TL;DR big battle pew pew pew dakka dakka enough salt to fill the oceans
Planetside 2, during the Mattherson vs Waterson Server Smash. For those who don't know PS2, it's an MMOFPS with hundreds upon hundreds of players fighting concurrently across land and air on four "continents." Sony Online Entertainment used to run a number of East NA servers, but these eventually got merged into one server. Before the final two servers (Mattherson and Waterson) merged, the player base asked SOE if they could engage in a cross-server, 288v288 man fight to determine what the new server would be named. SOE agreed, and cordoned off their Player Test Server so the match could take place.
While I was representing Mattherson's TEST Outfit, I didn't get to play until the final third of standard play. Our platoon (48 people) had to hold a valuable base on the bottom right corner of the map, fending off an incredibly strong offense from an enemy platoon on two fronts. We never let Ymir Biolab leave our hands during the match.
The match time came and went into overtime, where all bases that were secure would be taken out of play. My platoon cleaned up our fronts, securing Ymir for ourselves but losing the two fronts we were trying to push. Our platoon leader sends all of us to The Octagon, one of the few bases still left in play, and we fight along another platoon to take the base. Flying troop carriers (Galaxies) overhead provided spawn points for us, and the mass of us fell down into the base in a steel rain of drop pods, bullets, and aircraft. Friendlies rushed from other bases, bringing mobile spawn points/APCs with then. The enemies responded in kind, throwing a huge barrage of anti-vehicle rockets and grenades at them. Those that survived quickly set up heavily defended spawns around The Octagon's walls. As I spawned in after dying, jets and debris filled the air. Bullets flew from all directions, becoming a dazzling light show of tracers and death. A MAX turned to shoot me but was killed by falling pieces of aircraft. Every shot I took hit somebody, be it enemy or ally. All 48 people in our Teamspeak channel were shouting orders and information, wanting nothing more than victory. Death was cheap, but even it strained at our limits when a line of tanks were able to destroy our primary spawn point.
At this point, at least a half hour into overtime, Waterson was ahead 45-42. Both The Octagon and Esamir Munitions Corporation were worth four points, meaning that if Mattherson captured either base, they would win the match. Command made the hard decision to redeploy all forces to EMC, where we had several spawns available and a capture point in our possession (tough, but advantageous compared to The Octagon). As soon as a Galaxy was in their airspace, we immediately spawned in and rained down to the facility. Waterson command got the message quickly enough, and they redeployed all of their troops to EMC as well. Tanks and aircraft swarmed from the vehicle pads to take out our spawns, only to be met by very hard hitting AA flak guns and tank mines. Infantry poured out from every crevasse, assisting the aurora overhead with lighting the battlefield. Navigating the bridge between the two watchtowers that make up the base was perilous at best, but we slowly pushed towards the point rooms, throwing more bodies at the enemy than they could kill. With 30 seconds left on the defense timer for EMC, we made it to Bravo point and captured it for ourselves. The fight wasn't over yet, however, as we still needed to flip the base ownership for ourselves, which with two of the three capture points would take about six minutes. This was when our platoon lead told us to put on our MAX suits and assault Alpha point.
My platoon had no hesitation as we suicided and respawned, this time in our armored mechanized exoskeletons with powerful anti-infantry guns. We met up on the stairs with a second platoon, all Medics, Engineers, jetpack-toting Light Assaults with C4, or over shield-toting Heavy Assaults. As a united zerg, we rushed into the final point building, both blindly firing into enemies and teammates alike and throwing grenades at everything that moved. Somehow, in the madness, we made it to the point and flipped it, reducing the capture timer to just under 90 seconds. Defense was virtually impossible, given that the base was obviously not designed for a concentrated 500+ man fight and given that our computers (including the server) were universally just barely running the game at just barely slideshow framerates, but somehow we held our ground. I saw a Light Assault drop a block of C4 into the point room; I tried to react but ended up being part of a huge multi kill.
Watching from the map overview, waiting for my spawn timer to expire or for a medic to revive me, I saw the icon for Charlie was red, signifying it had been taken by the enemy, and the icon for Bravo was flashing. Our capture progress, just under five seconds now, halted without the cap point advantage. Everything went still in that moment; the sounds of all of the frantic yelling over Teamspeak and all of the explosions and gunfire fading away to nothing. Almost all of our forces were focused on Alpha; a Bravo defense would be extremely difficult given the time constraints. It could be it for us.
With baited breath, I saw the point stop flashing. It had once again reverted to its glorious purple diamond, signifying that our faction held control of that point. And with that, the capture timer resumed its glorious countdown.
*ding*
The Vanu Sovereignty has taken control of this facility. Excellent work.
And with that, it was over. We had won the Server Smash. 45 minutes into overtime, Mattherson had won with a final score of 46-46. The final battle had over 500 unique participants. We had won it by one point.
Our cheers and shouts of joy rang through the Teamspeak, growing louder and more voluminous as the dedicated platoon channels were merged into one. We fired Lashers in the air in celebration; a group of us returned to warpgate to pull a fleet of Galaxies to crash into their warpgate. Our teammates from [GOKU] said that in this moment, we were all Ginyu Force; cross-faction chat was filled with us gleefully shouting GINYU FORCE RULES.
A week later, the servers officially merged into one, taking on the name Emerald instead (both as a goodwill gesture to a very salty Waterson and as a nod to Planetside 1's Emerald server). That update also saw EMC being renamed Mattherson's Triumph and The Octagon being renamed Waterson's Redemption on all servers, to commemorate the largest fight ever fought in PS2.
For me, I'm honored to have not only been there, but to have fought in it. While I'm not eager to be in another 12FPS lagfest anytime soon, the scale of those battles is what makes Planetside such a great and irreplaceable game for me. May Emerald always be the crown jewel
