Lockpick Entertainment's Dreamlords: The Reawakening launched yesterday, a massively multiplayer online real time strategy game that's free to download, and free to play. It centers around three races: the zealous, hyper-religious Covenant, creepy, spell-wielding Nihilim, and beastly war-loving Thul.
The game is split between Empire building and full RTS action, both PVE and PVP. Your avatar, the eponymous Dreamlord, starts off as a large humanoid shape with a color of your choosing, and you can earn, buy, or craft items and equipment for both yourself and your armies, by conquering lands, and relieving monsters of their property.
While territory is claimed, it's never really conquered – beating the baddies on a particular spot turns it green and makes it your own, but you can fight them again and again – a different map with different objectives loads every time
For example, one fight had me clearing out a road, while the next had me taking out enemies, and then their reinforcements. Conquering and pillaging grants you more of the resource "Gnosis," which you'll need to increase your influence and get more followers to do your bidding. Sure, it's the standard kill-em-all quests, but the game has been out of beta for a day: MMOs need time to grow, and the few hours I played isn't nearly enough to get a feel for the game's content.
The feature that's piqued my interest the most (and something I've begged for Eve Online to add for years now) is a web management system: Fire up your browser and head to the game's site, and you can manage your empire's research, construction, unit production and more, anywhere at all, regardless of whether or not the client is installed. Here's hoping other developers are listening...
The trouble with Free-To-Play anythings is that there's always a catch somewhere down the road. In Dreamlords, it's "Tribute." By greasing the Gods' palms, you can gain access to Divine Intervention abilities (super powers of a sort, for healing and resurrecting troops, or attacking, and much more), in addition to buying gear for your Dreamlord and your troops.
You'll get 1000 Tribute points to start, but once you run out you'll have to start buying your own – with real cash. There's also the option of conquering and holding player-vs-player territories, either solo or with a team, to see a slight trickle of Tribute points, so expect to see lots of aggressive cheapskates. Yours truly included.
It's out now, so head over the the site and sign up to check it out, before all the good names are taken.
Dreamlords: The Reawakening [Lockpick Entertainment]
