PC.IGN: Your work on Star Wars: Empire at War had to have taught you some valuable lessons about persistent RTS features and styles. What were some of the lessons you learned and how have you fused that knowledge into the gameplay? Will it still all work in real-time?

Adam Isgreen: We've learned a lot from SW: EaW/FoC about what we loved and what we did not when working on a second-gen persistent game. First off, we learned that the persistent universe actually interfered with player's desires to play the story campaign. We kept hearing that players "just wanted to get to the story," rather than fight filler battles between them, no matter how compelling they were on their own. We took this to heart in our story campaign for UaW, which is more linear and features a lighter version of the global mode than we have for the full-blown Conquest campaigns. This keeps the story moving along at a better pace, allowing you to stay focused on the battles and the story rather than being side-tracked.

However, for our Conquest campaigns, our global mode is fully open and truly comes into play. We loved the power that we had in SW: EaW/FoC, but hated the management of it all. Having sub-screens to list what was where wasn't an elegant solution to the abundance of data (i.e. ship locations, which planet had what factories and tech, starbase upgrade levels, etc.) a player had to keep track of, and we disliked how technical the galaxy became when you turned all the data displays on. Combined with the sheer number of "buckets" you had for fleets and planets and factories, we felt that we could do a lot better in streamlining the strategic experience.

So, we did. In creating our new global layer for Universe at War, we had to make some tough decisions - lots of dials, or a few? Deep meaningful choices, or lots of minor impact? After a lot of revisions and reworking (much to the chagrin of our UI programmers), we've arrived at what we feel is a very deep, yet easy to understand global mode. We've changed the player's main focus to Strike Forces, consisting of heroes and their persistent forces. The changes to how you build and fortify zones is also more streamlined but at the same time still decisive and impactful to your overall strategies. They are also integrated better into both the tactical battles as well. In the coming weeks and months as we finalize details, we'll be able to talk more about Strike Forces, the way command centers work on the strategic level, and the other changes and gameplay in the global mode.

The player has a lot of decisions to make, but the focus on strike forces and large command centers allows us to make those choices deeper and have more impact on the game rather than worrying about dozens of fleets, who was building what (and where), and a lot of lesser choices that didn't have major impact on the territory.

And yes, it's still all in real-time.

Set in the near future, Universe at War: Earth Assault sees multiple enemy factions from across the galaxy come to Earth to wage war on an intergalactic scale. Universe at War: Earth Assault will create an exceptional strategy experience within both single-player and multiplayer battles through offering a host of new features and unprecedented customisation options never before seen in the RTS genre.