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Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium Online Interviews: Tim Campbell Interview
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently caught up with Warhammer 40K: Dark Millenium executive producer Tim Campbell to ask him a few questions about the game that, up to now, has been shrouded in mystery. Recently devs have been opening up about the game and we wanted to give our readers information about factions, combat, Tech Priests and a whole lot more. You won't want to miss this one!
By Garrett Fuller on September 03, 2010
| MMORPG.com: | In the new trailer you talk about the Imperium of Man. Can you tell us how the Space Marines and Imperial Guard will work together? |
| Tim Campbell: | The Imperium of Man is drawn to the Sargos Sector because of a significant disturbance in the Warp that jeopardizes a rich mining world. We are not ready to disclose any further details yet around the circumstances, but rest assured that we are working on something that is truly epic and will deliver on the expectations of the Warhammer 40,000 fan base. |
| MMORPG.com: | You mentioned in another interview that there will only be two overall factions in the game. Can you explain how this will work and what armies will be working together? |
| Tim Campbell: | We are working very closely with Games Workshop to ensure that the experience that we will deliver in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online will remain true and faithful to the IP. We know that this particular issue has been a subject of much debate. However, once we have finished revealing all of the races, classes and key storylines for the game and how they all interrelate to one another, we know that the fans are going to love it. How could they not when Games Workshop is closely working with us on making sure that the game stays true to the lore and the IP. |
| MMORPG.com: | How do you plan to balance the shooter combat and melee combat in Warhammer 40,000? Both styles are very relevant to the table top game. |
| Tim Campbell: | We agree. You cannot bring the world of Warhammer 40,000 to life without embracing both shooter and melee play styles. Our plan for balancing the two is to make sure that we are accounting for both styles in every aspect of the game design. From pace to controls to enemy AI behaviors to zone design, we have had to be mindful of the fact that the players will have both powerful guns that fire off numerous rounds of ammunition and melee weapons that deliver devastating attacks. It’s a challenge to say the least, but we feel that the balance that we are driving toward here is probably the most important pillar of our game and will really set us apart from other more traditional MMOs. |
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| MMORPG.com: | Tech Priests are clearly mentioned in the trailer, can you tell us a little more about them? |
| Tim Campbell: | For anyone unfamiliar with the Warhammer 40,000 universe Tech Priests are pretty badass and generally form the brains of the Emperor’s servants. As their name suggests they are skilled technicians and scientists and take human form, but they also have mechanical body elements which makes them really cool looking as well. I wish I could give you more details about their role in the game, but I can’t at this stage. All I can say is that it’s really cool they are a part of this game and you’ll have to stay tuned for more details. |
| MMORPG.com: | How has work on the game been going? Is the team excited about meeting milestones? |
| Tim Campbell: | The team is extremely excited at this stage and we are building the game in earnest. With all of the underlying technology development and prototyping out of the way, it is thrilling to see the world of our game come to life on almost a daily basis. |
| MMORPG.com: | Both trailers have made a big splash among players. Will we see an Orc or Chaos trailer soon? |
| Tim Campbell: | Our goal is continue revealing more and more details about all of the races in our game as we move forward. We are thrilled that the community has responded so favorably to the trailers released to date. We feel like we’re just getting started and hope to deliver even more exciting material in the months to come. |
 | |
| MMORPG.com: | As fans of Warhammer 40,000 what are your favorite parts of working with the IP? |
| Tim Campbell: | We are really excited about being able to dive into the depth of the lore. The table top game is fantastic and drives fan interest. However, there is so much narrative and history in the Codexes that is difficult to cover in the table top format. We feel extremely lucky to have the benefit of this rich material to help us flesh out a deep, rich, immersive experience in our game. |
| MMORPG.com: | How will you handle the many Space Marine Chapters in the game? Will there be some form of customization for players? |
| Tim Campbell: | All I can say for now is that the chapter that we are focusing on for our base playable Space Marine is the Black Templars. There are many reasons for choosing this particular chapter that will be revealed over time. As for what other Space Marine chapters will make an appearance in DMO, we’ll keep you posted, but it’s safe to presume that there will be some sort of customization option for players, after all this is an MMO we’re talking about! ;) |
| MMORPG.com: | Can you give three core elements to the game that you feel are essential in meeting expectations of the Warhammer 40,000 fan base? |
| Tim Campbell: | The team’s number one priority is making sure that they fully bring to life the unique, rich, and violent warhammer 40,000 universe to life. Fans have been waiting for a long time for their chance to truly live in the universe and we want to make sure that we deliver on that experience. As they say in the “Grim darkness of the far future there is only war”, so obviously combat is a huge part of bringing that experience to life. With our focus on embracing both the shooter and melee combat styles, we really feel that the players will get a chance to experience eternal battle that rages across the warhammer 40,000 universe. Finally we really want to get across the epic scope of the warhammer 40,000 universe. This is a setting where war is waged across sectors where men and aliens fight and die on battlefields as massive Titans, like you saw in the videos, stride across the battlefield laying waste to everything that stands in their path. |
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| MMORPG.com: | What is your choice for Table Top army and why? |
| Tim Campbell: | Personally, I have grown very fond of the Grey Knights. I love the mystery and secrecy around their connection to the Inquisition and their ability to use psyker abilities as well as a potent array of the more convention Space Marine arsenal. They rock! |
You should have asked why they are being lazy and only having 2 factions.
I love the arrogance in the way the two faction question is answered...
The more the people at Vigil talk, the less interested in the game I get.
more than 2 factions only works in DAOC.
Black Templars probably do make the most sense for a Space Marine Chapter for PC's. Aren't they the ones that have a somewhat ad-hoc organizational structure based on "crusades", that function somewhat independantly of each other... and tend to deploy in smaller sized units?
Please, PLEASE don't give us some forced "good guys vs bad guys"! 40k is so much more complex than that...
2 factions? Lets explain away 20+ years of 40k lore because its too hard to create content, AND we are only in it to capitolize on the IP and make a bunch of coin we THINK we are going to grab from wow players...
Give me a freekin break.
[Mod Edit]
To everyone arguing that the 2 faction set up is totally against the 40k lore please remember that it was used by GW themselves in the Eye of Terror global campaign... the sides were Order and Disorder:
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Eye_of_Terror_campaign
So 2 factions can work in the lore, the question is how will it be implemented...
Now I'm guessing you assume it'll be in a crappy Wow style -(Space marine runs into an Eldar fortress, gets a quest from a Warlock, learns a new skill from a Marine that just happens to be there and trades for a nice new bolter )- way, but that doesn't need to be the case... and as we don't have anymore details yet beyond "There will be 2 factions" it's a little soon to judge.
Somehow I am not being optimistic, I expect another bland MMO like WAR or AoC turned out to be.
Warhammer Fantasy Battles also uses Order and Destruction in its most recent core rules, as part of the team-play systems. Like it or not, that particular concept has Games Workshop written all over it.
And, coincidentally, so does Warhammer.
This made me snicker:
"How could they not when Games Workshop is closely working with us on making sure that the game stays true to the lore and the IP."
I think he's blaming GW for a boring order vs destruction themed game.
"Who could argue with that order vs chaos two sided conflict? That for certain guarnetees success, right?"
Im still smiling.
The Empire of Warhammer Fantasy is not the Imperium of WH40k. The Imperium has turned hatred of Xenos (aliens) into part of their religion. There's an entire order of the Inquisition specifically dedicated to exterminating any and all alien influences. About the only thing stronger than Imperial hatred of aliens is their hatred of Chaos.
There are certainly instances that will get humans working with certain aliens, so there are ways that the two faction could work, if they limit which races are playable at all. Chaos or Tyranid invasions can inspire some cooperation with the Eldar, even though both sides will spend the whole time waiting for an opportunity to backstab the other and come out the sole survivor. So if their 2 factions are humans and Eldar versus something like Chaos and Orks (because Chaos gets Orks to do their dirty work all the time, and all Orks care about is a good fight, with the reason being practically irrelevant), I could see that working, provided they make enough reference to the intra-faction tension.
Chaos and Dark Eldar could work too, since they both are affiliated with the Ruinous Powers to a degree.
I didn't get the chance to play in Eye of Terror, so I'm a bit rusty on the lore there. Did they actually have a reason why the Necrons would be on the "side" of Chaos when the Warp is anathema to them?
There is also an entire order of the Inquisition that believes that only through the Empires Cooperation with Xenos (like the eldar) does it have a chance of survival. The Xeno Hybris is the name of that faction of the Inquisition And I would guess that they would make an appearance in the game.
Even though they're evil, wouldn't Necrons be on the side of "order"? They just have a very extreme way to bring about perfect order...the stillness of death.
The Empire and the Imperium couldn't be any more different, yes. But 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles is relatively new, and is a valid basis for indicating a trend in their methods, which is further echoed by examples in other media.
The fact is, none of the races in either game ever "specifically" get along. High Elves and Dwarfs are technically on the side of Order, but they have one of the bloodiest and longest wars in Warhammer history under their belt. They are, however, more inclined (note: not perma-alliance) to team up against a common enemy. That's what the factions and the allied army rules are designed for: not any long-standing military arrangement, but for situations where the choice is ally or die, who would each army side with? (The Imperium of Man will always claim to choose die, but very few, EVEN the Inquisition, truly put their money where their mouths are)
As for the Necrons in the Eye of Terror, they weren't particularly on any side, so much as they were continuing what they were doing: seemingly random raids, "harvesting" any living being they come across. Abaddon and Asdrubael Vect had something of a bad habit of using the chaos and disruption caused by these Necron raids to their advantage, often attacking immediately after or at the same time. The Imperium probably couldn't tell the difference.
If I were to guess, Id think that oth Necrons and Tyranids would both be NPC races since it doesnt seem viable as playable races.
Yeah they were a wild card, I think they were mainly there to mix things up a bit.
As for the Lore.. Well Abaddon was supposedly guided to the relics which granted control of the Blackstone fortresses by the C'tan called "The deciever".
The BSF's were originally ancient Eldar Warp weapons that had been used against the C'tan and Necrons, but which were lost during the fall of the Eldar.
At the End of the Eye of Terror Campaign one of the few surviving BSF's was purportedly destroyed by Necron raiders so it is possible that the Deciever had all along intended this as a way of removing the threat of the BSF's.
So by that logic they helped both sides... and neither
As for which side Necrons would go on in an MMO... Hell they shouldn't even be a playable race! .. well maybe they could be played by korean bots, but definately not people...
My worst nightmare vision of the way this game could be ruined involves Tyranids and Necrons being playable races in a WoW style alliance with Chaos and Orks... just imagine it pogoing Termagaunts babbling away in Leet!!!11!1 outside an Orktion house while some Necron does a robo /dance... <Shudder>
The Xeno Hybris are a radical faction of the Inquistion, not an Order. They're like the Xanthists, who believe the best way to defeat Chaos is to use it against itself. Like the Xanthists, most orthodox Inquisitors would view the Xeno Hybris as heretics and traitors.
