Daybreak Game Company is one of the most important online game developers ever. The team was behind 1999’s EverQuest which took the MMORPG formula popularized by Ultima Online and gave it a rich fantasy setting helped by 3D graphics and a wealth of things to do with hundreds of players. It laid the groundwork for subsequent modern MMORPGs and is still played to this day.
The company would have varying degrees of success with its following projects but one that caught the eye of many people was PlanetSide in 2003. It was like other first-person shooters at the time but instead of taking on dozens of players you were fighting with hundreds in massive space-faring battles. 2012’s PlanetSide 2 would up the ante even further with the game holding the Guinness World Record for the biggest FPS battle ever with 1,158 players on the same server. The game is still being played to this day though it hasn’t seen quite the success of when it first launched, according to Steam Charts.
However, Daybreak seems to be in trouble lately. The company confirmed to Gamasutra late last April that they laid off a portion of their workforce across their various departments as they are “realigning their workforce to better position our company for the future.” It’s also rumored that they are negotiating acquisition with several companies, a source close to Daybreak told MMORPG.com. Meanwhile, despite great success with H1Z1, the company’s Battle Royale-style game has been steadily losing its player base to big competitors according to Polygon.
The company needs a big title to bring themselves out of financial worries. And according to rumors, the company is possibly marrying the PlanetSide series to the biggest trend in gaming.
So let’s look at the possibility of PlanetSide 3, its possible gameplay, and its release window.
What to Expect
Daybreak Game CompanyPlanetSide 2
The latest rumor comes from a now deleted Reddit post by an alleged former employee of Daybreak, according to Massively Overpowered. Keep in mind that the publication wasn’t able to verify the identity of the poster.
The user claimed that the zombie survival portion of H1Z1, Just Survive, is “on its last legs” and is likely to sunset (that is, shut down and cease updating).
More interestingly, the post claims that PlanetSide 3 is in the early stages of development. The game will reportedly be a team-based, battle royale-style game.
PlanetSide 3 isn’t the only game supposedly in development at the studio. According to the rumor, EverQuest 3 has been in development for a year and is “being rebuilt from the ground up” to also focus on Battle Royale-style gameplay.
Daybreak ceasing development on a game to focus on their more established IPs isn’t unheard of. In March 2011, Daybreak – then known as Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) – confirmed that it was discontinuing production of its spy-themed MMO The Agency so that it can focus development on new PlanetSide and EverQuest games, as reported by Kotaku.
This post lines up with other rumors Massively Overpowered reported on. Back in March 2016, Daybreak posted job listings for positions including senior producer and creative director for a new, undisclosed title. Other positions have been listed for existing titles in the company’s library including game analyst, UI designer, and product manager. They even posted listings for a part-time social media intern and student artist intern over the summer for school credit. 15 positions were posted in total.
Then in October 2016, the website learned that the unannounced game was allegedly going to be a first-person shooter for multiple gaming platforms.
If it is true that PlanetSide 3 will be a Battle Royale-style game, it would be clear why Daybreak is going in that direction. Battle Royale-style games are the hottest trend in gaming right now with the two market leaders Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) drawing in tens of millions of players. That combined with a microtransaction-fueled business model would mean skyrocketing profits. However the thing about being a market leader is that you lead trends, not follow them.
Look at how desperately Boss Key Productions abandoned Lawbreakers, a game desperately reaching for the coattails of games like Overwatch, and tried to chase the Battle Royale trend with Radical Heights. The game was trashed by players at launch for its poor optimization and cynical attempts to ape the success of its Battle Royale contemporaries. Currently it has a mixed response on Steam and an average concurrent player count of 2,750 players all through last month compared to PUBG’s 1,096,383 players according to Steam Charts.
Daybreak already has a Battle Royale game in the form of H1Z1’s King of the Kill mode. Despite great success even after the release of PUBG (with the game’s concurrent player count rising to 62,600 when PUBG first hit the scene in March 2017 and rising further to over 72,000 in August 2017 according to Steam Charts), the player count has steadily decreased since the release of Fortnite in late September 2017 and now sits at 6,443 players in the last month.
