The First Game in the Wargaming, Sega Partnership Will Be Total War: Arena

[Lizzy Finnegan]

The First Game in the Wargaming, Sega Partnership Will Be Total War: Arena

Wargaming, Sega, and Creative Assembly partner to support Total War: Arena.

Wargaming, Sega and The Creative Assembly have announced a partnership to support free-to-play strategy game Total War: Arena. The game was first revealed by Creative Assembly [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122998-Creative-Assembly-Reveals-Free-to-Play-Total-War-Arena] in 2013, and at the time was described as a game that will "focus entirely on online multiplayer, mixing elements of RTS and MOBA gameplay."

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1361/1361772.jpg

The press release also explains that Wargaming Alliance, the newly created publishing label, is a service being provided to third-party developers, providing "access to the unique expertise and knowledge of the online free-to- play market that Wargaming has amassed over the years, the company's multimillion loyal player community, and the best practices in free-to- play game promotion and operation."

"For the past seven years, Wargaming has worked hard to establish itself as an industry leader in publishing games within the free-to-play area," said Vladimir Makarychev, Head of Wargaming Alliance, in a press release. "Through the Wargaming Alliance label we hope to share our knowledge with other companies entering this highly competitive landscape and are extremely excited to partner with SEGA and Creative Assembly to ensure Total War: ARENA is a resounding success."

"SEGA is constantly exploring ways in which its diverse range of IPs can be brought to a wider gaming audience," added Jurgen Post, President and COO at SEGA Europe. "This strategic partnership with Wargaming, to release Total War: ARENA as the first game on the Wargaming Alliance platform, presents a unique opportunity for Creative Assembly's eagerly anticipated creation to realize its full potential. Working with Wargaming, a market leader in the free-to- play space, and by utilizing their extensive experience and expertise in this area, SEGA is confident that Total War: ARENA will become the worldwide hit it deserves to be."

Creative Assembly Studio Director Tim Heaton calls the partnership with Wargaming "a perfect match of proven strategy gaming brands."

"For more than a decade, the Total War franchise has been the standard-bearer of strategy gaming thanks to its trademark gameplay and a focus on authenticity. The free-to- play market is an exciting new opportunity for the franchise and in the last year we have seen great potential with Total War: ARENA," Heaton added.


Permalink

 

[ShakerSilver]

"can be brought to a wider gaming audience"

That's never a good phrase to hear.

Guess we'll have to wait and what it has to offer, but given the past efforts of other established franchises/creators trying to hop onto the MOBA bandwagon (where even Blizzard floundered a fair bit), I'm not sure this will be the successful spin-off they're hoping for.

As an aside: MOBA is a terrible genre name.

 

[Gutsripper]

All of this sounds so horrible....
Are they taking something that's great and just actively trying to turn it into crap?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

"can be brought to a wider gaming audience"

That's never a good phrase to hear.

Guess we'll have to wait and what it has to offer, but given the past efforts of other established franchises/creators trying to hop onto the MOBA bandwagon (where even Blizzard floundered a fair bit), I'm not sure this will be the successful spin-off they're hoping for.

As an aside: MOBA is a terrible genre name.

IMO MOBA is a terrible genre. I don't exactly hate it, but the only MOBA that appeals to me is Heroes of the Storm and its the more "casual" (I fucking detest that term) of the group. The idea of the MOBA feels fairly stagnant and any evolution/innovation seems to be, and I could be wrong because its an outsider view, looked down upon.
I dunno, I tried to get into LoL and DOTA 2, but it seemed those games were suffering from complexity masquerading as depth. Too much meta, and not very welcoming to noobs.
Meh, I might just be biased from bad experiences.

 

[Gennadios]

All of this sounds so horrible....
Are they taking something that's great and just actively trying to turn it into crap?

The thing that's great already crossed the crap threshold. The quality of the TW games have been dropping with each iteration, and when they do fix a horribly incomplete release they just decide to sell it as a whole new game.

I see this as kind of BioWare's Knight's of the Old republic. What used to be a venerable name gets completely dominated by a publisher and turned towards making wank.

 

[Kahani]

mixing elements of RTS and MOBA gameplay.

MOBA is already just a subset of RTS (remember that DotA was originally just a Warcraft mod), so all that says is that it's mixing elements of RTS and RTS. Or, probably more accurately, it's just a MOBA but they don't want to actually say that.

IMO MOBA is a terrible genre.

Well, see above. The problem with MOBA is that it really isn't a genre at all, it's really just one limited game mode taken from a much larger genre. That's why it feels so stagnant; any innovations in MOBAs don't actually add anything new, they just expand it to be a slightly different sub-genre of RTS. And of course, RTS itself has been pretty stagnant for the last decade or more.

The thing that's great already crossed the crap threshold. The quality of the TW games have been dropping with each iteration, and when they do fix a horribly incomplete release they just decide to sell it as a whole new game.

It was only really Rome 2 that was bad. The most recent was Total Warhammer, which was actually really good, and before Rome 2, both Shogun and Napoleon were pretty good, while Empire was nowhere near as bad as people seem to like claiming today (and was not viewed as bad at the time). And of course before that the original Shogun, Medieval, Rome and Medieval 2 were all great. That's hardly a steady decline, it's really just a single big misstep plus a couple that maybe weren't as good as the rest of the series.

Of course, that says nothing at all about how good a free to play MOBA is likely to be, which can safely be assumed to be shit regardless of what any company might have done in the past.

 

[Gutsripper]

The thing that's great already crossed the crap threshold. The quality of the TW games have been dropping with each iteration, and when they do fix a horribly incomplete release they just decide to sell it as a whole new game.

It was only really Rome 2 that was bad. The most recent was Total Warhammer, which was actually really good, and before Rome 2, both Shogun and Napoleon were pretty good, while Empire was nowhere near as bad as people seem to like claiming today (and was not viewed as bad at the time). And of course before that the original Shogun, Medieval, Rome and Medieval 2 were all great. That's hardly a steady decline, it's really just a single big misstep plus a couple that maybe weren't as good as the rest of the series.

Of course, that says nothing at all about how good a free to play MOBA is likely to be, which can safely be assumed to be shit regardless of what any company might have done in the past.

I agree, I really liked Total Warhammer but then again I was already a fan of Warhammer before that. But even if you do see it as a steady decline there's still a difference between getting a bit worse with every iteration and going full goose MOBA.

 

[Gennadios]

The thing that's great already crossed the crap threshold. The quality of the TW games have been dropping with each iteration, and when they do fix a horribly incomplete release they just decide to sell it as a whole new game.

It was only really Rome 2 that was bad. The most recent was Total Warhammer, which was actually really good, and before Rome 2, both Shogun and Napoleon were pretty good, while Empire was nowhere near as bad as people seem to like claiming today (and was not viewed as bad at the time). And of course before that the original Shogun, Medieval, Rome and Medieval 2 were all great. That's hardly a steady decline, it's really just a single big misstep plus a couple that maybe weren't as good as the rest of the series.

Of course, that says nothing at all about how good a free to play MOBA is likely to be, which can safely be assumed to be shit regardless of what any company might have done in the past.

My recollection is slightly different, Empire was pretty meh, and the fixes that it should have gotten were sold as Napoleon. Same deal with Rome 2/Attila, just worse. I don't know how they didn't fuck up Shogun but I'll give them that credit.

I'm waiting on the Steam sale before I can comment on Warhammer, all I know at this point is that alot of corners were cut in unit animations and the DLC practices were exploitative.

Kind of ironic that the past 6 years this was the Unicorn of TW titles and it ended up being the one I just couldn't bring myself to care about.