It seems like a simple fact to me that unless the sides are perfectly symmetrical, one side will always outnumber the other. And since numbers count, that also necessarily means that in that situation you will get a "the rich get richer" situation, which only makes the problem worse. This is why the 3-faction issue comes up so often.
But now it seems that the 2-faction order is actually coming from GW themselves. So the new question is, can you make an RvR game work with just 2 factions? How do yous top the rich from getting richer, and one side constantly demolishing the other?
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Inquisition
Faction yes, wrong word i used.
See page 129 of the radicals handbook for Dark Heresey. The believe that the imperium must work together with xenos in order for mankind to survive. They also wish to learn from other xenos so mankind does not make the same mistakes as they did.
They fit perfectly into the formula here i think, we will see if they make an appearance in the game or not.
also, there is much infighting in the inquisition but no group is considered more powerful than the others. Therefore I think this could be an interesting step for them, especially considering that the Sargos sector where they base this game (a construct of the designers) has ben cut off from the imperium of man for centuries by warp storms. It would make sense for the Xeno Hybris to be there seeking alien technology and knowlege.
Not saying it is going to be that way but if ANY member of the inquisition says jump, the imperium in whole generally answers "how high" since the inquisition only answers to the Emporer himself.
BigJohnny -
That's a good question..
One way to do this would be to make an NPC faction that intelligently scaled up in opposition to the overpopulated side. This could carry over to battlegrounds too.
Another way would be to limit the servers people can play on.
Players can create characters of one faction on one server, but can only create characters of the opposing faction on one other server.
Each server would have a previously set optimum population for each faction and as characters log onto servers up to 50% of each faction population can freely choose which faction to play, however after any faction reaches the 50% mark further characters logging on to that faction are forced to either wait until the opposition quota also reaches 50% total as well or to log on as the opposing faction on their alt server.
As the servers are paired opposites a game wide faction preference could thereby be discouraged, though you can bet players would cry like kids who had had their lollies stolen... on the other hand they'd cry harder if a population imbalance was killing their fun.
A third way would be to make drops scale so that the overpopulated faction received lesser rewards compared to the underpopulated faction... Publicise the fact on log on and you can bet your bottom dollar that'd bring the alts out on servers with faction imbalances.
My personal favorite system would be to allow an underpopulated server to send out a SOS calling for re-inforcements from other servers... Characters from other servers would be notified ingame and could then opt to 'teleport' to the aid of that server ... in a temporary capacity of course and limited to one such jump per day .. and for participating would receive bonuses to experience as well as cash and item rewards for their service above and beyond the call of duty.
Please don't put space rail minigames! Please don't out space rail minigames!
Hmm. Not sure any kind of space control is really fitting...
40k's scale has always been designed to make an individual feel small. That's the whole point. While there are "fighters" in Battlefleet Gothic (the space ship version of WH40k), they're largely represented by cardboard tokens standing in for a large number of fighters. The main ships themselves take large numbers of ultra-specialized crew to even operate. If anything, while you're in space, if the ship isn't being boarded, you should probably just be along for the ride.
You mentioned in another interview that there will only be two overall factions in the game. Can you explain how this will work and what armies will be working together?
We are working very closely with Games Workshop to ensure that the experience that we will deliver in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online will remain true and faithful to the IP. We know that this particular issue has been a subject of much debate. However, once we have finished revealing all of the races, classes and key storylines for the game and how they all interrelate to one another, we know that the fans are going to love it. How could they not when Games Workshop is closely working with us on making sure that the game stays true to the lore and the IP.
Staying true to "the lore and the IP" is the least of the problems in a 2-faction PvP-oriented game.... and it IS a PvP-oriented game?
"races, classes and.... " ...."key STORYLINES"?!?!? Storylines are going to help you with botched core design?!?! Storylines?!?!? WTF are u on about?!?!?
/facepalm
If this turns out to be another "2 factions fighting against a common enemy" BS "experience" we grew to "love" in WoW... OMG... How much money can you burn GW?
Are we to do raids against the evil watchumacallits and in the meantime do some BGs AGAIN?
FFCS Warhammer grew to be so popular, and I've been following it from the very start, precisely because it had NO GOOD vs EVIL BS. It was a punk, "no future" alternative to americano Starwarsies and Middleearthies with their good vs evil and good inevitably triumphs because it's "good" ya know crap. Sorry GW if this is your idea, turning Warhammer into a bit grittier Star Wars then you are much much dumber than I thought and I guess all the big rats already left the ship a long time ago. GL with your new concept. I'll just try to keep the fond memories of the good old punk orc days and completely ignore whatever it is the crap you're doing nowadays. (and as WAR's "success" shows, I might not be in such an emo minority here)
/doublefacepalm
This is very, very sad watching my favorite IP ever turn into another Warhammer Online failure....
Guess I'll have to stick to the Dawn of War games, seems like Relic is the only game company that knows what there doing with regards to this IP.
Ugh. Space Marines, Imperials and Eldar Vs. Orcs, Chaos and Dark Eldar. How boring. That's what it'll turn out to be, you know it.
Im not huge into the lore of Warhammer but i don't recall the Orks working with the chaos..... my poor greenskinned brothers are so misunderstood.
That's just it, nobody works with one of the other races. They all hate or disdain all the others, except the Imps and Space Marines, and even they don't like working together.
All these people who claim to Fans of the IP and the 40k lore seem to forget how tightly GW guards this IP. Nothing gets by them that they do not want in there. That being said, if GW signs off what is in the game, that pretty much settles the argument as to whether it fits into the current lore scheme.
I skimmed the entire interview just for the "number of factions", and its 2 Factions confirmed. Argh.
why did they d<sigh>
I mean a real unique thing for it could ha<sigh>
Forget the lore, lets just move away from WoW with its<sigh>
PvP bal<sigh>
2 Factions<sigh> I mean if only they<sigh>
Their defense of the two faction system tells me that PvP will be meaningless drivel; instanced BGs all over again; If there is territorial control it will be the quick and dirty kind where the whole map changes hands daily.
So much for any kind of meaningful open world PvP.
Doesn't mean I won't try the game, but a major kick in the pants.
Yeah, I feel GW's hand on the Order vs. Chaos issue more than the devs. As long as they took some lessons from WAR's two faction system to heart, I'll be looking forward to the game.
*sigh* Only two factions, sense another Warhammer Online coming here. Definitely put a big hit to my interest in this but I'll try to watch with a somewhat open mind. Even though hearing only two factions is pretty close to putting the nails in the coffin already.
"subject of much debate"?
Not really. With the exception of a few die hards who place their faith in GW to 'make it right' most people hate the idea. Period.
Try reading the forums (any forums) Tim.
Coupled with the fact that Vigil want to restrict access to the Space Marines:
"But you won't be able to be a Space Marine right away, because that's a very unique class, if you know the universe. The road there is a great road, and they are in the game." - Danny Bilson - THQ Games
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-17-thq-on-everything-interview?page=2
Based on that I would pick a massive population imbalance to Chaos.
I predicted this pre release for WAR too - but I got the timing wrong. I guessed months - in fact it was over in weeks.
But don't worry Vigil, population balance will be restored soon enough... after 90% of your players have left by the end of the third billing cycle and you are down to a half a dozen servers for the die hards who are praying for a miracle patch to save the game and bring people back to their beloved IP...
Well said and that is basically how it went for me. I was reading the interview up till the two factions part then I just sighed and couldn't keep reading anymore of it.
FAIL for using the Warhammer Age of Reckoning screen in the article. Cmon editors, wake up and smell the proofs.
On the 2 faction issue, it really does seem like they need a 3rd faction considering the various directions the different armies come from. However, I'm willing to give Vigil and GW the benefit of the doubt to see where they take it.
It's quite possible they're only putting in the Imperium and Chaos sides, and Eldar/Tau/Etc xenos people will be put in as NPCs or a 3rd faction at a later date.
Unfortunately we still don't know quite enough information yet.
I don't know man... NPC 3rd faction sounds like even more fail than just 2 factions. It just takes an already bad idea (2-factions), and adds a cumbersome element to it of random NPCs doing annoying things.
Both trailers have made a big splash among players. Will we see an Orc or Chaos trailer soon?
Our goal is continue revealing more and more details about all of the races in our game as we move forward. We are thrilled that the community has responded so favorably to the trailers released to date. We feel like we’re just getting started and hope to deliver even more exciting material in the months to come.
This part made me lulzie.
I played WAR from the start til about a month ago. WAR is an awesome game in terms of PvP... the RvR and Scenarios are really good content, unfortunatly it had a few problems
First, the devs took too long to fix many of the bugs, took too long to correct class imblances and in some cases were WAY to heavy handed in the nerfs to more powerful classes.
Second, they overhyped and were not ready for launch. Many things were lacking like PvE experience and Public Quests and the Auction House and the Crafting... seriously this is a PvP game... so it should not matter that much... but they overhyped themselves so much they passed as a "generalist" MMO that does it all awesome... they brought in PvErs and Socialisers who were interested in the one thing WAR did well... the PvP.
Third... and that's the important one... they put aside the 3 faction model from DAoC thinking things would work out fine and it didn't... server balance was almost impossible to achieve. Populations would be completly dominated only to eventually make a comeback but would quickly evolve into dominating the other side again... you'd end up with about only 2-3 weeks with both sides at even forces. They eventually worked on way to establish balance in otherways with artificial "underdog" system but it was too late, months of domination had driven too many people away to Aion and Darkfall.
Now... while "Order vs Destruction" worked ok lore wise for WAR... it was not ideal in terms of game mechanics... artificial balancing is just not the same as 3 factions.
SO WHY THE FRAK WOULD YOU PUSH A 2 FACTION SYSTEM THAT MAKES NO SENSE IN TERMS OF LORE OR GAME MECHANIC INTO A W40K MMO???????
Of course... in all this... I'm assuming that this W40K MMO is basically an RvR type game I don't see how you could make an MMO with that IP without being heavy on the PvP... I was taking that for granted... Only now am I realising I could be wrong... cause Vigil, you seem to be making illogical choices. The fact that this game could be anything else than full blown PvP / RvR had not even dawned on me... *shrugs*
I was hoping this thing on your site was a misunderstanding or a bad joke.
Side with the forces of Order, or the vile hosts of Destruction, in a war that will unlock ancient secrets, reveal dark purposes, and determine the fate of the Sargos Sector. For in this dark millennium, there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter.
I've lived through it in WAR and it's a game I still love, but I'm done with that and won't do it again except for SWTOR cause it makes sense there and its a true RPG in a setting where all that works. So you lost me right there.... that was the one thing that would have pulled me away from SWTOR to you... something most IPs do not naturally lend themselves to... multiple factions and awesome RvR.
