Dawn of War III

So what, does Acheron appear out of the Warp once every few millennia with the Spear on it?

Meet the voice actors of Dawn of War 3.

I just realized Gabriel's new voice actor is Alec Newman, who played Paul Atreides in the Dune miniseries and Sebastian Vael from Dragon Age 2.

MAKER, NOOOOOOOOOOO

So there's an open beta going on. Has anyone played it yet? Any thoughts? I haven't downloaded it yet myself.

Heard good things about it, but have no Windows laptop so I can't xD

The first few reviews are coming out. Looking good so far, as par for a Relic product, but the learning curve, MOBA inspirations creeping in, and there only being Eldar, Orks, and Space Marines is negatively affecting opinions. It's also looking likely that Relic is taking the DLC-by-piecemeal approach: some rumors so far say the Tyranids are the next upcoming faction to be included, but that they'll be a paid DLC option, obviously. I'd assume the same for future unique skins, Space Marine Chapters, possibly even hero units.

Gamewatcher Review

Gamespot Review

I'm not sure if this is true but apparently fans who preorder the game got a guidebook that tells the game's storyline and how it ends. So take this with a grain of salt from what i read and remember.

So it turns out the Spear of Khaine that the three factions are fighting for is nothing special as it's just an ordinary Eldar spear. Turns out, Lord Kyre, the Eldar Autarch who wants the Spear since he believe it will help him unite the Eldar and conquer the galaxy, was given a false vision as he was actually tricked into opening a seal containing a powerful Chaos Daemon. When said Daemon tries to open a warp portal on the planet he's on, the three factions form a temporary alliance to stop that from happening by ordering a massive Exterminatus and sending multiple Ork Roks crashing into the planet to blow it up. The game ends with the Daemon defeated, the planet blown up, the three factions going their separate ways and a stinger which reveals the C'Tan God the Deceiver was the true mastermind behind this conflict.

Just as planned, then?

So does that mean that theory about Necrons being in the game as a 4th race is false then?

It's out on Steam. Reviews are holding steady at about 50% positive. Main complaints are that it takes too much inspiration from MOBA games, and the multiplayer only has one mode.

I've come to see a multitude of modes as a bad thing, especially in the long term life cycle of a title's online community. It splits the playerbase up, thus making it more difficult to set up matches. Also, the additional modes need to be carefully balanced and thought out - a mode that emphasizes constantly moving from control point to control point is obviously going to favor the races with greater unit mobility, whereas as turtle races would suffer. Same goes with maps that drastically increase the starting resources; races with hard-hitting, tanky starter units will excel merely by rushing their opponents.

edited 27th Apr '17 9:54:00 PM by SgtRicko

@Nerevarine Yes. The Necrons are not the 4th race as it's actually Chaos albeit with Bloodletter Daemons and doppelganger soldiers of the three factions. They do appear in the stinger which reveals they were behind the conflict at Acheron.

So I am having a really hard time adjusting to the larger scale after 2. It seems like it wants me to control 3 heroes with fiddly skillshot abilities alongside about ten other units, each with distinct abilities, on multiple fronts. Hopefully I'll work it out, because even trying took me over the window for Steam refunds.

Also, we're building bases again. Great. Only now we don't have any static defenses except for listening posts? That genuinely surprised me - I was expecting bolter turrets as a campaign-only thing, given how many missions require you to hold areas.

Taking a page from Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, eh? Then again, I guess it's technically not plagarism if you're copying from within your own 40K franchise.

I'm under the impression that reactions to Dawn of War III seem...mixed, to say the least, if the current Steam user reviews and TotalBiscuit's impression of the game is any indication:

Although it's a shame that I won't be getting Dawn of War-themed vehicle skins for Company of Heroes 2 (thanks to those being a pre-order gimmick—and everyone knows how risky pre-ordering is), I guess I'll only buy DoW III after trying it out at a future Free Weekend event and once the full extent of the DLC plus patches/hotfixes have been released.

Biscuit is wrong that is why.

I think the WAAGH Tower might be the best thing I've seen in the Dawn of War franchise. Part Firy Road, all Ork.

@91: The only reason I still hear out TotalBiscuit is because he's a massive Warhammer 40K fan. I recall him gushing over Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and lamenting about the 40K intellectual property recently being leased out to game developers that turn it into games for mobile devices—many of which he found bland and mediocre. I guess he had his fears that DoW III would turn out the same way as those mobile games...

For what it's worth though, DoW III's Sequel Hook does sound interesting enough to warrant an actual Expansion Pack. (Freaking Necrons, c'mon! I loved playing as Necrons in Dark Crusade and I'd love to see what their gameplay—minus the Pariah units, probably—would be like in an expansion.)

edited 4th May '17 4:29:18 AM by IncognitoNinja

The Necrons would probably be quite different now, wouldn't they? There was a whole shakeup in their design between Dark Crusade and now, after all.

Yep. There's now two different variants.

is this the design change where they're now all Deadly Decadent Court style space egyptians, rather than space robo zombies now?

because it's weird seeing that they can now talk and scheme and... that weirdly makes them LESS threatening.

They're not ALL now robot-Ancient Egyptians, there are still some that just kill everything. I think, personally, that the dichotomy is interesting.

Yes, it's the design choice to change them from nameless fodder characters into characters with personalites since we already have one nameless horde army (and ask Tyranid fans how well that goes for them in terms of treatment by the writers).

True. Hard to write an antagonist who has no dialogue (And see the Tyranids campaign in Do W 2 - hard to do a briefing....)

I suppose for me it was jarring to see a whole paragraph espousing beauty from Robo Pharoh Arnie. But that's because I hadn't been aware of the change. having done some digging into the changes I will admit it's an interesting turn and could provide some decent motives or plots to give them a storyline beyond "KILL PURGE DELETE".

Dawn of War III must be in far worse shape than I imagined, because Relic confirmed that they will no longer be working on any expansions or major DLC for the game and begin moving on to new projects. To quote one of their staff replying to an email regarding the game's future:

To put things into perspective, Do W I and it's expansions had twice as many concurrent players on (approx 870) versus Do W III (with only approx 403 total) over the course of last month January.