Am I willing to form a Planetside chapter for Tribe of Judah? Yes, IF and ONLY if I have dedicated staff members in place to run the chapter immediately after it's formed.
Do I think there will be sufficient interest for a Planetside chapter? Certainly. But again, it all depends on staff.
What do I personally think of the game? Well, I jumped straight into the game after installing and patching the beta early last week. I'll withhold my full review until I have a chance to play more of the game, but I will post initial impressions.
- This is Tribes on a really, really big map. If you like Tribes, you'll love Planetside. End of story for Tribes fans.
- To its credit, Planetside has the least intimidating learning curve of all MMORPGs I've played so far.
- Do all MMORPGs suffer from long spans of time running from point A to point B with dull and uninteresting terrain? Yes. So this is not the fault of the game designers, but a flaw with all MMORPGs. Unfortunately, removing this particular problem implies some terrible balance problems. I will say that Planetside goes a long way to prevent player boredom by introducing vehicles. I have to admit, it was rather nifty sitting in the gunner seat as our transport vehicle, with six other players sitting inside, while our pilot took us thousands of feet above the ground and into a battle hotspot. That was, unfortunately, just when I had started enjoying the game and moments before the game crashed. But hey, it's a beta. It's to be expected.
- If your system is older and contains a CPU with less than 1GHz processing power, DON'T EVEN BOTHER. I have 1GHz chip, 256MB RAM, Windows 2000 installed on my drive, and the game would freeze every now and then as my machine chugged along. My system was also incapable of running UT2003 at higher detail settings, but, to be quite frank, Planetside's graphics do not even approach the level of detail and, dare I say it?, beauty of UT2003's system.
- Which brings me to my next point. The graphics are good, but not great. Now, to be fair, I'm not running the highest detail settings. Also realize that this is a MMORPG and maps are exponentially larger than those player in regular FPS games such as Quake 3 and UT2003. So, really, no one's expecting the graphics to be spectacular. But still...I was a bit disappointed. Maybe all the hype led me to develop unrealistic expectations.
- The interface for Planetside, at least in regards to communication, feels clumsy and awkward. It was frustrating moving and positioning windows that were overlayed on a first-person perspective view. Switching to the third-person view and simply hiking the learning curve a bit did help, but the interface could still use work.
- Consider for a moment the implications of the first massive multiplayer online game hyped as a first-person shooter and not a role-playing game. While there are role-playing elements involved, the first-person shooter elements are thrust to the forefront and thus will attract more FPS players than RPG players. If you've played Counter-Strike and any online RPG, you already know where I'm heading with this. In the interest of keeping this post shorter than a novella, I'll say this: If you play this game, be prepared for it to devolve to "d00d! i pwn3d j00 h4rd! gh3y!" and all the other vile nonsense that makes those who actually completed grade school cringe in repulsion. I know that there's no escaping this sort of gamer in any genre (if parents aren't paying attention to the MA-17 warning on Half-Life when they pick it up for their 10-year old, they won't see the T rating on most RPGs), but understand that this game will attract "l33t pwn3r5" in droves. Form clans, guilds, or whatever, or be stuck in the cesspool that is modern gaming. Fair warning.
Okay, that's way more than I wanted to type. -_- Please remember that these are all personal opinions and are not meant to be a professional assessment by any means. I've never liked Tribes, so I'm probably not the most qualified person to review this game. Also, I need to play more than three hours to figure out what to think of the game. ^_^;;
Overall, unless you're a hardcore Tribes player, I can't really recommend paying a monthly fee for this game. I'd recommend waiting for Star Wars Galaxies, but we all might be dead or raptured by the time our great-grandchildren see its release. If you're desperate for a good MMORPG, pick up Dark Age of Camelot and its expansion pack and hook up with our chapter guild.
Expect a more detailed review in the coming week.
Tek7, amateur game reviewer, over and out.