End of Nations Becomes a MOBA

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the MMORTS.  A really long time.  But the first news from Trion Worlds is that they will be developing the game as a MOBA instead of as an MMORTS.

So what’s the difference?  You ask.

Well a MOBA involves a hero type who will level up and get stronger as you accomplish tasks+kill stuff.  In this game the hero is at the center of it all and he will be assisted by a tiny army… but keeping that hero alive is the main thing as he will become a bastion of mega strength.

By comparison the old End of Nations had various units with abilities they could use in which heroes were just slightly stronger units that not everyone necessarily used.

The switch makes the game closer to League of Legends and it is now expected that people will be able to buy “Premium Heroes” for play.

As well removed from the game is the overworld in which battles were being won and lost on a global scale.  Instead it’s now micro games in which you are trying to earn currency to purchase heroes and level up your avatar.

End of Nations Re-Enters Alpha

After almost a year in developer hell in which the game was basically dead, Trion Worlds has re-launched the title to re-enter alpha stages.

The game was being developed by Petroglyph Games.  Petroglyph gave us Empire at War and was composed of the team responsible for most of the Command and Conquer games.

They really have not done anything since Petroglyph headed to courts to solve legal disputes.

So End of Nations development was shut down and now End of Nations has been handed full on over to Trion Worlds.

Trion Worlds just finished development of Defiance.  Defiance’s sales of course were not that hot and has recently been knocked down 75% off on Steam.

In light of this Trion Worlds has decided to re-brand this title from an MMO-RTS to a MOBA with RTS elements (which is what it was closer to all along anyway).  Whether that means there will be major changes to the game or not is hard to say.

What Happened to End of Nations

People who purchased the Founder’s Edition of End of Nations found an odd surprise, their purchase had been refunded.

Reason given?  Game cancelled?

Although no official reason has been given it is good to speculate at this point (and far more fun).

The community manager officially stated that the game was not cancelled but was instead delayed.  Later on that day he was laid off (that’s nice way of saying fired).

There are two main scenarios that keep End of Nations down.

The first is Trion Worlds.  This is something I have discussed quite a bit.  Basically Trion has bit off a bit more than they can chew.  Here is a studio that is developing Rift, Defiance, World of Darkness, and End of Nations.  That’s a lot on the table and honestly the studio is not big enough to fund so much stuff.

It’s possible the money just dried up.

The second, and more likely problem is Petroglyph Games.  Petroglyph Games has not made a game in quite some time.  It has actually made so few games that it went into a law suit over the development of Mytheon, another MMO RTS that just didn’t happen.

As far as this studio goes it runs out of money and then it asks the publisher for more.

As far as End of Nations was going, well not well.  After alpha and beta tests… well the game just was not being received all that well.  There was really nothing to the game particularly great.  On top of that the revenue model for the game just didn’t have any ‘oomfph’ to it.

So is End of Nations dead?  Most likely, but that’s not entirely for sure.  It’s largely possible Trion will sell the IP and all the work done on it for someone else to complete if anything.

Abuse of the Rift Engine #4: Personal Adventures

If you logged on to the Rift servers today you would have found out a new patch was deployed.  This patch included a new part of the game called “Personal Adventures.”  By hitting the period key (.) you bring up the menu, a single toggle to turn on Personal Adventures.  These personal adventures teleport you to a group of people who will have to complete a number of objectives and then finally meet up with a boss.

It’s another use of the rift engine, that is whoring out their product.

What is the Rift Engine?

The Rift engine, also known as the dynamic content engine was designed by Trion Worlds for their game Rift.  The purpose of this engine was to generate content randomly throughout the zone.  The idea was that this engine would create events within the zone that would make your experience leveling different and unique.

The Rift engine deploys a chain of content that can be halted by a player or allowed to become powerful.  The model was simple.  Content would start off in planar elements.  These are potential zones for change.  A player can activate them or a planar element can trigger on it’s own over time.

These planar elements will transform into rifts, what the game is named for.  Rifts are fissures in time that will spawn units from another realm.  These will also drastically change the layout of the zone.  Death rifts for example will spawn skulls and darkness.  Fire rifts will spawn fire and brimstone.  This dynamic content can spawn anywhere and alter a zone to an experience specific to you.

