Might be a bit dated to some but this is pretty new to me.

http://savage2.s2games.com/en/main.php

Independent game developer S2 Games have released a free hprid rts/action mmo which quite frankly owns imo. I've only played a few games so far and I must say the experience is very unique. It basically puts you in place of any old starcraft or warcraft sprite, but in a realtime lushly scenic and all to chaotic battlefield. Each team is composed of a top commander, squad leader captains, followed by remaining grunts. The classes are balance and have their own niche on the battlefield. Humans vs Beast are the two options and the main website monitors the winning ratio between the two races on the top banner. Clans and clan matching is of course supported. The learning curve while steep-looking at first isn't all that bad. There is however a vast room for strategy development. I've been getting my ass handed to me repeatedly but i've managed to get some good end game stats on a few battles. I usually play "beginner east US" server where if you fuck up you're less likely to be called out on it, basically its a learning ground for everyone including novice commanders.

I dont usually write free reviews for a game, but this a dope indy game if I ever saw one, so much so that I'd like to personally support it. Its about 1 gig to download, does require some beastly hardware to have medium effects on, but best of all its completely FREE. You can pay a measley one time 10 bucks to access all player stats and some other tidbits, but all in all I'd say its worth checking out. Maliken Rulz

2/20/2009 12:53:40 PM

I'm going to check this out, looks sweet.

2/20/2009 4:37:29 PM

Just won the most building damage award using the behemoth

We bulldozed the humans so bad I almost felt sorry for them. One thing you gotta know is that when a team gets momentum and have a good commander its all over. And when you're on a losing team it is still moderately fun plus you get to keep your experience when its over.

My tag is AmonAtoth btw

2/20/2009 4:54:29 PM

i remember hearing about Savage when I was big into Natural Selection...just watched the gameplay videos between the clans and I gotta say it looked really cool...especially for a freebie...if I free up some time I may have to dabble into this

2/20/2009 5:34:03 PM

this sounds really awesome, but i doubt my old ass machine can run it (dont play many pc games so no need to upgrade).

i love DOTA way better than actual warcraft 3 play. same idea, though obviously different implmentation. was so fun just focussing as one player in big battle and moving up as a class.

[Edited on February 20, 2009 at 6:41 PM. Reason : actually i barely meet the requirement ignoring my shitty video card (my friends lending me his soon]

2/20/2009 6:40:30 PM

THIS IS THE GAME I WAS THINKING ABOUT.

its fucking awesome

I'm Big Business and i approved this message.

2/20/2009 10:58:13 PM

i got it all set up, graphics set at the lowest setting so i can tell whats going on, but i cant login. i think there's some server issues going on though so i havent given up hope.

2/20/2009 11:46:26 PM

might be your firewall, also did it patch up. mine did automatically

2/20/2009 11:48:15 PM

yea i think it patched up. and i clicked allow on all the automatic windows popups. i dont know, i'll keep trying and checking the forums.

2/21/2009 12:00:23 AM

Quote :

"just watched the gameplay videos between the clans and I gotta say it looked really cool"

That was an interesting game, but it only showed a little of what you'll actually see on the regular servers. In that game they unlocked only one new class, the "Legionaire," on the human side because they were going so fast. I've only played one game where we won and early victory and no technology had been researched. Regular full public games you'll most likely see all the classes setting foot on the field sooner or later. Not too mention when hellbourne units are unlocked it gets pretty hectic.

[Edited on February 21, 2009 at 12:06 AM. Reason : ^ might want to setup another account and try it over]

2/21/2009 12:05:22 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvw5F1W8q7g

Heres some footage of the shapeshifter. I loathe these guys when i'm human. Them and the hunter are the fastest classes ingame and can bring you to your knees in a second if you dont know how to block them.

The developers are also going to be adding squad voice chat which has lately only been allowed for the teams commander. Should be interesting...

2/28/2009 4:09:53 AM

Ok heres an excerpt from the changelog of the upcoming 1.8.1 update which is in testing right now.

Quote :

