Auraxis, How I miss thee

“The planet of Auraxis in a distant star system cut off by a collapsed wormhole from their homeworld, locked in a three way struggle for power on an alien world where the dead come back to life.”

Over the last 8 years I’ve attempted to find another game but too many MMOs seem to focus on tempting you deeper into the game with various phat loot carrots, rather than inspiring a sense of accomplishment or teamwork. Running through-out Planetside was a underlying feeling of comradery that I haven’t encountered in any other game, this was every person working together as part of the global team and thus giving reward to everyone for their hard-work if it came to fruition.

The game is designed around support, both direct and indirect, it was the back-bone and heart of the game. It was sadly was discarded as they began to reward people for less team-work, for achievement whoring and kill-stat information, it was at this point the foundations of the system began to crumble and the 110% effort that people gave began  to drop and loyalty wavered. This was followed up by a never ending stream of cheaters that slowly strangled the last good elements of the game.

Some of my best and most vivid memories include base re-secures with 5 seconds left on the clock, a wave of MAX suited troops charging across the terrain of Cyssor & the determination that people had to stop just one base falling to the enemy. A unified feeling from all players that what you were doing no matter how trivial was important and that the global fight could benefit.

Here are a few screenshots from my time in Planetside and with it my hope that the sequel is half as good as the original was.

OK stop the press! As if by magic I started to write this post and discover that John Smedley has tweeted this:

And my faith in the new version of the game increases slightly.

If you want to learn more about the history of Planetside I suggest you start here : http://planetside.station.sony.com/howto/manual_detail.vm?chapter=0

4 thoughts on “Auraxis, How I miss thee”

  1. Ah, such fond memories! As you know, I’m back playing again, and while it’s still fun the sense of loyalty you talk about, or even the feeling of a need to ‘support’ the Empire, have completely disappeared. I think, even more than the addition of merits or kill stats it was the abolishing of “One Empire per Server” that really killed off this aspect of the game. Anyway, to continue with the nostalgia, here’s the YouTube link to our outfit’s 3rd birthday celebration video! http://youtu.be/5t3u1D0ZVeE

    DoktorChaos – BR25, CR5 ChaosNC, Werner server
    NC for Life!

    1. Yea the change of the empire server timer was a rather silly move. Rather than stick out a difficult fight and achieve everyone would just jump-ship to another empire.

      Filming for that video was great fun, though the quality isn’t as good I feel. Still I hope that I’ll be making another before the year is out.

  2. Less “us” and more “me” seems to increasingly be the way the forward in our much loved mmos does’nt it.
    I only played planetside for a month or so when they did free to play thing,can’t remember what they called it.
    I think I could be quite tempted to try the new Planetside when it comes though. Cool post 🙂

    1. Sadly I’m inclined too agree, i had hoped Warhammer would offer something that drew on that feeling of a group effort. It did at time but they were few and far between.
      The Planetside:Reserves was a genius idea, apart from the fact it allowed hackers to bounce between endless accounts causing havoc.

      I’ll come knocking when they are drafting for the soldiers of Auraxis

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