A new patch message is available:

1) MAX armor sometimes got stuck in a situation where it could not reload ammunition. This is resolved.

2) Storm fronts are much larger now, increasing the chance that you'll actually see weather in-game.

3) Base experience for killing players has been increased from 50 points to 100 points. Other variables increase the values from there (type of armor, weapons carried, how long since last respawn), but the base value has been doubled. Battle Experience should increase correspondingly for kill situations.

4) A large optimization to the way we process objects has been made. This should significantly improve framerate when near facilities and large battles.

5) The Striker no longer has the "raytrace from your kneecap" issue and now does its raytrace from the muzzle of the weapon, thus preventing LOS issues that shouldn't occur.

6) If the gunner bails on a Magrider, the driver will no longer be left in a situation where he cannot drive the vehicle.

7) There is now a "Location" column on the Server Selection screen. This is used instead of the old parenthetical description in the server names so that you can easily sort servers by location. For instance, what was once "Markov (US West)" is now just "Markov" and there is a "US West" description in the Location column.

8) There should no longer be a way to get out of the Options screens without first encountering a "Do you wish to save these changes?" dialog box. This prevents players from thinking they've saved their options without them actually being saved.

9) The weather clouds now show up properly when a storm front moves into view.

10) First-time experience rewards are reenabled (without the exploit potential).

11) Several zone crash issues are resolved. Server stability has been increased dramatically.

A new patch message is available:

The PlanetSide team is committed to ensuring a level playing field for all soldiers. Players who use methods outside of the intended game design to artificially advance their characters will be considered in violation of the target=_new>PlanetSide Rules of Conduct. Penalties may include the dissolution of any Outfit caught exploiting experience systems and suspension from the service for the first offense. Further offenses can result in a complete ban from the PlanetSide service. As such, we will continue to closely monitor servers, and will go through all reports that come in regarding Outfits and players who exploit any type of game system.

1) It should no longer be possible to cause grief to a Combat Engineer by throwing jammer grenades at his Boomers or Mines in order to detonate those items near friendly units and causing damage to them.
 
2) An exploit method of generating infinite experience was sealed up and prevented.
 
3) You can now move properly in the third mission of Offline Training.
 
4) You can no longer force your MAX into permanent autorun mode by dismounting a vehicle while moving.
 
5) Barricade collision reps were optimized to prevent slowdown seen when overflying facilities.
 
6) The Main Help menu now has the few remaining categories with no text filled out properly.
 
7) We removed the pop-up dialog that asked for confirmation before adding or removing implants. (It was unnecessary.)
 
8) To form an Outfit, you need a full squad of folks (10 soldiers including yourself) that are not already part of another Outfit.
 
9) Vehicle engine sound "spikes" in volume have been smoothed out.
 
10) First-time help should be available for all objects again. (It was missing for some terminals.)
 
11) There has been a zone crash plaguing us recently when a zone gets up around 500 players. It had to do with the respawning code in certain odd situations. That bug is now squashed.
 
12) /tell messages are no longer case sensitive when addressing players. In otherwords, if a player's name is BoBoB, you can now type /tell bobob instead of having to type /tell BoBoB.

Planetside.info is considering making Planetside game posters to sell, and wants feedback on whether you would buy them. The request is found at This Link, so if you are interested go there and e-mail them about it. (Just so it is clear, we have no relationship with their site and are just posting this as a courtesy to them).

You can now track the new comments being added by clicking on the New Comments link in the menu. This will let you see what has been added by the users most recently and help you track any questions that other users are asking in case you want to help them out. Also, Illia added a starting out strategy guide. If you are interested in writing up a strategy guide for any aspect of the game, feel free to write one and submit it to allakhazam@allakhazam.com. We do not guarantee it will get published, but if it is well written and informative, we will add it to the player guides section of the site. We hope to be able to gather together a nice collection of guides for the game.

A new patch message is available:

1) It should no longer be possible to cause grief to a Combat Engineer by throwing jammer grenades at his Boomers or Mines in order to detonate those items near friendly units and causing damage to them.
 
