EA's MOBA Dawngate gets first early details, Beta Starts Friday
EA joined the bandwagon last week with the announcement of their upcoming MOBA Dawngate and one could instantly feel the collective groan of a thousand gamers. Obviously, the question was never "if" EA would make a MOBA, but "when" EA would do so. I think the most surprising aspect of the announcement is that it took them this long to do so.
There weren't many details available for Dawngate when the website went live, but a new video from Machinima gives us our first look of the mechanics within. Some of the highlights of the video include a heavy focus on lore, only two creep lanes, secondary objectives, regenerating towers and evolving minions.
Secondary objectives come in the way of spirit wells which are situated off the beaten path and serve as capturable points which produce minions that harvest resources much in the same way workers in a traditional RTS do. These workers produce gold for your team and can be killed by the enemy in order to disrupt the flow of income. If no workers are left the enemy can then capture the point and begin producing income from that spirit well.
The minions and towers are also becoming less static in Dawngate. Towers which are called "Bindings" in Dawngate, serve as both traditional defensive installations and inhibitors. If an enemy's tower is destroyed a specific allied minion called a Strider (essentially the tank unit of the creep wave) powers up and gains additional stats and abilities. This can happen multiple times as Bindings are taken out putting increased pressure on the respective lane. However, Bindings slowly rebuild themselves overtime which will allow players to regain some control over a lane and "rebind" the Striders, removing their unlocked power. Hopefully, this leads to closer games and fewer runaways which are often caused by one team's early game dominance.
All these things sounds fine and dandy, but whether these changes amount to a new MOBA experience players want to play is another discussion point entirely. Personally, I feel as though the controls and responsiveness of the characters is a key part of a MOBAs success and something most new MOBA developers (SMITE withstanding) do not give enough attention to.
I suppose we won't have to wait too long to find out how it plays. The beta is set to begin this Friday, May 24th. If you wanted to sign up for the beta you can do so here.
Related Articles
About the Author
Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play MMO title since 2009.
More Stories by Michael DunawayRead Next
Queue up the Pokemon theme, because in just a little over a week players will be able to fight, capture and train over 300 unique dragons during the Dragon's Prophet open beta.
You May Enjoy
The trailer is very well done and it's causing me to speculate a bit.
Best MMO Games similar to Pokémon for fans of creature collecting. Get out there and catch those creatures.
The launch is kind of a test ahead of the game's October 21st launch.
Make sure you're ok with how the guild you join handles loot, though. You could find yourself surprised.
“Maybe” was the word of the day.
Radtown and local scenery got a lot of love.
I really think, the genre itself could use something more than that.
Its like RPGs would only try to copy Diablo, without something new or innovative for itself.
The game here shows potential on the side of map design and map dynamics.
But somehow I fear, maybe thats only because the style is really cartoony, that the rest might be MOBA for babies in gameplay.
The thing is, that most 'hardcore' players really want to be challenged.
There need be more than a few overpowered characters with strong skills, if the game dont provide counters for that through items and gameplay.
The great thing about DOTA was, that every hero was special for himself and his skills, but even more for the possibility to build him for different situations.
If this MOBA is not able to implement this, as so much others failed already, than its not even worth a try.
But the preview so far said nothing about this, so we have to wait for beta and see for ourselfs, before we call a game a waste of time.
Why not make a first person shooter?
Anyways. Just give up EA. Your company gos downhill. Save up the money u made and have a good life.