The nations are still ending, but they’re going a wholly different way about it. Last week we learned that the massively-multiplayer RTS once in development at Petroglyph had become a vehicular MOBA by Trion Worlds. The new End of Nations appears to share only a broad definition of ‘strategy’ with its namesake – but Trion say the change came about after feedback from the game’s last round of alpha testing.
“We received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from our last round of Alpha testing – and applied those learnings to the game, boiling it down to the strongest core game elements,” said executive producer Scot Lane in a statement.
Those elements? “Tactical combat, session-based gameplay, and vastly improved hero units.”
Trion have shrunk the old EoN’s team size, upped the power of its heroes, and plumped for a cleaner, more easily readable graphical style. They reckon the new game is “noticeably quicker and more dynamic”.
Teams of between two and four players will work together to achieve focused objectives. They’ll need to rely on the commander abilities of their Heroes, who’re picked from a newly broadened class system. Petroglyph’s two factions have been jettisoned.
As in Dota and LoL, heroes will level up during the course of a match, requiring players to make swift tactical choices even as the battle rages on. These adjustments can be “the difference between domination and annihilation”.
“Our core fans have been tremendous during this stage of early development,” said Lane. “We are now confident we have the game the fans have been waiting for: a tremendously powerful tactical game that fans of war games and strategy will love.”
That’s all perfectly lovely. But it’s simply not the same game, is it? Were any of you holding out for that most rare of releases: a fairly traditional RTS?
Sign-ups are now open for End of Nation’s summer beta on the official site.