GRIMDARK: WH40k Dark Millenium Online

[Lord Revan]

As for Slaanesh troops, I don't think they are going to allow those models.

the Slaaneshi faction is pretty much the only one I've never seen any of the PC games (while Emperor's Children
exist in DoW they use a mix of Khorne and Tcheenz(or how ever it was spelled) demons in DoW and mix of Khorne and Nurgle demons in DoW2 and they lack Noise Marines there's also a name drop or two for Slaanesh himself (or herself?)).

[Oskuro]

Come to think of it, I guess this game will be made teen friendly (that is, unbound gore and violence, but no titties).
Wich could devolve into.... well, into WoW-level cleanliness. That would be pretty un-40k.

[Feil]

'Unbound gore and violence but no titties' sounds like damn near every other 40k video game, novel, and piece of artwork ever to come out of Games Workshop and its affiliates. Which makes sense, because 40k has always been targeted primarily at teenage boys, because GW isn't market savvy enough to realize that they have a product that transcends the tiny market for little pewter soldiers.

[Serafina]

Which makes sense, because 40k has always been targeted primarily at teenage boys, because GW isn't market savvy enough to realize that they have a product that transcends the tiny market for little pewter soldiers.

Really?
You think that they do not realize the significant number of adults who enjoy their product, and cater all their products towards teenage boys?
Seems..unlikely to me.

[Azazal]

First off why would you assume the player needs start as a full space marine? I'd think it would start out as an intiiate (un-augmented human) or maybe as a scout. Levelling up could be handled as gaining the implants and such. I mean once the space Marine gets power armor there's not many "options" for enhancement. A scout ( or even the initiate/pre scout stage) would be a good starting point.

Another benefit is simply make Astartes-type characters harder to level up (HP or whatever doesnt necesarily represent ability for the body to take physical damage after all. It could repreesnt luck, training, experience, etc.)

A good IG character wouldn't be a "tanker" type the way a Space Marine is either. you'd either run it like an archer or a rogue type - it relies on indirect means (mines, grenades, other explosives) or heavy long range firepower (speical or heavy weapons, powerful lasgun modifications, etc.) to help win. SPace Marine power armor isn't totally invulnerable, and a weapon with an insanely high ROF, raw power or precision could do it. (critical hits could help too.)

IG characters could be helped by NPC squadmates (fire teams or "units" - up to 5 man groups) would be one way to enhance Guards. A higher level IG character could get exotic gear, augmetics, "infiltration" (stealth), learn tricks like setting traps, etc. At higher levels they might become storm troopers, snipers, and so on.

Agreed, talking with friends of mine on this, we are hoping that they set up just like you said. If you choose to be a marine, you start out as an initiate scout, as you level you get the various marine implants.Make that take the first 20 or so levels, then the player can become a tactical marine or a veteran scout, make that go for 10 levels or so at which point the player can continue as a scout sergeant, a tactical marine or become either an assault marine or a devastator. Then continue progression along those lines, the tough part being though, where does it end? Will marine players be able to become chaplains, apothecaries, tech marines? We'll wind up with a chapter of specialists and zip for tactical marines.

For the Guard, make them like the Minon Mater in City of Villains, they start out as a rank and file grunt, then while leveling they gain a squad to command. As they level up they gain more members and ablilites such as special weapons, heavy weapons, unitil they are leading a squad of storm troopers. One thing that has to be done though, make it so the player can not be easily target like the MM can be in be in CoV. (Always hate it when my WoW hunter gets nailed because people can ignore the pet) That way in PvP, a marine player will have to take out the entire guard squad to win, not just the commander.

Then in the middle, it would be awesome to have an inquisitor as a PC, again not as powerful as marine at the onset, but can build up a retinue of followers like the guard player, not as many, but when fully leveled, equal to a marine or squad of guard.

Orks start out as one of the boyz can can level up to be a warboss, mek-boy, weird boy, etc, probably the most straight forward of the races.

Eldar, yeah I know no sign in the vid, but they should be there. Start out as a guardian that can branch off to be anm aspect warrior or warlock then in turn leads to being either an exarch or a farseer.

Chaos, start out as either a lowly cultist that makes you way up to being a powerful cult leader or be a chaos marine that starts out fairly powerful, but takes a fuck ton of time to level up. Give the player the option to follow chaos undivided or a specific god.



