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This teaser cinematic was just dropped by Total War.

Empire DLC? Warhammer 3 teaser? Speculate!

The winds of magic stir, something powerful is coming. Watch this video to find out more. -Quote from the Warhammer Age of Sigmar FB page.

They've already done an Empire DLC.

We know there's one more DLC pack to go for 2, which will probably have Dark Elves vs ??? to bring DE up to 6 lords like the rest of the base races for WH2.

'Grungni's Baldric' would suggest something for Dwarfs (though they already got a rework as well). But it may be some sort of general omen buried in a fluff reference somewhere.
And yeah:
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https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Grungi%27s_Baldric
May just be teasing a date: late spring/early summer

Yep this is likely a teaser for the final DLC or a long term teaser for Warhammer 3, both of which are the next things from CA in general. Though there might be a small DLC for another game inbetween, the next big thing is Warhammer TW 3. Though I'd be surprised if that came before end of this year.

I could see a plan to release WH3 for the holidays. It would be their only new game this year.

However, the announcement trailers have generally been bigger, and of better quality than this video.

Voss wrote:
They've already done an Empire DLC.

We know there's one more DLC pack to go for 2, which will probably have Dark Elves vs ??? to bring DE up to 6 lords like the rest of base races for WH2.

The only races with 6 Lords are the HE, Lizards and Skaven. DE are doing okay, having been featured in 2 DLCs and having 5 lords, equal to Orcs and Vampire counts. All the other races have 4 or less (Vampire Coast, TK, Empire, Dwarfs, Bretonnia, and Wood Elves all sitting on 4, then the Chaos factions with 3 or less).

I was thinking maybe Dwarfs and Vampires, given that on the last update they expanded eastwards with more Vampires.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Voss wrote:
They've already done an Empire DLC.

We know there's one more DLC pack to go for 2, which will probably have Dark Elves vs ??? to bring DE up to 6 lords like the rest of the base races for WH2.

The only races with 6 Lords are the HE, Lizards and Skaven. DE are doing okay, having been featured in 2 DLCs and having 5 lords, equal to Orcs and Vampire counts. All the other races have 4 or less (Vampire Coast, TK, Empire, Dwarfs, Bretonnia, and Wood Elves all sitting on 4, then the Chaos factions with 3 or less).

I'm aware of the lord counts. They're clearly aiming at having 6 for each of the four base races of Warhammer 2. They've done the other three (as you spell out, HE, Lizards and Skaven), so the last DLC (or the accompanying FLC) will almost certainly feature a 6th DE lord. FLC may be more likely, since I can't figure what else they'd pack into the roster at this point.

Ah ok, I didn't realise by "base" you were only referring to only the 4 races from the initial release of WH2.

Either way, DE have already had 2 paid DLC's, which is equal to the others also.

So I'd be surprised if it's a DE DLC at this point, but who knows.

Seems a lot of folk are leaning more toward it being something to do with WH3.

We know there's 1 more DLC so its most likely for that. We also know Warhammer 3 is coming, but from what we know Corona has delayed development on it. So I'd be very shocked if we were getting hints on W3 this early in the year and before the last DLC for Warhammer 2.

If anything I'd expect at least one more DLC after Warhammer 2's last DLC for one of their other games before we see Warhammer 3.

Are we sure that the "final DLC" wasn't the one that we just got for Wood Elves and Skaven?

CA said it wasn't.

 Overread wrote:
We know there's 1 more DLC so its most likely for that. We also know Warhammer 3 is coming, but from what we know Corona has delayed development on it. So I'd be very shocked if we were getting hints on W3 this early in the year and before the last DLC for Warhammer 2.

If anything I'd expect at least one more DLC after Warhammer 2's last DLC for one of their other games before we see Warhammer 3.

I think maybe it’s because of the (twin tailed?) comet that some folk are expecting something more world changing than a DLC.

The Twin Tailed Comet has been a theme for all the games thus far, from the very first game. What would make sense is if the last DLC is going to have some portent directly to the unleashing of Chaos and such. Ergo one final message after all the vortext games and everyone breaking it.

