In our next ‘Things we Love About" we’re checking out Tom Clancy’s EndWar Online, a free to play RTS from Ubisoft where players get to go head to head against each other in a fast paced tactical lane based strategy MMO with their own personal armies. In each match, a player has a base to defend at the end of two or more lanes, and at the other end the opponent has their own base (kind of like a MOBA). By using a variety of different units players must try to push the lanes and find victory!

• Rock-Paper-Scissors And More - The unit mechanics are more than just classic rock-paper-scissors (r-p-s). When starting playing the game through the tutorial phase you are introduced to the gunship, tank and anti-aircraft as the three primary units; between them they have a r-p-s synergy where tank beats anti-aircraft, anti-aircraft beats gunship and gunship beats tank. The campaign AI battles are generally easy to play reactive to, see what the enemy are sending up your lane and then send the appropriate opposing unit to deal with them. However, as you advance more units are introduced that fall outside of this synergy, infantry that capture points, airstrikes that deal high level AOE attacks and more, adding in much more strategy and potential tactical plans.


• Forcing Aggressive Play - Players cannot simply focus on defensive play. When playing the AI it is very easy to simply react to what your opponent is doing, sending down the right counter-units in a lane. However, when you start to go up against players that benefit is taken away from you and you don’t get to see what the enemy is sending down their end of the lanes unless you have a unit nearby or a control point. Trying to play defensively in this situations means players can quickly find themselves overwhelmed with the enemy pushed too close to their base, so both players have to constantly send units out blindly, doing it with their own team composition in mind, the lay of the maps’ lanes and at times with a little blind luck and second guessing what the opponent is going to do!


• Map Layout - The map strategy is surprisingly tactical and deep. There are generally 2 or 3 lanes that make up a map, once your units are sent down them they can’t be controlled (aside from being able to use their special attacks), and will automatically move and fight whatever they come in contact with. The strategy based on maps comes from a few different things; firstly lanes are line with capture points in the form of barracks to house Infantry, artillery points (where artillery units can setup and attack at range) and more. Second to this is the actual positioning of the lanes themselves where some of the lanes come close together where units can attack each other from different lanes, making interesting bottleneck scenarios.


• Creating You Army - You are able to customize your own team. Players can choose the Commanders that are part of their team, with six Commanders (unlocked as you level up) max, each of which can lead a particular type of unit. As players get to choose their Commanders it means they can decide whether they want to be heavy with a particular unit, or have more of a variation to try and counter lots of situations, furthermore players can customize their Commanders to give them new abilities and their units extra gear upgrades. All of this leads to players being able to have some extremely varied tactics and plans.


• Great Campaign - The AI solo campaign is fun. There is a pretty extensive solo campaign that delivers the main story element of the game with the introduction of various quests, these lead players with a story-based tutorial, slowly unlocked players headquarters and allows them to progress through the map of Europe taking control of various countries from the enemy faction. The story really ties the game together well, but it also sets players up on various tactics as well as providing the territories that will yield currency to purchase new Commanders and upgraders.

So that’s what we love with EndWar Online, but more importantly what are some of your favourite things? What do you think could/should be added to our list that makes the game great? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2015 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.