The End of the World
"[PlanetSide] was ambitious, bold, and perhaps even a little ahead of its time, but for those who experienced it, they could never go back to smaller scale conflicts. This was a game that is truly unique and helped shape many people's expectations for [first-person shooter] games going forward," Tony Jones, Daybreak Games' lead community manager told me in an email.According to another player by the name of 'Mook,' that wasn't the only thing that set PlanetSide apart: "Without players, especially friends, it's not really much of a game. It has no [non-player characters], and shouldn't. It's all about player interaction." Where World of Warcraft is teeming with computer-controlled 'NPCs' who dole out quests or help tell the story, PlanetSide's story was entirely written by the players fighting—and dying—together.Where World of Warcraft is teeming with computer-controlled 'NPCs' who dole out quests or help tell the story, PlanetSide's story was entirely written by the players fighting—and dying—together.
That cynicism reaches back to PlanetSide. "I didn't play [PlanetSide] as much as I wanted to," Mook said. "The game wasn't supported by its development team." He told me that, as PlanetSide got older, Daybreak Games (then known as Sony Online Entertainment) began investing in the game less and less. And the less Daybreak Games paid attention to PlanetSide, the more hackers did."As a result of the lack of support, attempts to exploit the apparently shoddy security were not prevented," Mook said. "There were a lot of malicious individuals exploiting game weaknesses to drive players away.""It was just never going to be fixed," Chord said. "And as long as it wasn't going to be fixed the game could be ruined by people who were hacking." He explained that hackers could manipulate PlanetSide's code in order to teleport at will, increase the speed and accuracy of their guns, and even kill whole platoons with only a few button presses. With Daybreak Games seemingly uninterested in stopping them, it wasn't long before the only war being fought in PlanetSide was against its hackers—and no one was winning."As a result of the lack of support, attempts to exploit the apparently shoddy security were not prevented," Mook said. "There were a lot of malicious individuals exploiting game weaknesses to drive players away."
Hacking the Hackers
While hacking was, according to many of the players I spoke with, the poison that slowly killed PlanetSide, it is also the reason PlanetSide has any hope of existing after being shut down. As Chord's curiosity for how PlanetSide was built evolved along with his skill in programming, his focus shifted to the idea of building a perfect recreation of PlanetSide that could exist independent of what Daybreak Games did with the original.It's a massive undertaking, but before PlanetSide closed Chord managed to capture over 87 million packets of information thanks to the help of 42 players who used his software.