At first I was not all that into MAG. After reading the gamepro preview. I have enlisted!
http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/210119/mag-preview/
Sorry it is multiple pages
By Andy Burt
We go hands-on with MAG's 256 player online mayhem to find the answer to the question: is bigger always better? On a rainy Seattle morning, a large group of gaming journalists and I loaded into tightly-packed passenger vans for a quick trip over to Zipper Interactive to be the first to play MAG(no longer the acronym for the generic-sounding Massive Action Game). After a brief trailer, a couple (non-alcoholic) cocktails and some snacks, we dove headfirst into the biggest shooter to date. A helicopter-backed group of soldiers is not a good thing to try and take on by yourself.
nce we jumped in as members of the S.V.E.R. army (one of three armies players can choose from at the start), our squad was tasked with detonating a remote mine on an enemy bunker. Fragmentary Objectives (or FRAGOs as they're known in MAG-speak) such as our bunker objective are small tasks leaders can appoint to their squads, and are easily identifiable on the map. As we made our way towards the bunker, the world around us looked like a real war zone; jets were dropping paratroopers into battle and anti-aircraft turrets were shooting down helicopters and planes all around us--and everything going on was being caused by actual players. Working with your 8-player squad will save you from being singled out by enemy troops.
The developer in my demo noted that we were actually only playing a 64 on 64 match, but there was still a great deal of action going on with the player count halved. Another item worth noting is that the game was running quite nicely at a steady 30 frames-per-second, which the developers promised would be true for the final game as well. MAG should hit this winter, so make sure you and 255 of your friends are ready for battle.
MAG Preview
Massive Organization
When MAG was first announced at last year's E3, and revealed to support a whopping 256 players at once, I don't think I was the first to envision a horrible mess on screen with a cacophony of gibberish screeching through my headset as 255 other players and I ran around aimlessly in utter bedlam. The good news is that the direction MAG is going so far is a very intuitive and streamlined approach to accommodating every player. Yes, the final product will pit two armies of 128 players each against each other, but the breakdown goes further than that. Each army is broken up into 32-player platoons, and then further down into 8-player squads. Each squad has a leader who answers to a platoon leader, who answers to the OIC (the Officer In Charge, aka the army head honcho). Leadership abilities are granted to each squad and platoon leader, such as the ability to increase squad reload time or allowing squads to move undetected by motion trackers.
Objective Experience
I helped my squad for a time, but then eventually veered off. I chose a sniper class during my next respawn and parachuted down onto a nearby rooftop and began picking enemies off. Though each kill grants you a few experience points, I quickly realized that by not helping out my squad I was missing out on valuable experience points gained by assisting in FRAGOs, so back to the enemy bunker I ran.
