SOE president John Smedley discussed the upcoming sequel to MMOFPS Planetside, saying that the game would feature massive battles on a scale “no other FPS will touch.”
Now, LiveJournal has many uses in this day and age: You can vent about how your classes suck and how you’re so angry and misunderstood, you can publish your erotic Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy fanfiction, and you can roleplay your favorite Kingdom Hearts characters. Apparently, if you’re John Smedley, you can also use LiveJournal to discuss details about the in-development sequel to one of your games.
Now, this isn’t the first we’ve heard about a sequel to expand the Planetside universe – referred to as “Planetside Next” by Smedley – since we learned about it at the end of September. In his LiveJournal post, Smedley wrote a miniature love letter to the first Planetside, praising its massive FPS battles on a scale that you wouldn’t “find [in] any other FPS,” and discussed his hopes for the sequel:
To me the idea of a massive firefight on that kind of scale is why I’m a gamer.
Planetside had a lot of really great things about it, but it also had some frustrating things. The whole Sanctuary concept is something that slowed things down too much. We also didn’t get people back into the action quickly enough.
But the core of Planetside – massive battles with vehicles and infantry was something we nailed really well.
To me, Planetside Next means we get a chance to take the essence of everything that was fun in Planetside and make it a lot better. Massive battles on a scale no other FPS will touch. None of this 64 player stuff. REALLY MASSIVE. With much better organization, and a tight focus on making sure the action is always going on, with awesome graphics.
Damn I love Planetside. I really do.
Smedley further went on to denounce the prevalence of fanfiction pairing him with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes designer Brad McQuaid, saying that he “deserves Bill Roper at the very least.”
(Via Videogamer)
