It's been a slow news period for Eternal Crusade, since the announcements of Halloween. Behaviour Community Manager, Katie Fleming informed us that the Rogue Trader Store was switching from weekly updates to bi-weekly updates, so that the production team could buckle down and focus on getting the first combat module ready for release. Most fans, myself included, seem okay with that, given that the 10v10 module will give us some actual gameplay to play and test for ourselves, letting many of us finally scratch that itch for the first time.
Speaking of the upcoming combat module, there have been some very interesting changes to the game since last we looked at it. On Episode 12 of the live twitch stream we saw some of these including some added rendering and lighting effects, new execution animations, the Apothecary in action and a whole lot more. Watching the video closely, I think they have done a good job of adding some mass and momentum to the moving Space Marines, they look and feel really meaty now. I am not too sure how I feel about the ease with which Marines roll about, in my opinion the rolls should be a little slower and more cumbersome. That backpack should impede the roll to some degree as well, but it's still early, and there are lots of tweaks and iterations yet to come. This module is looking better and better, and I really can't wait to get my hands on it.
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An Eldar Farseer demonstrating the offensive side of Eldar Psychic powers
Also related to the Livestream, a while back Katie and the crew over at Behaviour asked if we (the Eternal Crusade community) would like to see occasional streams with members of the design team that were NOT official Eternal Crusade streams, but were more generally Warhammer 40K related. Things like seeing some of the armies the Studio guys play, or discussion of the various new codices and editions, and other, generic 40K stuff. Personally, I love streams like that, and, having played (and lost... badly) against Steven Lumpkin's Dark Eldar, I can tell you these guys have an incredible knowledge of all things 40K, both lore and tabletop related. If you think you might like to see such a stream, head over to the Eternal Crusade forums and let them know, and we will see if we can get something like that going.
I also want to take a moment to introduce you guys to Djemo-SRB. Djemo is one of the guys on the Founder Discussion group that I put together so many months ago, to help me identify interesting issues to write about, but he has another very interesting side-job: he is the caretaker of the Q&A thread on the Eternal Crusade forums. If you have not seen this thread, I highly suggest you check it out, as Dj does a great job getting answers from the people who know exactly what the deal is, and I guarantee that somewhere on the thread you will learn something you didn't know but wondered about.
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Abaddon the Despoiler, Master of the Black Legion and Commander of the 13th Black Crusade
On a related note, well sort of related, I recently wrote a review of the new Space Hulk: Ascension game by Full Control Studios. This is an update of their previous release of Space Hulk, and it adds quite a lot of new features to make the game more engaging. New features include new Chapters, new Genestealer variants, more weapons, a troop experience system for advancing your soldiers, more missions and a lot more. As Space Hulk: Ascension is a turn-based strategy game, you won't see this review on MMORPG.com, but rather on our sister-site RTSguru.com. It should be published some time this week. Keep an eye out for it, if you're a 40K fan you won't regret it.
That's it for this week, thanks for taking the time to check this article out. As always, we want to remind everyone that if you love 40K, and want to have some input into how Eternal Crusade is developed, head over to the website and register on the forums. The dev team is incredibly open and communicative with their forum community, and who knows, if you come up with a great idea you very well could see it incorporated into the final release. The mantra of the EC community is Be Heard, so get over there and join up!
