F2P Command & Conquer Now in Open Beta
The PC version of Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances has gone open beta.
Electronic Arts said that the free-to-play, browser-based strategy MMOG Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances is now in open beta. This latest entry in EA’s Play4Free portfolio is reportedly the first free-to-play cross-platform, MMO strategy game, available now on desktops and soon on tablets and smartphones.
"Players harvest valuable resources, foster strategic alliances and engage in relentless battles as they strive for world domination," the company said on Thursday. "With in-game news and status feeds, players get frequent updates, creating a completely interactive and dynamic gameplay experience that has gamers strategizing, reacting, and adapting on the spot."
The only drawback to the open beta is that gamers will need an Origin account, and to accept EA's Digital Services Agreement. Other than that, Tiberium Alliances will store game saves in the cloud, making it easy for players to move from one form factor to another without having to manage separate games.
"Thousands of players have clashed during the Closed Beta phase of Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances," EA said. "The air was filled with smoke and the smell of molten armor while armies have been stomped to the ground and alliances have been forged by the fires of battle. The fight for Tiberium has reached a new level and the Forgotten stand their ground within this global conflict between GDI and Nod. Now, it is time for new commanders."
As of this writing, the site seems to be having issues. The first few connections were extremely laggy, and then the page refused to load at all. Sometimes a black page with the following message popped up, stating: "We're sorry, the website is currently down for scheduled maintenance. Please check back soon." That said, it looks as though EA is having issues handling the new load of traffic, so expect a temporarily bumpy road.
Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances is one of two highly-anticipated new releases in the Command & Conquer franchise. In December 2011, it was announced that BioWare is developing Command & Conquer Generals 2 utilizing the advanced Frostbite 2 game engine. As for the current F2P MMO, players worldwide (yes, even you Jane) can get their open beta fill here.

The only hope I have is Generals 2, and that's because EA doesn't really get to have a say in how it's made.
Bring back Westwood please.
Ugh, just finding out it's being produced by Bioware. Sold their soul to the devil a while ago.
GOD DAMNIT EA!
Yeeeaaaahhhhhhhh...
...
That's a deal breaker right there
DUDE!!!
SWEET!!!
DUDE!!!
SWEET!!!
Yeeeaaaahhhhhhhh...
...
That's a deal breaker right there
Same here.
The only hope I have is Generals 2, and that's because EA doesn't really get to have a say in how it's made.
Bring back Westwood please.
Ugh, just finding out it's being produced by Bioware. Sold their soul to the devil a while ago.
GOD DAMNIT EA!
Its the same damn thing as steam (although Ill admit Steam is a more polished product).
Sure its not the greatest thing since sliced bread but its also not the anti-Christ some of you make it out to be.
Point is that Origin is not a reason to "not buy a game" especially if your a hypocrite and use Steam (which is based on the same damn principles).
The real reason to not play this game is because F2P plays are usually terrible.
What have happened to Steam lately? Gabe decided that it should be faster to get to the car, drive to retail, purchase from retail, install the game and read the manual before Steams slow digital download is done?
I bet there are huge bandwith differences over the the world from steam, Scandinavia have been plagued by really slow speeds as of late.. Not enocouraging when they want us to pay a premium as it is and then deliver less. Used to enjoy Steam but at this rate their loosing a customer!
Now, not only is this absolutely insulting to any veteran gamer, but if any young folks have to begin their gaming lives, based on this horrendous crap, then I really pity your youth.
This has got to be the worst iteration of a Command & Conquer (sad to disgrace their name) and worst game in digital electronics history.
Shame on you EA. SHAME ON YOU.
Westwood made C&C a great franchise. EA haven't really done much for it..
We'll now we know why its F2P.
I played the closed beta. The game is fun for about 72 hours then it just gets boring FAST. The reward clicking slows down as you improve buildings (greater reward / unit of time but over a larger timespan)
I rescind my Dude, Sweet comment above(see first comment with too many negative ratings to show it)
/cry.....
Uh... Your EA account is your Origin account....
Yeeeaaaahhhhhhhh...
...
That's a deal breaker right there
Actually the fact that this is an MMO was the deal breaker for me. Give me a compelling story in single player with cheesy live action briefings and Joe Kucan as Kane.
EA have destroyed the once great series, Tiberium Twilight was the end of my C%C admiration. It destroyed the series so completely i doubt any real fan would ever look at a EA title with the letters C&C.