Game 3 is very much going to be CA's take on the End Times with rampant Chaos armies and Chaos demons and such.



Brings the game to a nice close, ends it for new fans and leaves CA well open to making Age of Sigmar Total War

This is a tease for 3, and it won't be the only one.

 Overread wrote:
The Twin Tailed Comet has been a theme for all the games thus far, from the very first game. What would make sense is if the last DLC is going to have some portent directly to the unleashing of Chaos and such. Ergo one final message after all the vortext games and everyone breaking it.

Game 3 is very much going to be CA's take on the End Times with rampant Chaos armies and Chaos demons and such.

Perhaps, but I think the use of the comet would be more of a sign of the start of TW3 than a closing off of TW2.

But either way, we don't really know yet. I wouldn't put it past CA to start teasing TW3 before the final DLC for TW2 has come out, they did so back when TW2 was coming out also.

Brings the game to a nice close, ends it for new fans and leaves CA well open to making Age of Sigmar Total War

I dunno if they're going to try and kill the world like GW did. That's an open wound for Fantasy fans that's probably better off not to poke.

Have we heard whether CA has the rights to make anything AoS related? I imagine their license ends at Warhammer Fantasy rather than AoS. If anything I'd sooner see them make something for 40k than AoS.

I can't see why CA can't kill off Old World. Once Warhammer 3 is released and its DLC launched they don't really have anything else to do. It's not like when GW killed it off and ended the model lines and rules and then it was all gone; CA can story wise end things at the end of Wahammer 3.

Like as not it will have an open ended campaign with lots of differnet good and bad factions and each will "win" at the end with the "cannon" ending being the demons winning.


That pairs it with the GW lore.



I don't think CA had the AoS licence ever because it wasn't even on the cards when they started. That said GW and CA would be fools to not progress and do AoS total War.



For GW its a chance to get a major PC game by a major player onto their AoS marketing system. For CA it allows them to work on a title that has proven super popular in sales and longevity (Three Kingdoms had more sales peak, but its active playerbase is way below Warhammer).

Plus CA likely can't just start over with a fresh Old World game, it would be daft and most would still be attached to the first game.





The other option would be CA doing another Old World game set in the same way GW is doing it. However I'd honestly expect them to shift into AoS for a main game - perhaps doing a Saga title for the new-restored Old World title GW is working on.
Plus doing AoS means CA can work with current stuff not old stuff. They could even start the game at the end of the Age of Myth and the start of the Age of Chaos and progress through to the Age of Sigmar or such. Or just focus on telling the launch of AoS.

 Overread wrote:
I can't see why CA can't kill off Old World. Once Warhammer 3 is released and its DLC launched they don't really have anything else to do. It's not like when GW killed it off and ended the model lines and rules and then it was all gone; CA can story wise end things at the end of Wahammer 3.

Like as not it will have an open ended campaign with lots of differnet good and bad factions and each will "win" at the end with the "cannon" ending being the demons winning.

It's not that they "can't", I just think they might not want to do that.

There's nothing saying they have to finish the story by tying it up in a way that the world ends. The story doesn't have to end conclusively. Sometimes you're better off just leaving the world be and let people's imagination work instead of trying to wrap everything up.

It'll be interesting to see what they do after Warhammer, still quite a few years off finding out what that is. In some ways it'd be nice if they revisited some of the earlier factions and games for a bit of a refresh as Warhammer has more potential for replayability than the other Total War games. They might even expand in areas where GW hasn't if they're allowed.

I don't think CA had the AoS licence ever because it wasn't even on the cards when they started. That said GW and CA would be fools to not progress and do AoS total War.

There are already AoS games in the works elsewhere.

The people behind Elite Dangerous and Zoo Tycoon are doing an RTS:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/788003.page
Focus Home Interactive has a studio doing AoS: Storm Ground, a turn based strategy coming soon.

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I'm not convinced CA wants to play in the AoS market, and deal with a new license, new direct competition and frankly, an irritated fanbase. The grognards have retreated into CAs arms in large numbers. And if I were CA (and Sony), I'd be grouchy about GW going to other companies to do AOS games, assuming they didn't give CA first refusal on an AoS license.

