Today Hi-Rez Studios, who you may better know them for as the award winning developer of the now free to play mmo, Global Agenda, has announced that they’re in the works making a new battle grounds, DOTA inspired free-to-play game called “Smite”, which is an online battle grounds type game that pits the gods against each other. The gods in the game aren’t your typical made up gods that some games create for their games, but they’re based off Mythical gods from various areas, as is shown is a few of the wallpaper images they have shown, which include Zeus from Greek mythology and Anubis which is from Egyptian.

Apparently the game has been in development for months now, and as it is said the game is DOTA inspired but will offer some changes that should make it, not just another DOTA clone. For instance the engine the game will be utilizing is the Unreal 3 Engine. The use of the engine will make the game more action oriented in terms of battle and improve the graphics of the game. Another new concept added to the game will be the lack of an RTS style camera; instead this will be a third person view. The use of the third person camera shouldn’t be surprising since the company’s other game, Global Agenda, uses this as well. They do plan on keeping the session based gameplay and the mix of player vs. player, which also includes non player controlled minions which fans of DOTA are used to. Though the new features added to make this game unique are quite appealing.

Little more is known so far, but what they have said about the session based gameplay sounds like it will be similar to that of League of Legends, another popular DOTA inspired game. They said that, “These session-based games depend upon balanced class design, sophisticated stat-tracking, and matchmaking functionality.” (Hi-Rez Blog) Hopefully this translates into being a more balanced game, and matches people on a similar skill level instead of just random pairings. If this is true that part will be closer to what Heroes of Newerth have tried to promote with their PSR ratings, which go up/down depending on games won or lost.

According to the developers they already have a working, and as they said fun prototype that they’re testing with. This is good news as it seems that if they already have a prototype that is playable it may not be too long before we see beta sign ups available. Between the new and old features this sounds like it will be one of the games to follow this year.

Keep a watch out for the game on their site: http://www.smitegame.com/ or on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/smitegame