'Escalation,' which made its initial appearance during the last MAG beta, "supports up to 96 players, or one 32-man platoon for each PMC, as a separate in-game mode that pits the forces of Raven, SVER, and Valor against each other at the same time." The PMC who achieves the requisite number of points first, or has the most points when the round ends, wins the match and some additional Shadow War points.

'Escalation' matches take place in one of three different maps: "the volcanic beaches 'Isla de Magma,' the mountainous 'Silverback Ridge,' and the desert wasteland of 'Radiant Barrens.'" The announcement describes the two gameplay phases that comprise each round:

For phase one, all three teams battle to hold the map's A, B and C objectives - but when any of the three PMCs gains control of two of the three objectives, phase two begins.

In this second phase, the original three objectives are locked and a new fourth objective (D) opens up. Now, the PMC that forced the phase shift must defend objective D against both attacking groups as long as possible; if D is lost, then play reverts back to phase one again and the war continues on until we have a winner or time runs out.

• Raven: Gotha Elite (Assault Rifle) | KP21 (Machine Gun) | Kinmark SRS (Sniper Rifle)
• SVER: Tamsen MK2 (Assault Rifle) | Ariet SFW (Machine Gun) | Rubakho SVR (Sniper Rifle)
• Valor: M31 CIR (Assault Rifle) | M245 (Machine Gun) | Sentinel M421 (Sniper Rifle)