Going to AoS wouldn't be a 'progression' for CA. It'd be starting over from ground zero. New armies, backgrounds, maps, art, models, animations, style, everything.

They'd be better off (if they even want another GW license) aiming for the 'Old World' and doing a launch tie-in.

Voss wrote:

I don't think CA had the AoS licence ever because it wasn't even on the cards when they started. That said GW and CA would be fools to not progress and do AoS total War.

There are already AoS games in the works elsewhere.

The people behind Elite Dangerous and Zoo Tycoon are doing an RTS:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/788003.page
Focus Home Interactive has a studio doing AoS: Storm Ground, a turn based strategy coming soon.

--
I'm not convinced CA wants to play in the AoS market, and deal with a new license, new direct competition and frankly, an irritated fanbase. The grognards have retreated into CAs arms in large numbers. And if I were CA (and Sony), I'd be grouchy about GW going to other companies to do AOS games, assuming they didn't give CA first refusal on an AoS license.

Going to AoS wouldn't be a 'progression' for CA. It'd be starting over from ground zero. New armies, backgrounds, maps, art, models, animations, style, everything.

They'd be better off (if they even want another GW license) aiming for the 'Old World' and doing a launch tie-in.

GW has never given away exclusive licences - even with Old World CA still had other firms picking it up and doing stuff with it at the same time.
As for the idea about the "Grognards" I'd say that whilst computergame and wargame markets clearly overlap they are not the same markets. Sure there's a die-hard anti AOS block just like there's a die hard anti Old World block - both are small groups of people. The world has mostly moved on in the last 5 years or so from AoS's disaster of a launch. I don't think its healthy to keep treating the world as if we are still 5 days from launch day of AoS when talking about it and tip-toeing around in "fear" of the "Grognards"

Heck from the whole wealth of history CA has already basically made their own End Times storyline within their game. First game was rising war; second game is the shut down of the vortex; third game is the demonic invasion en-mass. That's basically your setup for an end of the world situation. Only when CA blows it up the game won't suddenly die.

And yes if CA did AoS it would mean doing mostly new things and that is a good thing. Look how long they typically leave between sequel games. CA can't do a sequel to Warhammer Total War likely for 5-10 years. IT's already an expensive game with a lot of DLC and jumping right back into repeating it over again would be a marketing mistake. Instead doing another fantasy IP would be very sensible and AoS would mean working with a firm they already have good relations and a licence with and a firm who are generally (it seems) quite amicable to giving out their licence.


An Old World Tie in might be a good idea, but I'd wager CA would overtake GW quite quickly in terms of races and content. Whilst the mechanics of the game take longer to develop; its much faster to make and release digital armies into a digital game than it is to make and release them for physical games (at least at the market and quality GW aims for). Like I said that would work well for a Saga game; ergo smaller scale, but it might take 15 years or more to get up to speed and size. IT's taken 5 years to get AoS up to speed and that's with some pretty fast releases and GW has Old World at the very least 3 years off and that's a best-estimation (and honestly like a Kickstarter estimation its very liable to get a year or more over estimation very easily).

 Overread wrote:

Voss wrote:

I don't think CA had the AoS licence ever because it wasn't even on the cards when they started. That said GW and CA would be fools to not progress and do AoS total War.

There are already AoS games in the works elsewhere.

The people behind Elite Dangerous and Zoo Tycoon are doing an RTS:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/788003.page
Focus Home Interactive has a studio doing AoS: Storm Ground, a turn based strategy coming soon.

--
I'm not convinced CA wants to play in the AoS market, and deal with a new license, new direct competition and frankly, an irritated fanbase. The grognards have retreated into CAs arms in large numbers. And if I were CA (and Sony), I'd be grouchy about GW going to other companies to do AOS games, assuming they didn't give CA first refusal on an AoS license.

Going to AoS wouldn't be a 'progression' for CA. It'd be starting over from ground zero. New armies, backgrounds, maps, art, models, animations, style, everything.

They'd be better off (if they even want another GW license) aiming for the 'Old World' and doing a launch tie-in.

