Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2

LobsterMobster wrote:

Very reasonable specs. It makes me happy inside that my old computer died now, because my new one, while not all that expensive, easily meets the recommended stuff.

The Radeon 4850 has Shader Model 3, right?

I do wish the min for the video card could go a little lower. COH was able to scale down enough to run on low end laptops as long as they had a dedicated GPU. Lowest settings it could run on my Pentium-M 1.6 Ghz, 1GB RAM, with a Radeon X600 64 MB @1024x768. It doesn't look any more graphically demanding then COH either (which still impresses me). I'm hoping its just for massive amounts of units for huge multi-player battles.

Yup, it's true.

Ruined got permission from PC Gamer Sweden to post info about their review of DoW II.
We did a review event in Germany the day before the community event at which we let media play the game to write Exclusive Reviews from.

Media were then given code to carry on playing back at the office.

These were exclusive reviews so its only one mag per country. Swedish PC Gamer where there i looked after the guys personally.

Really nice guys and a great read if you can get it translated.

The magazine in question has given me permission to post the cover and some quotes from the review.

“A fantastic mix and one of the best strategy games in a long time.”

“… superb strategy”

“In short, Games Workshops dystopian, futuristic vision has never looked this good in game form.”

IMAGE(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v58/siwrx/PCGamerSweden.jpg)

90% by the looks of it! Standard practice for magazines to get pre-finalized code, so nothing nefarious there (unless you consider it nefarious industry wide).

Tyranids faction feature video on IGN

Take a look at how many Tyranids they have on the screen at one time.

Edwin wrote:

90% by the looks of it! Standard practice for magazines to get pre-finalized code, so nothing nefarious there (unless you consider it nefarious industry wide).

Yes, exclusive reviews of unfinished code is always nefarious.

I cant wait to play this beta! Lets use this thread to organize some vs battles. I could also create some steam events. I never got Soulstorm because it was stale by that time but I will definitely be downloading on the 28th.

I look forward to finally playing RTS' with Goojers. Not many seem to play Company of Heroes anymore.

I think I might be picking up a copy of Soulstorm. Pretty nefarious way to get me to buy it though

I wanted to get Soulstorm, my first 40k army was Dark Eldar, but the bad word of mouth kept me away. I'll just save my dollars and wait the extra week for the beta.

I think I can wait a week and not spend more money than I have to.

Control yourself!

I've managed to control my enthusiasm for a while now. However, with the news of the beta, I don't think I can any longer. This game needs to be out NOW!!

It doesn't help that the 40k Universe is my favorite IP setting of any game/book/whatever.

I sense good times ahead with the Goodjer collective that's interested in this. There may even be the critical mass necessary to consistently play, and god forbid, give me the experience to become proficient at this game.

jonnypolite wrote:

I sense good times ahead with the Goodjer collective that's interested in this. There may even be the critical mass necessary to consistently play, and god forbid, give me the experience to become proficient at this game.

I'm building a brand new PC just to play this game

Barab wrote:

I wanted to get Soulstorm, my first 40k army was Dark Eldar, but the bad word of mouth kept me away. I'll just save my dollars and wait the extra week for the beta.

For the price that you can probably get Soulstorm at now, it's probably worth it actually. It mainly got slammed because it cost $40 and didn't really add much to the game - especially the promised flying units, which really just sort of hover and move around the map the same as land units.

So, I just looked at the multiplayer video... OMG. It looks incredible.

Dr._J wrote:

Tyranids faction feature video on IGN

Take a look at how many Tyranids they have on the screen at one time.

That's probably the coolest video I have seen thus far. :p

Barab wrote:

I wanted to get Soulstorm, my first 40k army was Dark Eldar, but the bad word of mouth kept me away. I'll just save my dollars and wait the extra week for the beta.

Yea, I wouldn't mind waiting the extra week, but despite all the bad press, I do kind of want it. I mean, most of what I saw was people complaining that it was more of the same from Dark Crusade, which doesn't bother me in the least.

On the 'Nids video, man, that was amazing. WANT NOW.

Dr._J wrote:
jonnypolite wrote:

I sense good times ahead with the Goodjer collective that's interested in this. There may even be the critical mass necessary to consistently play, and god forbid, give me the experience to become proficient at this game.

I'm building a brand new PC just to play this game :)

Me too, the i7 has been too tempting and this pushed me over the edge.

DRM free? We can only hope. The combination of COH:OF DRM and Steam DRM was the cause of many headaches for myself.

Tycho over at PA pointed a link to this article with the lead designer.

Article wrote:

Strategy Informer: What new features have you added to Dawn Of War II that really stand out?

Jonny Ebbert: Where do I start? In Dawn Of War we felt like we really nailed three things. The brutality, brutal melee combat, the dark nature of the universe and we really focused on combat and action while downplaying resource gathering because we wanted you to focus on your guys. And there’s the over the top nature of the universe – we felt we nailed that like nobody else ever did. So in this one – did you play Company Of Heroes? We’re taking all that and we’re bringing some of the innovations over from that franchise, like the cover based combat, the intelligent squad behaviour, the destructible environments. You’ve got buildings you can climb into for protection. and on top of that we’re trying to fix three things that we think are broken with single-player in the RTS.

