[Update]: The NSO faction has now received a bunch of new content: a new weapon, vehicle and MAX variant!

After spending a remarkably long time on the test servers, Planetside 2's Nanite System Operatives (player-controlled robot mercenaries) have now finally arrived. Their purpose will be to help balance out the factions by providing additional firepower wherever it is needed the most, thus fixing one of Planetside 2's biggest problems - the purely numerical faction imbalance.

However, while the Nanite System Operatives are a brilliant idea and something I fully support, there is unfortunately one catch - they are only available to players with a paid membership. Why exactly is such an important feature locked away from the average player, I have no idea, but thankfully there appear to be enough of them milling around that faction imbalance shouldn't be a concern for the foreseeable future.

As of right now the Nanite System Operatives are only able to use neutral weapons and vehicles. This will be changing in the future as Daybreak is working on getting them their own MAX unit, main battle tank and fighter planes, though that is likely still a few months away as the developers haven't announced any details just yet.

Besides the fancy new robots, this update has also brought in DX11 support, which combined with some of the other fixes should drastically improve performance across the board. The spawn system and "Join Combat" option have also received numerous changes in order to help players get into interesting fights as quickly as possible, and the list of tweaks goes on.

You can find the full patch notes, as well as read more about the Nanite System Operatives, over at the official website. Have fun with the killer robots!