TERA Battle Arena Game Mode

En Masse Entertainment (EME) posted a teaser trailer for the upcoming PvP team based game mode where players control past, present, and future heroes from the world of TERA.

This game mode is associated with the portals (that have trees sprouting out of them) that have been appearing around the large cities (like the following in Velika).

There had been speculation that this might have been a new story line associated with a series of wanted posters of various TERA heroes that were being posted on EME’s Twitter feed as well as the following.

All of these teasers are associated with this new game mode which will be released in the fall.  There’s a small amount of lore information they also posted:

After the defeat of Shandra Manaya, strange portals appeared across the world, offering glimpses of other realms where dead heroes lived on, live heroes fell into darkness, and heroes that never were stepped up to save the world. 

To learn more about these strange visions of alternate realities, a group of heroes fought their way through to a new realm called Agaia, where they encountered eerie replicas of themselves from worlds almost, but not quite the same as their own. 

In this twisted underworld stands a majestic structure known only as the Tower of Shara, an architectural wonder defended by even more familiar faces. Only this time, they’re ones corrupted and controlled by the mysterious…Manahan?

“The heroes you’ll control in TERA Battle Arena each have their own skill sets and abilities, drawn from those TERA players have spent years mastering.  Players will also be able to customize their heroes with runes and cosmetic items.”

The runes aspect reminds me of Devilian’s Devilian transformation mode (where you had not only separate gear, but a separate skill system with runes of varying quality which modified the way those skills worked).  It will be interesting to see if this is another small part of that game which will live on in some form in TERA.