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Just wanted to let you guys know that if you haven't jumped in early and pre ordered but were interested to see how the game looks out of the box, I will be live streaming my first look at the game on Thursday 17th Feb at 17:30 UK time.

Live stream is

Twitch: athariel_gaming
You Tube: athariel's gaming lounge
Facebook gaming: athariel_gaming

I normally stream World of Tanks but being a big Warhammer and in particular Warhammer Fantasy fan and a Total War fan I wanted to do a special stream for this release. I am also intending to wear my Blood Dragon Helmet (also a Warhammer Fantasy cosplayer) for some of the stream though it doesn't fit over my headphones very well .

Let the pre-load begin!

Preload is smaller than I was expecting, only 65GB? I wonder if the final download will be big or if the files are just very compressed.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Preload is smaller than I was expecting, only 65GB? I wonder if the final download will be big or if the files are just very compressed.

System requirements say 120gb of available space is needed, so roughly half is pre-loading. Pretty sure the install prompt told me that more then 121 GB was required for install. Had to uninstall a game to open up space and get it going.

It's more likely because the download mirrors as it downloads. So if its 65GB then it needs at least 120-130GB of total free space to have room to mirror during the download and install. This is done to hopefully reduce errors during the download and install process.

A fair few games do it, but often as not we don't notice until we hit really big and chunky games like this, especially if you're putting it on a smaller SSD for the faster loading times.

Oh gak I forgot this was tomorrow, better get to downloading. Lucky it's free on gamepass.

 Overread wrote:
It's more likely because the download mirrors as it downloads. So if its 65GB then it needs at least 120-130GB of total free space to have room to mirror during the download and install. This is done to hopefully reduce errors during the download and install process.

A fair few games do it, but often as not we don't notice until we hit really big and chunky games like this, especially if you're putting it on a smaller SSD for the faster loading times.

I don't think that's typical for games on Steam, or any games I've downloaded recently for that matter (not that I have downloaded a whole heap recently, but the few I have were mostly in the 100GB range). I have had programs that needed double the available space to download and install, but not for a while and I don't think it was a game.

I'm gonna guess the downloaded files are compressed compared to the final files and on launch we'll still have to download more. I checked the folder and it has the 65GB of files and the store page says 120GB required, TWW2 is just under 60GB on my disk and the store says it requires 60GB.

We'll find out tomorrow I guess (or tonight in my part of the world...).

This wouldn't be the first time I've seen a big game that needed twice the space. The one that most immediately comes to mind is The Division 2, on my PS4. Whenever a patch dropped - no matter how small - I always needed nearly as much free space on my hard drive as the game itself took, or I'd be informed that I didn't have enough free space for the patch. And Division 2 is not a small game.

Eumerin wrote:
This wouldn't be the first time I've seen a big game that needed twice the space. The one that most immediately comes to mind is The Division 2, on my PS4. Whenever a patch dropped - no matter how small - I always needed nearly as much free space on my hard drive as the game itself took, or I'd be informed that I didn't have enough free space for the patch. And Division 2 is not a small game.

Yep Warhammer 1 and 2 have always done that. Again you tend to just not notice it until its on the 500GB SSD drive with other games and space gets tight. I did think that shifting from 1 and 2 which were in the 30-40GB region that the 3 was jumping a LOT into 120GB for a basic install. So I'm guessing they are trying to get around the issue of lots of people complaining about "It says 40GB and I've got 50GB so why don't I have enough space"

I'm expecting a chunky update tomorrow, finishing the base game packet and a day 1 patch, and a fairly long install time.

Got most of my docket cleared today, and will start the remaining game download up in the morning before getting on with the remaining laundry, exercise and breakfast- thursdays tend to be agreeable with my work schedule, so it works out pretty well.

Figure I'll kick the prologue out of the way, while I decide who I'm starting with. One benefit of the daemons of chaos faction is you can save characters for use in other games, so you can save any daemon heroes and lords and recruit them in the appropriate monogod factions. (for a much higher recruitment cost).

But I'm still leaning toward Ogres or Slaanesh. Small chance of Kislev just to get lord unlocks out of the way.

It's unpacking right now...

I think I was right about the being compressed rather than mirroring, it's unpacking 65GB into 113GB.