"Team Manager Panel (new): The Team Manager panel allows commanders to more easily view the status of their team, and also provides some additional controls. - Visible information: Squad (by color), class, health, mana, name, officer status, inventory items, gold, souls, level, buffs, and debuffs. - Can select/move the camera to a player (same as the top-left squad displays). - Player swap (can move players around from squad to squad and even promote/demote officers by moving players around). - Can give teammates gold from the team gold pool (there will be limitations on this feature to prevent abuse, and they will be tweaked/modified as necessary to prevent abuse). Players are notified when the commander gives a player gold. VOIP (new/complete overhaul): - Configurable Features: * Test mic level (with visual indicators and recommended sound level indicator). * Voice chat volume (the volume of chat from other players) * Microphone volume (your input/record volume for your mic) * Auto sound dampen (automatically turn down other game sounds when someone is talking - can be turned off, or maxxed out for no sounds while people are talking) * Microphone boost (toggle) * Disable voice chat * Push to talk/voice activation toggle * Voice activation record sensitivity * Mic off time - Used for voice activation: the amount of time that the voice level has to be below the activation level before it stops recording. * Select input device * Auto gain control - All voice chat volume is automatically adjusted (to a limited extent) to keep everyone around the same volume level - Other notes: * The voice chat currently is audible for all players on your team. * Players can be selectively muted (players remain muted until you un-mute them or restart Savage 2). User Interface: - Hovering over structure icons as a commander or builder/conjurer will show an additional tooltip with icons for the units, weapons, abilities, and items that the structure unlocks. - Added "Team" and "Enemy" over the stronghold/lair health indicators at the top of the screen (both commander and player). - Added a significant amount of new commander tooltips, explaining various interface elements and features. - Miscellaneous other interface adjustments (primarily to facilitate the inclusion of VOIP and the Team Manager). - Added monkit icon (Thanks, Eaxs!). - The full ISO-8859-1 character set (unicode characters up to U+00ff) is now available for use in the game interface. Existing Map Polish: - Deadlock: Cleaned up texture seams, rough/jaggy terrain, fixed some map exploits. Visually clarified an area that should not be accessible. - Morning: Cleaned up some texture seams, missing textures, jaggy areas, and adjusted a couple of trees with visible roots. Fixed some foliage and replaced the water with the updated water model. Moved some trees so players are less likely to get stuck. Modified some blockers to prevent players from getting to areas that should not be accessible. Fixed some floating objects, and blocked off areas where players aren't supposed to be/tightened blockers to reduce wallriding. - Bunker: Cleaned up some texture seams. Painted blockers under the fences in front of the stronghold/lair to prevent ranged siege from firing from outside the base areas (cleans up steambuchet issue). - Hellpeak: Cleaned up a lot of texture seams. - Hiddenvillage: Cleaned up a ton of texture seams. Fixed some foliage issues. Lessened some of the harsher black coloring near rocks/arches. - Storm: Cleaned up texture seams, fixed some places where players can get stuck behind rocks. Modified blockers so that it's harder to get into places where players are not meant to be. - Moonlight: Fixed floating objects, texture seams. - Losthills: Cleaned up texture seams, fixed floating objects. - Eden: Replaced pit under the bridge with pool of water using one of the new water props. Added/tweaked foliage, tweaked terrain coloring, moderate amount of texturing updates, added some trees outside of the playable area to make the map look more lush, filled in some open space next to one of the scars. Game Balance: - Lynx feet cooldown reduced to 30s from 35s - Lynx feet max items per stack increased to 2 - Speed boost cooldown reduced to 30s from 35s - Speed boost max items per stack increased to 2 New Maps: - 3 new maps by Dark_Strider - Mirakar, Autumn, and Willow Map Editor: ** Thanks to Ferretalis and the S2SCIP for significant contributions to the map editor. - Map editor should now work completely out of the box (no special work or extra installation required). - Additional props are now available for use in maps. OSX (Mac)-Specific - Restricted (managed) users should be able to update and log in. Updating requires Savage 2 to have been installed under that user account. Linux-Specific - ALSA is now the default sound device for sound output instead of FMOD's default (OSS). Miscellaneous: - Wing spin should no longer kill with a NAME. - Commander is now notified when players donate gold - Some misc updates to descriptions for various skills. - Fixed an issue which caused the end of game victory/defeat audio messages to repeat at the end of a match. - There is now additional time (17.5 more seconds) allowed to get set up/organized before a match starts (an additional 7.5 seconds to choose commanders, 5 seconds to choose offers, and 5 seconds after squads have been filled before the match starts ). - Various crash and bug fixes. - Players are no-longer rewarded XP for donating gold. This is to prevent players and commanders from continually juggling gold to farm XP. - Players now receive a text notification when they are promoted to/demoted from officer status. - Players receive their spawn portals on the fly when being promoted to officer status (including on the field). If they are on the field when promoted, the portal ability will have a full cooldown to prevent abuse. - Server owners can now set svr_minLevel and svr_maxLevel to allow only players with specific level ranges. - Fixed issue which was causing damage over time abilities to occasionally stay on the target until death or dispel. Miscellaneous Modding: - New water props with updated texture (Thanks, Brokengame!). - HasListItem interface command (checks for the existance of a listitem by its value). See the new team manager panel in game_commander.xml for an example of its use. "

Sounds likes a brand new beast of a game to me. Btw, I dont want to sound like a ninny here but I pushed hard for the commander gold giveaway option and it looks like they listened to my ramblings to the 't'

I'm getting such a nerd-on right now its not even funny.

[Edited on April 8, 2009 at 12:15 AM. Reason : a]

4/8/2009 12:03:30 AM