I'm something of a junkie when it comes to beta trials. Been in a handful ranging from World in Combat, to Dungeon Runners, and a handful of others. I never play them much more than a few hours. The most recent one is a self proclaimed DotA clone. Having never player DotA it was a new experience, and ultimately worth playing once.

Cute little trailer eh?

So you pick a Hero, run him through the map with your minions running a preset path similar to Tower Defense games. Towers (go figure) block your way and pump out some crazy damage, you have to clear enemy minions and zerg them down. All the while your hero gains XP/GP for buying armor, weapons, and consumables. Each hero gets 4 abilities that you accumulate points toward as you level, and you being the summoner can assign two spells before each match. The Teleport and Heal spells were the starting ones I picked. The GUI is familiar for Warcraft/Starcraft fans. A minimap you can click to assign focus on, and a mouse-push on the edge of the screen to move focus on the main screen. Combat is painfully simple, auto-attack and a few abilities with rather excessive cooldowns though they get lower as you level. Essentially you lead your swarm into the enemy base and destroy their minion-spawner to win.

Oh, but it's a PvP game too. You can go from 1v1 to 5v5, so things can get a bit interesting.

Through the middle of the map are random monsters you can solo to get bonuses, nothing real exciting. PvP isn't so much a match of skill as it is whether or not your build can beat their expected build. Stacking a few of the same Hero types works the best. 5 Melee wins over a balanced group. 5 Tanks wins over a balanced group. 5 Casters wins over a balanced group, etc, etc… I played three different Heroes in an empty match, 1v0 with just minions rolling over mine. Surprisingly, left to their own devices, my minions would regularly lose. Your Hero makes a pretty big difference in minion v minion combat. I tried out the Rock dude who was kinda an AoE Melee DPS (I thought he would be more tanky), the Wolf dude who was a Lifetap Melee Fast attacker, and the Angel chick who was a Paladin style Tank. They were all interesting, had different unique styles, and could easily beat on defenseless minions.

I should really have applied myself more I suppose. I didn't give the PvP a shot as Warhammer was calling me. Based on my last post though, you can already imagine how that went. I plan on giving it another shot tonight for a match or two. Probably fight a real player, and get rofl-stomped like the noob I am. I don't see this game holding my attention though. It's a little too basic for me. Anyone wanna rumble tonight?