Hurray, a new Petroglyph game! The ex-Westwoodies and Empire at War studio is going down the Free-to-play route with a their new “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena” game Rise of Immortals. Apparently MOBA is a genre now. It’s official: I’m old.
Rise of Immortals is set in the Graxia universe of their 2010 board/card game Guardians of Graxia. What sets it apart from games like League of Legends, DotA Allstars and Demigod is a persistent character progression system. Rather than being stuck with an account-based leveling system, you can advance one of 12 Immortals through a persistent skill tree, and customize and upgrade your characters to unlock abilities that persist from match to match.
There’s PvE, PvP will be up to 5v5, stat-enhancing artifacts will be persistent, and there will be some “socialization” hub. Sounds like a mix between Dawn of War 2‘s The Last Stand and LoL to me. You can sign up for the closed beta which will run for a few weeks leading up to a Spring 2011 release. It only requires an email address to sign up. No DxDiag nonsense, pfew.
