PlanetSide 2025: SOE's Big Plans For The Future

These days, when an MMO maker declares its intention to carry on until the day the sun reveals it's actually been a giant Pac-Man the entire time and devours us all in one fell wakka, it's easy to be skeptical. Extremely skeptical. But PlanetSide 2 seems to be off to an especially strong start, and no one ever got anywhere - except maybe off the edge of a cliff - by being shortsighted. And so, in a blog post outlining his three-year plan for the truly massive MMOFPS, CEO John Smedley explained that "we're thinking about a game we plan to have running in 2025." Which, as you may have noticed, is a bit more than three years from now. But that comparatively short span is the part SOE's really focusing on, and by the end of it, Smedley's hoping for player-owned bases, harvestable resources, seamless oceans between continents, NPC armies, and tons more.

It's quite a behemoth of a post, but here are some of the standouts:

"We plan on releasing continents that are empty or partially empty where players can build their own bases. These are open world bases, so others will be able to attack them. We're also planning on having these continents heavily resource based with new resource types that will be very rare, and lots of cool new stuff that can be built out of these new resources. Imagine [StarCraft II] style resource harvesting with physical vehicles doing the mining or the harvesting."

"Water between continents - seamlessly - this is really hard tech, but our goal is to make the whole planet seamless and allow water based vehicles."

That last bit, especially, sounds completely insane. Meanwhile, Smedley wants to populate these areas - at least, in part - with NPCs that players can both fight and command. "Imagine," he wrote, "as the commander of a base, sending an NPC army towards another base MOBA-style - except it's in the middle of the Planetside 2. This isn't another game mode. It's all part of the same game."

Other goals include weather, tons more vehicles and weapons, and eSports support. That said, all of this is subject to change. To its credit, SOE seems to understand quite well that players are the glue that holds its game together, so they'll get final say. "This isn't some 'vision' we plan on imparting on our players," Smedley clarified. "It's our thoughts on what we think would be cool. We will listen to our users feedback and make changes based on that feedback."

OK then, apropos of nothing, I want a landshark gun. Anybody feel like starting the petition?