Infantry Online

[Thrawn]

I just found out yesterday that Infantry Online (Link) is free to play again and has been for more then a few months now. =(

I used to really enjoy playing this game back when it was free, but then Sony started charging for it and of course the community really died off. The amount of players is still a ghost of what it used to be, but I still thought I'd share the info for anyone else who used to play it and didn't know it was free to play again.

[naum]

Wow, that's a really old game… …I used to do MP before Sony bought it way back last century… …it was lots of fun… …suppose it'll run like a charm on modern day hardware…

[Yoru]

I remember playing this way back when it was originally free, along with Subspace.

BTW, would this fit better in the MMO forum?

[Ratman_tf]

When I tried it, the game seemed to be about a blob of players moving either clockwise or counter-clockwise around the map, mowing down anything in it's path... until the other team got their blob on. 

[Thrawn]

When I tried it, the game seemed to be about a blob of players moving either clockwise or counter-clockwise around the map, mowing down anything in it's path... until the other team got their blob on. 

Sounds like Chaos in EOL, a game version that isn't even up anymore where basicly it had no objective but kill everyone else as much as possible.  I liked that and CTF:X the best, but only the Twin Peaks CTF map seems to ever have people in it. 

[FatuousTwat]

Damn, I loved this game before SOE bought it...

[Thrawn]

Hey look, a 4 year necro. 

[Nightblade]

Hey look, a 4 year necro. 

Wow, I used to play the shit out of this game on my old gateway with a crappy Gateway PC with a controlpad. I was fascinated at how people could co-op pilot tanks and stuff.

Kind of sad to see it die.

[WayAbvPar]

I have somehow never heard of this....I thought it was some newly announced title when I saw the thread. Welp.

[koro]

I totally forgot this game existed. I think the last time I saw it mentioned in any obvious capacity was about six or seven years ago on a Station Pass ad.

[Thrawn]

I totally forgot this game existed. I think the last time I saw it mentioned in any obvious capacity was about six or seven years ago on a Station Pass ad.

Yeah, it's been mostly dead for a while.  Around the peak of it's popularity Sony made it pay to play and started making other changes with predictable results.  Game never really recovered.

Too bad too, I always really, really enjoyed it.

[koro]

Everquest Online Adventures is also getting shut down the same day as Infantry, apparently. I'm still shocked EQOA's been going all this time.

[Hawkbit]

EQOA was my first MMO beta.  I had played UO and EQ only live.  When I got invited to EQOA beta I actually had to buy the network adapter for it, and I think it was the only time I ever used it. 

It was kinda fun, but after playing EQLive, it was too hard to 'downgrade'.

[Tale]

Infantry was made primarily by Rod Humble (producer) and Jeff Petersen (programmer), who also made SubSpace (originally called Sniper in 1996, released in 1997 as SubSpace, now community-run as Continuum). That was my first MMOG. Then they ran out of cash while making Infantry and SOE picked it up.

Both went on to work on EverQuest Live, then Humble worked for EA on The Sims and is now CEO of Linden Lab (Second Life).

[Speedy Cerviche]

I played this game for basically it's entire existance. In 2003 it went to a subscription model and lost about 75% of its players  (it was hitting 10,000 simultaneous players, major bandwidth bill for a game with no revenues) but at that point got some decent funding from SOE for development. Unfortunately the devs made some bad decisions on what to develop, and squandered the resources on new niche game modes that never really caught on, instead of building up a beefy flagship "super" zone with more populist RPG and/or vehicle elements that could've been used to anchor the community and lead player attraction marketing efforts. At that point SOE kind of lost interest, the original guys like Rod Humble and Jeff Petersen got promoted at SOE to bigger projects and stopped going to bat for the game, and the guys leftover were dolts ("Yankee" aka Jeremy Weeks) so the game became stuck in SOE purgatory, shuffled off to some back area of the sony station, still retaining an active and hardcore playerbase but that was slowly dwindelling.

The players actually broke the subscription model of the game because some people setup hacked free servers that eventually becamee more popular than the SOE servers (despite using a 10 year old client version, they did add LUA scripting support which added some interesting design opportunities for modding, something never allowed on official clients). So SOE had to back off the subscription model I think in 2008 or 2009 so. That spiked the population (nowhere near 2003 levels, maybe 500 peak online daily) and that lasted a few years but still slowly dieing out. I was heavily involved in gravball zone and its league and we basically closed it down last October due to lack of interest, I don't think anyone has played since then.

Infantry would do well under a F2P model but I guess somebody will be better off re-doing it from scratch since I doubt all the late 90s era code could be easily adapted to that, but I think there could be real money to made on this kind of relatively simple with isometric sprite graphics, but some deep gameplay. A real gem of a game, people interested in checking it out should download it since I'm sure this last month will see a population spike.

[Thrawn]

Infantry would do well under a F2P model but I guess somebody will be better off re-doing it from scratch since I doubt all the late 90s era code could be easily adapted to that, but I think there could be real money to made on this kind of relatively simple with isometric sprite graphics, but some deep gameplay. A real gem of a game, people interested in checking it out should download it since I'm sure this last month will see a population spike.

I really hope this happens, I firmly believe this game isn't just nostolgia factor for me.  It is/was a very good game and I don't know that I've played anything since that captured the game play of being on a very large team that was working well together and using all the different roles to their full advantage.  I can still remember most of my favorite loadouts on CTF:X (heavy and infil), how different weapons were better in different situations and you had such a large selection.  Writing the little buy macros to buy and fill all of your ammo/mines/etc to exactly .01 of being slowed from being over weight.  Had so many great things for such an old game.

I would easily choose to play a good game of Infantry Online over Tribes:Ascend for example and I'm enjoying the Tribes beta very much.  I really hope Planetside 2 is able to capture some of that type of game play better.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Yeah CTF had great tactical play especially league play and X (with the private teams) where you got really organized teams and eaach person's item loadout selection became critically important. Personally asides from Gravball zone (the best sci-fi sport game I've ever played) I also really liked Mechanized SKirmish, it was in a lot of ways like Planetside, morsoe than CTF, with over 100 players on a map, mix of classes (grenade launchers, close range shotgunner types, various rifles, machine guns and anti-tank weapons, medics & engineers), and mix of vehicles too (from scout APCs to heavy fortress crawlers), and fixed objectives all of the maps you had some really heavy assault/defence actions all over the map, with appropriate use of vehicle deployment being critical (vehicles with assault guns vs. vehicles with solid anti-vehicle or anti-infantry weapons).

[Speedy Cerviche]

Also I think the isometric viewing angle is important in this regards. In FPS games you spend so much time focusing on your immediate spatial awareness it detracts from the tactical & strategic elements.

In the isometric perspective you don't have to be swivelling as much just to try and spot some hidden sniper or some's fire coming on your flank, you can more easily focus on tactical developments going around you, as everyone else is doing too, leading to a smarter team game even in public arenas.