VS and the religious element

It's not irrelevant though.

Because NOTHING is Magic... so anyone who calls something magic is doing so in ignorance.

It's entirely irrelevant. What you define as science and others define as magic are the exact same thing, so long as they are the exact same thing. You're only arguing semantics.

I don't remember where but Briggs was indeed the only person who heard the voice of Vanu.

And it was from a piece of technology, thought to be their equivalent of a timecapsule basically, so NOT Vanu communicating from the dead, he just interfaced with a piece of communication technology.

VERY akin to how Sheppard interfaced with the Prothean beacons as a matter of fact.

The semantics are not irrelevant though. That's my point.

One word exposes willful ignorance. The other expreses recognition for reality and owns to personal ignorance.

I don't think it ever specifies any of this.

Rules about prototype alien weapons:

#1- Don't assign prototype weapons you don't even understand as standard-issue infantry weapons.

#2- Refer to rule #1

Gameplay takes precedence; if only VS soldiers took nanites to spawn it'd be ridiculous. Also, unless you're prepared to say alien plasma guns are easier to make than simple propellant rifles, they're more expensive to make.

Game balance trumps lore in-game.

Certs are never mentioned in the lore, you just made that up.

Easy there, tiger. Have this ice-pack to sit on, it sounds like you need it. It's obviously not magic, and if you read what I said, I never said magic existed, DERP. It's not talking about what you think, it's talking about what you see. If you took the most advanced holographic tablet and showed it to a guy in the 1600-1700s, he may actually believe it is magic, because they have no comprehension of circuits, light emitters, plastics, and electricity. Someone from the Enlightenment era wouldn't necessarily believe it was magic, either, but because it was beyond his comprehension as to how it could work, it might as well have been. Even if it wasn't.

So calm down and eat a snickers, kid.

But it is still semantics. A thing is always that same thing, no matter what you call it. Only what can happen does happen.

I'll just leave this here 'cause it might be an interesting side-read for some people or something:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(paranormal)

But yeah, unexplained phenomenon =/= paranormal / magical, and jumping to the conclusion that it does is pretty much the opposite of science.

In most cases, outside of media, magic is just people crossing their fingers and hoping their thoughts and/or rituals can influence the world in ways not understood/explainable via science. Wishful thinking in a nutshell. Which of course got expanded upon / dramaticized in popular media into wizards flinging fireballs by mumbling incantations.

SOE hasn't expanded on the lore, and since we're not the owners of the IP, we can't expand upon it without their permission. Unless SOE says anything, anything we say that isn't explicitly mentioned in the lore archive is conjecture at best.

I dunno, I read it somewhere.

Briggs messed with some tech and claimed to have heard them. The supposition that it was a communication beacon was something figured after the fact. Since Briggs died nobody actually knows.

They are lore-related. I mean that's why they're called certification points. You do a good job, you gain experience, you get certification points, and then you use those certification points to certify that you are competent with a particular weapon/upgrade, whereupon you are given permission to use those weapons/upgrades.

Sure, but that's specifically so we can fill in the gaps in our own way. We only have what we're presented with. Either we can say that it is logically inconsistent, or we can fill in the inconsistencies ourselves.

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Lore_Archive/2011-10-13a

Briggs is alive.

Semantics are the entire point of what we're disccusing here though.

Not what I was discussing. Wait, what do you think we're discussing again? It seems we've fallen off base.

Also, just to put a point to rest,

"Genny laughed. “Unlike you Vanu lunatics? You believe in the magic powers of some alien God…”
“Not a God. Just an alien. We know they existed. We’ve excavated their cities. We’ve analyzed their artifacts. And ever since what happened to Briggs we’ve gotten sporadic telepathic feedback. Vanu and his people were real.”
“Operative word, Sandy, is ‘were.’” They died off a zillion years ago. And don’t dare correct me. Five hundred years or a zillion don’t make a hell of a difference when they’re dead. Look, I get it, brother. You scientists don’t take sides. You analyze. You poke. You rip the atoms out of whatever the hell you’re researching just to see what happens. Then you do it again and again to see if the results are the same.”

These events taking place at the start of the war, several hundred years before the 'present date'

Sure, but the VS weapons are hardly prototypes. Tell me, when was the last time that your Orion jammed on you or failed to function in a way that would suggest it's a prototype?

The Orion jams or fails to function as much as a CARV or G-SAW does... which is to say if the Orion is a prototype then all NC and TR weapons are also prototypes.

Based on the observable fact that the Orion (and other VS weapons) are just as dependable and damaging as NC or TR options, I would conclude that it is not a prototype (or at least not an unusable prototype).

But obviously they're not more expensive, because they are not more expensive than in the game.

You look at it in such a way that you have these assumptions, and when observable reality conflicts with these assumptions then you dismiss reality.

I look at it in such a way that I too have these assumptions that you hold, but when observable reality conflicts with these assumptions then I figure there's a reason for the discrepancy. Where you dismiss observed reality, I dismiss the assumptions.

That's the difference between us, and why we arrive at different conclusions.

Certs are part of the lore just as much as anything in PS2 is part of the lore.

Sure it doesn't show up in the lore archives, but so much doesn't.

For example, does the lore ever mention Vanguard tanks? Flashes? Harassers? Yet I would argue that in the PS2 lore such vehicles exist. It would be silly to say that because they are not mentioned in the lore archives, there is no such thing as a Vanguard, Flash, or Harasser in the PS2 universe.

Just as how the official words published by SOE make up the lore, so do the official game mechanics published by SOE.

The game takes place a decade into the war.

Also; 2845-2643= 202 years from planetfall to war.