I know we will not get the above, but hopefully we get something that makes the games balanced but not totally watered down in the process.

[Darmalus]

For the Guard, make them like the Minon Mater in City of Villains, they start out as a rank and file grunt, then while leveling they gain a squad to command. As they level up they gain more members and ablilites such as special weapons, heavy weapons, unitil they are leading a squad of storm troopers. One thing that has to be done though, make it so the player can not be easily target like the MM can be in be in CoV. (Always hate it when my WoW hunter gets nailed because people can ignore the pet) That way in PvP, a marine player will have to take out the entire guard squad to win, not just the commander.

Make it so that the player's UI is linked to the Squad rather than to the individual commander, so if the squad leader dies you lose whatever his abilities are, but you still have the rest of your troopers instead of having the squad "fade out" like a hunter pet. Might make for an interesting mechanic if you had a Medic who could bring back members of your squad or other squads (even if they had only 1 HP when they came back) during combat, making the commander the second thing targeted. That's likely to ambitious for most MMOs.

Chaos, start out as either a lowly cultist that makes you way up to being a powerful cult leader or be a chaos marine that starts out fairly powerful, but takes a fuck ton of time to level up. Give the player the option to follow chaos undivided or a specific god.

Chaos could have a fairly direct leveling system, with the availability of mutations and demonic possession for character upgrades.

[Oskuro]

Really, picking a Soldiers Mastermind in CoX was pretty much that. You even had a Medic running around. It was so functional and interesting I'm still wondering why no one has copied the whole concept. Besides, Dawn of War also was Squad-Based, people who enjoyed that game would be used to handling a squad as their "character".

And a Shokk-Cannon wielding Mek with a trailing entourage of Snotlings would be awesome (Eat telefraggin' death!!!)

'Unbound gore and violence but no titties' sounds like damn near every other 40k video game, novel, and piece of artwork ever to come out of Games Workshop and its affiliates. Which makes sense, because 40k has always been targeted primarily at teenage boys, because GW isn't market savvy enough to realize that they have a product that transcends the tiny market for little pewter soldiers.

Slaanesh disagrees. Even if the titties are not visiblle (and they are), the whole concept of Slaneesh revolves around human passions of the type that would cause another Hot Coffee bullshitcontroversy. Hence why derivative mass-media products usually avoid him I guess?

I know GW is pretty family-oriented (I've been warned for cursing in their stores) but, again, it's their stores, selling their material in a market they mostly dominate. All they have to do to avoid complaints is make a set of miniatures that appeal to kids so they don't bother with the nasty chaos titties, you know, like the Tau.

I'm not really bothered by this regarding this game, but more regarding the whole state of censorship in media, oh well.

The true question remains, will they ever attempt to make playable Tyranids? Because Carnifexxing around probably qualifies as a wet dream for many.

[General Zod]

The true question remains, will they ever attempt to make playable Tyranids? Because Carnifexxing around probably qualifies as a wet dream for many.

I don't see how they could make Tyranids playable in an MMO and still preserve what makes them a fearsome enemy.

[loomer]

They would make for an excellent enemy, though - it's a great excuse to send swarms of low-HP mobs at the player.

[Azazal]

The Nids will not be a playable race. Got to go digging but there was an update about a month ago or so. Relic stated that they will be in the came but on a purely PvE level, think of the scourge in WoW before death knights came along

[Agent Sorchus]

That is disappointing, they could have had Genestealer hybrids be playable.

[Srelex]

Did they say anything about Eldar or Tau?

[Covenant]

Did they say anything about Eldar or Tau?

Ugh, stinking Tau.

Thankfully the Tau appear to be mentioned nowhere. The Eldar, however, have been name-dropped somewhere. The trailer isn't much to go on, we're not sure if Guardsmen are playable NPCs, if there are PC Commisars, or what. We presume there are Playable Orkz. Probably the only place you'll get to play as a female character, unless they allow some female Guardsmen and Mechanicus, is with the Eldar. Maybe Soritas in a later xpac.

Right now the biggest question is if the Orkz and Chaos are allied or if the whole "Forces of Order or Destruction" language is just meant to evoke a feeling of Good vs Evil. I see no problem with making this a 4-way free-for-all, but they did mention that if there are power disparities (like if the Eldar end up having a very small presence) they might be willing to ally/merge some of the sides.