The next phase of this dynamic engine is to make the rift do something so that it is not a stationary element.  So as long as a rift is opened a set number of units called an “invasion” with a boss will move across the map along the roads.  These will cause an inconvenience and will attack in every which direction.

A fourth aspect of this dynamic content engine is the foothold.  The foothold is activated by the invasion.  The foothold will take control of key points and towns further inconveniencing you and forcing you to finally address this problem… or forever be unable to turn in your quests.

So that’s the rift engine.  It is something that is complicated to develop and revolves around constantly having unique events spawn around the map.

So what are the abuses of this Rift engine to date?

#1: The Zone Wide Event

The first one to develop was the zone wide event.  This concept focused around a group of people  working together to close down a specific grouping of rifts, invasions and footholds that would just spawn,

This concept was whored out like crazy.  Most major updates including more zone wide events.  These were casual friendly events that would activate randomly all over Telaria.  The concept here is the rift engine doing it’s job with a focus and a direction.  This is an addition to the dynamic engine in that the game will dynamically and randomly spawn mass events all over the world.

#2: The Story Event

A second abuse of the rift engine is the storyline event.  Trion puts forth a very minor story line.  And I do mean very minor.  As in nothing really happens.  Quests will involve killing rift monsters or closing rifts.  Usually it will involve a specific type of mob therefore during high populated times the game will spawn extra types of this rift in all zones.

#3: The Raid Rift/Epic Rift

This next part of the rift engine was to create a brand new type of rift that players can call upon.  These rifts unlike other rifts would give raid valued rewards.  This was designed for casuals to be able to gain gear in a raid scenario without having to try too hard.

Epic rifts would have 5 people in a group together to take out a rift and gain a single reward for it.  The raid rift would require an entire raid.  These would also require specific lures that you would have to purchase with planarite.

This solved the problem of mass amounts of stockpiled planarite and the problem of gearing up for content.

All they have to do was tweek their engine to make more powerful rifts and make them for cheap.

#4: The Personal Adventure

This is the final whoring out of the rift engine and the most recent one.  I’m sure there will be more.  Trion spent a tonne of money developing this engine and they have whored it out ALL over the game.  Most people when they develop something this expensive either deploy it to all of their games (like Cryptic Studios did) or they will sell it off to other games (like Everquest did).  Trion Worlds however has no other games (at the moment) and no one is really interested in this dwindling studio.

So this has really caused a money problem for Trion.  They need to get this engine to max use, but only have one game.

Solution?  Over use the engine in the one game.

And they are.

The new “personal adventure” is just another adventure involving rifts and rift creatures.  Sometimes you will go to a zone and have to clear out some mobs that aren’t rift creatures, but for the most part you are just killing rift beasts.  The personal adventure brings absolutely nothing new to the game.  You are teleported to a public zone that anyone can join and you kill off objectives that were in the game before the patch.

It’s 100% nothing new.  Just a new way of doing the same thing you always did.

Personal adventures have no stories to them.  Personal adventures are also not personal adventures.  They can involve up to 20 people.  How personal can things get when you have a full raid?

Overall personal adventures are another failed attempt by Trion to pimp out their content and add nothing.

How to: Black Garden Stockpile Mode

As part of a 1.6 weekend special Trion released the new Stockpile mode into their game set. Stockpile mode is only available during the special Black Garden weekends (the warfronts will rotate) meaning this will be available once every five weeks. So in this article I will deal with how the game works.

How it Works

The fang is gone.

In its place are lootable black balls.

Your job is to carry these black balls to Cleansing Orbs.

But there’s a trick. Each orb you carry reduces your movement speed. You can carry a maximum of three at once.

The orbs come in pairs and will spawn in mirrored locations. Each orb will have 8 charges on it. Every time you do a turn in you lose a charge on the orb.

Each black ball is worth 10 so it is advantageous to carry a whole bunch at once.

Orbs are placed in strategic locations that will favor one team over the other. The first set has a minor inconvenience in a large rock placement making it a slightly longer run path. After that orbs will appear very close to bases. Considering there are eight charges this leaves a mini strategy involving dumping on their orbs or dumping only 3 orbs into yours.

As another note a kill with worth 2 points. You will need 500 points to win so obviously carrying orbs will be more worthwhile. Winning teams are successful in cleansing black balls and preventing their opponents from doing so. Priority targets are the ones who have the three orbs debuff.