EDIT: Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne, and Milk for the Khorne Flakes!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I know it's early, but I'm not sure I like the new minor settlement battles. I think they'd be good if they were infrequent but I'm only a few turns in and I already feel like I've played too many of them, lol. Too many choke points / corridors and too many capture points for garrisons to defend.

Cool, cool. My entire Steam library page is black while the game is updating/unpacking. I can get a timer off the store page (about 19 minutes), but that's it.

Not worried at all.


Edit: Right, good to go. Shut down and starting up again fixed all woes (not surprised, just relieved)

I would just like to say.
FINALLY

I have been bobbing and weaving spoilers like crazy

Its been pretty annoying how much content there is.

Looking forward to having a go

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think I was right about the being compressed rather than mirroring, it's unpacking 65GB into 113GB.

EDIT: Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne, and Milk for the Khorne Flakes!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I know it's early, but I'm not sure I like the new minor settlement battles. I think they'd be good if they were infrequent but I'm only a few turns in and I already feel like I've played too many of them, lol. Too many choke points / corridors and too many capture points for garrisons to defend.

Watching the preview streams and vids, I wondered how many people would have that reaction

I'm 87% downloaded and I still don't know if I'll start as Kislev or Cathay but it's so close..




EDIT: it's downloaded and I'm playing the prologue. So far so awesome. I hope people cease their whinging about how Kislev looks because they look fantastic.

I happened to be up when it went live. So I finished the install and fired it up. There's a Prologue campaign, which I ignored, and instead started a New Campaign. This screen is changed. Unlike in the earlier games, where you saw all of the Legendary Lord's you can pick, now you go to a faction screen and choose a lord from that faction. Given how many lords will be available to pick from if you play the combined campaign, this is probably a smart change.

Started Cathay as the Storm Dragon. Watched the Cathay intro, took a glance around the map (the colors and art look different than I remember in the previous games) areas that were visible (spotted Tzeentch, unaligned Cathay, Cathay rebels, greenskins, and ogres) , and called it a night.

I'll probably take a look at the Prologue when I get home this evening.

The prologue goes on a bit too long (and the khorne quest battle is rough. Love the map though.)



I kind of want to do it again to see if there are real consequences to any of the choices, but I suspect not. And its a bit too much of a slog to do again.

Prologue was indeed a chore, but I took my time with it, trying to complete all missions and get as elite a force as I could.

Think I’m going the Skarbrand route.

Apparently a number of negative reviews on Steam. There appear to be some optimization issues. Oddly, based on what I've seen elsewhere, a high-end CPU might actually be more likely to give you issues than an older one.

However, there's also a review bombing issue. Apparently quite a few Chinese got upset about the pre-release marketing direction CA took, and are retaliating by posting negative reviews. I don't know much more than that.

Given that the game just came out, it'll likely be a bit before positive reviews show up. As I saw noted elsewhere, if the game doesn't work, you've got nothing to do but complain. If it does work, you're currently too busy playing to post a review.

Honestly I've yet to see any game these days launch without needing some patches in the first few weeks. The only ones that get around it tend to be either very simple games or those that had extensive beta or early access schemes. Ergo where the big data and error pooling happened before launch.

It's the same as how most major mmo will have a bad first week/month of server issues until the population settles down and such.

Works fine for me although I've definitely noticed my computer struggling a little but that's not a difficult fix.

Eumerin wrote:
Apparently a number of negative reviews on Steam. There appear to be some optimization issues. Oddly, based on what I've seen elsewhere, a high-end CPU might actually be more likely to give you issues than an older one.

Seems to be okay for me. I played TWW2 on a mix of high and ultra settings, I started TWW3 on high and it's been mostly fine. When I get back to the game tonight I might try seeing if I can push some settings up to ultra while remaining playable.

I don't think it was a graphics issue, but in one battle things got jittery for about 10 seconds, I have a feeling it was related to an enemy Bloodthirster trying to land in a packed blob to attack my general and either the world or just the camera tripped out when he couldn't land.

The only other annoyance was that the game launched in a much lower resolution than my monitor's, and when I turned it up to native res the UI got really big so I went back to low res, but then I discovered there's a "UI scale" option in the advanced graphics setting which was set to 200% for some reason, turned it to 150% and it's fine.

I will admit, there's some things that I've been disappointed with. Overall happy, but my gripes so far...