The first one is, starting over each time you start a new mission. It sucks. Everybody hates doing it so we don’t make you do it any more in the single-player campaign. You carry all your progress over from one mission to the next. Second thing is, we didn’t feel like we rewarded you enough for playing our game, so we’re trying to reward the player a lot more for playing the game. You’ll notice that we constantly shower you with new kinds of weapons, new kinds of armour, new abilities, new traits and new unit types you unlock. Final thing is, we really wanted to enhance the sense of attachment you get with an RTS. In a traditional RTS, it’s hard to get attached because you usually have a bunch of anonymous units that are built to die, so in our campaign we’ve given you command of a strike force and you’ll know everybody by name, and they each have a role on the battlefield. They’ll come with you from mission to mission and they’ll get better as you play, which we found really drives the level of attachment through the roof in relation to other RTS games. We’ve also streamlined the multiplayer quite a bit, making it more action-packed and exciting.

Tkyl wrote:

Is it wrong of me to hope that DoW2 is a much better game than SC2?

Considering they're based on the same IP, it should be interesting.

Shoal07 wrote:
Tkyl wrote:

Is it wrong of me to hope that DoW2 is a much better game than SC2?

Considering they're based on the same IP, it should be interesting.

The cries of Blizzard copied Games Workshop is a bit over done.

While they may have taken some ideas from GW what they did take they made them their own. There's no reason to think that SC2 is nothing more than extension of that world. As such, with the exception of taking place in space, DoW2 and SC2 are going to be 2 entirely seperate games with seperate identities. Trying to say one came from the other is doing a disservice to both.

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

Tycho over at PA pointed a link to this article with the lead designer.

Article wrote:

Strategy Informer: What new features have you added to Dawn Of War II that really stand out?

Jonny Ebbert:

The first one is, starting over each time you start a new mission. It sucks. Everybody hates doing it so we don’t make you do it any more in the single-player campaign. You carry all your progress over from one mission to the next.

Hallelujah. This was one of my biggest pet peeves in the RTS genre.

Dr._J wrote:
Eezy_Bordone wrote:

Tycho over at PA pointed a link to this article with the lead designer.

Article wrote:

Strategy Informer: What new features have you added to Dawn Of War II that really stand out?

Jonny Ebbert:

The first one is, starting over each time you start a new mission. It sucks. Everybody hates doing it so we don’t make you do it any more in the single-player campaign. You carry all your progress over from one mission to the next.

Hallelujah. This was one of my biggest pet peeves in the RTS genre.

Agreed. But honestly, everything he said was win.

Also, you not being able to play for the month of February makes me sad.

BadJuju wrote:
Dr._J wrote:

Tyranids faction feature video on IGN

Take a look at how many Tyranids they have on the screen at one time.

That's probably the coolest video I have seen thus far. :p

Agreed! The graphics are looking amazingly fluid as well.

Source

Everyone has been holding their breath since Relic posted the system requirements of Dawn of War 2 with a teaser that beta information would be released shortly. In today's press-release, the information has indeed been unveiled. Steam will host the beta for the Dawn of War: Soulstorm owners who can download it on the 21st of January, the rest have to wait another week, namely the 28th of January, until they've acces to the anticipated beta.

You knew it was coming, and now we can reveal the dates of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War II multiplayer beta.

The beta will be hosted via Steam and will launch exclusively to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War - Soulstorm owners on January 21. If you're not a Soulstorm owner, you'll be able to get in on the action on January 28 when the beta is opened to all worldwide.

All four races (yes, including Tyranids!) will be available to try out in the beta, along with five multiplayer maps and Games For Windows LIVE TrueSkill Matchmaking. Keep your eye on THQ-Games for more information on the Beta.

Sign up to the Game Alert to stay up to date with the latest on Dawn Of War II.

The game itself has an estimated release date of February 23, 2009.

armedbushido wrote:

Source

Everyone has been holding their breath since Relic posted the system requirements of Dawn of War 2 with a teaser that beta information would be released shortly. In today's press-release, the information has indeed been unveiled. Steam will host the beta for the Dawn of War: Soulstorm owners who can download it on the 21st of January, the rest have to wait another week, namely the 28th of January, until they've acces to the anticipated beta.

You knew it was coming, and now we can reveal the dates of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War II multiplayer beta.

The beta will be hosted via Steam and will launch exclusively to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War - Soulstorm owners on January 21. If you're not a Soulstorm owner, you'll be able to get in on the action on January 28 when the beta is opened to all worldwide.

All four races (yes, including Tyranids!) will be available to try out in the beta, along with five multiplayer maps and Games For Windows LIVE TrueSkill Matchmaking. Keep your eye on THQ-Games for more information on the Beta.

Sign up to the Game Alert to stay up to date with the latest on Dawn Of War II.

The game itself has an estimated release date of February 23, 2009.

Thanks for the new link, but awesome skim job

jonnypolite wrote:

Damn, now i wish i'd bought Soulstorm as well as the Platinum pack in that Steam sale.

Dawn of War 2 beta starts January 21 for Soulstorm owners, Jan 28 for everyone else.

I give up!

You know, the Tyranid do nothing for me. I'd perfer to have the Imperial Guard back or Necrons instead.

Yea the Nid's don't hold much appeal for me but Relic has been promising them for DoW 2 since DoW originally released. Personally I want my Chaos Space Marines back.

Khorne Berserkers always bring a smile to my face.

While there are races I'd rather see, people have been asking for Tyranids since Dawn of War hit the shelves. If Relic hadn't delivered on them, they would have been crucified, and quite possibly in a literal sense. So, they have to be in. After them, Orks are always popular, and I can imagine it was a pretty tight race between Eldar and Chaos.

Personally, I just want to see a single player campaign more along the lines of what we got in Dark Crusade as opposed to a return to the first Dawn of War. I thought they'd learned their lesson by now.