Planetside 2 details come out of SOE's FanFaire

SOE boss John Smedley revealed long-awaited details for Planetside 2 last night during the FainFaire event and Smedley started out talking about the game's engine, Forge Light.

The engine will allow for "massive seamless worlds, advanced atmospheric effects such as moving lights and shadows, volumetric fog, and even sun filtering through clouds," according to Massively.

It will also allow the game to work on older PC systems as well as future hardware configurations. It uses NVIDIA's PhysX system, which SOE believes can "make some of the most amazing looking characters and environments."

PlanetSide 2's Matt Higby said the game would contain massive warfare, and it will be able to accommodate "thousands of players in open world combat, with massive conflicts."

It will come with a new conquest map, areas in the game are contestable and considered valuable real estate. Topography changes when areas are conquered, with battles taking place in physical structures as well as in the landscape. Players will be fighting over resources, which are needed for armor, weapons and vehicle upgrades.

Each of the three empires are back, the game has new combat roles, a new skill tree class and outfit updates, and will include an "offline, time-based unlock system," similar to the one used in EVE Online. This will allow players to continue advancing even when offline and to keep up with what their friends are up to in-game.

Read the full thing over on Massively, and there is another nice write-up over on Ten Ton Hammer.

Shots and a video can be found here.