Does DotA have anything to fear?

Creative Assembly has unveiled their latest entry in the Total War series, pitting commanders from across history against each other.

Sega has announced a spin-off title for Total War that’s been inspired by MOBA games such as DotA and League Of Legends, in terms of both gameplay and pricing structure.

The idea isn’t as much of a stretch as it seems since the MOBA genre (which, rather meaninglessly, stands for multiplayer online battle arena) started life as mods for Warcraft III and Starcraft II.

As such Total: Arena will mix the franchise’s traditional real-time strategy battles with more hands-on action. It’ll also be free-to-play, with the game likely to make its money through microtransactions.




The details we have at the moment are extremely limited as the game is being announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, but the press release we’ve been sent ahead of time promises ‘the chance to pitch history’s greatest commanders and their armies against each other in massive team-based battles’.

By the time you read this the official website at www.totalwar.com/arena should be live, at which point you’ll be able to sign-up for a part in the closed beta tests. We’d also have a look at the YouTube channel for the trailer below in case they put any footage up today.

(We’d check ourselves but the embargo isn’t up until 7.30pm, which may seem silly given the bank holiday but America doesn’t have any days off at Easter.)

Speaking of strategy game beta tests the one for Company Of Heroes 2 has just been announced as starting on April 2, with more information at www.companyofheroes.com

Sega bought Company Of Heroes and Dawn Of War developer Relic after THQ went bankrupt, which means they now own two of the world’s most respected real-time strategy developers. Well, it beats another rubbish 3D Sonic game…

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