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Posted today on Gamasutra. "Warhammer 40k MMO doesn't need a million subscribers"

I hope this doesn't falter due to money being as cheyenne mountain did with stargate universe. I am really hoping for this to be a hit or at least play well.

I hope this doesn't mean they are sacreficing quality for monehs....I REALLY hope not.

Empchild wrote:I hope this doesn't falter due to money being as cheyenne mountain did with stargate universe. I am really hoping for this to be a hit or at least play well.

Lol?

Cheyenne Mountain also had a huge chunk of its funding pulled because they were dicking around with the money and not producing anything to show for it.

Kinda like the first team that was doing the Warhammer MMO back in the day.

I'm prepared to invest in this game. This game should have been developed instead of Warhammer Online imo. It was kinda dumb of Mythic to try and compete with WoW for the same genre with a game that's less developed. A 40k MMO is practically guaranteed to be a huge success after the popularity DoW brought to the IP.

I hope this game is either absolutely great or absolutely terrible. If it's great, I can feel good about the 10 bucks a month or so. If it's awful, I save a lot of money. The expensive, mediocre middleground is where I don't want to be.

40k is really easy compared to fantasy tho.. it needs absolutely 0 pretense for fighting to start

Race 1 lands on planet
race 2 is already on planet

Race 1 does not like race 2 because no one in 40k likes each other.. They fight

IF for some reason race 1 and race 2 = same race then one delcares the other a heretic.. They fight

IF the improbable happens and the two races should not care about one another (such as necrons vs tyranids) then.. well they fight anyway because its GRIM DARK

Kirasu wrote:IF the improbable happens and the two races should not care about one another (such as necrons vs tyranids) then.. well they fight anyway because its GRIM DARK

The Necrons would fight the 'Nids if there were Blood Angles around to impress. It's happened before; those Space Skeletons'll do anything if it gets the attention of the Space Vampires. Because they're both Undead. In SPAAAAAACE!

Anyway yeah, this 40k MMO news could be good or bad. On one hand they might've finally prised the large cartoon dollar symbols out of their eyes and realised they can't compete with WoW, so they're going to make something innovative and different and understandably cheap (you don't risk big money on untried ideas).

Or they could've decided that the money's now in these casual 'facebook MMOs', and they're going to create some abominable cash-shop... thing. $200 if you want to play as a Space Marine, otherwise you're stuck as a Guardsman with a defective lasgun and asthma.

The article is about how they were able to save a lot of development costs because they went through and ensured the development tools used to build the world and all the content were completely fleshed out before the company decided to "ramp up development" which translates to "put many warm bodies to work" which translates to "Development costs are going to go up a lot right now".

This shouldn't have an impact on the "quality" of the actual game content.

Actually, if this game is gonna be all Space Marine centric, I won't even give it a chance.
THQ would be shooting themselves in the balls if they pass up the amazing variety and depth of the 40k universe, of which SMs are a very small part. Though I can picture GW holding the proverbial gun to THQs head and forcing them to make it another boring SMs vs. Chaos SMs cluster feth... In which case I save lots of money.
Been there, done that, too many times.

I think the big problem with a 40K MMO is that it is very hard to represent the player's epeen visually. Most space marines look very similar so it's hard to distinguish a veteran form a newbie. In most other games the amour you wear shows what you have achieved in terms of the end game content.

I think they'd be wisest to stick with 4 Space Marine chapters and 4 Chaos marine chapters. Then let players interact with the other races. The problem with too much choice is that you will spread the players very thinly and it would be hard to find people to group with. Also they need to make sure a wide variety of computers can run it. The reason that Warcraft is so huge is that it will run on just about any PC. In a hobby where we'd rather splurge our disposable income on miniatures there isn't much room for an expensive gaming PC.

Bloodwin wrote:I think the big problem with a 40K MMO is that it is very hard to represent the player's epeen visually. Most space marines look very similar so it's hard to distinguish a veteran form a newbie.

