The Total War games have always had a fairly interesting multiplayer battle game. You line up your Frenchmen, your friend pulls out his English longbows, and then you have at it. The most recent iteration, Total War: Kingdoms, implemented hotseat play for the campaign, but hotseat PC gaming hasn’t really been popular since I was a mere boy.
Now Creative Assembly and Sega seem ready to make the leap to 1 on 1 online play.
Finally, that was the one thing I thought was missing from Rome: Total War (and maybe naval battles :P)
What they aren’t saying, as far as I can see, is that this mode will be eventually made available for free to people who buy the game, only that they will be in the beta. Are they going to save it for an expansion pack?