General Discussion

Just saw this on curse gaming:

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THQ's to release a Warhammer 40K MMORPG at an unspecified date, the company's confirmed. The game is currently under development at THQ's wholly owned Austin-based outfit, Vigil Games.

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Read more about it here: http://www-en.curse-gaming.com/games/54/warhammer-40k-mmo/articles/1001/warhammer-40k-goes-mmo/

Personally I am looking forward to it, but who's Vigil Games?

Company that produced Dawn of War was called Relic, THQ was only the publisher, so that doesn't clear up anything.

Am I the only one that finds it very strange that THQ is giving a project of this proportions to a new/unknown company?

New name = old developers??

Bioware have made a small sister company as well, to make their MMORPGs.

 

Edited: And as posted here: http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6166560.html?tag=topslot;title;1&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot

Relic (yes the Dawn of War developer) had ads up for MMOG developers, so in the end it could be the same ol' Dawn of War folks that makes the MMORPG, just under a different roof.

Good point that. Still if any of you have any info about Vigil Games, please post it. :)

And of course discuss Warhammer 40k mmo! :)

Heh, in the link I gave above in my edited post it actually say the following:

[Quote]Kelly Flock: Yes, we have the game in development at our Austin-based studio, Vigil Games. The team there is led by David Adams, formerly of NCsoft, and is comprised of several MMO veterans from that community. We look forward to making further announcements with more specifics on the game in the coming months. [/Quote]

hehe nice edit, thanks :)

The benefit of giving it to a virgin company, so to speak, is relatively simple.  You differentiate yourself as a major publisher from the release, and every one of the Vigil team is expendable, as they have absolutely no reputation within the industry.  So, if they make a terrible product, the entire team can be cut out like an infection with little to no backdraft on THQ.  All THQ has to do is make sure the marketing guys keep their name in the small print until they see the player base's reaction to it at an E3 preview or something of that nature.  Now, this will give Vigil an incentive to do one of two things.  First, they could make an amazing, ground-breaking and innovative piece of software that re-establishes the MMO world.  Alternatively, they could follow the same old boring trends in the MMO world that have been established by titles like WoW and EQ, and turn the 40k universe into white noise, which would suck.  As an avid table top player of 40k, I am looking forward to this, but I'm extremely skeptical as to how they are going to do it right. Consider Space Marines, for example.  They are the pinnacle of human evolution and genetic manipulation.  They all have a sliver of the essence of a living god inside of them.  A single squad of them, according to the lore, is supposed to be able to annihilate thousands of men without reenforcement.  How the hell are they going to balance a Space Marine player against an Ork player?  Now, think of the Chaos Space Marines, who have all the toughness of a Space Marine, and a slew of mutations that expand their killing power further.  The 40k universe deals in ultimates.  So, as someone who is going to college to learn this stuff and whose been a 40k fan for some time now, I'm interested to see how things would be balanced.  I figure it could happen a couple different ways.  For example, because space marines don't recruit from the imperial guard, you start as a baseline human recruit, brand spankin' new to the battle barge.  As a baseline human recruit, as you progress in the game, you'd undergo the medical procedures that make a space marine a space marine, the first being the secondary heart, and the eighteenth being the progenoids.  From there, the player would just progress as a space marine.  This would keep the playing field balanced while keeping the space marines true to lore because while the players are playing space marines as a race, they won't be space marines in power armor until later in the game, when they're fighting bigger, badder enemies.