GW has never given away exclusive licences - even with Old World CA still had other firms picking it up and doing stuff with it at the same time.

For completely different types of games, yeah. But licenses aren't 'given away.' They're deals that have to benefit both parties.

You're glossing over a lot real work and real negotiations with your counter arguments for an utterly hypothetical 'Total AoS.'
A 'sequel' 5-10 years on, in terms of the video game market, isn't worth talking about. Sega can drag CA in a lot of different directions, and GWs priorities aren't set in stone for that long. They may well take the Dawn of War approach to the Totatl Warhammer concept and let it die a painful death after the trilogy ends.

But Dawn of War ended because of the terrible 3rd game that didn't do well in the market. Total War Warhammer probably one of their best selling games right now (Vermintide might be better?)


Sure the licence isn't free, but right now an AoS licence would benefit GW and benefit CA in general. To me its the logical next step for both firms considering the current relations. It lets GW get a big AoS title game into the market;it lets CA continue down the path of a mass fantasy battle game without copy-catting their current Old World game and without having to negotiate a licence with a totally new IP holder or creating their own.


Sure CA could go another direction and GW could say no or give an unfavourable deal. In the end that's all possible, however as I see it the most positive and likely direction is an AoS Total War.
Or who knows perhaps a Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones official games (granted accepting that both of those IP have agreements with other firms and one could argue that Game of Thrones has past its peak now).

I do wonder how many TW:Warhammer fans would jump on a TW:AoS game, or if it'd be a different fanbase they need to attract.

Even though AoS in the miniature market might be doing better than WHFB was before it was murdered, WHFB was around for a long time and accumulated a large fanbase that maybe wasn't actively buying miniatures but was ready to jump on a Total War game, making it more popular than the historical Total War games. How many of those fans will also jump at AoS?

Maybe it's just me, but I think TWW is a game you could keep drip feeding content for quite a long time as it has incredible replayability. It's one of only a handful of games that I have accumulated hundreds of hours playing, but there's still races I haven't even touched yet.

One of the stupider things GW has done was to kill WHFB a short while before TWW1 came out. There would have been sooo many people would have been inspired by the video game to buy some minis only to find out the table top game had been killed and many of the models were no longer available.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

One of the stupider things GW has done was to kill WHFB a short while before TWW1 came out. There would have been sooo many people would have been inspired by the video game to buy some minis only to find out the table top game had been killed and many of the models were no longer available.

GW never seems to pay much attention to what's been licensed aside from making the occasional nod here and there (for ex., the occasional pic of a painted Blood Ravens model). That was a mis-calculation in this case. But given the quality of most of the licensed video game content, it's usually a good move.

As for CA licensing AoS - I suspect that they would do just fine with the license. People will buy it because they like Total War, and they like what CA did with the previous GW property that they had (i.e. Warhammer). One of the things that I noted when the game was still in pre-release was that a lot of the people excited about the game really seemed to know very little about the setting. That would suggest that while most of the players had heard of it, and probably seen some spectacular miniatures, they'd never actually played the tabletop game. Given that, I suspect that a Total War: AoS game would sell just fine.

However, such a thing is still quite a ways out at this point. We're not even sure whether we've seen the initial teaser for the third and final Warhammer game. Warhammer 2 was released in September of 2017. Given that, the final DLC will be released at least three and a half years later. Assuming a similar life cycle for Warhammer 3, we're still more than four - and possibly five - years away from Warhammer 3's final release. An AoS game is still a long ways off for the players.

The Warhammer games are like the Lord of the Rings films - its made to roll one into the next. So unless something went really wrong it won't be 3 or 4 years until Warhammer 3. It will be fairly soon after the last DLC - 1 year or so I would estimate. I wouldn't think they'd leave it years and years when the games roll into each other.

Eg Warhammer 1 was released in 2016; Warhammer 2 was released in 2017. If anything we've already had the abnormal years long gap since 2018.

 Overread wrote:
The Warhammer games are like the Lord of the Rings films - its made to roll one into the next. So unless something went really wrong it won't be 3 or 4 years until Warhammer 3. It will be fairly soon after the last DLC - 1 year or so I would estimate. I wouldn't think they'd leave it years and years when the games roll into each other.

