Right since people finally have nothing to complain about things in game (since it would be futile cuz roadmap); we're now reduced to figuring about what and how the lore works in Planetside 2. Right. Addressing Concerns A lot of people are confused about the incident with the assassination of the N.C diplomats, President Connery (a title he deserves respect for), and of course the case of Brent Waterson. To confirm, yes the assassination did take place - but it wasn't the fault of the T.R government as a whole. Waterson's efforts to stoke conflict even further between the colonists gave excuse for his ruthless rise to power as leader of the expedition fleet and subsequent status as dictator of Auraxis for 20 years. The issue of numbers (my personal opinion) - the figures for original colonist fleet are specifically given to us, and in a matter of fact very low to allow an effect colony growth without it getting well... genetically refined so to speak. The numbers allow for the factions to develop on Auraxis start to become slightly lopsided, if you figure that 100,000 colonists land, 10,000 are "rebels" and 500 are vanu etc etc. Therefore in personal opinion the original figure for the first colonists should be higher at what can be close to half a million. (feedback is open) The issue of the world and its surroundings; Auraxis as a planet itself is restricted by it's resources and landmass to feed and sustain its population (for all factions) - as well drawing on raw materials to build the original colony cities on the planet's surface. But thanks to a recent update in game our view of a lonely war-ridden planet can be kicked in the proverbial nuts; because the V.R Room is suggested being on another planet... (No joke check it yourself) So that opens the box, how many or how much is the Auraxis SYSTEM colonised by humanity? What wonders exist for us (as players/observers) to explore? Rebirthing and nanites; now this is where everyone gets a little tetchy - rebirthing was not an original lore construct in the planetside 2 drafts (that is the idea of permanent human cloning and coming back to life when dieing outright ). However REVIVING technology is discovered - which is pretty much a overly sci-fi and epic form of defibrillator. Nanites; this is not a unique "creature" or phenomenon that exists on Auraxis, nanites are really just the cheap manufacturer of the planet's raw materials powered by the "uberpowerful" awe-inspiring auraxium (that purple stuff). Nanites; serve the purpose to build and mass produce but without the remote power (resource revamp stage three) you can not do diddly except rub bullets together in the vain hope of creating a spark to light a camp fire (no campfire, no hot meals). Indar,Amerish,Hossin,Esamir,searhus,osshur etc etc as the colony landfalls? - no. simple outright no. Purely if you're going to look at the game and look back the lore, you'll tend to feel let down on the question of where is civilization. Simple; civilization is not exposed to the players on the basis of the home far away and out of reach, the "continents" are the battle-grounds for resources, technical facilities, and logistic support. The battle rages away from the comfort of city life, villages, humanity in general. So if you as yourself the question - it's because you won't be able to see home - not for a long time in the service of your faction. ("But Techplants and Biolabs are colony ships!") Not really - if the power for interplanetary travel exists in the current climate, the ability to manufacture large scale "pre-fabricated" facilities exists and are dropped down in one piece rather than build from the ground up. The Drop-pod - no one has thunked this bit, but this is the evidence of the wider idea of interplanetary war. Simply where does the drop-pod come from ?("Bastion Fleet carrier!" shh!) So we have the evidence staking to create our lore, and it proves that Planetside as a 10 year game DOES offer a lot more potential than people would give credit for it. BUT WHOSE ARE THE BAD GUYS?!?! As many would say, history lore is not black and white, you can create characters that exhibit this classic ideal, but really all the factions have their white knight armor and sinister dark forces at play, it is for us to recognize them and develop them even further. If you are looking for the good clean shaven heroes, there are none - except in the way you build own little character, and what he/she tries to do survive. But I want get involved too! Sure thing! The beauty of the current storyline is such to actually allow you guys with your active imaginations to get involved (ignoring the stupid net/troll culture -.-, for the sake of Connery, you guys) - the storyline is UNFINISHED, there is no end plot as there is no end-game. The ability to create new chapters in the game lore is there for us as fans to contribute bigtime. The only issue we have is getting every to follow a streamlined pattern (AKA GETTING THE TIME LINE CORRECT! ) and we can argue for hours of what do you here. example : Sonny, who I've chatted once and gave me an opportunity to submit some lore writing, wrote and audioed a whole series of history of Auraxis after PLANETFALL; but if reviewed with information from the game and the official sources - becomes purely a first draft of a Planetside 2 "historium de epica" which needs alot of feedback and revision. But don't fret Sonny it's because you put an end-game plot in your history when there shouldn't be Where can we start discussing?!? Right here! We have to courteous of each other's ideas and opinions on the subjects involved because if we want to get a story (plot) that we all can agree on, it has be thought out with the negatives and positives (i.e. don't do Warhammer 40K and start making everything O.P for the sake of looking good -.-) NOTE: THERE ISN'T A TL;DR because I ain't gonna baby you - learn to sit down and read.
