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End of Nations

End of Nations

The name Petroglyph might not ring a bell for most people, but every serious strategy fan ought to be familiar with the Las Vegas based developer.

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It was founded by former Westwood veterans who decided to start on their own, when EA folded Westwood into their Los Angeles studio.

Westwood more or less invented the real time strategy genre with Dune II, and the core of Petroglyph is made up of people who worked on not only that game, but on every Command & Conquer title up until and including Red Alert 2.

That's not the primary reason you should keep an eye out for End of Nations, though. No, the upcoming free-to-play title should be on your radar for one particular reason: it looks bloody fantastic.

End of Nations
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The team has taken the usual RTS formula, spiced it up with a few MMO additions and expanded its boundaries in every direction. That's why End of Nations can pride itself of both PvP and co-op PvE gameplay, permanent upgrades for units and battles with up to 56 players duking it out at once.

One of the main differences between End of Nations and genre giants suchs as Command & Conquer and Starcraft II is the way in which you gain resources and build your army. Unlike the aforementioned games, there's no collecting minerals during battle, no base building, and no construction of new units once you roll out.

Instead, you compose your army between battles, buying new units, upgrades and unlocks with the credits you earn from winning. You split your armies into companies, and choose what company to use before the battle starts.

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Every company has a so-called Hero unit with different unique abilities, and your goal is to build different companies suited for different tactics and play styles - such as a focus on tanks, air units, long range attacks, stealth and so on - or even companies tailored to different maps. It is possible to switch companies during the heat of battle, but it will cost you valuable seconds where you can't do anything.

In the PvP maps, you obviously fight players from the opposing faction (the game has two, Shadow Revolution and Liberation Front), while PvE players go up against a third, the Order of Nations, controlled by the AI. Up to four players can take part in a PvE mission, and we got to see an example of the game type Full Boar, in which the goal is to gain control over a series of control points, thus gathering a total of 5000 resource points. That simple task is made significantly more complicated by the presence of a Panzer Hulk - a tank the size of a cruise ship. In order to succeed, you'll have to defeat that hulking monster first.

We see how the enormous Hulk drives with reckless abandon across the map, crushing terrain and buildings along the way. Even though this is the type of mission that could be repeated infinitely, the presence and maneuvers of the Hulk gives the whole thing a feeling of a more traditional single player campaign with scripted events. The players are forced to give up the control points they've already captured in order to focus on the Panzer Hulk, which is eventually defeated through a combination of napalm and generous nuke use.

Once it's down, the players shift their attention to the remaining Order of Nations forces and eventually win the day.

End of Nations

As we mentioned, there's no base building in Order of Nations, but the Hero units have the ability to place a few basic structures, such as turrets or repair stations. The latter are quite useful, seeing as you only have a finite amount of units available. These structures are shared across the team, encouraging teamwork and leaving room for different play styles.

End of Nations is financed through the free-to-play model, but the developers are quick to point out that there will be no paying to win. For that reason, players will only be able to spend real money on custom paintjobs for their units (we see a tank covered in lipstick kisses, and another with a spotted giraffe pattern) and XP boosters, increasing the pace at which you level up.

And it's your level that decides what units are available, what upgrades you can equip them with (influencing things like damage, armor, speed, etc) and so forth. In theory that means you'll still be able to fast-track your way to an advantage over non-paying players, but we'll keep our fingers crossed in hopes that Petroglyph will get the balancing right. A combination of your level and ELO rating should help ensure that you are only matched against players of a similar skill level.

End of Nations

As a sidenote, fans of the old Command & Conquer games will be happy to hear that C&C-composer Frank Klepacki is on board, and has produced more than three and a half hours of music for End of Nations.

The devs won't say anything about a release date yet, and are also being vague about when the game enters open beta. The vagueness is something of a surprise, as the demo they've brought to Gamescom looks very solid indeed. With the combination of both PvP and PvE gameplay, End of Nations should be able to satisfy a wide range of RTS fans, and as long as the freemium elements are balanced right, this could prove to be one of the most influential games in the genre.

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