The best way to think about it compared to other games is look at your empire as your guild. In any MMORPG if your guild mate is getting ganked by someone, you sure as hell are gonna group up and go roll that guy. That type of mentality is what you have here. When anyone in your empire is being attacked, you will defend them. In other games the only time you have faction loyalty is in battlegrounds. In Planetside, every action you do helps or hurts your empire.
Originally Posted by Figment
When YOUR home continent is attacked, it's not just the empire that's attacked, it's YOUR empire, YOUR continent, YOUR base, YOUR home, YOUR pride, YOUR pie stash that's being attacked. As leaders, you always got the best response from your troops by making such invasions feel as if they were after the dearest thing you had. The audacity of coming on YOUR turf and claiming it for themselves!
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At launch, the Lattice system was static. Each continent was attached to each other in a very particular way. Each of the sanctuaries were attached to 3 continents each, the empires "homeland". If you were fighting on your homeland, lets face it, your empire was currently losing, which was unacceptable. The enemies were at your doorstep (yes, couldn't invade sanc, but still had the same feeling). This lead to an unbelievable sense of loyalty. Players would abandon fights they were winning to recall and defend those continents. Lets face it, Amerish is the Vanu's. You Elmo's and Smurfs will never keep it. And it will remain ours in PS2. lol
Another thing that helped is your empire shared in the glory or ruin together. With each faction having completely different arsenals, if a weapon got nerfed, or vehicle got buffed, what ever it is, your entire empire had to deal with it. Another bounding element.
And lastly, with the large scale battles being fought, you got to know everyone, specially the CR5s (where the hell did those pants go), on your side. Yes, I was real tight with my outfit. Loyal Son of Vanu for life. But you also fight next to other outfits and lone wolves, and you end up trusting that they got your flanks secured.
You will experience this in PS2 if you choose an empire and don't hop around. It really is an unbelievable experience.