Nobody wants another Battle Royale game because they already have Fortnite and PUBG. They don’t want to play a lesser version of those games. So if you’re going to make a new Battle Royale game, it better have a unique angle.
PlanetSide 2’s gameplay actually has a lot of parallels with the genre. It has hundreds of players fighting each other in one of three factions in massive Sci-Fi space battles on enormous maps, similar to the huge maps in Fortnite or PUBG where a hundred players all fight each other (and sometimes join forces in squads). The game has vehicles just like PUBG but tanks and fighter jets join the lineup of cars. The game even introduced a base construction feature for placing walls, buildings, and even turrets which is a bit more involved than Fortnite’s building system. It’s also a free-to-play game supported by microtransactions just like Fortnite, with players able to buy XP accelerators and cosmetic items. And just like PUBG and Fortnite, PlanetSide 2 received multiple updates and new content over the years adding things like the aforementioned base construction feature and more.
However PlanetSide 2’s gameplay is more similar to point capturing modes in other FPS games, with armies taking over key territories holding valuable resources and positions such as power plants and ammo depots. And instead of scrounging for weapons and healing items, each player comes with their own customizable class from the sneaky Infiltrator to the hulking, cannon-toting MAX. It also has way more players with each in-game continent holding up to 2,000 players and games easily having players in the hundreds all fighting each other at the same time. But the biggest thing separating PlanetSide 2 from a Battle Royale game is that you can respawn after dying. Even the Combat Medic can revive you on the spot if you die.
So if PlanetSide 3 puts on the Battle Royale mantle, it’s going to have to take advantage of all of its unique features from the previous game. And we think it can do so to great effect.
Imagine massive battles with not just a hundred but a few hundred to thousands of players who can all permanently die just like in real warfare. Instead of dropping from a plane to scavenge for resources you may or may not find, squads of soldiers can fight together using their loadouts in tandem with each other to decimate the enemy faction. Instead of coordinating with others on where to drop on the map, you can all figure out which territories to secure first. While all that is happening others can build and manage the army’s massive base and hold their own against enemy sieges.
This kind of direction means that a potential PlanetSide 3 won’t be the same Battle Royale experience people have come to know, but it would still retain that hardcore thrill of having just one life and having any mistake be your last. That combined with the epic scope of intergalactic warfare and you have a pretty strong contender to the Battle Royale scene that can truly stand out from the crowd.
When to Expect It
Daybreak Game CompanyPlanetSide 2
The fist hints that PlanetSide 2 was in development came in September 2009 when Daybreak (back when they were SOE) sent out a mass email to players asking them to fill out a survey, as reported by PlanetSide Universe. SOE said that the information players provide would help guide the development of a new PlanetSide game. Daybreak’s former president John Smedley was also teasing a sequel and the domain http://www.planetside2.com was acquired and modified by SOE.
PlanetSide 2 was then formally announced in July 2011 and released on PC on November 20, 2012.
If the rumor is true and PlanetSide 3 is indeed in the early stages of development, and assuming it has a similar development cycle to PlanetSide 2, then we could see an announcement in about two years and a release the following year. Hopefully the Battle Royale genre would still be strong by then. Who knows? Maybe people will get sick of Fortnite and PUBG and want to move on to something a bit more fresh. Either way, don’t expect a surprise announcement at this year’s E3.
There’s nothing wrong with falling back on past successes in game design, but you’re not going to copy a game’s success by copying its format. However if Daybreak is going for another Battle Royale-style game, then they’re going to have to make it really stand out from the crowd in order to compete with Fortnite and PUBG. Luckily the PlanetSide series brings not only its built-in audience but some interesting game mechanics too. If Daybreak can incorporate the enormous scale and strategic gameplay of the series into a Battle Royale game that can match the ease of access of Fortnite, then we could have something truly special on our hands.
What do you think of the rumors and our speculations? Do you want PlanetSide to take the Battle Royale route? Let us know in the comment section below.
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