2) An exploit method of generating infinite experience was sealed up and prevented.
3) You can now move properly in the third mission of Offline Training.
 
4) You can no longer force your MAX into permanent autorun mode by dismounting a vehicle while moving.
 
5) Barricade collision reps were optimized to prevent slowdown seen when overflying facilities.
 
6) The Main Help menu now has the few remaining categories with no text filled out properly.
 
7) We removed the pop-up dialog that asked for confirmation before adding or removing implants. (It was unnecessary.)
 
8) To form an Outfit, you need a full squad of folks (10 soldiers including yourself) that are not already part of another Outfit.
 
9) Vehicle engine sound "spikes" in volume have been smoothed out.
 
10) First-time help should be available for all objects again. (It was missing for some terminals.)
 
11) There has been a zone crash plaguing us recently when a zone gets up around 500 players. It had to do with the respawning code in certain odd situations. That bug is now squashed.
 
12) /tell messages are no longer case sensitive when addressing players. In otherwords, if a player's name is BoBoB, you can now type /tell bobob instead of having to type /tell BoBoB.

Miir from Malvision has asked us to host his wonderful Planetside videos. You can download or watch them online here.

Gamesdomain recently ran a review of Planetside, giving it a top game rating. They conclude "PlanetSide's exciting mix of action and strategy is a breath of fresh FPS air. Attention Deficit Disorder types who just want to run around and shoot wildly can certainly come out and play, but they may wonder why they're getting so many rocks thrown at them... and why so many are hitting them in the back of the head." For the full review, follow this link.

One day into the launch, Producer Dave Georgeson posted up a producer's letter to let you know what's going on in Planetside. ---------- Producer's Letter - Day 1 Recap Howdy folks, Here we are. Day One. The worlds are live and starting to fill up. As we watch the process working, we're also watching the Forums and we've noticed a few topics that may interest you. First of all, the My PlanetSide features are now available. (You can either click this link or go there from the front page of PlanetSide.com.) This is a powerful feature that will only grow over time. You can check out outfit and player statistics, ranking ladders and even watch the progress of the various worlds over the last 8, 12, 16, or even 24 hours. Secondly, there's a rumor out there that SOE was not going to allow the European players to play on American servers and visa versa. That's a very strange rumor and it has absolutely no truth. We, of course, allow players to play anywhere they wish to play. We are opening up world clusters based in Amsterdam soon, but those are not "required" for European players. Those servers are just located there geographically to lower latency issues for European players, if they desire to play on those servers. Lastly, folks that were in Beta have noticed that experience awards are lower than those to which they were accustomed. This is true, but the experience curves in beta were intentionally overinflated to allow faster progression of rank. This allowed our design team to examine data about the usage of weapons and armor at the various Battle Ranks. Those XP gains are now returned to the gains originally intended. For the record, the experience gains while in a squad are shared evenly among squad members, but with a 20% bonus added onto them. Therefore, if you destroy a target worth 100 raw XP, and you're in a squad of 10 people, your individual gain would be: (100/10) * 1.2 = 11.2 XP (rounded up to 12). This may seem like a reduction in experience potential, but when in a squad of 10 you rack up kills at a greater rate and with relative ease compared to doing so as an individual, so it's possible to gain a great deal of experience that way. (Plus, squads allow easier communication and allow the sharing of base capture experience, as well as allowing Command functionality, so they're very worthwhile groups.) That's it for now. Watch this space in the coming days. There's sure to be more on the way. Dave Georgeson Producer

I just realized that our post on this did not get put up on this site, so I figured I would remind people about the new pricing plan implemented by SOE for their games, including Planetside. The All Access Plan costs $21.99 and gives you access to Planetside, Everquest, Everquest Online Adventures, and the Station Pass, which includes Infantry Online, Cosmic Rift and Tantrus. It will also include Everquest 2 when that is launched. If you are already playing one of those games and have just bought Planetside, you are definitely better off signing up for the all access plan. Complete information on this can be found at This Site.

The games have been shipped out and should be in the stores tomorrow, so I figured I would take a minute to say welcome to Planetside to those who just bought the game and found yourself here. Have fun!