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[Warhammer40K MMO]Apparently no longer an MMO; inquire within (Page 13).

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  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Nought wrote: »
    SanderJK wrote: »
    If they are afraid of competing to much with their own product, there is also the possibility of going larger instead of smaller.

    Total War: 40k

    Imagine up to thousands of imperial guards fighting an endless Ork Horde, or being slaughtered by dropped in Chaos Marines. A chance to truely animate Titans and their various counterparts. To truely see the devastating effects of Psykers. Including a 'grand strategic' overlay where you manage resources such as men, weaponry, space capabilities, where Hive Worlds scream for aid at the same time as Forge World.

    I would be very interested in that. (I know Apocalypse exists but that is fairly niche and still not really integrated on that scale).

    One might even say Warhammer 40.000 on an Epic scale. Just imagine a game in that setting.

    Truth be told, Epic was my gateway into 40k and I have a lingering and smouldering hatred for Games Workshop for abandoning it and later killing Specialist Games when they became too successful.

    I've been thinking about what you've said, and I've come to a conclusion.

    Total War 40k NEEDS to be a thing. Everything would work perfectly. They could stop having lore conviences in the DoW games for the Space Marines. They could show them how they really are. Small in number but angels of death. Huge waves of IG, showing how battles in War40k work with them. Space Marines being able to take down beings equal to fighting 100 men. Perhaps cover systems could still have a place, but maybe on a smaller scale than Relic's for DOW2 or CoH. Something not as involving like Empire: Total War's cover to compensate for huge sizes.

  • ArchonexArchonex No hard feelings, right? Registered User regular
    edited April 2012
    Corehealer wrote: »
    I know not of these games of which you speak, but Total War 40K would basically be the God Emperor's gift to grand RTS lovers like myself. The fact that it was done, and not to completion, makes me very sad indeed.

    I think GW might just be afraid that if such a game that simulates in computers what the tabletop game simulates in real life were to ever become very successful, they'd make less money selling expensive miniatures, glue and paint, because everyone would go for the one that's cheaper, easier, and has visual and audio accompaniment of stuff like explosions. The games we have now are supposed to be fun and just enough to get you interested in more. In theory.

    Seems dumb, since they make money ethier way, but there ya go.

    Final Liberation was probably the most accurate depiction of "Epic", the huge scaled up version of Warhammer 40K's tabletop game, to ever come out. It's also probably one of the most accurate depictions of the setting as well in terms of warfare, which ties into what you're saying.


    To explain:

    The only campaign that was ever released for it took place on a planet conquered by Ork's. You fought on a battle map similar to Total War's. Every turn you would choose a territory to attack and managed your planetary crusade. The Ork's would counter-attack by spawning a little WAAAAAAGH at their capital territory, to take back a territory.

    During the first battle to gain a territory, you commanded about six to ten squads of Space Marines and a few Imperial Guard that drop in to take out the defenses and carve some land out for your first territory. Doing so opens the way for your full invasion force, which makes the Space Marines look small in number.

    It was entirely possible to field heavy-scale Titans by the half dozen, have gigantic armies of infantry rush across the terrain and get splattered by enemy artillery, and even take cover inside giant buildings that could take damage and collapse on top of your vehicles and men.

    Taking a territory could unlock new troop types to requisition from the Imperium. For example, assaulting the titan works and holding them would let you build or call in Titans to reinforce the crusade against the WAAAAGH. You got money for the types of territories you held, and other factors, too. You could field everything to Thunderhawks, to every variation of super-heavy tank, to Space Marines, to even unique legions of infantry like one of the cavalry units from a desert planet. Generally, if a military unit was ever mentioned in any of the canon or fluff, it was in the game. This was accompanied by a codex giving a blurb about the origins of the unit in question, like an Ultramarines squad or Guard unit (Complete with their origin planet.).

    The goal of the game was to take all the territories and kill the Warboss, who reigned from his capital zone. Eventually the Ork's would go full bore crazy and start fielding Gargants and other nastiness too. Which scaled the game up to "Epic" tiers of combat in full. It also had a bitchin' sound-track and live action cut-scenes.

    (You can see some screens of what the game looked like in the first soundtrack compilation, too.)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joWDZfBYOos

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-u7H1xR6Q

    It was a buggy, unfinished mess. It was also the most accurate and entertaining depiction of tabletop mechanics for the game to date, and really nailed the awesomeness of the setting. Despite never getting the sound it to work, despite never getting the music to work, despite the obvious lack of time to finish certain features like the full battle map that would have included other races, despite the unfinished and only partially released mod tools that would have fixed this, and despite it crashing every five minutes, I'd sit down to play for a few minutes and every time, end up blowing blowing hours on that thing.

    It was really damned fun. The sheer size of the available units meant that you could actually sit down and design a cavalry based army that fought by charging on horses while supported by artillery for maximum shock value. Or design an Adeptus Mechanic inspired Titan Legion. Or design a full blown Space Marine crusade against the planet supported by minor Imperial troops. Pretty much anything in your imagination was at least designable, if not workable. It also predated games like Total War by quite a bit of time and was a sort of precursor to it.