2 factions = fail!
You dont have my support here!
Each race should be it's own faction, and work on some alliance system, player driven.
It's 15 years i wait for a W40k licenced massive, i'm really disapointed you go the blizzard way for it.
me confuse... then rage
now words hard... sentences... hmm
characters better!
#$%^#$~|\"%^#$%&*&&(}L*#$%^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111!!!!!!!!!1111
GW will sign off whatever grants 'em some money without impacting on the general lore ("hey, let's say the Sargos sector is completely isolated, so you can do whatever heresy you want in, and we don't have to change anything out of it")
Apart from a few people who seem to want to protect the ip at any cost, most consensus is that 2-factions appears to be a major design decision with very limiting consequences to the game:
1) The company keeps side-stepping the question and not being upfront and announcing with as little information as possible eg Mythic-WAR do this all the time.
2) Not explaining how choosing the WAR40K IP makes sense for the type of game they want to make, especially as this IP is renowned for races All-against-All xenophobic battles.
3) Not willing to open into discussion about what exactly their faction system is and WHY they chose 2 Factions over >2-Factions ie 3 factions and the implications for high-level game design.
4) What will differentiate their game from WoW, WAR, Aion, AoC where players are perhaps jaded/disgruntled with a 2-faction playable system or what sort of PvP systems are intended?
5) Could they discuss alternative models such as 3/5 faction systems each with their unique story and greater potential for player interactions and PvP modes and possibilties for expansions of new races in the WAR40K lore? Why did they not choose such a model, what were it's disadvantages?
6) Why as a potential buyer should I invest in this game when I am not informed about it in the right way or it looks to be another clone or the pertinent questions from previous feedback are not answered? Saying the IP is great is secondary to a great design.
My opinion is that when you are doing a big campaign for table top to make it follow some scenario for ease of use you split it into 2 factions, also helps make the sides even. But overall you don't see anything but tenuous alliances formed that after a couple of battles dissolve. That is why most of the fans for 40k are up in arms over the whole 2 factions issue.
Most want that true feeling of its everyone against everyone, the gritty and bleak never ending war that has raged for how long? Reallllllly effing long thats how long. But to do this with the MMO is going to require to much work and effort for most companies because they want to not have to work on the game for more then the industry standard time frame. At least thats how it seems to me.
I wanted to play Warhammer online so much that when it was announced I went to their site everyday just to see if there were any new released info on stuff, most importantly the races released only to find disappointment every time because my favorite ones were not there. Finally I realized that I need to be calm and just wait let the game develop and surely they were going to include nearly all the different ones. Nope totally and udder disappointment when I finally hear that the game is near to launch and I go to check and still only the same six that had been stated since I last looked. Still to this day the have not and probably will not add for than a few more and according to what I have seen if they do they adding them the wrong way. Oh well I gave up on WAR along time ago and unless things really come around with 40KDMO I will just have to play DoW single player and be happy with it. Still kinda keeping my mind open to this game and will wait and see cause it still has some time till launch about the only thing I can do.
Yeah, i guess that will be the factions, This means:
1. Its lame.
2. Any kind of "meaningful" pvp will be impossible, unless the faction are both equally "cool" and balanced, which almost never really woked in any game with 2 factions so far. DAoC´s kind of "self balancing" three faction model is the only model that works, more or less.
DAOC had factions that mostly resembled humans,and mmos weren't mainstream at the time,you might say that 2 sides could ally against the strongest one,sure but then the 13 year old kid team comes and attacks everyone and screws it all up then it's back to more of the same.
I suggested how RvR (with many factions) could work in this post
But I wasn't very clear on how it could be automatic.
As I see it it would work like this;
1000 players online total
150 Space Marines
100 Imperial Guard
75 Eldar
25 Tau/Kroot
350 Orc
250 Chaos
50 Dark Eldar
so... the game automatically does the following....
Allows alliances between Eldar + Tau + Imperium of Man (SM and IG)
Automatically enforces temporary alliance between Tau and Eldar
Allows alliance between Dark Eldar and Chaos Marines and automatically enforces it
Forbids an alliance betwwen Chaos and Orc.
This now effectively gives;
250 Space Marine + Imperial Guard
100 Eldar + Tau
350 Orc
300 Chaos + Dark eldar
Now... if the Imperium of Man players and the Eldar Tau players don't agree to an alliance (giving them a 350 player faction) then the game also;
Generates NPC Necron attacks on Both Orc and Chaos AND a NPC Trynid attack on the Imperium of Man.
As populaton numbers change (let's say school gets out in the East Coast of the USA and those guys are mostly rabid Imperial Guard players?)
1000 players online total
100 Space Marines
400 Imperial Guard
50 Eldar
0 Tau/Kroot
250 Orc
125 Chaos
75 Dark Eldar
Now the game;
Allows and automatically imposes a Space Marine + Eldar alliance
Allows and automatically imposes a Chaos + Dark Eldar alliance
Allows an Orc + Chaos + Dark Eldar alliance (but leaves that up to the players)
Forbids the Imperial Guard to work with anyone (generates a reason the Space Marines should not work with them... suspected Heresy?)
Completely blocks entry to Tau space (Warp Storms etc)
Ends all Necron attacks on Chaos and the Orcs.
etc.
What a bunch of nonsense. I love this quote:
"We are working very closely with Games Workshop to ensure that the experience that we will deliver in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online will remain true and faithful to the IP."
i.e. Games Workshop is dictating to us that they will have only two factions and who they will be. Mythic found out that working with Games Workshop is a complete waste of time. Kind of like working with LA. Games Workshop is clueless how a MMO works hence they insist on a multitude of stupid design decisions.
Anyone thinking this game will be great has loose marbles in the brain. Games Workshop will insist it be at best mediocre.
When will any of these IP owners grasp that board game mechanics do not translate well when it comes to MMO's?
Such a shame, this could have been a great game.
I can't wait for the game to come out and see every single one of you playing in it because it will happen. BTW the reason WAR failed wasn't due to the 2 faction system it was due to the fact that mythic wasn't able to have stable servers for the first year. Having the servers crash after you take over a fort was terrible.
I have been waiting for a 40k MMO for years but i dont have high hopes for this game sadly
This game needs to be planetside with a war40k skin put on top.
2+ years out and people are already starting to complain. We do not know what kind of racial grouping mechanics are even hinted at being in the game yet and everyone is slamming unknown decisions. For all we know Vigil could place some sort or soft grouping penalties. Vigil could have negative exp, reduced healing or even friendly fire on classes that are not of your race. Soft penalties like that would lead to race only guilds/groups more then likely and would have people forming 1 race guilds.
Still to early to whine about 2 factions...
Logic? Common sense? A forum blogger craves not these things.
What?
I think you will get disagreement from almost everyone on that statement. Name one two faction pvp game that has been successful? I can't think of any. It got so bad in Aion, that they had to disallow creation of new characters for one faction on some servers. That pretty much explains why two faction pvp just does not work.
DAoC on the other hand the pvp was successful mainly because of 3 factions. There is always a dominate faction, but with two other factions competing against it, there is balance achieved somewhat. Does not have to be 3 factions, could be 4 or more. Of course that would make implementation hard for the developers, so three is a pretty good rule.
It's probably best to wait til the game is done to underline major design flaws... oh wait no it's not.
The guy does an interview and is asked about the 2 factions... he acknoledges the negative reactions they've recieved and does nothing to correct the basic message that it's a 2 faction game. We know what we need to know.
No, you do not have to wait for it to be released, but at least wait until the PvP is better explained.
there should be more than 2 factions. anything else is not sticking to the lore of the ip. full stop. if you think that the xenophobic imperium of man is going to work with the eldar then this is sadly mistaken. there are many cases of the 2 fightinng against chaos, but never togeather. change this at least to 3 way with orcs as the third. cause everyone knows with the ip that orcs will fight anyone as long as the fight is good.
Have faith brothers, they may just be putting two factions down for the time being... remember the DOW series there were only few races at the time, they added more as expansions came out and more backstory and gameplay functions...
They will probably do the same here and build the story where the imperium of man splits from corruption and factions will break into subfactions or even just no faction just race...
Yeah, okay.
Like in WAR - about two months out from release - when Mark Jacobs said that he was confident that the PvP would balance itself out despite the fact the developers had no mechanism in place (and no backup plan) if it didn't?
Because, I mean, in Beta it worked fine... you know when people didn't really care which side they were on and were prepared to play the less cool stuff because, you know, it was free and everyone was playing nice?
My words exactly!
While two factions does seem alittle...less..then what a 40k game should have, I'm not sure everyone should be so quick to judge that it will "destroy the lore" of 40k, it could wind up to work pretty well with the lore, who knows.
Sounds horrible...
I really want to echo this, because I've seen this happen time and time again.
People go into these games thinking "oh, it's only in beta, things will improve", and are not being critical enough of the game. Then it releases in pretty much the same formula as it was in beta, and everyone is surprised.
There's this blind optimism that things will be fine, and there will be a miracle patch, or some landmark interview with the devs where they'll explain it all and everything will be alright.
The reality is, from my experience, that the major points that are revealed even VERY early on, will usually end up in the game at release exactly the same way. They won't get changed during alpha, or beta, or in a miracle patch, ever.
So if anything, this is the BEST time to be overly critical with this game. Because it's still possible at this point for them to change things and decide to go for a 3-faction system, or a player-driven faction system, or whatever. If it goes into alpha with 2-factions, that's it. It will remain in that fashion until launch, then the game will see a surge of players who will shortly leave, and it will go into maintainance mode where there's no hope of ever seen the major flaw in the design fixed. Or.... they could just do the right thing now, and have a winning game on their hands.
I basically agree with everyone else who's posted so far. This game died before it got off the ground.
I like how he keeps throwing GAMES WORKSHOP in our faces, as if thats supposed to glaze over their poor decisions and make us forget all about the lore breaking travesty that is, this game. Its clearly going to be a pathetic WoW clone, where you KILL 10 SPACE BEARS, recieve Enchanted Chainsword of the Monkey. Another thing I hate is the graphics. In order to portray a dark, gritty future, I would suggest using more dark, gritty looking graphics. These WoW-Marines just arent going to cut it with the fans.
The more and more they talk about this game, the worse it sounds. Too bad they wont listen to the fans on this one. Just another half-assed game thats gonna fall by the wayside like everything else. Broken lore, broken gameplay, and the usual. But hey, theres still that Space Marine 3rd person shooter coming out. That game looks far more phenomenal than this travesty. I think ill go with that for my 40k fix.
Eh, this isn't really surprising. MMO developers are physically and mentally incapable of making a game that respects an existing IP. They just can't do it. The genre they work in is too rigid and too confining, and they either don't have the money or talent required to break the mold (sometimes both).
The short history of MMOs is littered with titles that bastardize their source material. The only question is how much bastardization is going to take place. Is it going to be a decent, but well camouflaged amount (LOTRO), or a giant-turd-in-the-breakfast-cereal-of-every-fan amount (SWG, WAR).