This ought to answer a lot of questions: https://www.planetside2.com/news/may102012story Summary: Waterson threatened Miller into conspiring against Conney (leader of the fleet and former leader of Earth), destroying his ship and killing him, then blaming the NC. Connery was a cool dude but there's still tons of corruption in the TR. Even though Connery tried to do the right things, the TR is one layer of bureaucracy on top of another. This means there are tons of power hungry monsters like Waterson, and people like Miller who have to go along with the corruption out of fear. So the TR who consider their government and system to be good are partially true because of people like Connery, but they overlook the fact that giving their government ultimate power allows widespread corruption, embodied by people like Waterson. This is why the NC rebelled.
1/2 Where is it confirmed that Waterson was the dictator for 20 years? I've read the lore and nothing is mentioned about his rule beyond the fact that he was all oppressive and such. Doubtless there's colonies on other planets in the Auraxian system. After all, those who grew up on lower gravity worlds in the old TR need a comfy place to live. I personally think that VR pointing to the moon is just a coincidence. Not to mention that this other planet exists in the night sky. (Which is a proverbial kick in the nuts to fans of n-body physics) I rather like the idea of rebirthing. What I really want is for Planetside to emphasize its effects more. Similarly to how Spec Ops: The Line challenged the mascaraing of hordes of baddies commonplace in shooters, Planetside could challenge the idea of respawning and constant war. I mean, just look at this video. Planetside has so much potential for lore that just sits there it drives me crazy! There's an official lore entry that states Cyssor is home to some civilians. The CGI trailer shows some station/ship interior where drop pods launch from. Sonny is awesome. He helped organize the ALA contest, my entry into which you can read here. I tried to flesh out the old TR a bit more. It's still under heavy revision, mind you. PM'd feedback would be appreciated. One thing I think is necessary for the lore is the abolishent of Nanite Systems as a sort of overlord power. Plenty of people seem to think that the entire war is a conspiracy to put money in their pockets, but that just opens up some huge plot holes since nanites eliminate the need for money. It also sucks meaning out of gameplay.
2/2 I've got a bunch of problems with the lore in its current state as well. While pouring over the official lore archive studying for my ALA entry I stumbled upon a number of confusing and frustrating tidbits and feel like I need to dump all my thoughts somewhere. Here they are, in no particular order. Phobos. An excerpt from a lore entry: This is what Phobos actually looks like.You may notice that it's extremely tiny, only 11km in radius with a gravity of only 0.0057 m/s, not even strong enough to shape the glorified asteroid into a proper sphere. Now how the heck are there rivers there? Water erosion would take incredibly long, definitely longer than humans have been trying to terraform it. Its tiny gravity and nonexistant magnetosphere rules out a free atmosphere. The description would be possible, I suppose, if the moon were paraterraformed. Its large craters would be a good spots for pressure domes which could contain artificial rivers and parks. That's how I rationalize it. Still, it's painfully obvious that no research was done while writing that piece. That also raises the question of terraforming itself. This is an extremely far off idea that would take thousands of years to complete per planet, yet it's implied that we managed to do it in FORTY YEARS. That's assuming we started in 2542 when the wormhole opened for the second time and assured us there weren't any evil aliens in it. Even if we had started earlier, it wouldn't matter. Still peanuts compared to the timescale required for terraforming. I can rationalize this by saying the TR is in the process of terraforming the solar system. Most of the planets they speak of being terraformed are actually paraterraformed with pressure domes and sealed colonies. Then there's Martin Harris, the apparently idiotic TR Vice President who died of, get this, a heart attack. In 2615. A heart attack. 2615. How?! Richard Morgannis talking about Earth (this is hundreds of years before Martin died) said: And yet they can't stop a simple heart attack. You'd think there'd be some nanites in him monitoring his vitals, but nope. Seems pretty contrived to me, though it is a funny parallel to later events. Connery took the place of Martin the same way Waterson took the place of Connery. The only way I can rationalize this is that Martin Harris is is some sort of anti-nanite loon, similar to the anti-vaxxers today. He must have had a pretty big following. Sylvia Wyatt, the president at the time, must have chosen him as her VP in order to "balance the ticket" and secure the votes of this following. I'm sure his death changed quite a few of their minds. That would also parallel the genetic purist attitudes the TR and NC have taken up as a reason to fight the VS. Then comes the wormhole itself. I'm going to completely ignore