Wargaming Teams With Mad Head Games For ARPG-MOBA Hybrid Pagan Online (UPDATE: Not F2P)

UPDATE: VentureBeat is reporting that a spokesperson from Wargaming has said that the company "wasn’t talking about its business model yet, but they did confirm that it would be a paid game." So that means we won't be covering it unless (until?) it goes free-to-play.

ORIGINAL: If you pegged early November as the time when a major studio would announced a new ARPG for the PC, you were right. Only it wasn't Blizzard and Diablo 4 getting the headlines -- well, it has been getting headlines, just not the good kind -- but instead Wargaming, which today announced Pagan Online, a collaboration with Mad Head Games.

Pagan Online is billed as "a demonic dystopia based on pre-Christian mythology," and set in a time when the pagan gods have left and "dark forces" are running rampant throughout the world. It's up to you, the Chosen of the gods, to battle the evil hordes -- and also enrich yourself with priceless treasures. Hey, it's a pre-Christian world, things were rough back then, even without demons running amok, and you had to look out for yourself.

The trailer seems to show off a few potential classes: a heavily armored dwarf warrior type, a blindfolded bear-rider, and a slinky blood-magic-wielding mage. There's more to the game than just APRG-style gameplay, however, as claimed in the press release:

Following in the footsteps of classic dungeon crawlers while tearing down and reinventing gameplay into a MOBA-style combat experience, this game will have MOBA players begging for one more run and RPG disciples wondering what just hit them.

The game is also described as having "session-based, MOBA-style combat experiences" in "procedurally generated battlegrounds." What's not said anywhere is a pricing model. Being that Wargaming is the publisher, we'd expect it to be free-to-play, but we'll have to wait and see.

Pagan Online is scheduled for release in 2019. You can learn more and sign up for the "Trials" -- a.k.a. beta testing -- on the Pagan Online website.