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MMORTS Gamers Main Game List

Introduction

In the 21st century, shortly after the colonization of our Solar System had begun, a huge dark object appeared beyond the orbit of Pluto. The object, called ‘Shard Zero’ by the scientists, possessed some kind of a deadly aura, spreading mysterious ‘plague’ of cosmic scale around itself, twisting and disrupting the very nature of space and life. There was no time for reaction, and all attempts to study the anomaly remained futile. When we finally realized the object is moving on a collision course with our planet, it was too late. Shard Zero hit Earth and that was the end of our civilization.

WorldShift is set thousands of years later, when our civilization is no more than a fading myth. The remains of Shard Zero still are spreading its Plague, twisting and re-shaping Earth and its nature, sometimes in the course of centuries and sometimes in a matter of hours. Humans developed a new culture and now live in 5 mega-cities, struggling every day for the precious resources they need to survive. The rest of Earth is populated by the Tribes, successors of early humans, that were affected by the Plague.

WorldShift is a next-gen cyber-fantasy RTS game designed to be quick and very easy to learn and play. It offers hectic, fierce encounters all around the Earth and a fascinating story uncovering ancient secrets about the true nature of the Shard and the Plague. But also, WorldShift introduces many features new to the genre, like modifiable factions, unqiue cooperative multiplayer gameplay, and more.

In WorldShift, there are no technology trees featuring hundreds of upgrades; instead, WorldShift allows the players to discover and acquire a vast number of items and powerful relics that they can use to freely change their gameplay and preferred tactics and to surprise their foes. The players will gather items as they fight their opponents and as rewards for completing missions. But to discover the most powerful relics, they must form teams with their most trusted friends and embark on deadly missions where it is difficult to survive and where the real challenges await.

Fast and furious multiplayer
Thousands of items and powerful relics to collect
Use items and relics to build your own tactics
The best cooperative, player-vs-environment gameplay ever made in RTS game
Random maps for infinite exploration
Unique blend of post apocalyptic setting, hi-tech and primitive
Epic, dangerous missions with great rewards
3 playable races

Game Details

The innovative real-time strategy game created by Black Sea Studios and published by Black Inc. will enter its online closed beta phase today, 12 February 2008!

On the 12th February 2008, five thousand gamers joined and participated in the closed beta phase of "WorldShift".

The beta test will be hosted by FilePlanet (http://www.fileplanet.com), IGN Entertainment’s popular game download Web site.

Set in a cyber-fantasy world, the real-time strategy game "WorldShift" by Black Sea Studios offers a fast-moving gaming principle, manifold tactical battles and an epic tale. In “WorldShift”, the developer has interwoven the best elements of real-time strategy and MMO games to create an innovative and uncomplicated mix that will enthrall both RTS adepts and gamers who are new to the genre.

There are three races playable:

Humans

Humans live in five independent Megacities scattered around the plagued Earth. The cities are ruled by local oligarchies that rarely pay attention to the global threats the Humankind might face.

Despite the differences between the five Megacities, they all share a similar problem - many of the decisions taken by their Senates are a direct result of political intrigues and the influence of different powerful factions, each fighting for its own interests.

Tribes

The Tribes consist of the mutated successors of earlier humans that were affected by the Plague but survived and emerged stronger, wielding strange new powers and abilities. The Tribes are organized in loose alliances and have no central leadership. Instead, every Tribe is led by its own High Priest.

The Tribes are not entirely foreign to technology but the mutants prefer to rely on their paranormal abilities, or ‘magic’. Since xenolite is key for unlocking the higher levels of the mutants’ psychic energy, the Tribes always build their settlements around rich xenolite deposits, tend to the xenolite, and move on when it expires.

The Cult

The Cult is a mysterious faction that has recently entered the stage and threatens to upturn the fragile balance of forces on Earth. The Cult’s exact origins and agenda are unknown but their hostile reactions in all kinds of encounters show they are not here to seek cooperation or trade. It is feared that they may pose a threat far greater than is obvious.

The Cult’s forces consist of several very different species, genetically modified and cybernetically enhanced for their role as slaves and soldiers for a single dominating species: the Jaar Lash.

The Ability Grid

In WorldShift, you are not stuck with the same three races throughout your gaming career. The Ability Grid lets you customize your factions by equipping items and choosing specializations.

The items represent things like technologies, policies, or special training. They are equipped for the faction as a whole, not for an individual ‘hero’. For example, if an item gives an armor bonus to the Trooper unit type, equipping it will affect all Troopers that you use in subsequent missions.
You can extract items from artifacts, receive them as awards for completing a mission, or buy them with the battle points you have earned in deathmatches. Artifacts can be found just lying around the map in most game modes but the ones yielding the best items are dropped by the bosses in cooperative games.
You keep the unequipped items in a common inventory area for all factions.
The specializations are arranged in specialization trees similar to the skill trees in role-playing games. Every faction has is own skill tree.
To be used, specializations must first be unlocked and then have special points, or stars, allocated to them. The number of stars available for a faction depends on the number of unlocked specializations in the faction’s specialization tree.
To unlock a specialization or reset your specialization tree for a certain faction, you need xenoshards, a special resource gained when collecting or recycling artifacts.

There are several modes available: Cooperative missions, Single Player Story missions, Multiplayer practice games, Deadmatch (1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 random players, 2v2 and 3v3 pre-made teams).

Summary

Worldshift in many ways plays as a typical Modern RTS (ie all the bells and whistles) but has some new features which warrant attention. Research will be examined closely soon, as will the online cooperative play and the persistent rankings. Expected fro release at the end of summer 2008.