how a rift in spacetime manages to track our solar system through its tumultuous tumble around the center of our galaxy since I'm not incredibly well versed in the theory of relativity. Do wormholes behave like planets, moved by gravity, therefore orbiting our solar system, or are they completely still relative to the universe since they are a connection between two discrete points in spacetime? I'm just going to chalk that one up to Vanu being more experienced in the intricacies of spacetime than any human that could answer those questions. The phenomena definitely moves from one spot in our solar system to another each time it opens. I downloaded the program Space Engine (wonderful little sandbox that is) and set the time to March 16, 2444, roughly when Pluto was destroyed. Since the visualization closest to canon, the ProSieben War Stories preview comic , shows the dwarf planet being destroyed in a wormhole collapse (Which would NOT produce a brilliant blue flash regularly. The only thing I can think of is the collapse's massive gravity fusing some hydrogen or helium [or whatever O, B, and A type stars {blue stars} fuse, I'm not bothered enough to look it up] from the nebula on the other side of the wormhole) I'm going to go with a collapse and not some alien thing coming through and destroying it as suggested as a possibility in the archive. I kept my eye on the spot Pluto was, for the wormhole couldn't have been far from it, and set the time to October 20, 2640 two hundred years later when the wormhole opened to let Connery and friends through. It is mentioned that the fleet has to stop at Neptune to refuel. (Would be way more efficient to just fill up all the way at Earth and gravity assist your way to the wormhole without wasting fuel to stop, but whatever. I guess they needed to pick up something other than fuel from Neptune due to such short launch notice.) I found that Neptune was waaay on the other side of the solar system from where the wormhole had opened up 200 years prior. I took some screenshots of each time, but I'm not sure where they went and am not bothered enough to retake them since this is just a rant nobody will read. Take my word for it. The thing moves. Then the ships go through. The vessels pictured in ProSieban's comic preview look completely impractical for the task at hand. Too massive with so much pointless hull plating and not enough room for fuel. The wormhole can dump them literally ANYWHERE. It could be right next to a planet or thousands of light years from any star. They had to be prepared for a long voyage. The artists of that comic didn't put any thought into the vessels or their function beyond generic soft sci-fi blob ship. In actuality the ships would need to have enormous fuel tanks and advanced medical systems like stasis chambers capable of sustaining the crew for hundreds of years if need be. I'm assuming medical tech has lengthened the human lifespan considerably by then, ignoring Martin Harris. It's extremely confusing since all of this implies a one-way journey, yet this is said: What?! Here's a quote from another archive that completely contradicts that: So they expected to go through the wormhole, find a planet to colonize, build some cities, factories, and more all within two weeks, then send the mercs back to get their cash? Or would they return when the wormhole opened again in 100 years, which may be a shorter time than it takes to reach a suitable planet? Was Jones fed misinformation? All are inconceivable and unlikely notions. I can't really think of a way to rationalize this other than removing the last sentence from the first quote. In my ALA entry I managed to rationalize this somewhat by saying that scientists detected clouds of nebula gas where the wormhole had opened up years prior and used this to predict its next opening. If you look up ingame you can see a nebula. It's fairly easy to imagine that some stardust made its way through the wormhole. (Could be what the pluto-busting wormhole collapse fused in the WarStories comic to produce that flash of light) Since nebulae are stellar nurseries it would be reasonable to assume that there is a myriad of newborn stars nearby ripe for colonization that wouldn't take too long to reach (relatively speaking). This appears to be a very dense and bright nebula considering it's visible to the naked eye. A number of nearby stars probably contribute to this. The large size of all the stars in the Planetside sky allude to a globular-like cluster in which stars are extremely close together. That big glowing green blob at the center of the visible nebula could be a protostar acting as a binary twin of the Auraxian sun. The Auraxian planetary alignment itself is a bit of a puzzler as well. Just look at this.It would seem Planetside artists don't know how a solar system works. If I had to guess, Auraxis and that unnamed terrestrial planet circle around a common barycenter. Auraxis appears to have enough influence to hold its own moon. The barycenter orbits around the gas giant, which in turn orbits around the sun. A rather strange and delicate alignment (I'm honestly not sure if it would actually work) but all can be explained by Auraxium generated warp bubbles since Auraxis is likely a Vanu construct. Hard Sci-Fi has ruined me.