While personally I find Space Marines boring, they seem to have dealt with the problem in the Deathwatch RPG: "Hey, I am a Space Marine in Black and I PWN Chuck Norris." "Hey, I am a Space marine in Black, too, and I also PWN Chuck Norris" "Hey, ..."

But they want to field ALL major 40k races eventually. I will certainly test the game, when it is released.

Man I hope the game is good, how would a 40k mmo play though? Would there be a good/evil faction type thing where the races are divided between them? What races will be playable? Or will this be like Dark Heresy?

Bloodwin wrote:I think the big problem with a 40K MMO is that it is very hard to represent the player's epeen visually. Most space marines look very similar so it's hard to distinguish a veteran form a newbie.

Hence GW's tendency in recent years to add ever increasing levels of "bling" and ornamentation to everything marine, have them ride giant zoo animals, sprout wings, increasing angry faces, crazy poses, etc., etc.

You'll get studs pounded into your skull for every year that you are a subscriber.

Not your toon, YOU.

After that, they can show you teletubbies and you will be happy

I don't think that they are saying they don't need to be successful so much as they aren't deluding themselves that they are going to get WoW like numbers, which really isn't needed to make a profit.

Well it could be set up like Warhammer AOR, where there is the order/destruction thing. though it wouldn't make much sense fluff wise. Armor could just change slightly, or they could just go crazy and make their own armor patterns. I want to know if vehicles will be included, imagine pulling this out for your mount?

The Night Stalker wrote:I want to know if vehicles will be included, imagine pulling this out for your mount?

I recall reading that they won't be initially but are being planned for expansions if all goes well.

Of course, they can always do what Star Wars did, I believe. Certain parameters are met, and you can be a Space Marine. You get a choice in the matter. Roughly: Each race has it's own "I'm better than all of you" mode. Each player starts off in a various aspect of their race, and then if they meet goals, they either get a chance to become Space Marines/Chaos Marines/ Ethereal/Warbosses/Eldar Path Specialists/Big Bugs/Lords and so on.

And for the big boys who do some really neat stuff, allow them to be chapter masters/honour guard, demon princes.

Three stages: Regular, Awesome, Super Awesome. In theory, that would allow players who actually value their character, they can work to get their position. And, because they'd be special positions, they would, naturally, get bonuses and would be correspondingly harder to kill, and have access to special weapons due to Chapter armouries and such.

However, I do demand a daft Inquisitor being followed around by a couple Marines someplace remote.

Joe Madureira is doing the art design for this game, and he's responsible for making tons of stupidly busy characters, namely in games like Darksiders. I don't think there will be any problem representing your e-peen or what have you. They even said about a year ago that you'd be able to make your character look cooler than in any other MMO, with more crap on him than imaginable.

In short Joe Mad will make sure your character is so overladen with bling that you won't be able to tell if he's a Space Marine or not.

Whoa whoa whoa.

Darksiders' "War" was awesome. It may have been busy, but it was also a busy that wasn't absurdly distracting.

Kanluwen wrote:Whoa whoa whoa.

Darksiders' "War" was awesome. It may have been busy, but it was also a busy that wasn't absurdly distracting.

There are at least 6 giant monster faces on War and his sword. It's not a Rob Liefeld level of sin, but I can't say I like much of that game's character design.

http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/portals.php?show=news&news_id=606969

Just thought I would drop this here.

Karon wrote:http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/portals.php?show=news&news_id=606969

Just thought I would drop this here.

Thank you, that was a pleasure to read. So DoW2 has another expansion in the works. Awesome.

And when they're listing probable playable factions for the 40k MMO, I hope "Imperium" means Imperial Guard or some such. Space Marines should not be a playable race, as one would have to be made more powerful than any other single character, and such imbalance makes for a horrible MMO, while a lack of that imbalance would not be true to fluff.