    Sadly, I don't think you can run it these days unless you have Windows 97. Making things worse, Games Workshop has a bad habit of skipping over profitable and entertaining releases to make more "Gears of Space Marines" releases, instead of using the entirety of the setting. See: Here.

    They just really don't make games like that anymore. If I ever get into game design, i'd like to make something with that scale of complexity and entertainment.


    Edit: In the preview pic for the first sound track you can see what I mean about it being unfinished. They had Tyranids, Chaos, Eldar, and a bunch of other races ready to go in. They were never released. In some releases I think you could preview the (unplayable) races units, however. The rumor i've heard is that Games Workshop got cold feet and sabotaged the thing for fear of it ruining Epic's sales (Not that most people are willing to plunk down $2000 on a tabletop game in the first place.), since the game was a frighteningly accurate depiction of both the setting's warfare, and the tabletop game itself.

    Archonex on
  • MalkorMalkor Registered User regular
    SSI was the best company.

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  • ArchonexArchonex No hard feelings, right? Registered User regular
    edited April 2012
    Malkor wrote: »
    SSI was the best company.

    Any game that lets me drive a tank into a super-cathedral the size of several city blocks and use it as impromptu cover for the tank and his support infantry, or use said building as cover for Titan to Titan combat (It was like a strategic Mechwarrior, only with giant chainsaws instead of laser cannons. Also, the laser cannons they had were building sized.) can't be that bad of a game.

    The game had an insane amount of attention to it. I recall infantry deployments sometimes having a tiny little commissar in them. While he was alive, morale tended to be much higher. Seeing him getting blown to smithereens would hurt morale greatly. Or, in the case of troopers like Catachans, could boost it, from what I recall. Though I may be mis-remembering that part.

    Regardless, it's a prime example of the Games Workshop curse. Games Workshop will never have a game like that come out because they seem to be paralyzed with fear of it hurting their tabletop sales, or a company taking advantage of the license. Combine that with bad business decisions in the market for video games, and to date only maybe two or so of the games to come out under the license have been decent. So instead we get half-assed strategy games like that Warhammer FB Total War ripoff (That was entirely linear in its campaign, and had a bad MP element.), and stuff like Gears of Space Marines.


    I mean, imagine if they did what MtG did, and went through with what SSI was planning to do. Every year they could update the game via re-release with a new "codex", and new campaigns. Imagine playing a Total War style game that actually let you play through a Black Crusade, or through the war(s) for Armageddon. And then the next year, events that took place in the meta story were playable in a re-release. And even, if they were smart enough to get a clause for it in their licenses, letting you play as a commander in the campaign of other games, like Space Marine.

    They'd make a killing. Like Wizards of the Coast are now.


    Edit: Mind you, to get into Epic can cost you hundreds, if not a thousand dollars or more, depending on what level of quality you want your army to be. It's literally Warhammer 40K scaled up to an insane degree. Which means the price increases accordingly as the number of miniatures increases. And that's before you get into some of the more obscene things, like the larger Titans and super-heavy tanks. Warhammer 40K is already ridiculously expensive to get into if you don't shop around a bit, so do the math.

    It's a win-win situation. The amount of people they'd bring in through sales dwarfs the amount they'd theoretically "lose", because they can't or won't pay insane amounts of money to build miniature armies that they may not even be able to use regularly depending on their geographic location. Also, there's less of a stigma to playing a game then having a bunch of tiny toys sitting in your house.


    These images pretty much sum Epic up pretty well.

    633631638880407362titans_2.jpg

    titan.jpg

    apoc2u.jpg

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    It'd be an amazingly fun game to play, if most people could afford it. Dark Millenium seemed to be taking cues from Epic. But my money's on that going to shit now.

    Archonex on
  • KeysierKeysier Registered User regular
    I'm going to be honest and say that I am glad there is not going to be a 40k MMO

    I've been pretty much full of playing MMOs and the last thing I'd appreciate is the taint of other MMOs coming off of what should be the greatest experience ever made by human hands, ie: a 40k MMO.

    The current MMO system is just so tripe. It isn't ripe for the picking with ingenuity. Would you really want another hotbar game for a 40k MMO? "While playing my Devastator for optimal DPS the rotation I use is 2 1 1 5 6 8!".

    Guildwars might change the field a bit, hopefully it is wildly successful and it allows developers and publishers to decide to do things differently then what is available today. Right now the hallmark of success is powerfully strong and unwilling to die (WoW) and would negatively effect every aspect of a 40k MMO because the publishers would want to actually make money and they'd believe the best thing to do is to copy aspects of WoW.

    The only MMO that I played and felt came close to what 40k should be is Shadowbane. Controlling areas, botting to level because levels rarely mattered. The battles mattered. Specs mattered. Balance changes and moving with the FOTM mattered. The game was insanely fun especially in the beginning and at the end. Bugs, exploits, and the most terrible engine that took 30 years to develop might have ruined a good part of it, that and server wide zergs, but the idea remains sound.

