A little while back, I had a chance to talk to Trion's Gary Wagner about End of Nations, the developer's RTS/MMO hybrid. His words, mixed with a stellar trailer that demonstrated the game's large, epic battles, had me extremely excited to see more in person. At E3, I finally had that chance, and while I didn't have time to get too far into things, I definitely walked away amazed by this ambitious title, and happy with the direction Trion seems to be taking the future of real-time strategies.

While we already covered the basics in an interview with the developer a few weeks back, here's a rundown for those who didn't get a chance to read it. End of Nations is an RTS that hopes to blend MMO elements into the mix, allowing for massive battles between sides unlike the genre has ever seen. In the first trailer for the game, over fifty players were commanding armies on one map, a big jump up from the usual four to eight player combat. This, sadly, wasn't shown off at the convention. Instead, the developers focused on showing off the game's interface, and explaining the steps they've taken to make it a fair, balanced MMORTS experience.



The first thing I had noticed was the HUD, which might be the best example of a hybrid game interface I've ever seen. On the left side, everything looked like a traditional MMO, with a number of icons that could be clicked to use different abilities. On the right side, it was straight-up RTS, with a radar and everything fans of the genre would expect. When it comes to gameplay, the line is drawn done the middle as well, with the gameplay being as RTS as it gets and everything outside feeling more managerial and persistent. Outside, players can build their army by using a point system, not unlike the one used in Warhammer, and customize it by choosing emblems and paint jobs.

While seeing the game at the show, the developer displayed a few different areas, all of which looked fantastic. The game isn't attempting to push out the best graphics ever seen, but they're definitely keeping up with the current generation. When it comes to gameplay, it seems to play like a fairly traditional RTS with the sensibilities of an MMORPG. The instanced missions, for example, can easily be equated to dungeons from MMO games, something that makes sense in practice. In that sense, the massive battles are essentially raid missions, something that, while not shown off at E3, is certainly alluring.

All in all, not too much of End of Nations was displayed at E3. What was shown, however, is how the developer is planning on meshing together the RTS and MMO game types. In that, their display was a success, and it looks to really take on elements of both genres in a number of interesting ways. Hopefully, moving forward, we'll be able to see more, since there's definitely potential for greatness here.

End of Nations is due out for the PC in 2011.