Eg Warhammer 1 was released in 2016; Warhammer 2 was released in 2017. If anything we've already had the abnormal years long gap since 2018.

You misunderstood me. What I meant is that the LAST DLC release for Warhammer 3 is still a long ways off, much like the upcoming last DLC for Warhammer 2 will be released probably three and a half years after Warhammer 2 was released. And a hypothetical AoS game won't come until after that.

Ahh yes I did missunderstand sorry.

I do agree we are a long ways off an AoS title. If anything after Warhammer I'd be crossing my fingers that the next big game is Medieval 3. What ever it is it will certainly be in planning during Warhammer 3 development. CA is pretty good at simply keeping their staff on and having rolling products so as your creative and design and concept people are no longer needed as much for one game they move onto the next game in the list.


Even their Saga games, whilst often not being as popular, work really well for CA retaining staff and keeping them busy just on a smaller project that profits or markets (eg Troy) and then goes on to ensure that they don't lose staff or spend money on staff who are doing nothing.



One big question will be if/when CA decides to update their engine. Whilst its not a fun game the "Epic Battle Simulator" team appears to be pushing mass battle systems quite a lot. It would be really great to see CA break out with a new engine or a heavy revision that supports bigger armies and more intensive battles. New control systems; new engine; new means ot organise and such. Heck we saw in warhammer 2 where they pushed it with the lab option to let players mess around .

 Overread wrote:

Whilst its not a fun game the "Epic Battle Simulator" team appears to be pushing mass battle systems quite a lot.

Incidentally, EBS is free until tomorrow.

Eumerin wrote:
As for CA licensing AoS - I suspect that they would do just fine with the license. People will buy it because they like Total War, and they like what CA did with the previous GW property that they had (i.e. Warhammer). One of the things that I noted when the game was still in pre-release was that a lot of the people excited about the game really seemed to know very little about the setting. That would suggest that while most of the players had heard of it, and probably seen some spectacular miniatures, they'd never actually played the tabletop game. Given that, I suspect that a Total War: AoS game would sell just fine.

I tend to think it's more the other way, with Warhammer fans being drawn to Total War rather than Total War fans just buying it because it's a Total War. My thoughts lean that way because my understanding is no TW game prior to Warhammer had such popularity.

If your observation was that a lot of the people excited about the game knew very little about the setting, my thoughts would be...

1. A lot of people who have played Warhammer don't really know a lot about the background either (not on this forum maybe, but out in the wild where less... "intense" fans tend to live, people often only know the background to their own army and little else, personally it took me years to learn anything about certain armies because no one in my group played those armies).

2. Where was that observation taken? If it was on the Total War forums, I'd suggest the sample was biased toward Total War fans, not Warhammer fans.

3. I can't imagine you observed enough folks to get a decent cross-section of the purchasing community.

But hey, anything's possible without sufficient data. Another option is maybe folk came across from 40k or the DoW games and knew of Warhammer but never played it.

Anything's possible, and my sample locations might have been skewed. But I'll also note that TW wasn't the first time someone attempted to bring Warhammer mass combat to the computer. There were the two games with you playing an Empire mercenary commander, and a later game with you playing as a chaos champion (iirc). Neither of those games had the same level of success the Total War version has had.

A Time of Legends Total War would - I think work well. Stuff like the

War of Wengeance
Nagash vs the nations of Nekahara
The Sundering
even Sigmar (or another leader of the twelve tribes) building the Empire.

So a second video has come, with the Piper constellation (Autumn, 'trickster' figure, those born under it are considered to be leaders or betrayers... or both). Given that Grungi's Baldric is a 'martial' constellation, this may be some flagging for chaos gods.

Gives more weight to Warhammer 3 announcement, rather than a release date

Another video and constellation will be coming.
Though not necessarily tomorrow since the line at the end is apparently 'We _shan't_ see the third constellation tomorrow, I'm sure of it.' But then again, this astronomer seems to be a bit of an idiot.