It's been an 'interesting' start to Planetside 2 so far.  When I first started to write a few words on it, I had been supremely impressed by how smooth the launch had been, how clear and open the communication had been between the Planetside 2 team and the players... and then the cracks started to show.

It's probably best if I start with the positive aspects of Planetside 2 before I get dragged into the issues I've personally faced for fear of getting into a rant missing some of the amazing experiences, and, without any shadow of doubt, they are amazing.

In fact, it's when you first load up Planetside 2 and walk out of your starting faction's base and look around you'll realise just how stunning it looks.  The scale of the surrounding area is truely impressive, especially when you notice just how many tanks, aircraft and infantry are whizzing around on their way to a hot spot somewhere nearby.  Things get even more impressive when you get into your first proper large-scale battle and realise just how hectic it can really get with three different factions fighting over one facility... aircraft dogfighting overhead, groups of tanks roaring past while infantry exchange gunfire with each other.  It really is a sight to behold.

The idea behind it all is pretty simple.  There are three factions; New Conglomerate (NC), Terran Republic (TR) and Vanu Sovereignty (VS), all looking to control numerous facilities across a number of terratories, each split into sectors.  Taking control is simply a case of battling your way into a facility and holding key locations.  Of course, while I say "simply" the reality is that the faction that currently controls that facility are likely to let you just walk in and claim it.  Instead you'll have to battle through numerous force fields and slowly push the defending force out of the base.

Each faction has it's own style and are normally pretty easy to pick out in a crowd... which proves essential in the large battles.

The key to any of these battles is team work and playing to the strengths of your class.  While you can play solo, you won't really get the most out of Planetside 2.  Your best bet is to hit the instant action, pick a hotspot with a good ratio of your faction, and dive in feet first.

Speaking of the classes, there are six to chose from and you can change between them whenever you find yourself at a loadout terminal:

• Light Assault - Equiped with a jetpack, this class is suited to hit and run style attacks.
• Heavy Assault - Bigger guns, including a rocket launcher, and a force field make this class an excellent all round choice
• Medic - Exactly as you'd expect... keeps everyone else alive
• Engineer - Can deploy a useable gun turret and ammo packs, as well as being able to repair vehicles, MAX units and (more importantly) base fortifications
• Infilitrator - Able to cloak for short lengths of time, hack enemy consoles and armed with a high-powered rifle, this is the class for those sneaky players who enjoy ruining my day
• Mechanized Assault Exo-Suit (or MAX) - Essentially a heavy weapons platform that's classed more as a vehicle.

You also have, of course, a number of different land and air vehicles at your disposal... from the fast, but vulnerable Flash ATV (Quad bike), up to the Galaxy Air Transport.  Each vehicle carrying a specific resource cost relative to it's usefulness on the battlefield.

Customisation is the key here, and as you gain Battle Ranks (levels) you'll get certification points to spend on unlocking abilities and weapons.  The choice can be a little intimidating at first, but there are a number of low cost unlocks that'll get you going.  My advice would be to play each class/vehicle to find one that suits your play style before investing serious points in it.

So far, so good... it's a great looking game, it has lots of choices and customisation and massive-scale battles. What's the problem?

Well, sadly, what appeared to be a relatively smooth launch started to go rapidly downhill.  The EU server I was playing on suffered from some hideous lag, later attributed to a bad hardware configuration.  Loads of people appeared to be losing boosts and weapons that they had paid for with Station Cash (SOE's premium currency).  A lot of people are missing rewards from either their Alpha Team subscription or the Facebook Recruitment Centre app.  Individually, these problems are to be expected, but together it starts to look like Planetside 2, despite the extensive beta, wasn't *quite* ready for public consumption.

My personal experience has been marred by a few of these issues.  For example, I've already spent a handful of Station Cash unlocking a couple of weapons for the Heavy Assault class to make myself more useful... one of these was a light machine gun for 250 Station Cash (about £2, quite cheap compared to most of the unlocks).  Despite claiming that it was unlocked, I wasn't able to equip it until I'd logged out and back in again, which isn't great during peak times (and I had to do this for any other unlocks).  Still, not too bad, I can live with that.  However, the next day when I logged in I found that the LMG was once again locked, my Station Cash was still missing and instead I'd been given 50 certification points... which wasn't enough to unlock the weapon again, even though it was now on sale at 50% of the cost I'd paid for it.  Tickets to SOE support appear to be going generally unanswered (I already had one open for missing rewards from the Facebook app... that's been open for five days now with only a general group reply) and the support Twitter account, @SOEHelp, appears to be quite selective in the questions it answers.  Add to this the complications of ProSiebenSat.1 who are responsible for dealing with European accounts... unless you were in the Beta... and things really start to get muddy, especially when it appears that the ProSiebenSat.1 network/website seems to be struggling to keep up.

So I find myself reluctant to play again until the issue is resolved and I even more reluctant to spend more Station Cash for fear of it disappearing... which is not good for SOE who's business model revolves around these micro-transactions.

I can only hope that SOE get these issues resolved quickly as the game they have is a masterpiece and desrves to be experienced without reserve.

UPDATE: About ten minutes after posting this, I got a reply from SOE technical support kindly refunding my missing Station Cash.  All is not quite roses, however, as I then queued for over 6 minutes to get into the game, only for the server to crash a minute later *sigh*  

Still waiting on an answer to my older support ticket as well...

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