With Warborne Above Ashes, a new free-to-play MMO is set to launch on September 19, 2025, on Steam. MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz was able to play it early and collect his first kills.
What kind of game is Warborne? The developers at Qooland Games describe their new work as a “free-to-play 24/7 real-time PvP MMO.” Thanks to the free-to-play model, you can dive into the massive battlefield of Warborne Above Ashes starting September 19, 2025, and experience small or large battles against players from other factions around the clock.
At first glance, the MMO, with its colorful graphic style, isometric perspective, controls, and champions (called Drifters in Warborne) resembles League of Legends. However, Warborne does not conform to the tight framework of MOBA matches or other instanced PvP modes.
Instead, you start the game in a vast world full of contested territories, where you can encounter players from a total of 6 factions at any time. Always at the start: your mobile Driftbase, where you can repair, change your Drifter, research, replenish supplies, or trade, among other things.
A Reward Awaits at Every Corner
How does Warborne play? You can already feel the MMO’s free-to-play model with every first login of the day. First and foremost, you want to collect login rewards, goodies from the optional subscription, supplies, mails with in-game items, and special event treats.
The reward spiral continues even after that, as you follow the chapters of the main quest and side quests, which gradually introduce you to the various features and systems of Warborne like a red thread. This is quite motivating and ensures that we were never overwhelmed and always had a clear goal in mind.
The amount of systems and features is remarkable. Let’s take character progression as an example, as far as we’ve experienced it so far:
- Your chosen Drifter defines your role in combat, the base attributes your hero possesses, and what active Drifter ability and passive enhancement you have access to. Additional abilities and effects are defined by your weapons and equipment.
- By defeating enemies and completing tasks, you gain experience points and level up. This allows you to obtain attribute points to improve your champion’s stats.
- Moreover, you can also increase a hero’s attributes by leveling combat infusions and the equipment mastery of the character. By the same means, all weapons and armor pieces can be improved.
- Speaking of which: weapons and armor can be obtained as loot or mission rewards or purchased from other players through the auction house.
- Alternatively, you unlock recipes for weapons and armor pieces through equipment training. Unlocked equipment can then be purchased through the trading house.
- Drifters can connect with certain other Drifters, allowing you to unlock additional bonuses for your healing caused and/or damage dealt. Additionally, you can park Drifters at the support station, which also provides attribute bonuses.
- In your Driftbase, you can build a research center to develop upgrades for your Drifter, resource gathering, trading, and more.
Furthermore, there are faction missions and a faction pass through which you can earn additional rewards, as well as a progression path, weekly rewards, and seasonal leaderboards that honor your PvP contributions. In summary, you are constantly rewarded for almost everything and continuously increase the strength of your Drifters.
Currently, regular boot camp videos for Warborne are being released on YouTube to prepare you for the upcoming battle – here is Part 2:
A Playtest Outside of Reality
In each of the many regions of the battlefield, you not only face opposing players. NPC enemies are scattered everywhere, guarding junkyards with reward boxes, important resource points, or gathering stations. You can also summon world bosses at specific points. Additionally, there are heavily guarded locations that are better visited with a group.
The closer you get to the central regions of the vast battlefield, the tougher the opponents become, the more exciting the locations are, and the more valuable the rewards are.
The idea of Warborne is that the various factions and guilds fight for exactly these points. Sometimes in large battles, sometimes in smaller skirmishes. Whoever reaches and controls the center will likely have a good chance of victory in the current battle cycle.
However, we cannot currently say whether this plan will work and whether the performance will remain stable when 200 Drifters actually meet.
During our playtesting sessions, we mostly had one-on-one duels, often near junkyards. These were always very one-sided. It is unclear whether this was due to our fortunate Drifter choice, the current balancing, or our already achieved progress. We were able to take on the boss of the junkyard, his minions, and the interfering player at the same time several times.
There is also a question mark over the progression itself. In our test version, we had so many resources and instant research available that we could gain numerous improvements and significant power-ups in just a few hours.
However, as the research center also has research queues and specifications for the required research time, we believe it is very likely that the actual progression at launch will be significantly slower.
The developers promise that Warborne will not require grinding, but many of the quests felt grindy even during our play sessions. For example, daily quests requiring you to defeat 100 mobs or gather rich veins 400,000 times.
Who could Warborne be for? While there are PvE enemies and challenges, the MMO clearly targets PvP enthusiasts who want to engage in an ongoing struggle for territories with their own guild or faction.
Given the many progression systems, missions, and the mentality of many competitive guilds, casual players will likely not enjoy Warborne in the long run. MinMaxers and PvP fans with plenty of time can look forward to numerous Drifters, weapons, synergies, and more. One can certainly get wonderfully immersed in this MMO for months to ultimately stand at the top of the leaderboard. This news concerns a weeks-long battle: In an MMO on Steam, thousands of players fight against each other for weeks, and a big update is now coming
