Rend is a 60-player competitive survival game where matches last 'a month or two'

Rend appears to be another survival game at first glance, but coming from former World of Warcraft developers, there's also a lot of fantasy MMO inspiration. And Path of Exile inspiration. And "it may be a little bit like a MOBA," too, says Frostkeep Studios CEO Jeremy Wood, if matches in that MOBA last "a month or two." 

In short, Rend is a "cutthroat" war between three 20-player factions who are vying to collect and store souls in Divinity Stones, while also protecting their faction's stone from opposing players and AI creatures. If a faction's stone is destroyed, that team is wiped from the server until another faction wins the game.

At the same time, now that Frostkeep has decided to take the sandbox survival elements further, players will be able to form clans within their factions and build personal bases. And of course there's crafting and skill trees—really too much to describe in one interview, but Wood runs Steven through the core ideas in the video above, and also talks about how to get involved with this serpentine mix of genres.

Rend is scheduled to enter Early Access in the first half of next year. You can follow our continuing coverage of PAX West 2017 here.

Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.