Unlike most shooting games, in which small-scale matches take place in essentially an instanced map, PlanetSide battles can involve hundreds of players in a single fight.

[7][8][9] After exploring through a deep space wormhole, the Terran Republic, a highly centralized oligarchic galactic government which had unconditionally ruled humanity for the past thousand years, discovered a single habitable planet.

This allowed for the quick colonization of the ten continents of Auraxis, the creation of power sources and vehicles for the use of the colonists and, most importantly, it facilitated the development of rebirthing technology.

Later on, the discovery that the planet itself had been an artificial construction of the Ancients further served to solidify the realization that, if left unchecked, Vanu technology would forever and irrevocably change humanity and its future.

Meanwhile, as widespread usage of the technology grew, the Republic began to fear the potential repercussions of allowing so much power to be shifted so quickly into the hands of so many people.

Namely, it feared that the rebirthing technology and the potential impunity to death, disease, and pain it afforded would cause massive philosophical shifts amongst the isolated population, thus pulling out one leg of the tripod that had sustained the Republic for a millennium: that of deterrence.

More generally, the military feared that if use of the technology continued to spread, that the other two bases might come away as well: a populace armed with practically god-like power would have very little need of a strong authoritarian body to provide structure and purpose to their lives.

Meanwhile, in the intellectual circles and among the scientific establishment, there had long been the feeling that the Republic was ill at-ease with the possibilities of the New Science, and a movement had begun to sequester and conceal as many of the Vanu artifacts as could be feasibly obtained without overt notice.

As the Terran demographic continued to polarize, these movements finally came to fruition as the predecessors of the Vanu Sovereignty made their exodus and took with them the research and artifacts they had managed to stockpile over the Auraxian years.

Their leadership is a public oligarchy known as the Overwatch, composed of various representative officials and their associated Ministries, who regulate allotted portions of society in accordance with their own expertise and the collective will towards favourable outcomes.

They believe that authority is the bastion that protects humanity and that in a truly free society, with no Big Brother to guide and watch over citizens, misery and suffering would quickly be visited to all.

They stand by the view that the Vanu became extinct by meddling with power on the orders of magnitude which was to be found in their artifacts and technologies, and they fear groups such as the Sovereignty will drive humanity to a similar fate, causing as much damage to reality as possible along the way.

The NC's democratic philosophy is often their Achilles' heel militarily, as they lack the iron-fisted leadership structure of the TR and VS. From the New Conglomerate's point of view, however, theirs is the only moral and just cause.

They also see the New Conglomerate as a savage, ochlocratic band of thugs who have repackaged old mistakes in new dressings and are desperately afraid of new concepts which they cannot grasp, and the future these promise to the far-sighted.

Their view of the future is one of scientific perfection and purity: they believe that the Vanu used the power of their advanced technologies to transcend their physical limitations and the mundane world, ascending to a superior state of being, and ultimately, a higher plane of existence.

They are most reliant on alien science and technology, and often more than compensate for their shortcomings through the superiority of their engineering, using mind-bending physics, high-energy arrays, and other exotic weaponry to defend themselves.

Gameplay took place on the ground and in the air, across desert, mountains, forests and swamps, with factions attempting to capture as many facilities as possible on the surface of the planet while denying them to their enemy.