just readin the reviews for planetside and honestly the ratio from good reviews to bad reviews is 8:1 which is ridiculous for any game... so why isnt it is as popular as it should be?

Planetside is great. It used to be awesome and probably the best teamwork game out there but the lack of end game made many people quit and Planetside lost one of its glory.

I hate planetside. It took me 3 hours to get through tutorials due to horrendus bugs which eventually left me unable to complete most of the tutorials. Once out in actual gameplay, going solo I was instantly sniped and killed in 1 shot by high level players whenever I got close to the fight. I eventually got into a squad and jumped in a tank with a high level player, but we seemed to randomly explode without explanation half of the time, and the other half just be driving to our destination. Granted, this is based on trying the game out about a year ago, but I don't think that it was terribly new then. The bugs were really awful, extraordinarily frustrating, and more than enough to make me quit. Then, when I finally got into combat, I couldn't ever see getting enough kills or experience or whatever to rank up once, since apparently lowbies just get slaughtered.

I quite enjoyed Planetside.

The reason it isn't so popular is because of SOE's bad decision-making, odd imagination, and apathy. They introduced an expansion that completely unbalanced the game (BFRs).

They marketed the expansion as being "combat in an urban environment," but in fact it was just a series of underground caverns with a horrendously confusing web of "ziplines" that you used to travel around.

As the numbers dwindled in the aftermath of the expansion (took them well over a year to get the BFR issue straightened out, and some say it still isn't) they pulled the majority of the development team.

For the next couple of years, the game sat essentially in limbo, with nearly nothing being added. Quite frequently, they would change their certification system,  forcing you to have to reselect your certifications, and it sometimes resulted in you no longer being able to use the equipment that you had been previously using.

They did eventually put a dev back on it, that brought us wonders like the overpowered buggy for each nation, as well as the Galaxy Gunship, an idea that had been batted around the forums for a while. Both were designed to appeal to those looking for some kind of alpha class in their vehicles. Both ended up being toned down because they had reintroduced, on a smaller scale, the same imbalance that had accompanied the BFRs.

Despite all that, I would still be playing, but cheating has gotten so rampant that it's killed the fun. You can find any number of these recorded for posterity on Youtube. The recent server merge was long overdue, and it did (seemingly, if not in actuality) help with the population issues.

The game was a blast, but SOE abandoned it to go after their new Vision™ of what an MMOFPS should be, The Agency.

No, don't hate the game. I have fond memories.

Planetside is my most favorite MMO of all time -ever!  Played it for like 3.5 years.   Loved my time in the game.   Eventually to many of my friends left and it got old due to SOE not updating it every once in awhile.  You can only kill the same people so many times before even that grows old.   ^_^

I agree with DragonShark.  I can't tell what is more frustrating, the way SOE acts, or the fact that two of the most fun MMO's I've ever played (SWG and Planetside) were completely destroyed by them.  I'd kill for another game that had SWG's old class and economy system.  It made your game experience so incredibly versatile and unique (even when trying to be the best of the best) that my experience in games has yet to match it elsewhere.

 What ticks me off is when your own empire OS's you because someone thinks it's funny or a good way to clear the que or as last night when someone was trying to make a point by OSing the ants as they filled a drained/just capped base. What point i am unsure unless it was to prove what a dumbass they were. Regardless i am finished with this game.

Back in the day the game was popular and really great but SOE destroid it. Instead of focusing on giving us new content on the existing islands like changing the bases to make each one more unique they added to the land mass with some horrible caverns. Then again they totally ruined the game with horrible looking BFR's which not only do they look shit they were overpowered, the only good thing is cause noone goes in the caverns youc an no logner unlock them to cert for em lol. Other things Ii hate about Planetsdie are all the guns and vehicles stuff they added because not only does it all look very cheap, the game didn't need new weapons or vehicle addons, it was fine how it was so i think they ruined that side to it aswel.

The main reasonw hy it will never do well now though is because it's a FPS and it looks horribly dated so people wont be attracted to it anymore. The art style of the game is SOE's usual crapfest which puts people off too, the factions look far too fisherprice.

Also with low populations the battles arn't fun like they used to be with several conts locked at once. The battles back in 2003 were soooo intense and now if you go itno it they just feel rather empty.

Basically the content added was for a different play style and more like the current fps's. This also added BFR's which where overpowered in the rest of the game. They thought this would bring more players into the game but it was not the same game play style and ended up causing problems for the pop they did have.  Then after this blunder the game was plagued with bugs that where not addressed in a timely manor and no new content.

Basically they hoped that they could lure players who played fps's into the game.  They ended up losing players they did have. 

Planetside is a great game and the posts before me all agree on that. It's just a classic case of the developer fumbling up and making a mess of things, then taking months, if not years, to fix the problems and the imbalances (introduced with BFR's). Add to the fact that for the past two years they've had nothing but a one man maintenance/dev team on PS ... well, we haven't seen new content in a while, only few improvements, and so on. They've just begun in recent months to put a little more effort into it, afaict, but it's waaaaay too little and much, much too late.

I'd love to play Planetside again but the population count on Werner (EU server) is just abysmal. 2v2 in a game which used to have 50v50 and more? No thanks.

[edit] If they could start a massive PR storm, put out a new expansion, put a real dev team on the game and overall give the game and the situation surrounding the game a brand new image ... the game would be so much more successful. At this point, everybody knows it's pretty much dead and most people wouldn't touch it with a 50 foot stick. They should've dropped SWG like a stone after CU/NGE and put all that money into PS, imo.

Originally posted by jplayer01

I'd love to play Planetside again but the population count on Werner (EU server) is just abysmal. 2v2 in a game which used to have 50v50 and more? No thanks.

well all the servers are merged now i think so thats not a problem really anymore.

Originally posted by Bobalue

Originally posted by jplayer01

I'd love to play Planetside again but the population count on Werner (EU server) is just abysmal. 2v2 in a game which used to have 50v50 and more? No thanks.

 

well all the servers are merged now i think so thats not a problem really anymore.

With all due respect, I decided on trying  Werner one night recently it was 33%TR 66% VS 0%NC  I created a NC  The pop was 30% TR 60%VS 10% NC..... It is bad on Werner.

I love the game. The gameplay is unique. The only and true MMO with FPS action.  The graphics are just right: you get a smooth gameplay and giganteous areas to look.

Theres always action, interesting action, somewhere.

Is a game I return somethimes, play a few weeks, and quit again.