The only other question is when all of you folks will wake up and stop buying this shit. WAR40K is being made because they know that every WAR fanbot will buy it regardless of his forum rants about the lore.
Can't do crap about fanbois besides warn them.
But I question this game even coming out. They invested very little as they re-use the darksider engine and THQ has the long term license for W40K games already... If it's not looking good I think they're gonna change or pull the plug.
I don't know of any other MMO THQ has... it's not their thing... they might just shy away and push this off to a later date or hand it to a different studio.
I was tracking this for a loooong time, but from what I read recently and saw , all I can say is...another awesome IP going to waste! The cemetery is full of them now! What a waste of money, work and men...
Summary of interview:
-yes we are using the same engine as WOW, thats why it looks like wow, but the main point is we are planning to steal away WOW customers.
-2 factions cause 3-5 is too much work, its easier to copy paste with 2 factions, also other factions will be NPC (just like space bears)
-if we push put a POS game its not our fault, we are working closely with GW
Wow, there are a lot of knowitall whiners in the world, more than I anticipated. Cant wait to now see you guys in this game... im looking forward to it.
Two factions in WH40K? Hahahahahaha.
Oh wait, they are serious. In lore, the Imperium working with, say, the Eldar, would be a 1 off kind of situation, usually involving the Inquisition against a demonic manifestation or a Tyranid invasion. And no Space Marine Chapter Master worth the name would entrust his Marines in an alliance with Xenos with a specific ORDER from the Inquisition. (and even then it's still 50/50)
Just like WAR when us beta testers saw the writing on the wall about 2 faction RvR (and the multitudinoous things like, say, memory leaks) the designers/programmers will ignore us and stick to the developement plan.
Why? Because it's all about the money. And my personal theory that Games Workshop actively tries to gimp MMO development so it doesn't take away from miniature sales.
in beta no one said a thing about the 2 factions. The 2 faction system wasn't the problem with WAR the memory leaks and overall server stability is what killed it.
Pretty much. I actually enjoyed WAR to a degree, but what knifed WAR in the spleen going out the gate had very little to do with the 2 factions and/or the races contained therein. The PvP was great for the half hour or so the game would run before the memory leak crippled it, and the PvE was trite and miserable outside of public quests. The public quests were great, except many required a full party to finish, and most people couldn't be bothered to play anything except the PvP which was, to a very real extent, the only truly rewarding element of the game.
The fact that it released missing 4 classes and that any type of endgame barring non-functioning city raids on the two major cities that they managed to put in was mostly limited to T4 ORvR and Scenario work didn't help either.
While I dont know anything about the Warhammer IP except through the single player pc games and what my friend has told me over the years of the tabletop stuff(not much at all) I dont see any reason why a two faction system can not work within the overall IP itself. I dont think anyone expects them to recreate the entire WH40K universe from scratch at release in an MMO setting. If they do they are either siimply crazy or dont understand basic economics.
The only thing they have to do is bring the scale of the playable universe down to the size in which only 2 factions make sense (single world fighting over a simple minor issue in relation to the entire 40K universe). Limit the unit types available such that they make sense inside this storyline then in future expansions etc more factions on different worlds with different unit types could be opened up with their own storylines etc.
In this way each expansion could be considered its own scenario possibly played as a "seperate" type of game where characters from the old world do not mix with characters of the new world.
There is a reason why the complexity of games is limited, especially upon release and it usually has to do with money. Everything costs money and there is a limit to how much a company has to work with when creating something new. I would much rather play an extremely well made game with a very narrow focus than a so so game with a very broad focus.
In 40K, there is only war. That sums it up. War and then more war. Everyone is warring with everyone else. Period. Doesn't make a very tidy mmo setting, but thats the IP they chose.
Scale it down to 3 races. Do them right and make them as complete as possible. Add more races later as part of expansions. If they can make the game feel like a real extension of the IP, even if it doesn't include everything, then they will have captured something special and the game will only be stronger for it.
What GW/Vigil, and some of us are missing, is that they are not the only ones who own the lore. We have been telling this story over and over for 25 years. We voted on which aspects were cool and which weren't with our money (I voted for Squats). Those who wanted to play multiple races bought multiple armies because the lore said they wouldn't mix. You can't negate all that with a gimmick and expect everyone to buy it just because it has the almighy GW stamp of It's Profitable For Us At This Moment.
Under the Imperium of Man, I bet they have a SM class (tank), an IG (ranged dps), techpriest (healer), some sort of psyker (controller, buffer), and an inquisitor (rogue). Unfortunately that's WAR with guns. It may be fun for a while, but it will always have that forced, artificial feel and the sense that it should have been so much more.
Its going to be WAR. In Space. And WAR was just awful. I spent £40 on it and the best part of it was the uninstall button.
Maybe people will one day move on from MMOPRGs being flavour of the month and take their 2nd rate game production to another genre. Like racing / driving sim. Or sports.
I fail to get excited about this and i've loved 40K for many years. Just like when i tried GW, DDO, SWG, WAR and more....I think my WoW subs are well and truely safe. Until The Old Republic Comes out.
Yes, okay, money.
And if you don't have the money stay the hell away from complex IPs.
If you want to develop a 'cheap(er)' MMO - develop your own IP and don't hype it to all hell creating unrealistic expectations.
Right now there are a growing number of MMO companies going bankrupt. That should be a warning to others.
WH40K is a well known IP - people know what factions / units / weapons are available and they know the lore. That creates one hell of an expectation.
It's going to be expensive to deliver an MMO for that IP - so if Vigil don't have the money required to do a proper job they should surrender the IP. Because if they continue and don't have the funds they will release a half arsed game, fail, go bankrupt and be left with nothing.
A safer option for them (if they are not sure if they have the money required) would be to start a trucking company... at least that way if it all goes wrong they can sell the trucks.
I enjoyed WAR too and I agree. Stability and bugs was it's first problem. But then they fixed that and the loss of players stabilized, even though they had to merge like 60 servers into 12 or something like that.
However population balance WAS a problem. When you play the game and are dominated for 7 months straight you lose people, which makes matters worst. You can merge servers to balance it out but that only works because you are bleeding people...
In they end they went for game mechanics that favors the underdog... it kind of works... but most people naturally demanded a 3rd realm because that is a more "organic" way to balance things, and for them to stick to what they knew, which is DAoC.
As much as I did enjoy WAR... 2 factions is wrong for this IP and a bad strategy when so many games already offer it.
Nearly all the time in DAOC on my server the two weaker factions would team up to take on the leading one. That was the balancing factor which 2 sides lacks. The picture for this article was very dark millenium but everything else I have seen shouts pastel coloured millenium, lets hope grim and gritty wins out.
Not sure if this has been said already, apoligies if so. WAR didn't exactly do well, I seriously doubt GW will allow this game to be destroyed by bad lore. If they say 2 factions can and will work and GW have said "yup its cool with us" then I for one will wait to see how its explained with an open mind.
I'd prefer more than 2 factions don't get me wrong, but as long as the game works and as long as the reasons behind 2 factions works then I'm happy :)
Going to be crap. They'll build it up to be something that can't be delivered and we'll all just be pissed off. Will go the same way as most the other heavy IP games of the past 4 years. Shame, could've been so much more with the willingness to take some risks.
Every army should be it's own faction.
If they can't have everything finished for release they can release other armies and races as updates and tell players who are playing those new races as they're released to shut up and suck it up. They got the race so no they won't get any special treatement because the other race has been in play for nine months.
Land should be divided like DAoC with PvE zone and open planets that are up for conquer.
PvP should be mandatory with your pve 'prowess' dropping without engagement in the real war...ie 'training' will only take you so far.
Crafted items should be the best items available beyond extremely rare weapons captured from pvp planet fortresses that can be wielded for two weeks before they are 'stolen' back by whatever assassin/merc group you want to spin a story about.
Fighting should result in other bonuses, whether they be crafting, melee, ranged, extra 'income' 'cash drops' better crafting resources from foundary whatever.
They state from day 1 we balance our powers/abilities/classes for pvp or pve. I don't care which one but they should state it and stick with it and tell crying newbies to go back to whatever game they came from when they cry for more balance because they suck. Because Devs need to state we balance our game according to what we perceive as fair. Not what you want you fotm to be.
But hey why would any marketing guru or producer possible allow a dev to 'alienate the customer base' to that degree. Instead they'll make a crap two sided game that'll be a token homage to 40k that the enthusiasts they're trying to bring in will simply go 'screw that, was good for alook but will go back to my TABLE TOP gaming and MINITAURE PAINTING and BUILDING TERRAIN and sharing all those things with groups of people who love doing those same things. One day these people will get a clue that just because something has a fanbase or enthusioasts doesn't mean that they'll come play MMO's because they're a completely different thing. Sure some of us play MMO's and own half a dozen armies and have been playing since good old WD was a small orange fanzine in black and white and when someone talks about squat trikes and rogue trader and harlequins we have a clue.
Or we understand that something like Xenos Hybris is a RADICAL MINOR faction and has no real support at all and the majority of humanity would right it off as a bunch of heretics who should be burnt at the stake in lore and outside of lore was nothing but a little fluff to add to a TABLE TOP ROLE PLAY GAME as BAD GUYS for the HEROIC PC's to interact with. But hey keep grasping at those straws. We also understand that the Eye of Terror was a way to include all players in a game and was done as a marketing ploy for customers and nothing really to do with lore as it was written. Scenario was created so people could play.
Suffice to say weak thinking, spineless producers and creators will leave us with a hlaf baked imitation of every other MMO we have out there in an attempt to make ap lay for a big market without understanding a small niche product like table top W40K gaming went out on a limb years ago and certain people loved it and respected it and others simply thought it was crap. Same will happen here and in some stupid attempt to please everyone the developers and producers will let down everyone.
For gods sake, I wish some game company would grow a pair and build us a game with meat on it's bones and an identity I can respect and become passionate about...
GL DMO, you're going to need it...
The Eye of Terror campaign is so specific that it shouldn't be taken as an example.
In 40k there's no way space marines would deal with Eldars or Tau or anything xenos as they have been brainwashed for centuries to hate anything non "Emperor certified", they even slaughtered humans by the millions because they refused to acknowledge the Emperor.
Never forget than in 40 the Imperium are not the "good guys" they are an ultra violent dictatorship who slaughters everything that doesn't fit their belief. The faction which would be the closest to the "good" side would probably be the Tau.
As far as black templars, well... not really my cup of tea, u'd give me Blood Angels or Space Wolves, ok, but BT...
So far i'm not optimistic on this game; the engine looks pretty outdated, the factions system will be bland at the best, it'll prolly be something as failed as WAR. But who knows, we might get surprised by a good MMO one day.
Yes and no.
