Something is happening again at Planetside 2! After the game series recently attracted attention through negative headlines, such as the early end of the Battle Royale offshoot Planetside Arena, developer Rogue Planet Games now wants to breathe new life into the multiplayer shooter with a huge expansion.
more on the subject
Planetside 3 is coming and is supposed to offer a "full galactic war"
Fleet carriers, orbital attacks & competitive mode
The latest update is titled "Escalation" and is quite ambitious, after all it is the biggest expansion since the release in 2012.
The developers want to convince you of a return to the battlefields of the planet Auraxis with the following features:
- Outfit Wars: This mode allows guilds to battle each other in competitive endgame tournaments. These take place every month on a card specially made for this competition.
- Sanctuary: The new zone is a meeting point for players of all empires. Here you can chat peacefully, recruit new guild members and trade with NPCs.
- In Outfit Wars, guilds can collect a new resource that will give them access to new, powerful weapons and vehicles in regular battles.
These are the new war tools:
- Bastion Fleet Carrier: This massive interplanetary fleet carrier has manned towers, artillery cannons mounted on the ship, a launch pad for interceptors and respawn points for vehicles
- Steel Rain: A coordinated dropping of the entire platoon into the landing capsule.
- Citadel Shield: A bubble-shaped shield that protects small outposts from projectiles.
- A.N.V.I.L .: Tanks and other vehicles come to you via Air Drop.
- Orbital Satellite Uplink: Requests an orbital attack.
You can see the new fleet carriers in the official trailer for the update:
Player numbers are increasing again
The expansion can already be seen as a small success, because Planetside 2 reached its last night shortly after the release of the expansion highest simultaneous number of players since 2016.
According to SteamDB, a total of almost 6,000 players were online at the same time yesterday, in 2019 the number was usually only around 2000. The Steam Reviews have also been very positive in the last 30 days: Of almost 2,500 reviews, 93 percent were positive.
At the moment, Rogue Planet Games seems to be doing a lot of things right – even if they are probably already working on Planetside 3 in the background.