What I'm hoping that means is that you'll have mostly Word Bearers with like a small coven of Thousand Sons for the Sorceror classes, and a handful of Guardsmen and Mechanicus working with the Black Templar. IE, when they mentioned merging groups/factions they meant groups/factions of the different major sides. We do see techmarines or mechanicus guys with the Templar, and merging Chaos factions seems likely. We've got a Nurgle demon and Khorne berzerkers on motorcycles. Unless you've got Nurgle sorcs adding in some TSons would not only look cool (rubric marines!) but help flesh out their sides more. Same for Orkz. What faction of Orkz are these anyway? Red and Yellow? Speed Freaks?

And it could very well mean that!

[Srelex]

Ah, I see. I'd imagine they'd throw Tau (like it or not, money goes over fan-wishing, and quite frankly all the Tau hate is overblown and eyeroll-inducing IMO) and Necrons into the mix in an expansion pack, like with Dark Crusade, as I mentioned, along with some extra features, like space hulk environments (they'll likely deliberately leave things out to add in later, I'd imagine. Perhaps they'll add in Rogue Traders).

[Covenant]

Now now, don't gimmie that crap, and don't lump me in with anyone before you know why I don't want the Tau in the game. I'm not going to call them Blue Anime Samurai or anything stupid like that, I think the Tau are a unique army list that adds a bit of diversity to a game that's got too much similarity as-is.

But adding the Tau into a game like this would be one of the most painful things ever. You've got invisible guys, long-ranged sniper guys and flying jetpack armor units. Nearly everything the Tau field is an immense aggrivation to fight against. That's what makes them a fun army, but in a FPS/RPG game... I mean, we haven't even seen Assault Marines or Stormboyz yet, so mobility may never be able to compensate for Tau advantages in the MMO. Imagine running along as a Marine, killing some squigs for fun, and then getting zorched from a mile and a half away by some stinking Tau player? I'd be worry about them upsetting the balance. The Eldar are shooty enough as-is, and plus, Tau really aren't that core. Adding them into this is debatable, since this is a bit of a big boys conflict from the sound of it, and the Tau aren't major players. They may show up at some point (I'm all for adding in interesting stuff) but I think that the Nids, Tau and Necron are very poor choices for a game like this.

To do them justice would require upsettng the balance a bit. Not everyone's favorite factions are going to make it in, that's just the way it is. Nids aren't, at least not anytime soon. Why should Tau?

[Srelex]

Fair enough, but even if not as player characters, I'm sure they'll stick Tau and 'Crons in even as things you can kill for extra zomg_XP or something. So that people can brag about killing off a Crisis Commander or a Necron Lord and whatnot.

[Oskuro]

'Nids would be playable if you modify the paradigm, just as you would need to do with Guardsmen squads or the like. So instead of being a lone 'Nid creature, you control a small swarm and can alter its components just as other players change gear? There could be ways to do it.

[Ryan Thunder]

But adding the Tau into a game like this would be one of the most painful things ever. You've got invisible guys, long-ranged sniper guys and flying jetpack armor units. Nearly everything the Tau field is an immense aggrivation to fight against.

I'd guess they'd just nerf stuff. 'course the problem with that is that they'd become aggravating to play ("Yeah, my railgun isn't a railgun, its some kind of glorified sniper rifle. My plasma rifle is a damage hose. My pulse rifle is... a lasgun, or something. What the fuck. XD"), so I think I see where you're coming from.

[Ritterin Sophia]

For the Guard, make them like the Minon Mater in City of Villains, they start out as a rank and file grunt, then while leveling they gain a squad to command.

Do you mean the Mastermind Archetype?

[Oskuro]

Of course, if they implement it, the most abused class will turn out to be human after all: Assasins.

They are perfect as RPG characters, and very griefer-friendly *has World of Roguecraft flashbacks*

[Feil]

Close combat looks pretty bad from that video. Straightforward attack-wait-attack paradigm that has been in place since pen and paper games.... I'd like to see more of the sort of fighting one sees in D&D online, even if we can't have genuine action-style combat. The Dawn of War RTS games have better looking close combat than seems to be present in Dark Millenium.

Ranged combat looks better, though. Something like Tabula Rasa with bolters.

[Covenant]

Close combat looks pretty bad from that video. Straightforward attack-wait-attack paradigm that has been in place since pen and paper games.... I'd like to see more of the sort of fighting one sees in D&D online, even if we can't have genuine action-style combat. The Dawn of War RTS games have better looking close combat than seems to be present in Dark Millenium.