1. The AI has gotten dumber. I'm playing on normal battle difficulty like I did in TWW2 to stop the AI cheating, so maybe it's intentional and I have to turn up the difficulty to get non-slow level AI.

2. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like units engaged in combat spend more time just staring at each other not attacking than they did in TWW2?

3. The UI feels worse to me.

4. As I mentioned earlier, not a fan of the new tower-defence-choke-point style minor settlement battles.

Overall I’ve been enjoying it though, those are just my minor gripes. I’ll get more stuck in over the weekend when work isn’t so hectic.

HBMC's experience with TWW3 so far:

"Ok, it didn't take 4 minutes to get past the splash screen this time. That's good. Drivers are updated. Put graphics to medium high, as the FPS is the same anyway. Let's start with the prologue. Alright all loaded up. Here we... oh hello little spider! You're very tiny. What are you doing coming down from the ceiling. You're very small to be all by your... *looks up* "... self... oh... you have a lot of brothers and sisters. That's... not good."



*Half a can of bug spray later*

"Ok! Now I can play!"


Yeah. That really happened. There was a slight spider genocide.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
HBMC's experience with TWW3 so far:

"Ok, it didn't take 4 minutes to get past the splash screen this time. That's good. Drivers are updated. Put graphics to medium high, as the FPS is the same anyway. Let's start with the prologue. Alright all loaded up. Here we... oh hello little spider! You're very tiny. What are you doing coming down from the ceiling. You're very small to be all by your... *looks up* "... self... oh... you have a lot of brothers and sisters. That's... not good."



*Half a can of bug spray later*

"Ok! Now I can play!"


Yeah. That really happened. There was a slight spider genocide.

Sooooooooooooooooo being as your flag says you're in Australia I have to ask, on behalf of us who live in normal ecosystems.

How many inches across was the "small spider" ? ?

 Overread wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
HBMC's experience with TWW3 so far:

"Ok, it didn't take 4 minutes to get past the splash screen this time. That's good. Drivers are updated. Put graphics to medium high, as the FPS is the same anyway. Let's start with the prologue. Alright all loaded up. Here we... oh hello little spider! You're very tiny. What are you doing coming down from the ceiling. You're very small to be all by your... *looks up* "... self... oh... you have a lot of brothers and sisters. That's... not good."



*Half a can of bug spray later*

"Ok! Now I can play!"


Yeah. That really happened. There was a slight spider genocide.

Sooooooooooooooooo being as your flag says you're in Australia I have to ask, on behalf of us who live in normal ecosystems.

How many inches across was the "small spider" ? ?

I literally have a huntsman next to me as I type this. No, it's not a pet, it just decided to wander in and say hello.

It's the white tails and redbacks that crawl out from behind my desk that scare me more though.

 Overread wrote:
Sooooooooooooooooo being as your flag says you're in Australia I have to ask, on behalf of us who live in normal ecosystems. How many inches across was the "small spider"??

Like... rice grain sized. These were tiny baby spiders, just lots of them (around 20-ish).

If they'd been normal spider sized I would've set my apartment building on fire and called in an airstrike.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


2. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like units engaged in combat spend more time just staring at each other not attacking than they did in TWW2?

I've definitely noticed a bit of that, especially in one of the early parts of the prologue. And a few times I've had my horsies just sitting there. Really like the Kislev aesthetic and also the Tzeentch daemons are cool, it's fun to zoom in and watch them caper.

I do sort of like the prologue but also it's a lot longer than it needs to be. I stopped early evening as it finally gives me the option for diplomacy.



My cat is next to me which is much better than huntsmen and spider babies..

The Bad Moon has been found on the campaign map. Apparently it's near

 Olthannon wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


2. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like units engaged in combat spend more time just staring at each other not attacking than they did in TWW2?

I've definitely noticed a bit of that, especially in one of the early parts of the prologue. And a few times I've had my horsies just sitting there. Really like the Kislev aesthetic and also the Tzeentch daemons are cool, it's fun to zoom in and watch them caper.

A couple of times I zoomed in on my Bloodletters to watch the carnage and it seemed like they were just standing around doing nothing, lol, I seem to recall TWW2 was a bit more dynamic when you zoomed in close to a melee. I know single entities always had a bit of an issue, but Skarbrand is a lot less impressive when he spends half his time looking one way and taking a step, then looking the other way and taking a step, then repeating that a few times before he actually decides to swing his axe.