Transformers Universe was a third person multiplayer online battle arena game developed by British game develop Jagex Games Studio in partnership with American toy company Hasbro. The game was officially unveiled at Botcon 2011, the game went in to closed beta in March 2014 and entered open beta on July 4, 2014. The game shut down on January 31, 2015.
Gameplay was team-based with players choosing to fight on behalf of the Autobots or Decepticons. The game offered both PVP and PVE gameplay, with the emphasis placed on PVP combat between the two factions in 4v4 matches.
PVP Missions – On loading into the game players were automatically placed in to a PVP queue where they could be assigned one of 2 different game modes, across 5 different maps.
Elimination
This game mode operates along traditional team-death match rules, players are placed into game in two teams of four. The winner is determined by the first team to secure 20 kills.
Meteor Storm
This game mode shares common threads with “king-of-the-hill” game modes. Players operate in two teams of four, who need to secure and hold meteor crash sites that appear across the map. These points are captured by standing on the crash a zone and waiting for the capture sequence to complete, taking damage during these capture moments will result in slowed acquisition of the site. During the course of gameplay the crash sites disappear and respawn at different locations.
The winner is the first team to 1000 points.
PVE Missions – There are two type of PVE missions offered by the game, the first is open world missions that players encounter once they have left their respective home bases, and the other is a player invoked encounter.
Open World Missions
These take place in the zone immediately outside of the base, it’s an open world in which players can engage in dynamically generated missions and events that spawn at numerous locations throughout the open world. Players can choose to take on these missions alone or in conjunction with other players around the environment.
Energon Quests
A four player mission that pits players against increasingly difficult AI enemies as they progress through a series of objectives before taking on a final boss. The core game objective is to gather and collect energy that’s used throughout the game for Transformer repair and crafting.
Classes
Players utilise a squad of different Transformers, on starting the game players have 3 different Transformers to pick from, further Transformers can be unlocked through playing the game but can also be purchased using the in-game currency Relics. Whilst all the Transformers seem to differ, there’s currently three core character types:
Healers
Transformers characters who are equipped with healing ‘weaponry’ and associated healing equipment.
Tanks
Bigger Transformers characters that are slower but heavily armoured and armed with heavy damage dealing abilities
Sniper
Single-target damage dealers whose abilities focus on providing ranged support and stealth
Nice summary! I spent a lot of hours playing the open Beta. The game had its problems, not least some pretty serious balance issues, but it had promise too and it was a shame it never got a proper launch. There were some really nice character designs too we’ve been working on customs / toy mods of a few of them.
I’d still really like to see a more MMO style Transformers game get made. I wonder if it’ll ever happen?