Lance James, also known as Myll Erik, has started an interesting post on the Official End of Nations forums. He titles it “Art of War – Part 1″ and essentially asks the community what your take is on having shorter games.

Welcome to our new series where we will be taking a look at various RTS game-play mechanics and examining what makes certain things work. We will also be discussing various other aspects of the RTS genre, so keep checking back for new topics! Now for some ground rules :

- Stay on Topic
- Keep things as general as possible – this is not a bashing thread!
- This is to encourage thought – therefore well thought out ideas are encouraged!
- Healthy Debate is also encouraged, but flaming/spamming will be dealt with swiftly.

Our good friend Lance James (Myll Erik), End of Nations Community Manager, recently had the opportunity to take Chris Lena, Senior Producer for End of Nations, out to lunch.

Chris sheds some light on how he got started out in the industry, what his overall favorite game of all time is, what exactly he does as Senior Producer for End of Nations and much more.

How did you get started in the industry?

Chris Lena – I first started by doing a tech support job. I was actually managing a book store, but quit and was jobless. I had friends in the industry who suggested I apply for the tech support job. I took a test (I Failed) and then got the job.

What do you do outside of gaming?

Chris Lena – I’m not particularly exciting. I like to read. I do not surf, I do not go to sporting events, and I cant think of anything exciting that I do. Well, I did sign up to run a half marathon in January…not sure if that was a good idea.

What do you do as a Senior Producer?

Chris Lena - I’m mostly a big organizer. We have a lot of moving parts in dealing with our Trion teams as well as our Petroglyph teams. I help get everything set up properly and try to make sure things don’t go wrong. I like to think, if I’m doing my job correctly you won’t see me.

Gamerzines.com has released their latest issue of MMOZine (link to pdf) featuring End of Nations on the cover. Inside the issue you’ll find a preview of the game with plenty of new screenshots and cool graphics. Of the preview it rates the game at 90% on first impressions and rates the game at 80% Complete.

Following the preview you’ll find an interview with David Luehmann, Executive Producer for End of Nations, where he details different basic concepts for the game which include Free-to-Play, factions, RTS vs. RPG elements. Finally he was asked about beta and notes that the game is in Alpha right now with friends and family and that Beta news will be “hitting the news wires very soon”

We can’t wait! Check out the whole issue for a lot of great screenshots we havne’t seen yet.

The latest and greatest from Eurogamer with an interivew with Lance James as he tells us things are still on track.

From RTSGuru about End of Nations at Pax 2011.

Then we chatted a bit about the economy in End of Nations, and while there won’t be an Auction House or a Real-Money AH either, the former isn’t off the table. The team just wanted to focus on getting the RTS part of their game right, and the whole war meta-game that stretches the entire globe. To do that, they took some focus away from stuff that was beginning to feel like tacked on MMO features. That’s not to say an AH and other MMORPG aspects won’t ever make it in, but rather that for launch they wanted the strategic and competitive side of things polished as much as possible. For example, the bases which were going to be akin to player housing, are out for launch to be put back in at a later date. Crafting is also out for launch, because again it was just feeling too tacked on. If they do crafting, they want it done right and within the context of the game. Chances are we can expect both features to make their way back into EoN once it launches.

Outside their opinion on the game we find that there are some notions of player housing, auction houses and crafting that might be features that come after the game’s launch.

While we were at the Trion Worlds booth at PAX, we took the opportunity to ask about their upcoming MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy).

PAX 2011 interview with David Luehmann from GamerLive TV.

G4TV has recently published their review on End of Nations from Gamescom 2011.

That’s the thing with End of Nations; strip the MMORPG stuff away and beneath there seems to be a familiar, traditional RTS game lurking beneath with good old rock-paper-scissors style play to exploit. Yes, that’s probably easier said than done for both developer and player, but with such an ambitious hybrid to master maybe that’s exactly what End of Nations needs to be

Read more: http://www.g4tv.com/games/pc/63676/end-of-nations/articles/75437/end-of-nations-gamescom-2011-preview-risk-on-steroids-meta-game-and-unit-customization/#ixzz1XCXkgkou

As with many of the other reviews, it focuses on the RISK-type gameplay. The RISK buzzword was all over PAX 2011 this year and once you can view some of the gameplay videos, the reason why stands out.

Check out the full review here
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From Gamescom, Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes a quick peak at End of Nations:

Again, like Tribes: Ascend, the mantra here is ‘no pay-to-win’. The Petroglyph guys were regularly confused about what they’d agreed they were and weren’t charging for, but we think they’re selling new skins for vehicles (we saw an astoundingly gaudy Team America look, a German flag and a disgusting bacon skin) and probably XP-boosters, but they don’t plan to restrict access to either maps or the higher levels of the game. These skins don’t preclude your own colour customization either, which you can do with every single unit.

End of Nations is dragging the DOTA game back to its strategy roots, plugging C&C’s endlessly-compelling multiplayer into a RPG structure and a wider metagame. With this set-up, being Free2Play is natural; but if this shift of every multiplayer genre into micropayments continues, we have to ask are all AAA games going to go this way?

You can read their full impression by visiting this link.

After our interview with Chris Lena we got to tape a match with Chris at the helm of an 8v8 encounter. This was played on the PAX big screen and the commentary is done by Lance James.