While initially those were the major problems that did "kill" it, the 2-faction concept cock-up was lying in wait.
I've been playing WAR since open beta until now and I believe, however immodest it might sound, I have just a little tiny bit of authority to speak of these matters over folks who quit in the first month and are still talking about "game-killing" problems that were actually solved a few years back. If someone starts hating WAR because "everybody's in scenarios and RvR lakes are empty" you know the said "expert" hasn't played the game in the past 1 1/2 years. But let me continue:
Now that there are no memory leaks and server stability is pretty much stellar and all the technicalities are more or less solved it is NOW that you can really appreciate how dumb and unworkable 2-factions are in a RvR game.
Sorry, but at THIS moment, 2-factions is THE number one problem WAR has and it is the prime reason this game won't ever live up to its potential no matter how much they manage to polish it. Simply put, it is boring and predictable. The T4 campaign is boring and predictable back-and-forth tug of war that always plays out the same. A game can be whatever it wants to be but it must never ever be boring and predictable and they have no way of really solving this except a complete overhaul of all the games zones and races and classes.. This is the PRIME reason WAR is not working right now.
It is a textbook example how a single flawed core concept can pretty much negate all the subsequent work and polish on a game. If you build your house on a flawed foundation ("say this sandbank looks really cool with the pretty sea-view") it doesn't matter how much money and effort you pump in it, it is till going to sink.
Might like a system with 2 factions? But say you are stupid? You are not able to invent the game mechanics and copy WOW, no site can invent a BG and destroy that of the 40k, with a BG that promised well you have managed to achieve yet another trite, simplistic, and as a clone of WOW that will eventually be a huge FLOP, which is even closer to the figures of the original game as all WOW clones in recent years to flop continues you developers are still not able to understand that people want something new and not a copy of what already exists, and as if that were not enough to destroy it a title instead of your small and bankruptcy game deserves much, you could easily make 3 or 4 but no factions must meet to play good against evil because you are not able to do something serious, as we will have the classic SITEMA idiot class with tank, DPS, melle, etc., and tell us that this will be new and we like it? We will meet to pick mushrooms with a space marine on duty for the victim? And maybe with the little animals Tyrannyd as bad in the woods? But please you are just incapable of buffoons who hope copying a game that has had success mixing it with a title which in turn succeeded to outperform the market with little effort, at least evitatevi the usual nonsense of you will like how we are doing, " because it is a copy of something already there but I'll pretend to be new, "that you are inept.
Same mistakes all over again.
Neeeeeext!
I'm just hurt....2 factions just doesn't fit. People could try as they like to justify it but it wont work for me with 40k. I'd say the best thing they coulda done was make it 4 factions: Imperium, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Orks.
Everyone could have just been going against eachother trying to achieve their own goals...shit, if they devs were GOOD devs, they could have done this.
Having read the interview I signed up to the web site to state how disappointed I am with the 2 factions. Is there anyway we can put our point across to the Dev since I would say 95% of people are unhappy with the 2 factions idea (old idea that is).
Im really starting to think Games Workshop is in the middle of a warp storm... How can they even aprove a W40k game that looks like a Willy Wonka fantasy game? With graphics as if the models are painted by a 2 year old? Were is the gritty universe, no future, bloody war and lovecraft madness feeling?
Has the developer even seen GW artwork??
Why isnt Relic doing this game, atleast they tend to get the balance between computer game graphics and W40k lore right (well mostly)
Or is GW just a money hungry corp, that want to get back at Blizzard for nicking all there ideas?
I don't know it just worries me even the Dark Libary book covers are starting to look like Manga drawings and a lot less oil painting stuff.
I guess we all have to get used to a W40k universe were the 4 gods of Chaos are portaited as angry Teletubbies just so to increase the target demographic.
PS if the factions are gonna be order and corruption then the inquisition should execute an exterminatus order on the GW system cause they have been corrupted by Nurgle...
I just read that this is due for release in 2013... Seriously... whats the point in releasing info now? I think its bad enough when games try to get you hooked 6 months before release, but 2013??
Wake me up in 3 years time.
I was excited when they put out the first trailer for a WH40k MMO but I did have some concerns when you really start thinking about what they're saying and showing.
The faction issues in relation to the IP hasn't been answered at all and was brushed aside with a comment along the lines of, "GW is working with us. How can it go wrong?" It is the biggest point of concern now for WH40k fans. Nothing else really is wrong from what we know, but the idea of this game going the route of Order vs Destruction, ala Warhammer Online doesn't sit well with many.
Oh, and this interview doesn't really tell much. Granted, the game is quite a ways off, but still, it doesn't say anything useful in new information.
Look in 40k lore does 3 factions make any more sence than 2 factions? If you have 3 factions how are you going to break them up? Either way there is going to be an alliance of some sort weather it's Chaos and Orks versus Imperium of man versus Eldar. Nope if your going the multiple seperate server route 2 playable factions make sence with maybe a 3rd NPC faction of Nids and Necros that wouldn't really co-operate but would be attacking from different parts at different times maybe. On such server setups more than 3 factions would spread the playerbase to thinly and all kinds of weird player made alliances would be created anyway which could end up being worse.
To illistrate take a server population. Now divide that in half to represent how many can play at any one time. Now divide that by however many factions your thinking of. Thats the best case senerio of how many people you have playing your faction while your online. So with a 20,000 server population 3 faction system your best case senerio for potential team mates is 3333. With 4 factions it's 2500 and so on and so forth. Of those potential team mates though alot don't want to do what your doing, alot arn't at a high enough level, alot are to high a level and some are complete idiots on your ignore list.
The obvious solution to this is to have everyone on 1 server but it would appear that only a couple of small niche game developers have the technology to do this. Then again these guys also arn't looking for 1 million customers straight off the bat like THQ is. It would also appear evan the most advanced dev team on this sort of set up (CCP) runs into problems with around 350,000 accounts when over 30,000 want to try and play at once. So it would appear that the infrastructure and server technology isn't up to the task to handle a single sever with the kind of numbers the big devhouses want/need to justify the expence of developing a MMO.
The next solution would be some kind of lobby type system. However recent experiments in such systems wouldn't seem to support this solution. APB is struggling financially, Global Adgenda has been forced to drop the sub and now runs a GW type setup and still doesn't seem that popular. Crimecraft is FTP and dropped off most peoples radar not that it registered much of a blip on them anyways. Not exactly the kind of results you can take to the investors and expect to make it through the presentation let alone getting to the point where you can ask them for money.
Nope the best of a bunch of poor options remains multiple seperate servers and that means low numbers of factions of which at least in this case 2 playable ones makes as sence as 3 while leaving room to add more races in future expansions.
I really wont mind on 2 factions cause winter assault has done two races allied. kind of...
Still I just dont want to see eldar xenos in an imperial city selling good, or imperial of man on craftworlds selling there good.
Space marines flying falcon grav tanks and using eldar guns. Its not 40k :(
What they are going to have server stability and crashing problems as well???? Because that was WARs only problem
They could do 3 factions for now. Space marines/Imperial , Orks and Eldar then just add 1-2 factions in the future. Then make it only 2 servers for Us and Euro to maximize the population. And have like a mini peace treaty that last for a few hrs to help them overcome the faction with a lot of players IMHO. So whats your solutions?
so true, so true :(
The problem with two factions is not a lore-problem it's a player-problem, having only two factions makes the population of ither realm a problem.
If one of the factions has to many members the "smaller" faction will get a higher rate of people quitting the game becouse they get owned, and then the problem will getting worse.
The third stage is that the players of the high-pop realm starts quitting becouse they have to few people to fight.
Best factions would be Imperial, Ork, Chaos. Later you could add Tau(?) to Imperium, but Elder don't sit well with any faction. Time locks, scalable difficuty keeps and time windows are the answer to faction balance.
Hows "WAR" doing again? not so good last i cheaked, two fractions has been done to death, NOBODY wants to play another clone.... THis game will fail as all the rest who try to copy what has gone before. People want new things or we wouldent have evolved from using sticks and stones. Read up on your history, EVOLUTION is what the MMO genre needs not more on the same old bullshit we have been spoonfeed since 2004.... There hasent been mush Inovation or development of core fetures since WOW...... Before every MMO felt diffrent now they all feel the same......
Server stability and crashing were WAR's only problems?
LOL!
Are you talking about Warhammer Online? It had a slew more hardcore problems. Order being lackluster compared to Destruction. DPS uber alles. Nobody doing RvR despite the PvP emphasis of the game and everyone sitting inside of scenarios. Nobody doing Public Quests. And that's just for starters.
Maybe they fixed things by now, but those were some of the major issues when the game came out. If they did fix it, well, not as many people are there anymore.
You were talking about WAR, right? lol!
Ok I see where your going with this post. I have played my fair share of MMO's were ive spent two to three hours a time in game without even coming into contact with another player.
This usually happens three to for month after release after all the hype has passed and the die hard fanboys are the onlyones left still clinging onto the idea that somehow there going to get the problem fixed and then some how pople are going to notice that its been fixed and sub again in their droves to give the game a second chance. one thing ive notice about every release of a new game is that the player numbers that the bigwigs acount for when lanching a triple A title are usually massivly under estimated leading to servere server lag and instability. i remember Blizzard scratching their heads as to were exactly they found the several million player base that seemed to popo up out of no were. With an IP like WH40k the problem of the millions of willing players wanting to transfer their passion from the table top to the mmo game. The problem is the tech. Now I could belive that the tech issue was a Problem if there wernt allready mmo title's out there allready using the multifaction model and has and is doing successfully allready.
Man am i disappointed. Two factions? Imps + Elder + Chaos + Orcs and your telling me your story will somehow make sense with two factions?
I think they totally lost it, sorry. But what makes Warhammer 40k great is the immersion, the fact that its not about good or evil but about kicking ass. I can totally see myself playing a ork and walking up to some chaos cultist to receive my orders, yeah thats totally what being a orc is all about. Or how about a spacemarine taking orders from a elder? It made little sense in fantasy Warhammers world, but it actually makes zero sense in W40ks world. I'll bet i cant even randomly slaughter people on my side(atleast the NPCs? No? *sigh*), you might be able to play orks or eldar or space marines there but its obvious the heart of it is already dead.
Its not enough to get a little bit of fluff thrown our way in the questtexts, or have some funky differently starting zones. If you make orks play the same as chaos marines, or eldar the same as imperial guards, just with different questtexts you already lost 90% of your customers. It will be just another case of playing reskinned generalized guys, doing the same quests maybe with individualized starting zones. Makes me a bit sad.
Especially as orks would have made such an awesome 3rd faction. Its well known they outnumber both chaos and imps together, and care little for sides or causes. Why couldnt they just make them into some sort of player/npc hybrid race that more or less randomly raids whichever faction holds enough ground(or crashes the party by mixing things up in a nice 3 way battle)? The orks could have been kept in check by randomly turning different clans hostile to each other when the other factions refuse to fight them, it would have made sense and would have been very funny to watch when that ork WB that was about to crush your resistance suddenly turns on itself.