Archonate wrote:

Karon wrote:http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/portals.php?show=news&news_id=606969

Just thought I would drop this here.

Thank you, that was a pleasure to read. So DoW2 has another expansion in the works. Awesome.

And when they're listing probable playable factions for the 40k MMO, I hope "Imperium" means Imperial Guard or some such. Space Marines should not be a playable race, as one would have to be made more powerful than any other single character, and such imbalance makes for a horrible MMO, while a lack of that imbalance would not be true to fluff.

As the kids say these days: "lol, whut?" The notion that a Warhammer 40k MMO would not include the iconic and most popular element is near insane. Now, possibly people will have to level themselves up into Space Marines, but that's a bit odd. I could see it though; Eldar have a parallel upgrade path in Aspect warriors becoming Exarchs and then Autarch, Minor psychers becoming warlocks and eventually Farseers. Ork becoming... bigger orks...

That said, the question that would have to be addressed by the developers is who their audience is. A more casual audience might not be willing to put in ten, twenty or thirty hours of play before making the jump into a space marine. Then again, a more casual audience might not care, so a lot of market research will go into things.

More likely is probably what happened in Warhammer AoR with Chaos Chosen. For fans of the table top game, Chosen seem kinda on odd choice, as they are simply sooo much better one on one compared to the other infantry represented in the game. So what happened? The Chosen in game retained their iconic look, and lost a lot of their potency.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
By the way, for others excited about the possability of a 40k MMO, there are more details posted at Kotaku;

According to the article,

THQ boss Brian Farrell said earlier today that the game, which was last seen when we showed you some concept art in 2009, will be on show at E3 in all its glory, promising to "fully unveil" the highly-anticipated project.

Buzzsaw wrote:More likely is probably what happened in Warhammer AoR with Chaos Chosen. For fans of the table top game, Chosen seem kinda on odd choice, as they are simply sooo much better one on one compared to the other infantry represented in the game. So what happened? The Chosen in game retained their iconic look, and lost a lot of their potency.

Well since we've already seen concept art for an Ultramarine, I'm betting this is exactly what will happen to SMs. Though I suppose they are approximately equal to Eldar Aspect Warriors, so it's not that big of a stretch.

I just happen to think that a 40k game without SMs would be really cool. The darkness and dangerousness (aka awesomeness) of the 40k universe is diminished when everybody gets to be an unkillable hulking paragon of superhuman size, strength, agility and technology. I'm sure most people disagree with me but it doesn't really matter. As long as I don't have to play a SM, I will enjoy this game as much as anybody else.

I thought DOW2 did a decent job of presenting different levels of wargear, insofar as each item represented a storied relic.

Step up the detail such that one can tell PA from MC PA From Relic PA ets... (who knows, maybe a coloring system of green blue and purple... ) and you could get some information from glancing at another player.

/LFG 60 Heal Spec Apoth, geared

Keep in mind blizzard developers stated that they would be happy to get 300k subscribers before WoW was launched. You can make a great game and not have to have a ludicrous initial budget. Warhammer online got into trouble specifically because of a sprawling budget, overlarge development team, and initially overhigh expectations. More money doesn't make a better game, and it can make a worse one (as in the case of age of conan).

Each faction has plenty of choices that are all roughly equivalent in power. Even if each faction only had one class each, we could have Space Marines vs Howling Banshees vs Ork Nobs vs Chaos Space Marines and have everyone be equal lorewise.

And then there are other choices like Inquistors, the other Aspect Warriors, etc, to throw in there as additional classes.

What I'm most excited about is the focus on ranged combat and cover playing a roll. If this is similar to DoW2 but more up close and personal, I'm gonna love it.
I'm hoping they include some sort of squad mechanic to make the game feel more like 40k. Maybe designate one player or NPC as squad leader who keeps the players oriented, and if squad mates break coherency, they get a big morale debuff or something.
I can just imagine playing a Dire Avenger or a Firewarrior... The awesomeness is almost more than I can handle.