No basebuilding - WTF!
No real resourcemanagement - WTF
Total Rock/Sizzor/Paper unit setup - WTF
All i see was a lazy ass producer who claimed he would make the series feel fresh again, the stupid EA board who don't know anything about games just spreadsheets liked the idea and the charlatan made off with the money and left EA with that piece of shit - Worst game ever and they even had the stomachs to call it a C&C game - What a joke! Still waiting for EA to make up for that!
Not a very good game and it is laggy, but it's not that bad. All I had to do to play it was make a new email and sign up in Origin with the email. It really isn't nearly as bad as people make things out to be. Nothing had to be installed on my computer at all and the lag is probably more because of my slow computer and having four different browsers all with a different base in the game open at once on the slow computer. With only one open I never had many problems.
I never had to log back in. Whenever it freezes and has a blue "back" button pop up, just ignore it. It will go away and let you play after a few seconds. If you do click back then you may need to log in again. Sometimes it says update error (or something similar) or command error (or something similar). You only need to log back in if you click back and you only need to do this if instead of command error or update error, it says log out. This only happens to me when I leave it running while I don't play it for hours (such as leaving it on overnight).
It was a lot less laggy once I clicked "options" (lower right corner, it's in small, blue text next to "feedback") and disabled animations (does almost nothing visually, but it reduces the workload it puts the computer on tremendously), enabled webGL, and restarted the browser. I used Palemoon, Lunascape, Dragon, and Opera and I feel that Lunascape is best avoided for this, but the others did well. Dragon is based on Chromium and Palemoon is based on Firefox, so I assume that Chrome and Firefox should do similarly well.
Overall I'd say it's a decent casual game, but it's not like playing other C&C games. It isn't too great until your construction yard is over level 11 or 12 (of course, you might wait longer if you don't know what to expect like I do now that I've done it several times). Once I was tough enough to attack other players, it got a lot better. It seems simple, but if you really think about what you do and you do it fast enough, you find yourself moving up a lot faster than anyone who doesn't think much about it (most players) and if you stay ahead of them, well there is little they can do to you.
For the first few days you're most likely to just build up your base and attack Forgotten camps and outposts. If you are close enough to the center of the map (you don't choose how close you are to the center, it depends on how populated the server is with more people meaning further from it) then you can attack Forgotten bases after you advance far enough, but if you are too far then you may need to kill other player's bases and build on their territory in order to reach the Forgotten bases.
If you do this then you need to be even more careful with your defenses because people don't like it when you attack and destroy them. I haven't taken any bases out yet because I started out far away from them, but I have killed a dozen players or so and I got a little careless... My forward base that was reaching for the forgotten was destroyed after I took out to many people in the area and the survivors took revenge and now I have to start it over again.
It's a decent game for casual gamers, but I prefer getting into an FPS game with huge amounts of players in tiny maps for some death match or CTF action.
Also, keep in mind that this is a beta. Many things may be changed (I know that a lot of changes are planned by the developers).
You know that you can build the second harvester before you even get a single bonus reward from the first one, right? Like most people that complain about a game, you don't know it very well before you judge it. Is it great? Nope. Is it horrible? Nope. Like I said earlier, it seems like you don't need to think much about playing it, but if you do you find yourself having far fewer problems and more fun. What I did was build up my base and even my second base on the close beta, but by then I knew what to expect and how to play a lot better and I set up a new account on the open beta and I'm doing a lot better.
I had four harvesters before I collected a single bonus, so you did something wrong and/or I did something right. What you need to do is upgrade them quickly so the bonus don't get in your way until they are actually large enough to matter. The tutorials don't really show the best way to play, just the easiest to teach you what the things do. I suggest actually reading the short descriptions instead. Also, you understand what you need to do a lot better once you have already done it, so make another account/use another server and start again, especially if you find a new server that is barely populated yet. I got into the open right after it started so I start off as one of the top players and I'm good enough to stay at the top and it's a lot easier when you don't need to worry much about being steamrolled by higher, aggressive players.
As of right now it is probably the worst iteration, but only because it is a beta and a different type of game. I've played the betas for a lot of games and they are often not as good as the more finished product. Anyway, I'm not sure if I'd put it behind (or at least far behind) C&C RA3... That one was like having someone hold your hand throughout the whole game.
After that... i don't know...
I don't like it.