So I logged into Vanu last night to meet up with my guildies - both of them. Before they got on (and before I did my other game's beta) I jumped on first just to refamiliarize myself with the Vanu.

I have two Vanu characters - TheLadiesMan and DiedAgain. I picked TheLadiesMan because he was already BR 6, and therefore had an implant slot. I headed over to VR and into the shooting range so I could work my way through all the weapons. There's a new weapon in there, the Heavy Scout Rifle, which is a slightly weaker sniper rifle with more ammo in a clip and a faster rate of fire.

In PlanetSide, each time you use a new weapon/vehicle/etc., you get experience for it, so it's important to do as much as you can before that.

I then headed over to the Vehicle section of VR and tried out a bunch of them. I missed the BFR shack, and forgot to sit in the tail gunner position of the Vulture, but other than that got caught up. With that, I returned to Sanctuary.

There I remembered that they added Training Missions. They teach you the basics of the game, but each one also gives you 500 XP - not an insignificant amount at BR 6. I ran through some of those.

The missions are very buggy. A lot of times they wouldn't recognize one step, and I'd have to cancel and re-do them. That got really frustrating later on, when I did the vehicle mission. To end it, you're supposed to get out of a BFR. However, when I did, it didn't work. Another mission actually crashed PlanetSide on me.

The more interesting one (to me) was "how to use the HART" (which takes you between what used to be continents and are now planets). I landed on a randomly selected, secure continent (errr, planet) just to find that I'd landed right next to a tower that'd been hacked by the TR. I'm stuck in Agile armor, with no certifications AT ALL, meaning the Punisher assault rifle in my rifle slot (put there by a training mission) is unusable. Still, I pushed on, hacked the outside door, walked upstairs and hacked the control panel (which takes FOREVER when not an advanced hacker, which my main character on TR was), then went out the other door...

...over a mine. Boom. Didn't kill me, but owie. I used my one and only medpack and ran over to the bio lab nearby, where I healed up, visited some of the components of the base I hadn't before (therefore getting the XP for them) and recalled to sanctuary.

So finally later that night I was on with my friends. One was in VR, working his way up to BR 4 with a brand new character. I did a few more training missions, certed Armored Assault 1 & 2, Medium Assault, and Uni-MAX, then instant action-ed my way onto Cyssor.

I came into a base that was under heavy attack. I swapped between MAXes, attempting to defend the base from (mostly) NC attack, but only managed one kill. Frustrated (and out of beer), I recalled to Sanctuary, but when I instant action-ed again it sent me back to the same place.

I did a bit better but then we squadded up with my guildies and headed to Esamir. There we worked on re-securing some bases. It took us forever to push in on the back door against embedded Terrans, but I helped a good bit (I'd like to think). Then I remembered I had jump jets and ran up to the ceiling and the front door to help with those pushes. At one point, in a Quasar (the anti-personnel MAX) I busted in the front door, turned to the left, and managed to kill 2 infantry before falling to the MAXes and others nearby.

It doesn't lead to the greatest stats in the world, but it does help break the stalemate and helps your side. That's what I'm really there for - I died a ton to lasherbunnies on my own side who were so desperate for kills that they'd shoot their own people to get some. But oh well, that's how PlanetSide has always been.