Exclusive Preview Impressions: It’s battle-time!

In the days between Christmas and New Year ’s Eve, a Games company could be assumed to be a desolated place. Well, at InnoGames, there’s always somebody in the office, very much so, now that we’re in this important phase for Forge of Empires. And I guess otherwise an angry mob would turn up here with torches and pitchforks, demanding Exclusive Preview keys. No, seriously, I am very glad that you guys are that passionate about this game (everyone who has no idea what I am talking about, check our facebook-page.

The comments display the thin line between joy and sorrow, when our daily key giveaway makes some people immensely happy, but always leaves some behind in utter disappointment). I hope you know that we would love to give all of you access as soon as tomorrow, but the game simply isn’t finished yet – heck, it’s not even in Closed Beta so far! But no worries, unless the Mayans were right after all, you WILL get a chance to play Forge of Empires in 2012. But let’s get back to some insights into key features of the game. Today: PvP!

I’m sure that most of our readers have played Tribal Wars or Grepolis at some point. Whoever did, knows the exhilarating feeling of challenging an opponent, move troops, attack, defend, ask your alliance for help, finally be victorious and assimilate another city into your empire. But for every winner there needs to be a loser, and in contrast to any first person shooter-death matches, sometimes people lose the work of entire months within days. And even players, who despise PvP or simply don’t have enough time to constantly guard their cities, can’t escape from a power-hungry neighbor. That is why we went for a slightly different approach with Forge of Empires.

With our wonderful Hex-based battle system, PvP is of course part of the game and of utter importance to us. Whoever already conquered the third province, Hymir, might have noticed the Bronze Age PvP-Tower. In order to move further up on the ranking displayed by clicking on the tower and win the PvP-tournament, you have to succeed in battles against NPC enemies and other players using only Bronze Age units. You are allowed to attack every other player once every 25 hours, battling his or her defensive army. Right now, this rewards you with PvP-points (and the slain soldiers of your opponent, but who would feel rewarded by that ;)), but in later builds of the game, players will also be able to obtain rare resources or building blueprints this way, and steal coins or supplies from their defeated rivals. Further Multiplayer options will follow as well, so you guys have a lot to look forward to in 2012!