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gamigo announces new Elements of War MMORTS
There's a new MMORTS in the works from gamigo, and the upcoming Elements of War Online looks to give players the opportunity to take part in an invasion of the United States carried out by a coalition of Russian and European forces. The game features eight-player (4 vs. 4) matches and requires a mixture of strategy, tactical prowess, and teamwork to control various sectors of a battle map set in the war-torn continental United States. Player commanders choose and train their units to create the ultimate army, and can even make use of "experimental element weapons such as artificial tornados and storms [that] can make or break a battle," according to a gamigo press release. Beta testing for Elements of War will kick off this quarter, and the game will feature 50 unique battle zones, 16 maps, two playable factions, 31 unit types per side, and destructible environments.
Command & Conquer 4 devs show off what's new in multiplayer
With all of the furor around the StarCraft 2 beta going on this week, you might actually have forgotten that there are actually two major, big-budget RTS sequels due out in 2010. Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight is arriving in just a few weeks on March 16, and, to remind you of that fact, here are a few of the game's developers telling you about how they balanced the multiplayer component. The main feature is the new class choices -- whenever you start up a map, you choose whether you want to play as offense, defense or support, and your teammates can make the same choice, allowing each of you to choose to run your own units entirely, with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's also some information at the end about the co-op campaign, which will also let you use the complimentary classes to split up the fight against enemies and follow objectives that much more quickly with a friend. Sure, your Marines and your Zerglings and your Zealots are fun to play with, but it looks like C&C4 is ordering up some new ways to play one of the older genres in PC gaming. [Via Big Download]
Spellborn updates for 2009 mapped out
Although the US is still waiting for The Chronicles of Spellborn to finish up its beta phases, the European version of the game has already been released. As is usually the case with an MMO launch, the developers didn't just flip the switch and then wash their hands of the project, and have been pushing out patches and hotfixes to their live servers as needed. Now we've been given an idea of where they hope to take the game over the coming year, via a post on the official forums.In the short term, a big patch is expected to be ready for the end of January, which will include some new monsters as well as a tutorial that comes in response to feedback from the community and press. A bit later in the year, the plan is to roll out the market, and an arena match-up system that will allow 2v2 and 4v4 PvP games. Longer term development goals include mounts and guild alliances, but when we're looking at this time-frame, it's highly likely that more ideas will come about. So, who is already on board with Spellborn?
2v2 almost was 4v4
Nestled in a hokey thread (as important as the overpowered McRib is, it's not something I'd really expect a blue to be commenting on), Kalgan has dropped some insight about how Blizzard is viewing the very strange 2v2 Arena lineup. 2v2 is the weirdest balance of all, because not only is WoW not a dueling game, it's not a 2v2 game either. It's very possible for there to be two classes within four players that don't have balances against each other.And Kalgan says that Blizzard realizes this, and as a result, they are still not happy with the way 2v2 is balanced out-- Kalgan says that there are a lot of classes "left out of having a reasonable chance" to compete in the format, because of the "endurance" nature of the game. In fact, Blizzard almost went with a 4v4 Arena instead (in addition to the 3v3 and 5v5 teams now in the game), and abandoned the 2v2 idea entirely. The reason 2v2 stayed is that Kalgan agrees that players should be able to grab a friend and play. So Blizzard apparently took on the bigger challenge of balancing 2v2 just to keep players who didn't have lots of great PvPing friends in the Arena game.Was it worth it? I've played both 2v2 and 5v5 formats, and I'd have to say that 2v2 is an interesting format, but the players angry about balance are right-- there are just some fights that can't be won in 2v2. I don't know if that's reason enough to have decided against it and gone with 4v4 instead (and I also don't think that there are lots of players that have friends enough to play 2v2 and not one of the bigger brackets), but Blizzard does have a long road ahead of them if they want to make 2v2 seriously balanced. Depending on how many people they've got playing there (my hunch is that 5v5 is much more popular, but that's just a hunch, I haven't seen the numbers), that may not be a road worth traveling.