I know how the IP is set up but more than 2 faction will just not work in a 40k mmo.
People just need to think the mechanics of it and will see that in RACE based mmo only 2 factions work.
Just imagine this simple scenario of 40k mmo coming out with 2+ factions:
The general player base (not the ~5% of the mmo players that plays the tabletop and has tau/necron/dark eldar miniature armies) could turn out like this:
50% space marines (because for most people 40k = space marines)
30% chaos marines (because some want to play 'evil')
5% Ork (because some people always play ork)
5% inquisition (because they are awesome :P)
9% eldar/dark eldar/tau etc (table top players)
1% IG (lol)
You may not believe that it would turn out like that (that's only my opinion) but with separate factions it's a possibility so the game has to be designed with a scenario like that in mind.
What's gonna happen then in the server if chaos/orc and the rest have friendly fire on cause they are separate factions but the 50% space marines have friendly fire off? who would even bother playing some obscure race like dark eldar when they could never form a single raid?
Only 3 factions then? How does that fit 40k lore? The 2 factions would have to be Imperium and chaos so who would 3rd faction be out of all the above and how could they stand against 90% of the server?
Under separate factions and a distribution like the above soon the small races would beg to be able to join the big ones for raids or reroll one of those so that's practically 2 big races fighting for the server and a ton of unused PVE content at the leveling zones of the rest because no-one plays them.
So the natural solution is to group every race under 2 factions from the beggining and pray that one side doesn't get too large (also use queues etc). Nothing else works in race based games simple as that unless you want alliance/guild based warfare like eve or darkfall but that doesn't work in 40k for obvious reasons.
Just a last observation: In my opinion 2 sided RvR failed in WAR not because it had 2 factions but because the class balance and looks favoured Destruction. Since 40k doesnt have pansy elves and stupid dwarves and no clear-cut 'good' side I think it will be ok with 2 factions.
I understand the problems of over tilt on factions in rvr but the problems that you pointed out here arnt actualy solved by having just 2 factions as you will still enevitably get a tilt towards one faction or another reguardless of the number of factios available. The only simple solution to this problem is to have just one faction. There are more complex solutions for example ,low population bonuses, and npc intervetion ect. which usualy work reguardless of the number of factions implamented.
just thought id point out that your are most likely very short sighted with you 9% for table top players. I think you will find that this figue will be more in line with the space marine 50% figure. but i guess those figuers were just a meens of shwing you example.
i seem to be having a major stint on the typos today i will apologise now
SO many people making assumptions about what 2 factions in tis game means cuase other games have 2 factions. Just becuase WAR has 2 factions it doesnt mean that in DMO, you are going to be a space marine visiting the Eldar to get orders. It may mean that there is a cease fire between sides cuase thier is a greater common threat from the other. shoot, the 2 factions may not even work directly with each other, the may just have a truce which allows one faction to combat the other.
The way I would do a 2 faction ssytem is this.
Each side has truces with the race it is associated with. These truces are fragile but allow the order races to not kill eachother and concentrate on th common enemy and vice versa for the destruction side.
However, based upon certain game states and events, I would allow for the truces that are there to be broken for a short time wherein there could be combat between the factions of order and between the factions of destruction. Then after certain conditions are met, the game returns back to an icy truce between sides..
As far as the "wow this game looks like lollypop pastel" etc etc etc. Go to games workshops website, look at all the tabletop models and see how they are painted. that is GWs sanctioned LOOK for thier games. Everything is very colorful, that hasnt changed in the 23+ years I have been involved in the hobby. They, s mentioned in interviews are striving for a comon ground between the table top look and the lore and art look and I think they are achieving tat.
chaosboy walks upto da boss nd says " can we have a truse"da bos jus shouts WAAAAAAAGH! and knock ten shades of SH*@ outa da chaosboy
text appears on ork warboss screen" you cannot engage in pvp with this race at this time. resolve greater threat from imperium of man to enable pvp with this race"
The idea behind multifaction balance is that no faction can ever get bigger than all other factions combined. Thats impossible with 2 factions, but gets increasingly more likely the more factions you get. Gamemechanics and graphics aside, this worked wonderfully in DaoC. Every time one side got too powerful the other two sides got into an more or less unofficial cease fire and ganged up on the stronger one.
Also while your right insofar as human races usually end up dominating in MMOs, you ignore that with chaos and imperium we obviously have human races on both sides. Also tabletop playerbase is of little concern, its not as if only W40k fans would play such a mmo if it was wellmade. If your really worried about chaos being underrepresented just give them better racials, cooler emotes and kickass fighting animations aswell as a bunch of halfnekkid toons with boobs fighting in g-strings. Worked every time so far. Just ... not with the orks ok ... omg the visual ...
@ MESS14H
Warhammer 40k is not colorfull, if you have ever actually read a codex or seen a book cover or a profesionally painted figurine its detailed for sure, but if you have ever painted a tabletop figurine its not done with pastel crayons as it looks now it done with very deep colored paint, some higlights and ofcourse the secret of modelpainting, dark inks for the shading.
The artwork i have seen so far has no shading whatsoever, look at a chaos space marine figurine and they look nasty and scary not like a alice in wonderland character that the game developers have made for this, its just silly and really insulting for the tabletop fans.
LOL 2 factions only, especially in WAR 40k!
Next game plz.
go look at the games workshop models currently displayed on the games workshop site to represent thier game to their customers, then get back to me... Your vision of WH40k isnt colorful, my 23 years of experience with the hobby says otherwise... but like I said, go check out the models on the site, dont take my word for it. The disingers of this game are trying to achieve a balance between both sides.
of course you know this game could be designed where any sort of interaction as you have just pointed out is irrelevant.
Hopefully this turns out to be awesome. Surely games workshop wouldnt the second of their biggest franchises to FAIL hard like Warhammer Online did.
Black Templars are an odd choice... With them you can't stay true to lore in anyway and only have 2 factions, as black Templars will not ally with anything with psyhic powers, Tau, eldar and even Librarians.
Personally I would like them to start with 3.
Choas(chaos marines and demons), the imperium of men(Space Marines, IG, Inquistions, etc..), and the Tau(with the Koots).
But they will probably want Eldar... not sure why people like Eldar over the Tau, because the Tau are WAY cooler and have alot more options.
indeed i have painted a gw model or 2. quite a substatial number infact. i have pritty much all the codexe's, old and new, and have read them front to back several times, aswell as having read a sizable chunk of the black library books on 40k.
of course you know this game could be designed where any sort of interaction as you have just pointed out is irrelevant.
Well you have justed summed up what people are saying about the effort vigil games have taken to the ip in this game. Irrelevant!
You can not say this: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/ look even remotely like the screenshots of the game. I guess its not really a W40k game just a spinoff for the kids...
And Black Templars that don't even have there weapons chained to there armor??? ROFL! yeah they have studied the lore, only not the one Games Workshop wrote...
Its gonna be a long wait
I love the 40k IP, but everytime these guys open their mouths, I die a little inside. I'm almost to the point of having no hope for this game. When they say crap like: "we know that the fans are going to love it. How could they not when Games Workshop is closely working with us on making sure that the game stays true to the lore and the IP!"
Oh well, it's a long way off.
The reason why you will see Eldar first before some of the other races in WH40k is that they are one of the original races / factions. They have a long intricate history with the IP. I recall back in my Tabletop days there were some pretty good, hardcore Eldar players in decent quantity. Back in the Rogue Trader rulebook for WH40k, the 3 races shown prominently were: Humans, Orks, Eldar.
It's like a big multiplayer Star Trek game having the Federation and Dominion, but not the Klingons or Romulans. You'd be missing some fundamental things about the setting of the IP, because the Klingons and Romulans have long been major players in the franchise, ever since The Original Series days.
Yeah, that quote you brought up annoyed me. They must be expecting alot of blind faith. I've been careful about WH/WH40k video games for years (since late 90s), since games based off them are very hit or miss. When they're good, they're great fun. But it's either that or they suck balls tremendously. No in-between results.
I'm trashing WH40k DM alot these days, but I'm hoping the devs prove me wrong and give a good MMORPG as well as respect the IP and setting. The MMORPG genre could use another good non-fantasy based game.
Am I the only one that felt like the questions were answered in a Politician style, IE-not answering at all.
MMORPG Interviewer "How is this certain detail of the game going to be handled?"
War40K "Well thats a very good question but I cannot discuss those details present, but let me assure you this game will be great and this game will be epic!"
= I didnt learn anything I didnt already know. What a complete waste of time.
thats actually called an NDA (non disclosure agreement) the want to release information at thier own pace... especially when the game is still 2 years off.
LOL... ok whatever, nerd rage is fun.
second, I thought Id show you the colorful tabletop of the warhammer world. go ahead, follow the links, look at all the figures. dont be shy.
here are the eldar elites.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440240a&rootCatGameStyle=
here are the chaos elites.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440208a&rootCatGameStyle=
Look at all those bright reds, blues, golds and oranges!!!!!!!! wow... these almost look like WoW models ;-)
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440248a&rootCatGameStyle=
even the imperial guard adorned in vibrant reds, greens and blues ?!!?
dont let me forget about the fanboy favorites space marines.... http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440272a&rootCatGameStyle=
my how vibrant and bright they are!
ok now that that is over with number 1, scoreboard, number 2, the folks at vigil have said that they are going for a style that encorperates both the table top look and the darker look of the illustrations and so forth. I think this is the right way to go, but you cant make everyone happy, so I understand why you dont like it.
Its such a shame PR departments are on these forum, putting in so much work to disproof every persons opinion that is questioning or deviant from the press campagne. No right minded person would take so much time to convince someonelse about something they have no connection with what so ever. Only a blind trust a developer with a very mediocre track record. Very suspicious.
You think Space Marines have bright armor? lol Noise Marines and Harlequins ftw.
Um ya thats what Mythic said too. Well they Do have the DoW series going for them,and yes I know it was THQ/Relic,and its THQ/Vigil doing DMO,but at least vigil is under THQ witch hopfully gives them the people/resources they need to make this a good game.
Im happy to see that they are showing IN GAME footage and not just throwing out a big cinimatic to get the AHh factor/hype going.Although dont get me wrong it would be cool to see a cinimatic of DMO.
How would 3 factions work any better than 2 factions with the 40k IP though?
I havn't followed 40k lore religiously in a while so this is all being pulled out what remains of my memory.
Evan in 3 faction system there are going to be alliances and they most likely would be something like Chaos and Dark Eldar vs Imperium and Eldar vs Orks.
I really don't see Tyranids or Necrons being playable as they are hivemind controlled entities which doesn't translate well into player controlled entities in anything other than stratagy games.
