This Persistent Life #11

This week, we take a look at the ever-elusive MMORTS.

Back around the time when rumors about Starcraft 2 were flying around, I made some pretty embarrassing predictions to my friends. You know about these-I wrote about them right after Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in Seoul in the middle of May. For those fortunate enough to not remember, I basically convinced myself that Starcraft 2 was going to be an MMORTS, in the spirit of Shattered Galaxy, but blessed with Blizzard's polishing hand. Through some divine intervention, these "predictions" never made it farther than my immediate circle of friends. I never committed these to print, so there were not many people able to lambaste me for being woefully mistaken.

Behind all that wishful thinking, however, was an earnest yearning for a sort of game that's yet to be perfectly realized-the "modern" MMORTS. Shattered Galaxy exists, but the fact that its audience is modest prevents it from being everything that it can: a game that's as visually exciting as the latest RTS's out there-the Command and Conquer 3's and Supreme Commanders of the world-worked into a world that's meaningfully persistent. Shattered Galaxy has the second part down, without a doubt; but take one look at it, and there's no question that its "look and feel" is pretty dated.

I resigned that I probably wouldn't play a "modern" MMORTS for at least another five years. Then a game called Saga came into my life. Still in its beta stage, the game is undeniably modern, but not in the ways that I was expecting. It's clearly the work of a devoted team, though it's surprisingly feature-complete, if not super-polished in its current state. The "modern" thing about it is its payment model. The game is completely free to play, but if you want to build your army in the quickest manner possible, you have to buy "booster packs"-randomized assortments of units sold for real money within the game, or through its site. Just like in collectible card games, the units are divided by rarity, and every pack has a chance of garnering you one of the ultra-scarce super units. From the looks of it, players wanting to opt out of paying real money can still get their hands on these units via the in-game market, but it remains to be seen how much of an advantage cash-players will have over them.

There are five factions in Saga, each with unique units and hard-written rules as to whom they can ally (and thus, share units) with. The game is split roughly in half between city-building elements, and RTS combat. The city-building is mainly focused on increasing your nation's productivity, nations being the equivalent of characters in Saga. As your city matures, so does its productivity, which increases the size of your standing army, and your ability to effectively wage war against your rivals. It bears mention that building stuff in Saga is slow. It can take hours for a building to pop in your city after you've ordered it built. Think learning skills in Eve Online. Fortunately, the process continues even after you've logged out.

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