It’s a question that has been rattling around our brains since Daybreak Games announced that is was splitting its IPs among smaller studios. Rogue Planet Games took control of the dying Planetside 2 which has struggled to maintain 1,000 players for months at that point. Shortly after, Escalation was announced as a new upcoming content update to Planetside 2 and the question on everyone’s minds at that point was whether or not Rogue Planet Games could successfully revitalize a beloved title that features a massive scale of PvP combat.
As of this moment, growth in Planetside 2 on Steam has increased over 400% in the past 30 days, largely due to the release of the Escalation, if not entirely due to it. Where the title would typically hover around 1,800 players in the past months, it now currently sits comfortably around 5,000 players, typically spiking to 7,000 during weekends and peak hours. Along with the new resurgence in popularity, it also appears that the numbers will likely continue to climb as Rogue Planet Games hit their proverbial stride in development.
With all of this being said, it’s similarly worth noting that the popularity is still nowhere close to what it was on release, where it held tens of thousands of players online at the same time all waging war on each other with a multitude of vehicles and weapons.
This spike, however, is one of the largest spikes the popularity of the game has had in its lifespan of the past seven years; rivaled only by a 2014 update.
Escalation by itself, however, is fantastic news for fans of PvP on a massive scale. Logging in throughout the day presents players with massive battles occurring around the server; vehicles are once again everywhere as pilots fly around objectives with gunner support, and battles are filled with a wealth of opportunities to play the hero against an enemy that scale their ranks into the thousands.
For many, this is the opportunity that they’ve been waiting for to dive back in, and it has finally appeared to present itself under the control of Rogue Planet Games.
Empirically, however, the servers tend to quiet down shortly after a major patch as everyone once again becomes familiar with the new mechanics and leave to find greener pastures with new content. The true test of the studio will be what they can release after this successful content patch, and how quickly they can do it; that’s frankly the only chance Planetside 2 has of regaining the traction it has lost while it stagnated over the years.