I'm currently listening to music from PlanetSide in the background, which made me think back to the glorious times when I played it and how it's the best MMO game EVER and the only true MMOFPS to date... But unfortunately poorly maintained at first and a victim of its own lack of advertising (and, subsequently, lack of popularity).
So, any other PlanetSide vets out here? :)
FIREk - Werner, Terran Republic, BR25 CR4, ex-Outcasters officer.

Heah! I played it for some time. Actually there was a re-launch of this title in Russia 2 years ago. So it added some fun to the game.
P.S. Check Werner, I think all new meat is there :)

Back to the topic (which Crysis shouldn't be :P), I suppose you make a valid point about reaching too high... SOE does, however, have a bad reputation for killing their own MMOs... ;)
The net code looked like it was written to cope with high-density action on 56k modems, which was probably a good idea at the time, but the resulting "warping" issues were never fixed, which is the game's biggest problem (as they made the game quite unfair). I think they could make some changes and allow PlanetSide to use up more resources (connection-wise), since nowadays practically everybody (and their grandparents) has some sort of relatively high-speed Internet connection. ;)
This month looks like it's gonna be a handful, but I think I'll resubscribe in two weeks to see how the game is doing... :)

Which is why I was prudent enough to add "practically everyone". ;)

I thought I would resurrect this thread, considering SOE has started sending out "play free for a month" e-mails about merging the two surviving servers into one (I hope they would provide a solution to keep the pings bearable for us Euro gamers, but I doubt it...).
<rant>
I'm so totally looking forward to trying the game out again, lag permitting, but it seems that SOE wants this game dead, and badly... The website was broken for 2-4 years or so now (on IE and FF, at least on all my PCs to date, surprisingly it works on Safari), the Station Launcher fails to launch after I installed it... Plus, you have to be aware that you need the Launcher to actually get the game in the first place (it's not hinted on Planetside's site, at least at first glance, plus it worked differently when the site was created)... Not to mention PlanetSide needing to be set to Windows 95 compatibility mode to work on Vista and the installer doesn't even turn this on by default...
Edit: Oh, and the Launcher doesn't work unless you Google out one site with a working solution... :O
I'm absolutely infuriated to see such an awesome gem's potential obliterated by neglect. I think that if SOE had giver PlanetSide any attention, instead of breaking SWG and giving all its love to EQ2, there would be more true MMOFPS games. Instead, there are none, aswhen a publisher/developer sees how PlanetSide failed, they decide that no one would buy the game...
</rant>

Well I've played it for some times but never reach highest rank - I am just poor old 16 BR :), also TR, Werner :) Use to be in Outcasters (drafted in by Firek :P )
Also I logged in today since I get vet invite from SOE - its still awesome but a little bit empty on Werner. Have only W95 problem mention by Firek. Gladly I did not have Launcher problem :D