Hi guys, Great idea for a forum topic. You are both ( Rictavius and Strottinglemon ) great at picking out all the details that don't make sense in the story, and suggesting a much more rational (and generally cooler) alternative - I think you should come together to make an official Encyclopaedia Planetsidea, about Auraxis, the war, and what is actually possible in terms of how nanites, respawns, civilian towns, planetary colonisation etc. work. There's a great amount of information already here in this thread - but maybe we should focus down on one topic at a time? I think it's difficult for someone to respond to every hole in the lore at the same time. If we do one topic at a time - e.g. where are the civilians? How does respawning work? How do nanites work? Where did the warpgates come from? Who is Vanu and where is he / are they now? Did someone make the wormhole and do they still control it? - then maybe we would be more likely to get input from others just passing through the thread? Sonny
I was thinking the same thing. An idea I had was to get up a timeline Google doc editable by a few of us lore fanatics. Anyone can visit it and add comments to share their ideas.
Apart from trying to reply to your chunky bits - which I absorbed up - we got to break down the sections of our lore encyclopedia first we need to create a map or maps (one of auraxis, and the planetary system) then address the specific issues involved in the story. AIFN (gibberish acronyms) Waterson's 20 year reign was first thought up by Sonny, and it was logical to assume that a man who would blow up the president, force an entire people under a tight central authority would at least have a couple decades to enjoy it. The V.R Room pointing to another planet cannot be a coincidence, since before it was just a button XD , the redoing of the warping map then had a new section for the V.R Room which under the full intentions of the U.I artist put the line on the other planet... so in a way its an indication by the devs that other planets can be considered. Nanite systems is purely an annoyance XP, but it should be considered as a third party company.
+1, I think that's a great idea to have a shared, editable timeline. Also, Rictavius, your ideas about having a map of the system is also great. How best to do this? Google drive could work fine for documents. The downsides - When dealing with maps this may not work so well. Also, the output wouldn't be publicly viewable. One possibility I thought of was to make some sort of website that we can all edit. The info could be edited only by registered members, and the output would also be publicly available to anyone with a web browser. Maybe the best would be something in between - sharing the documents in google drive only with those specifically interested in the lore, then putting it up on a website later when we've put together something we're happy to publish? Sonny
For sure. I'll see what I can work up in terms of a document to put all this stuff in. A Wiki would be ideal, but I have no experience with those. As for a map, that might be difficult. We don't know what the other continents are shaped like quite yet, or how many planets are in the Auraxian solar system. Makes sense. Good point. I'll message Xander about it, he's the one who wrote the latest Hossin lore entry. Perhaps he can shed some light on our issue. The output would be viewable, actually. You can set the document so that the public can view it and leave comments, while other specific people can edit. For a map we could either make one in Photoshop or Illustrator or something and insert the image, or make it using Drawings, which is Google's paint/illustrator thing. That sounds good. I'll get to work on a document.
having a better lore would be good help pull in more players give more of a sense of doing things if there was a better story behind it