Tau I don't have very much knowledge about so thats why I left them out of the equation but from what I have read on these forums they don't really fit well with any of the 3 factions so evan if playable and not totaly hivemind controlled they would either be a 4th faction or if the limit is 3 would be lumped in with Orks.
So 3 factions hardly seems like a solution that would generate less complaints about the faction system than 2 does.
The only solution to the complaints would have to be 6 seperate racially based playable factions.
Each faction would have to have their own political map as to what faction they can ally themselves with because each faction has it's own lore base will never ally with these ones will sometimes ally with these other ones. Then to be true to the lore if you were in a mixed faction party/guild any one in your faction or your allies faction could kill you without repercution. They could call it role play but you could call it them being a dick. Can you see where I headed with this. All this stuff pushes the game dangerously into niche territory all that would need to happen next is the lore backed call for FFAPVP being implimented and there you have it a game that if wildly successful wouldn't top 500k and most likely would peak at around the 200k accounts far short of the reported 1 million they are aiming/developing/budgetting for. This is just the gameplay reasons.
Server limitations also play a factor as to why it isn't likely to be 6 playable factions. In order for the gameplay to be smooth and for content to be easily accessable there has to be a certain sever population per faction. If the population is to small there will be content that people won't be able to do simply because there is not enough people around in the required faction to do it. In a 6 faction game your looking at EVE style server sizes in order to get enough people in enough places for the game to flow smooth and evan then EVE with it's fairly simple graphics requirements struggles to handle 30,000 people online at once and 100 vs 100 battles. So with the graphical requirements upped to a ground combat FPS style the kind of server farm you need to handle enough people to fill out 6 factions in order to prevent content bottlenecks would be massive. Could it be done yes probably maybe I don't really know, with tech available right now I'm guessing it's probably not worth it.
Do you have a spare couple of 10 million dollar bills in your couch cusions you would be willing to gamble on such a project? If so good for you if not sorry but your going to have to rely on those that do and most often than not the people with that kind of their own cash laying around only bet on stuff that at bare minimum pays back what they put in thats why they have all that money in the first place.
Hush, The game isn't even fully out yet and your naysaying it? And what arrogance? He was using a PC statement to keep the rabid fanboys like yourself from bursting out at them.
2 factions - fail.
Space Marines, Chaos, eldar, Dark Eldar, Orks, Tau, Necrons.... 2 factions can never be enough
Let's not forget the sub factions within the imperium itself.
Destined to mediocrity.
Necrons / Tyranids, that's hard do to the heiracrchy or lack there of but I'd make them the FTP races. Change the exp/skill gain to global for all players of that race each player geta vote on an upgrade etc. but limit them in terms of depth. They are afterall the throwaway armies that just keeps giving.
The ONLY reason i can see anyone thinking 2 factions is a fail are the people compairing this to WAR,and just because Mythic had a hit with THREE factions. But they failed at TWO factions. Almost every other PvPish game/MMO I have seen ONLY has 2 sides/Factions.
"The ONLY reason i can see anyone thinking 2 factions is a fail are the people compairing this to WAR,and just because Mythic had a hit with THREE factions. But they failed at TWO factions. Almost every other PvPish game/MMO I have seen ONLY has 2 sides/Factions."
This, heres a fact for all those that think they know 40k, 40k ALWAYS is about 2 sides, get over it.
It's a fact that one side will be bigger, and therefore stronger, than the other. Unless they can offer an explanation on how they're gonna handle that, how they're going to deal with "the rich get richer" situation where the strong faction just repeatedly beats the weaker one, then you're just flat wrong.
It's a serious problem within game-design, and it's a problem that needs to be addressed. It's rarely an issue with PvE game, like WoW, but it comes up when talking about PvP games, especially RvR ones. Not only that, but the problem was already solved with the DAoC 3-faction solution in the past.
So... unless someone can come up with some genius game system that will somehow make a 2-faction system work, I'm sticking with the fail-theory.
So 1 game has a 3 faction system that worked now suddeenyl its a magic cure all that works every time?
Thats funny cause i remember terrans beating down everyone in planetside when i played it and gee it had 3 factions...
Having 3 factions doesnt magically make the population 33/33/33, theres still going to be the biggest faction and likely there will be an even gimpier than 2 factions faction.
No.... Learn to read. 3 factions is ONE solution that came up over the years to the 2-faction problem. Just one, but it's a good one. All I'm saying is that there is such a thing as the 2-faction problem in RvR games, it exists. To just sweep it under the rug and pretend it's not real is... dumb. So if the 40k MMO is going to have 2 factions, I would also love to hear their solution to the problem. That's all. Not that they have to do 3-factions, but that it would be nice to know how they plan on dealing with 2 factions. And so far there's no indication that they're dealing with it at all. Looks like it's just being ignored with the blind hope that "all will be well".
And by the way, to follow on the 33/33/33, that's not even the idea with having 3 factions. The idea is that even if it ends up being as terrible as 45/30/25, simple 1st-grade math tells us that 30+25 is 55. And is 55 more than 45? Why yes, yes it is. The point is, that at least there's the potential for the two weaker ones to team up against the larger one. In a 2-faction system, that's not possible for obvious reasons.
The point is, that at least there's the potential for the two weaker ones to team up against the larger one
And yet you could also argure that 3 factions could be even more unbalancing if the 2 bigger sides decided to pick on the smaller one making it 75 agianst 25. It comes down to how they exicute the mechanics/game play/classes and a whole bunch of other factors. Classe would be a big one though imo.
So again you could turn it around and say that side A with 45,and side B with 30 had crappy/unbalanced classes compaired to side C with awsome Over Powered classes, and kicks A&B's but. Fun discussion :).
It's all about potential. Sure there's the potential for the larger factions to gang up on the smaller one. But game mechanics can be designed so that's not desirable. For instance, once you "beat" a faction, they won't drop any more loot for you. So it discourages farming the same faction over and over. DAoC had something like this with their Relics. I don't know really, and it doesn't even matter. The point is that there's the potential for things to go either way.
But with 2 factions you don't have that potential. One side will be more powerful than the other, and that side will repeatedly beat the weaker side. There's no potential here for the weaker faction to over-come this obstacle. If they were weak/low-pop before, they'll remain so in the future unless the devs make their classes OPd. In fact, with 2 factions you get the rich get richer situation, where the larger faction beats the weaker one, and gains gear and ranks from doing so, which makes it even easier for them to do it again. This then makes people from the weak faction jump ship, which makes it even weaker. It just gets worse over time.
"Looks like it's just being ignored with the blind hope that "all will be well"."
Gee, you know why that is? could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that the game was JUST shown, and isnt coming out for another 2 years?
Yah, im sure every other mmo youve followed released all teh information on it 2 years in advance right after it was shown right?
FFS, they literrally JUST announced the %$#^ing factions, MMO gamers just seem to like to fill in what they dont know with what they assume then assume its fact.
Yeah, or.... maybe it's that I had this exact same argument 3 years ago during the WAR beta. And people said the same thing you're saying now. I constantly heard "dude, the game's in beta! Just wait a bit". Sure enough, everything from beta made it into live, and even less than what was expected. And I see no reason to believe this 40k one will be any different. If they announced something now, which they did in this article about the 2-factions, then it's almost certain that it'll end up in live 3 years from now when it comes out.
That's just the way it is, the way it's always been. Maybe I'm jaded...
Well I do have to say one of the things they were suppose to do in WAR was have NPC's with really smart AI, fill in for lack of population and they had the title of "Dogs of War". Now I know AI is no where near having another person/player,but it is a step in TRYING to balance things out imo. I just hope THQ/Vigil does come up with some cool/fresh/good ideas to decently balance 2 faction PvP. And who knows devs could read a discussion like this,where people are throwing all there ideas and opinions out and it JUST MITE give them an idea.
*My editing
Well I hope THQ & Vigil & GW are reading threads like this at the moment.
I hope that they notice that this is one of the most viewed threads on MMORPG.com and there seems to be a lot of interest in this title.
I also hope they notice that people (in general & mostly) don't like this idea at all.
Just came to mind. Also if they had/did decide to do 3 faction PvP they would still get stigma from DAoC success too,so either way they got their hands full.
I think there have been like 3 maybe 4 video games base on GWS Warhammer fantasy compared to 40k witch has a lot of video games base around it,lol im not going to look up the number but i know of at least 12.
And honestly there have always been more 40k table top players (me here) than Fantasy(dabled), at least from what i remember when i was playing 16years ago. So I can see why this one mite be more of a PLEASE get this right compared to WAR.
yea this game is going to fail as much as warhammer fantasy did... there should be as many different factions as there is in the table top (many) why do you say? because the game is gonna end up being instanced to holy hell anyway... what a load of crap
it'd be alot better to see instanced 16v16v16v16 or 8v8v8v8 fights then 16vs16 or 32vs32.. that way you dont feel like your zerg surfing as much as you are working with a tight group of allies that you leveled up with. this games already going in the wrong direction... and its not coming out til 2013... this game isn't going to hype up at all because i can see the failure from here.
IP lore aside, two factions is just weak for gameplay. To the point of being a gamebreaker, for me. I'm too sick of devs being so lazy on this issue to even bother wasting time being let down by it yet again. Not when there are plenty of other games for me to be disappointed by in all sorts of new and unexpected ways :p
If you look at most of the TT sessions/games, it was almost always me vs you,My Army vs Your Army. 2 sides to start on,one for me,and one for you. it would be great if the did more than 2 factions,but if they dont its not going to be a game breaker for me.
If the game were an RTS you'd be absolutely right. I think the problem lies with the lore hounds. They know certain factions would never put up shop in other faction's HQ's. I tend to agree with them.
If it's just going to be 2 factions make it Imperium of Man Vs _____ don't mix and match just save the multitudes of other factions for an expansion and make the best with what they've got.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst my fellow MMO fans.
You can't fix fundamental design errors once the game hits alpha. It's far, far too late by then.
That is not correct; there have been a few other games where multiple factions (more than two) worked, but most MMOs just stick with two factions. In those games with more than two factions, the system works just as other have pointed out: If one particular faction becomes too dominant, the others team up to bring them down. This is why claims that having more than two factions will dilute the number of players per faction until one always dominates is wrong; one faction may have more players and tend to dominate, but the other factions will work together (no matter what restrictions you place on them) to bring the more populous faction down.
On occasion some games can and do go back and redesign things (TR and Jumpgate: Evolution come to mind). However, once a MMO hits the closed beta cycle, it is generally feature locked (i.e. what you see is pretty much what you will be getting at launch).
What other games do you speak of, im curious. I have only played the trial of DAoC,but I know all about the success and such. It mite bring some light to this discusion if you said what games they were.
