Shards of War - The Next Generation MOBA

"The rules are simple: Two teams of five players. Fighting enemy drones, turrets and warriors, players advance towards their opponents base in order to destroy their headquarters. You’ve been there. You love MOBAs. Think you’ve seen it all? Think again."

Unlike previous MOBAs, you use the WASD keys to move your character instead of clicking with the mouse. The gameplay seems solid and the animations is really good. I only played a few matches so far, but from what I can tell, this game should be fun. So grab your friends and lock and load!

I'm off to play some more. I hope to see you on the battlefield!

EDIT: So after playing a few more matches, I'm not as impressed with this game as I hoped. Moving with the WASD keys is cool at first, but soon enough you start to realize that using the Q, E, and F keys to use skills and activate healing pod starts to cause a problem.

In a game where movement, the positioning of your character, and dodging attack and skills are crucial, using the WASD keys and QEF key together is not effective. What I mean is, you cannot run left or right (A or D) and trying to use a skill set to Q or E at the same time. I guess this wouldn't be a problem for someone who has a gaming mouse and could set these functions to buttons on their mouse, but for someone who doesn't own a gaming mouse, it is a nightmare and will get you killed. I was hoping the game supported controllers. With a controller, the game would play comfortably as a twin stick shooter.

Shards of War isn't that unique either. There is a lot of aspects of Blizzard's Hero of the Storm MOBA. Your character does not level independently, but as a team. You fight neutral camps, or jungle mobs, to recruit them into fighting for you and pushing towers. Both of which are found in Heroes of the Storm.

The game does however have a few minor things that are unique. The item purchasing and crafting is different than any other MOBA that I know about. Also when you or your enemy dies, they leave behind a pickup that heals your character if you manage to gather it. Overall, these features do not shine enough to set it Shards of War apart from other MOBA games.