User:PBChew18/sandbox/TFEW toy inspirations
Characters and chronology
Given the live-service nature of Earth Wars' enormous and ever-growing cast, we've opted to break with our usual formatting a little and divide them by year introduced to illustrate the evolution of the game over time.
Launch
The game's initial cast featured all the old 1984 standards plus a suspicious number of combiner team characters from the then-recent Combiner Wars franchise.
| Autobots | Decepticons | Support characters | Non-playable characters |
|---|---|---|---|
2016
Late 2016 saw the debut of the hotly anticipated "Combiner" character class in the finale of the opening arc of the game's story.
| Autobots | Decepticons | Trans-factional | Support characters |
|---|---|---|---|
2017
2017 was themed around the introduction of non-Generation 1 characters, including time travelers from the Beast Era and refugees from around the multiverse.
| Autobots / Maximals | Decepticons / Predacons | Support characters | Non-playable characters |
|---|---|---|---|
- ↑ Most unusually, this Optimus Prime using a character model based on the famous Generation 2 "Laser Prime" toy is eventually revealed to be from the same dimension as his wavemate Armada Megatron in later Armada-centric arcs. (Then again, the two designs are very similar in terms of transformation and kibble arrangement...)
2018
2018 tied into the contemporary Power of the Primes franchise with a spin on the Prime Master concept in the form of "Prime Cores," the mystical remains of the original Thirteen Primes with minds of their own, built out of the extant "Power Core" mechanic. The storyline also featured the introduction of the Sentius twins, keepers of the Prime Cores and Earth Wars' first original characters, give or take a human.
| Autobots / Maximals | Decepticons / Predacons | Support characters |
|---|---|---|
2019
2019 was themed around an extended crossover with Transformers' sister G.I. Joe franchise.
| Autobots / Maximals | Decepticons / Predacons | Trans-factional | Support characters | Non-playable characters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2020
2020 saw a major shakeup to the game's mechanics as an extensive crossover with the War for Cybertron Trilogy franchise introduced a new "C.O.M.B.A.T Bot" character class broadly based on the Battle Master concept and built off a major expansion of the Power Core system, as well as the introduction of alternate skins for existing units.
| Autobots / Maximals | Decepticons / Predacons | Trans-factional | Skins | Support characters | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Omega Supreme and Overlord are mechanically identical to normal Combiner units in game, and are only given unique titles denoting their in-fiction not-combiner-ness in supporting documentation.
2021
2021 introduced the "Titan" character class.
| Autobots / Maximals | Decepticons / Predacons | Trans-factional | Skins[2021 2] | Support characters | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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|
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- ↑ 1.0 1.1 First debuted in the game as non-playable "bosses" in Alliance Raids in 2019, only to be then made playable.
- ↑ These alternate skins can only be accessed through gold or Gmetal bot-specific "Transmetal" cores of their respective bots (their equivalent of other characters' G1 cores), which, as its name suggests, changes their color scheme reminiscent of their Transmetal forms in addition to the bonus effects provided, whereas silver "Transmetal" cores changes the bot to sport a metallic coating instead.
2022
2022 featured a tie-in to the Shattered Glass Collection franchise, in no small part to introduce the concept of pay-to-play character skins via the game's new "Cyber Pass" subscription service. Notably, the bulk of the game's Shattered Glass cast occupies a peculiar state of "quasi-playable," fully present as distinct individuals in story segments but only mechanically represented with cosmetics for existing characters.
| Autobots | Decepticons / Predacons | Negative universe | Skins | Support characters | Non-playable characters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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2023
2023 introduced the "Weapon" character class.
| Autobots | Decepticons / Predacons | Skins | Support characters | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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2024
2024 featured a time-travel plot (plus a couple overt skins) as a tie in to the origin-themed Transformers One franchise, plus the return of the Thirteen as fully fledged Bots and several Artifacts of the Primes in the tail end of the year as part of the run-up to the Thirteen-centric Age of the Primes.
| Autobots / Maximals | Decepticons / Predacons | Skins | Support characters | Non-playable characters | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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- ↑ This is notably Grimlock's second, unreleased "tiger stripe" Generation 2 deco, its name referencing the Legacy: Evolution line, which this deco was a part of when it finally saw its appearance on store shelves via the "Toxitron Collection" capsule.
- ↑ This skin core was intended to belong to Brake-Neck as it matched Wildrider's G2 deco (or, more specifically, the one he had in the Combiner Wars G2 Stunticon set), but in-game, it was erroneously labeled as G2 Dead End and assigned to Dead End himself rather than the intended bot.
- ↑ Was called "BW2 Coelagon" in the related newsletter and in-game Cyber Pass. However the skin core itself is actually called "Redeco Coelagon" instead.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Released for free as a promotion for the film. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "One" defined multiple times with different content
2025
2025 featured an emphasis on the Armada franchise, presumably spinning out of its heavy representation in the Legacy toyline, as well as the introduction of the "Primes," a whole entire character class devoted to the Thirteen as the game's Age of the Primes synergy kicked into high gear.
| Autobots | Decepticons | Trans-factional | Skins | Support characters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2026
2026 thus far continues to see a heavy focus on the Thirteen alongside the still-ongoing Age of the Primes toyline.
| Trans-factional | Skins | Support characters | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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† Upcoming characters