One that immediately comes to mind is Planetside, though most don't consider it a MMO since the gameplay is FPS centric. Still there are three factions in that game and from the two servers I played on, the two teams that weren't dominant tended to work together to bring down the dominant one. Eve Online also shows this: Although you are not really restricted to your starting faction in that game, you do see constant shifting of alliances and weaker corps teaming up to take on stronger corps. I also think there are a few Asian MMOs out there with more than two factions as well. Although it has shut down, Auto Assault had three factions I believe. Earth & Beyond (also closed down now) also had three factions, but I cannot honestly remember if there was PvP in that game.
It really depends on the factions and what makes up the sides of them. The Tau, Imperials, Eldar, HAVE all joined together in the LORE to face huge WAAAGH's and Chaos Incursions both. They have joined together to face Necron threats, and also Tyranid threats. Is it an EASY peace? No, but they have done so.
The problem with THIS situation is they chose the ABSOLUTELY WORST SPACE MARINE CHAPTER FOR THIS SCENARIO! They needed to use Ultra Marines (As much as I hate the smurfs) or Blood Angels because the Big M and Dante are smart enough to see the big picture and MAKE those alliances.
The Black Templar are just -to- fanatical for it, they don't even use Librarians... It's a stupid foolish mistake. The only way two factions is going to work with this game using the Black Templar is Imperial Guard + Black Templars vs Chaos Space Marines and/or Daemons -or- Orks.
Ork's aren't likely to side with Chaos anymore than anyone else. As for the comment about Ork's in thongs or whatever... they don't even have a female gender. All orks are orks. They are a fungus, literally. You kill one and ork spores go flying out and those spores become little orks.
That said, the game is to far out yet, if they don't change the Space Marine faction or limit it like I said, it won't really work as no way in hell are Black Templars going to work with Eldar or Tau or the Inquisition.
As for the game being "too far out yet": This is the time our feedback is possibly the most important and possibly the most use.
This thread has 32000 views now (making it one of the most read threads in the news section) - suggesting (3 years from release?) that there is a lot of interest in a WH40K MMO. And in all that feedback - there is a lot of negative feedback on the Two faction idea. From people who know the lore very well through to casual passers-by.
Vigil should really look at that. If they want to change it - now is the time to be doing that. Every day they continue to design the game to be a 2 faction RvR game is another day wasted if they decide to change it / need to change it later.
As for the Space Marine Chapter... this is something no-one has really mentioned - but I consider it a mistake because they have chosen a Chapter.
Think about it: what are players going to want to do when they become Space Marines?
Form their own Chapter! (Guilds)
Now I appreciate that Vigil and Games Workshop don't want every kid forming a 2 man 'chapter' called 'L33t g4NK3r$' and running around the battlefield - but they could put safeguards in to prevent that. There are ways they could design the game so that players can form Chapters of their own (PotBS allowed players to submit sail and flag designs which had a formal approval process and compliance rules).
Vigil are making a mistake if they don't give players the option to form their own Space Marine Chapters (even if it is difficult and beyond the reach of all but a few hardcore players) because there is a player expectation that they will be able to do this.
Still have unanswered questions about this game?????
Jeff Strain: "Film, television, and book franchises are just not good candidates for MMOs. Even MMOs based on the “Big Two” franchises – you know the ones – have not lived up to the expectations of their developers. Today, and historically, the biggest MMOs are based on universes that were created for the purpose of supporting games. MMOs are all about exploration, personal glory, hanging out with friends, and meeting new people. You can’t take a universe that was created to support a linear, non-interactive viewing experience that has its own six-volume set of rules and expect a development team to deliver something innovative and fresh within that universe that allows millions of players to be the hero. The best games, MMO or otherwise, are created first and foremost to be games, and the world, story, and setting are there to serve that end, not the other way around. It seems like I hear about a new MMO in development based on a sci-fi or fantasy license every week, and it worries me tremendously. MMOs are expensive, expectations are high, and huge failures will disenfranchise publishers and make life more difficult for new MMO developers. If you want to take a popular movie license and spin out a DS game to support its launch, then go for it – I think that’s an appropriate form of media collaboration – but let developers design MMOs that are not constrained by the rules and restrictions of a licensing body."
First of all, the trailers for this game look awesome. On the other hand, this was the least informative interview I've ever read. Campbell seemed to have only three responses, "That feature's not ready for discussion yet", "We haven't reached a design decision yet", and "let me assure you that Warhammer 40k is the coolest, biggest sci-fi toybox you'll ever play in."
Nice, but this tells me nothing. Guess we're going to have to wait a couple more months before we get to the interesting stuff.
The two faction system is the best approach to this MMO. For those of you who cite needing 3 or more factions to keep the overpopulated side in check, imagine for a second what that might entail in 40k. Let's say for example the space marines are the dominant force to start with (not a big stretch of imagination.) In order to restore balance, you'd end up with eldar fighting alongside either orks or chaos to beat them. Or an even more bizzar idea, let's pretend the Eldar are the dominant force (harlequins as far as the eye can see...). In that case, you'd have space marines teaming up with chaos space marines to fight eldar. In fact, if the eldar ever DID end up gaining the upper hand, the Templars would just help them finish off whatever Chaos forces are left and die happy knowing that at least chaos was denied victory. I'll admit though, Templars are an odd choice for a space marine chapter to co-exist peacefully with anything non-imperium considering how much they hate everyone else.
As for it's success as a PvP MMO, the 3 faction system is only necessary in a pure PvP MMO. A lot of you guys make the assumption that because the fantasy warhammer MMO was entirely PvP based that the 40k one will be exactly the same. In reality, the only thing the two games seem to share at this point is part of the name and the idea that it's order vs chaos. There was an interview about DMO in which the developer stated that the game will be neither wholly PvE or PvP focused. As such, there's no need for precision population balance because at least part of the population on both sides will be out doing their PvE thing.
Now would you all PLEASE stop embarrasing yourselves with the widespread condemnation of a game that has not yet gone to closed beta? What they have in mind may very well kick ass. But on the offchance that it blows chunks, they'll at least have time to fix it. But only AFTER THEY'VE GONE INTO A PROPER TESTING PHASE.
Only had to read the first sentence to know this post was nonsense. Look at every pvp game with two factions, they struggle with highly unbalanced factions, yet DAoC with 3 did just fine. 3 is not the magic number, but anything more than two is!
Anyways there are multiple factions in the 40k universe, two just misrepresents the lore.
Read the fucking post. There's a big difference between a PvP game and a game with PvP in it. A PvP game is like warhammer online where the entire game, maps content and abilities, is built around PvP. A third faction works well for those games because there aren't huge reserves of players out in the world that can be called upon to help bolster your side, they're already right beside you. There's no raids to farm, no social events to enjoy, no professions to skill up, just killing.
This game, by the developers interview, is not like that. There will be PvP, and maybe even map control, but they're also making PvE, professions, cool quest lines and so on. So if you get your nuts kicked in by someone, you can go run some dungeons or farm some mobs for profession mats or whatever. The point is that when PvP is only a part of the game, you will never have an entire factions population out there fighting. Winning or losing could come down to how many people you managed to rally to a fight, but no matter the outcome you're not stuck farming non-existant players or getting curbstomped. In a PvP game however, that's all you have, and if the population isn't in balance, the game's fun suffers.
As for the lore, it's an easy fix. The Ordo Malleus shows up, talks to the eldar, judges the situation and says "By the authority of the Immortal Emperor of Mankind, I am taking command." Then he tells the people under his command, who wouldn't dare disobey him lest they be declared heretics, to play nice with the eldar while they go forth and destroy the Traitors and Orks. The inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus have been known, on many occasions, to work peacefully with the Eldar when a major Chaos incursion is at hand. A few priviledged ones have even been able to visit the Black Library as a result.
I have almost no faith that this game will be any good. They are already having to dumb it down, and it will almost certainly get worse. I don't even think Blizzard could pull this off. The source material is just too rich to re-work into a video game.
Oh good grief!
The game is 3 years out and all we've seen so far are the barest fragments of what the game will be like and people are already bitchin and moanin... Seriously get some perspective, and failing that exercise some patience.
I am just saying that history and precedent suggest that there isn't much of a chance for this to succeed. In other words, if they pull it off, it will be the FIRST time it has ever been done. I don't like those odds.
QFT QFW
4 real guys hey , we should make it 2 sides cuz thats what wow did, gud idez.
"We are working very closely with Games Workshop to ensure that the experience that we will deliver in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online will remain true and faithful to the IP"
How about, We are working very closely with Games Workshop to ensure that the experience that we will deliver in Warhammer 40,000: IS FUN!
i LOVE THIS I READ IT 3 TIMES IN THIS THREAD AND EACH TIME THOUGHT REALLY?
See most people don't realize the only time you need more than 2 factions/sides is when you have open pvp at all. If you have an area of open pvp you need more than 2 sides. Or that open pvp is a joke.
DAoc (was mentioned but you have to spellit out because these people don't know daoc at all). Doesn't have pvp in MOST OF ITS AREAS. In the orginal daoc after a few months pvp was largely and end game only thing. The rest of daoc was a pve game. People don't know or realize this becuase doac pvp was its focus end game, mainly because daoc pvp was so good. But you can have 95% of content be pve, but if 5% of it is open zone pvp it better have 3+ sides or it gonna be bad.
I'm getting really tired of all these DaoC fans circle-jerking to 3 faction PvP. It is NOT necessary to balance open field PvP, and in fact if everything works ideally, nothing will go anywhere because the slightest rise in power will be crushed by the other two sides. There will always be a winner and a loser, but at least for those who can't grasp that idea or simply don't have the competetive drive, you can play the PvE part of the game. Then you get a game that actually goes places instead of having year-long stalemates without the whole vicious cycle of dispair for the losing side being stuck doing nothing when their side gets their asses kicked.
I'd imagine that them trying to make it fun goes without saying, it is after all a GAME.
Saying that they are tying really hard to make the game as fun as possible really doesn't say anything it's as vaccuous as the pap politicians feed us everyday.
The question by JT1228 is still valid though. Why be lazy and make a 2 faction game?
My guess is that they want to maximise content and think they can balance PVP by another method than by having 3 factions.. Again lets wait and see what they have in mind before croaking doom laden portents about how it can never work with only 2 factions.
i love war but as others.. we need more faction system!!!!
Good luck in competing against the behemoths coming out in 2011 when this one launches if you(Vigil) keeps this mentality
A good interview asks uncomfortable questions and tough questions HAVE to be answered early in development... before it's too late!
Melodramatic maybe, but let's talk GAME SYSTEMS for players and not marketing drivel about the lore etc and how you're great, we're great and everybody's great (incl. GW oc).
Some positives: Vigil (check), WH40K (check)... 2 factions (rain-check!).
So this game shoud be more like that post apocaplytic game wtih 6 factions - Fallen Earth?
I alway liked the open world feel to what i saw in that (but never played it).
Im sure the PLAYERS can figure out how to stage big battles - we dont need them staged for us by the game mechancis. (Ie clans etc can stage battles - trust in the players! - sand box all the way).