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BattleForge screenshot

With Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 out, and StarCraft II and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 looming ominously over the horizon, RTS fans have got it good. But there's one game you might not be aware of that you really should, and that's BattleForge, EA Phenomic's new MMO-style fantasy RTS that incorporates Magic the Gathering-esque card collecting. Intrigued? Head filled with questions? Good, cos we got answers, from producer Sébastien Nell no less. Read on for the low-down on what could be one of 2009's surprise hits.

VideoGamer.com: BattleForge is unique in that it's an RTS that incorporates elements from traditional card-based games. Was the idea for the game an easy sell in terms of the initial pitch?

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Sébastien Nell: For us, the keeper of the creative vision, it was fairly easy to imagine what it was going to be like, but unfortunately everybody else had a different vision. There was a lot of communication that was needed to be done in order to get everybody on the same page on what our vision is within the studio. There's still a lot of misconceptions because we're going a different route, we're trying something else that hasn't been done before, especially not in the RTS genre. We're doing an RTS completely online, having micro-transaction items, using different game mechanics than RTS usually has. There were lots of misconceptions but I think we did a very good of getting rid of those.

VideoGamer.com: What was the reaction when you pitched the idea to the powers that be at EA?

SN: There's a cool story behind that. After we finished SpellForce, we were looking for a new publisher. With the idea of BattleForge in mind we created a board game that has more or less the same rules that the game has right now but it was turn based. So what we did was we created a board game and went to different publishers, also went to EA, and had a great meeting with the execs of EA, also with the EA partners. They came back to us and said, 'guys, I'm sorry, we aren't going to publish you, we want to buy you'. For us it was just amazing. One of the EA execs played the board game for more than two hours and was asking all these questions, 'how does that work and how does that work, how would that translate into the real game?'. It was really great. You could tell that they were gamers and really liked the new idea behind doing something different than anybody else does. Especially for EA, if you look at the line-up that we have this year in total there are some very exceptional titles out there.

VideoGamer.com: Any high-profile publishers that turned the game down that are perhaps regretting that decision now?

SN: (Laughs) Yeah! Definitely! But unfortunately I'm not able to talk about who this is!

VideoGamer.com: The game has been in beta for a couple of weeks now. Have you learnt anything?

SN: Yeah, oh definitely, we've learnt a lot. It was a great launch. Initially we sent out 2000 keys, we did that on a Friday, and on Sunday there were 1000 users online at the same time, which means that 50 per cent of the people we sent a key to actually played at the same time, which was great. The servers did a good job, load testing worked out very well. BattleForge is a very cooperative gameplay oriented game. We have 12 player maps and on the first day we already had a couple of groups that tried to complete those missions but horribly failed, which is great to see. When you unleash your baby to players who are not EA, and not press, but are just regular players, what they do with it was really great to see. The forum was full of suggestions and questions. It's starting to live now. Community, for BattleForge especially, or for every online game, it's the key, it makes the game successful. We're trying to do the best job and provide them with all the information they need and try to be present within the game to answer questions that might occur in the game and in the forums. We're looking forward to the future stages of the beta.

VideoGamer.com: Has the beta flagged anything up in terms of the way the game plays, perhaps balance or content changes as opposed to stress testing servers?

SN: Right now it's mainly actually stress testing and getting users in and trying a couple of things. But in terms of content we will definitely have phases in the beta where we focus testing on, let's say four player PvE maps, see how they balance, see how the people do and of course, balancing the maps is one big point, it's very important for us to keep track of.

VideoGamer.com: What kind of release date are we looking at?

SN: We're planning for very very beginning of next year but now it's looking later towards March time. We're announcing the release date in the next two weeks.

VideoGamer.com: You'll have to pay for the game itself but there's no subscription model, is that correct?

SN: That's correct. There's no subscription model. You can go into a store and buy the box. There has been a misconception about what are the micro-transaction items, why do I have to buy the game and then pay more for extra cards? That's actually not quite true, because what you get in the box is actually four pre-defined decks, which are 16 cards from each power, we have four powers in the game, and also ten booster packs. One booster pack is made up of eight cards, we guarantee that there's one rare, there's five commons and two uncommons, which adds up to roughly 100-120 cards. And that's more than half of the cards that we actually created for launch, for the first edition, because one edition has around 200 cards.

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