Recently there was a newspost about Quakewars Online and it was met with utter distates because of the word Quakewars, however the prospect of QW Online as a Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter is something that makes my mouthwater.
image: planetside_coverart
You see Crossfire right after RTCW, ET and Quake my fourth favourite online PC Game is actually PlanetSide. What is Planetside? Well Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

Quote by WikipediaPlanetSide chronicles the efforts of three factions as they fight for territorial control over ten different continents on the planet Auraxis. Players take on the role of individual soldiers fighting for one of the three factions within the game, and can specialize in various fields such as combat vehicle crewman, infantry, invisible infiltrator or a variety of combat support roles such as combat medic or combat engineer. The game is played primarily in a first person perspective, with the option of third-person (though without crosshairs).


I draw a huge amount of similarities between PlanetSide and RTCW, its why when I played it, it was with RTCW players and lots of them. The two games share many common concepts, you cannot win on your own, you must have multiple classes, you must communicate with other teams and the important part of any FPS, your aim is important. Now ok you cannot win in 8 minutes and actually there is no 'winning' like a clanmatch, but a battle is very much like a clanwar. You're looking to conquer a base, much like you fight it out for the forward bunker and take the flag. Its the same, in Planetside you fight for multistaged bases and 'take flags' and can lose those flags as teams fight back.

Planetside was far from perfect, it was buggy (to hell) for the first 12 months of release if not longer and like any MMO had at various points, massive imbalances. But it wasnt like WoW where a level 10 could never dream of challenging a level 80, if that level 10 in Planetside had some movement and some aim, he stood a chance take down a top level opponent - simply put, theres skill involved rather than simple playing time (though that is of course required!).

There has been nothing like Planetside since its release, the game was not widely looked upon as a success though it is still running today. However in February 2010 Global Agenda is released and for me thats the next big thing and I think its something that many RTCW/ET players will enjoy.

image: Logo_global_agenda

Global Agenda is based on the Unreal 3 engine and for me bares very many similarities to Planetside and the enjoyment parts of RTCW. I played it at Quakecon & PAX and said how much I enjoyed Planetside to one of the developers who retorted that he can see the similarities, but this one actually works! And he was right, what I played was far smoother than Planetside, all be it the game was clearly being played on a LAN server so it was far from a real test.

However it had some very key likeable features, first and foremost it was 'lightweight' by this I mean, idtech 3 engine vs idtech 4 lightweight. The aiming was very simple and the ability to change classes and your weapon outputs was also very simple. It was a touch hard to navigate your way around the map, but then navigation around any MMO 'basecamp' is far from simple. The movement was clever, considering I had a jetpack on it was really quite 'freestyle' - not quite Quake 3 trickjumping but certainly enough to not annoy me (hi Wolfenstein). One other big seperately feature for this game from Planetside was that there are no vehicles. So before I had got into any real action I still had a smile on my face, which was a welcome change!

I guess the best way to describe games like these are that they are like massive ET public servers but with a point! Whilst games like these can never replace the thrill of competition they certainly can be extremely enjoyable. If you're like me and in need a new game to play because you're bored of everything else then I strongly suggest you try Global Agenda, You can find out more over on the official site