channel and especially the bug tracker and individual player can have quite an Impact on the game.

I hope you continue to enjoy planeshift for many years.