Ranged combat looks better, though. Something like Tabula Rasa with bolters.

Well, we have heard that it's very FPSy, so I don't think a fire-as-you-will philosophy with guns would translate well into "swing in intervals" melee combat. My assumption is that melee is barely worked in yet, and the cinematic 'roving camera' viewpoints we're seeing devoid of UI are just bullshots staged to give us a taste.

With a realtime FPS model that works for guns I see no reason not to just let me switch to my choppa' when I want and attack that way. That may not be what they choose--option for a 'stuck-in' assault mode rather than a free-form one--but either way I think it'll be better than sit-and-wait melee. It'd be so easy just to give me a melee weapon to attack in over-the-shoulder mode.

...so either they'll give us more freeform melee combat than that, or we'll just end up being disappointed by melee. Both are probable.

[Oskuro]

Keep in mind that the swing-wait-swing combat is in essence turn combat with die rolls, as on tabletop pnp games, or more importantly, as in old MUDs, from wich MMOs are derived. Although the real reason for this system is that MMOs are still high latency environments, and thus real-time combat systems would be detrimental to the experience.

Then again, there are ways to make it more active, like what Champions Online does, making it more like a fighting game even if at its core it is the same old mechanic, and thus succeeding in making it feel superheroic.

Really, the shooting part of an MMO needs not be more complex than shooting in an RTS, just choose a target and let your character's stats do the work while you handle positioning and manage special abilities (as it is done in WoW, CoX and CO), wich ain't too different from action/adventure games where your character autoaims.

What I think would make close combat much more involved in an MMO is more character interaction, that is knockbacks, grapples, and the like (even if they are the result of an attack animation, not necessarily real-time). CO does a decent job with knockback, but it also shows that high latency yet again ruins the day when your character is flung through the air seconds after the enemy punches you.

What I hope they do in this game is implement collisions between enemy players in combat (like in WAR), or else tactics will suffer greately, particularly close combat tactics.
And I also hope they engineer combat (specially PvP) to promote players banding together in squads, and thus minimize soloing or "I am the HERO!!1!!" complex (if someone wants to go into battle solo, they should invest into whatever cost they set for a Dread).

[Lord Revan]

Slaanesh disagrees. Even if the titties are not visiblle (and they are), the whole concept of Slaneesh revolves around human passions of the type that would cause another Hot Coffee bullshitcontroversy. Hence why derivative mass-media products usually avoid him I guess?

actually I'm pretty while it's possible to decipt Slaanesh in video games (he's the "prince of excess" not the "prince of sexual perversion" after all), you'd just have to emphasis more the thrill of combat part while downplaying the sexual perversion part, which might it bring too close to Khorne game playwise (and then there's the fact that Noise marine weapons would be pain to make sound effects for). So it think it's more like "it's not really worth the effort to make to not be AO, so it's better to just ignore it" then "it's impossible to not make it AO".

[Azazal]

For the Guard, make them like the Minon Mater in City of Villains, they start out as a rank and file grunt, then while leveling they gain a squad to command.

Do you mean the Mastermind Archetype?

Yes, thank you. Too much Sluggy Freelance of late

Also found that article / teaser from before:
http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/p ... _id=606969

A Massively Multiplayer Online game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe is currently in development, according to reports. The game will be announced officially at E3 in June of this year, where more information may hopefully be gleaned for the game.

However, until then, a list of possible features has been released, which includes

Playable factions:
Imperium
Eldar
Orks
Chaos
Features:
Focus both on Melee and Long range Combat
Covering system
29 Zones (21 claimable, 8 invadeable)
Open-World
PvP around resource gathering and taking strategic points
Center zone features a conquerable stronghold
No playable Tanks or other Warmachines at release but implemented possibility for expansion
Tyranids as full fighting PvE-Faction

Lore (being discussed concerning certain faction-plots at the moment but here are the things we determined with Games Workshop so far):
Game takes place in the southern border-sectors of Segmentum Tempestus
Factions fight over a destroyed imperial forge world called Tarelis and its hive-city Cerberus X (newly added to the lore!)
The story of the game will NOT take place in a parallel universe! Just like the Planet Kronus (made by our colleagues at Relic) Tarelis will be part of the lore!
Tyranids will be main-antagonists
Fully revealed at E3 2010.