WARDOGS

Now I had the experience of being a part of the playtests for WARDOGS and seeing how the game and community grew. If you have ever had the opportunity to experience an ARMA KOTH match in the past, you will understand this game as soon as you get right into it.

For those who have not experienced the KOTH format or what WARDOGS brings to the FPS genre, let me give a brief explanation.

You pick from three teams with 33 player slots, usually represented by BLUE, RED and GREEN and for WARDOGS these colours are back with the three teams called LONESTAR (BLUE), VALKYRA (RED) and MANTICORE (GREEN).

These three teams are placed on a fairly large map with 4-5 points of interest, usually TOWERS 1 to 5 in different spots on the map. These towers play an important role in the WARDOGs game because each tower offers a piece of code that you can enter to lure the "HOTZONE" to you.

The "HOTZONE" is the smaller circle inside the bigger " ZONE " circle. When you have people in the "ZONE," they count as 1 point per person, but if those people are within the "HOTZONE," that one person counts as two!

The team with more people in the overall "ZONES" as the bar progresses gets 1 point on the scoreboard, and the team to make it to 100 points wins! But remember, there is a lot you can do to change that outcome!

If you come from a RUST background, then building is going to be your favourite pastime in WARDOGS because it takes a lot from their system when it comes to building in a great way! When you are building in a FOB area and building walls and other stationary things, you will see a yellow X, and the more you aim and hit those X's, the more XP and cash you will make while also building it faster!

Cash is a big thing in this game, and you can earn both cash and XP doing any and everything! This means if you are more of a delivery person, you can do logistics for FOBS and towers via vehicles or helicopters, or if you like to be a warzone Uber, you can take teams to areas on the map, and safely getting them there will make you a very valuable person on your team.

You can build fortresses as a builder, take on the role of recon and scout areas, enemies and vehicles for your team and get your hands dirty attacking and defending your FOBs, towers, or taking it right to the HOTZONE for intense fighter fights.

This game has it all for everyone looking for a group game to play because squad sizes are not limited, and having different people doing different things in your squad is really a great thing to have. If you are more of a solo player like myself, the community is reasonably welcoming as a group. I have had some questionable interactions with some people in-game, so be prepared for that if you are a content creator.

But WARDOGS offers both official servers and community-hosted servers, allowing more customization and admins to prevent things like cheaters, griefers and speakers, not thinkers. It also seems to have server locations around most regions of the world, but server density might be scarce.

Overall, WARDOGS has a lot going for it, and the different play styles that you are rewarded for give a player a task to try every day to learn, grow and earn with it. I can see this game getting a lot of love and, when the "honeymoon phase" is over, it develops a really great community and loyal players.