End of Nations - MMORTS

[ríomhaire]

[strike]As far as I know this is going to be the first MMORTS/RTT[/strike] Ok I'm just an idiot. Anyway. It's being made by Petroglyph, makes of Empire at War and Universe at War and made largely of ex-Westwood employees.

Website is here and it has some early details on the gameplay. The first trailer shows that so far they have had 51 players playing on a single map at once (with plans for more).

Listen out for a familiar sound
Story: The world's governments collapsed one after another after the world economy crashed. An organisation called the Order of Nations took power over the entire world by force and organised a police state over the whole Earth. The players join in resistance movements against it (I'm not sure if you can play as an Order of Nations commander or if it's purely NPC). Order of nations units include gigantic boss tanks (a pre-rendered one is viewable in this wallpaper).

You pick a commander class (no word on what classes are available) and level up to unlock units and abilities. You build and develop a HQ but I don't know if it can be attacked be enemy factions. For normal battles you use a more RTT type of unit deployment than RTS. Each map has a points limit and you choose a loadout of units up to that points limit to deploy. Should be familiar to any Warhammer player.

You manufacture your units outside of battle before you deploy them (makes more sense than the normal RTS system to be honest). There's some sort of trading and manufacturing system where you can buy and sell resources and fully-constructed units to other players. I saw some mention on the forums of stealing blueprints off enemies. Not sure how that works. Maybe recover some of their scrapped tanks to copy them or something.

Will apparently have an Eve-like faction system where player-run factions can take over parts of the map and war over resources and land.

Air and ground units feature in the trailer, but no sign of infantry or sea units. I hope infantry make it in and they just don't have the animations polished yet, but it could be that it'll only have vehicles.

The site has three videos (the above gameplay trailer, some interview snips with the developers and a story trailer, which has a pre-rendered cutscene). It also has a forum.

This game is probably going to replace Eve as my "MMO to try if I ever try and MMO." Also, thanks to Pi for telling me about it in the first place.

 

[Bob_Marley]

It looks interesting, but I can't say I'm a fan of the art design - it looks very C&C Generals. Additionally, Petroglyph hasn't exactly got a brilliant track record on ground combat, which is also worrying.

On the other hand, a grand-scale World In Conflict knock off could well be alot of fun!

 

[Acepilotf14]

There have been MMORTS's before. Most were semi-flash based or failures.

Shattered Galaxy was one of the gems.

 

[Nabobalis]

I hope this goes well, seems like it could be a great idea.

 

[Gargantou]

As far as I know this is going to be the first MMORTS/RTT.

Eh?

There are plenty of MMORTSs(Correct plural form?) out there, such as Beyond Protocol for example.

 

[Shift]

Looks pretty awesome, if its like World in Conflict then happy days.

 

[VirusType2]

So, turn based strategy gets no love these days?

There are plenty of MMORTSs(Correct plural form?)

MMORTS'

I think.

 

[ríomhaire]

MMORTS'

I think.

NO. WHAT THE HELL? WHY WOULD THERE BE AN APOSTROPHE THERE? Apostrophes show contractions and possession, not plurals. Some people put in apostrophes before the s to pluralise acronyms, personally I don't like this but it happens so much some people now consider it part of the language. But putting an apostrophe at the end and not adding a new s? My god that's so wrong.

Less angry mode: You're getting confused with how to mark possession for things that are already plural.
The guns belonging to a single soldier are the soldier's guns, but the guns belonging to a group of soldiers are the soldiers' guns. Grammar should be taught properly in schools. People get pluralisation Ss and possessive Ss confused far too much.

For the record MMORTS is probably the most grammatically correct plural seeing as it can stand for Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategies but from a practical standpoint "There sure are a lot of MMORTS coming out at the moment" doesn't really sound right. For the plural I would write it as MMORTSs.

 

[VirusType2]

The thing about my public education was that they teach you something once, and then when you advance to the next year, they expect you to know this much. They may test you on it in the following years, and even mark things as wrong, but they will never stop and say "Oh, he doesn't know this!", and re-teach you.

Only recently I've been meaning to teach myself all the nuances of English once and for all. For example, I never used a semicolon in my life until a few months ago. (Some may have noticed me using it a hell of a lot recently?)

My education consisted of me not caring, but not wanting to fail. Just to get by. I hated school like a mother****er.

Anyway, sorry for getting this off-topic.

 

[Gargantou]

Yeah, sorry for the off-topic but thanks for the clarification, we don't use apostrophes in my language like they do in English so it's the most alien part of the English language for me.

 

[Remus]

If you have the ability to develop secret weapons to later unleash them when you spawn on the map, it could make this interesting. Other than that, I'm really not a fan of RTT.

 

[Lucid]

I'm saddened that they'd make their next project an MMOG.

Was hoping to see some grand and original RTS or possibly a prequel to Empire at War that dealt with the Clone Wars.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

I'd say that an MMORTS is pretty grand.

They couldn't do another Star Wars game unless Lucasarts asked them to - it's not up to Petroglyph.

 

[Lucid]

That's a shame.
Since Star Wars: Republic at War has a nice ring to it.

 

[StarBob]

Didn't they already make an MMORTS a long time ago called Sovereign or something? I don't realy care though, I don't like the idea all that much. I feel like the single person aspect of MMOs are the only way to go.

 

[ríomhaire]

Some extra info: Current commander classes (it's still WIP) are Tank, Artillery and Strike. Tank and Artillery are obvious. Strike is based around stealth and guerilla.

Your HQ cannot be attacked (would suck if it were razed while you're asleep) and you build it up in order to unlock more units and support powers. It basically acts as your inventory and skills tree from the sound of things, not really part of the game world . You loot enemy units on the battlefield to unlock new unit designs, armour types, ammunition types etc.

There are unit groups and if you unlock and use all the units in a particular group it gives a bonus to you and your allies.

Bad news: Territory is not controlled by player guilds. You get to choose between two factions and then the PvP combat is fighting for your faction to take control of territory for the other faction. If a side conquers the world, the territory is reset. So no Eve-like grabbing for space by different corporations.