Planetside is a really innovative game being one of the first and still the only true MMOFPS. In 2003 we hadn't seen anything like Planetside which was had 1000 people in 3 way battles per fully seamless islands. It combined ground foot soldier first person shooter gameplay along with vehicular combat that had aircrafts and ground vehicles such as tanks and vehicles that could travel through the water. I just remember joining the game with one of my friends and grouping up and having such a blast seeingthese MASSIVE battles fold out infront of our eyes. You could take as much enjoyment just watching them as you could playing them because you hadn't seen anything like this before. Planetside was really a game that should have influenced others and should have gone really far. However sadly SOE had problems with SWG being late and EQ2 being way behind in development, that they had to cannibalize the Palnetside development team and send people over to finish them games. So as a result the budget got cut and so did the vision of the game.
From launch then the Problems all showed through with the bugs and how unfinished the game was. SOE then decided to make an expansion in 3 months with no testing and then went on to release it in Sept of 2003. The expansion flopped and many people who wanted diversity to bases to make foot combat more fun, got these horrible to access caverns. So alot of people quit after that expansion because it was the last straw, they couldn't take anymore of SOE's BS. Planetside is a game that really only played well with massive battles as thats what it was about, so as the population fell then the gameplay suffered. However there was still lots of people playing and it was still really fun playing in these massive battles.
Planetside has character development and did this way before other FPS games like COD4 did progression in an online FPS. Every level you gained you also gained a Cert which you can use to spend on wepaons, armour and vehicles. So everyone had the choice to play the game how they wanted and noone could be a master at everything, you had to specialise in things. I loved getting in the bomber aircraft named the Liberator and bombing the crap out of enemy bases.
Then however SOE ruined the game like they ruined SWG by putting BFRs into the game which were big overpowered walking robots. They made foot zergs useless and they made all other vehicles useless and you can see what an impact that has on the game. SOE took forever to fix it and by the time they did most of the population left. So did SOE's development for the game because after so many people left, it wasn't worth putting the resources into it anymore. So over the years Planetside has had little development and has just been left to grow old and dated and slowly die.
That said Planetside is still a fantastic game and an amazing one because it was so bold and innovative for it's time. Never before and still to this day have we seen an FPS with so many players. It was so fun and amazing just to participate in these giant battles. I really wish'd developers would respect what a fine achievement the game is and would clone this isstead of WoW all the time. It wasn't Planetside's fault that it failed but the poor management of SOE not caring about it. The reason it was never more popular back in the day is because it came before WoW and people wouldn't put money into a montly sub, specially for an online FPS. SOE never advertised it showing off these giant battles so people just never understood what it was all about.
The game is still fun and still has enough people playing to have some big battles. Just a shame that they arn't as big as they once were. However give the free trial a go and be part of history!
http://launcher.station.sony.com/
My heart says to give it a 5 for how amazing it was but the game was never complete because SOE sucks lol.