    If I could imagine Shadowbane, like one Shadowbane map and then make 25 worlds all slightly different but catered to different kind of environments and fighting. Then put space combat in as well as no faction based allies. 40k HAS to be FFA or Same-side factions, there shouldn't be "Good guys" vs "Bad guys" or anything similar to that. On top of that put in some kind of Planetside-esque system. I mean the game definitely needs to be shooty, but it also needs to having more then just "I hit one button and stab the guy" melee, and thus really needs a hybrid system of shooting and some light skills. Put in some sanctuaries themed to the respective armies. Then above all make things not balanced, 40k is balanced in a different fashion then most games and so should an MMO of 40k be balanced.


    Of course this is all my opinion. If I ever wanted anything to hold me to it and never let go, it'd be 40k. So I am definitely one of those people that would hate to have a "same ol" MMO when they could have something different, but thematically more respective of the ideals that 40k represents.

    Could this 40k MMO have been that? Sure? Maybe. It is hard to say. I'd be willing to give them a chance if the first "preview" or whatever, the talking points about this MMO, was that it was going to have Space Marines and Eldar on the same faction. For me, this is already the end of my interest in playing such a game, and I'd understand in people feel otherwise. I thought the idea of "leveling" up to be a Space Marine by going through ranks and such was a very neat idea. That and they were ambitious enough to consider many of the races and not just start small with perhaps SM and Orkz or something. Necrons? FFFFFFFFFF yeah. I was very pessimistic about this game once I saw the factions thing, I have to admit.

  • BasilBasil Registered User regular
    edited April 2012
    Ah well, leastwise it ain't Warhammer Online all over again, eh wot?

    Pip, pip, chin up and all that.

    :winky:

    Back to my dirty fantasies of a Dark Heresy pc adaptation.

    Basil on
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  • SkwigelfSkwigelf Passed out in a cloud of farts and cigarette smoke.Registered User regular
    I'm with Keysier in that I'm glad there is no 40K MMO.

    Why?

    Because no-one has made a successful MMO with numerous factions or where each race is its own faction and everyone is fighting each other. I don't want "Order vs Destruction" like WAR was. I want my warrior of the Vylka Fenryka to be able to rofflestomp Eldar, Imperial Guardsmen, Traitor Marines, Orcs, Necrons, Tyranids, Tau and even other Loyal Astartes(It's why The Rout was created by the Emperor, after all. They were his executioners).

    I don't want to run a dungeon with an Eldar Farseer healer and a Tau Battlesuit tank. I want to run a 5 man dungeon with 4 other Space Marines. I might be willing to accept an Imperial Guard class. But Eldar, Tau, and whoever else they planned on having as our forced allies is right out. I mean...could you imagine playing as an Ork 'Ard Boy and grouping with a Tyranid Zoanthrope and a Necron Pariah? IT DOESN'T. MAKE. ANY. SENSE.

    As for changing the game to a single player game with a multi-player option(Hey, didn't they already make this game?), I really hope they let us choose which force we want to be and which chapter/legion/clan/Craftworld we belong to.

    Basically, I don't want to be forced to play an Ultramarine or some lame non-Death Guard traitor in the single player campaign.

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    I agree the temption to shoot an ultramarine in the back as a black templar is too high at times

    They really should have done a deathwatch or inquisitor style of game for 40k if some people wanted to group with the alien and not get burned for it

  • ZzuluZzulu Registered User regular
    I'm pretty sure they pulled the game because of the financial trouble they're in. They had a lot of success with the singleplayer Space Marine game, so it's not a big surprise they're retooling this MMO to become a singleplayer game as well

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  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Brainleech wrote: »
    I agree the temption to shoot an ultramarine in the back as a black templar is too high at times

    They really should have done a deathwatch or inquisitor style of game for 40k if some people wanted to group with the alien and not get burned for it

    I think temporary alliances would be acceptable. However, you would have to limit them. In lore and some games, imperials have teamed up with Eldar to shitkick a common enemy. Tau and Humans make temp. truces while not alliances. Chaos and Orks have been seen to work together. Dark Eldar and Chaos would be an easy match (DE: Slaanesh worshippers, CSM: all the chaos gods). Necrons would have to be alone. Though, they could bullshit a reason to why necs and nids are fighting together (As necs are not food for nids) maybe a C'tan could give the necs a certain hormone or some shit for nids to follow them. Crazy stuff on the top of my heads.

    However, besides SM and Guard, they would all be temporary and could stab each other in the back at any time. SM and guard should be permanent, because Dark Crusade and Soul Storm? The fuck was that shit?

  • ArchonexArchonex No hard feelings, right? Registered User regular
    edited April 2012
    Dark Crusade made plenty of sense. The Imperial Guard goes at it with the Marines all the time. It's just that the Inquisition tends to kill all the survivors on the Imperial Guard end of things to keep word from it getting out. Either that, or induct them into the stormtroopers, with a complementary mind-wiping.

    Soulstorm was fucked up, but for many different reasons. The least of which was the voice acting of the SPESS MAHREENS! Space Marines.


    Factions are easy enough to set up realistically for a release day game. Start the game with the guard and marines on one side, with maybe a tech marine/priest and inquisition class rolled into them in lieu of a commissar class (Seems we were going to get minions. So they'd count as they're outside the command structure.). The warriors and demons of chaos could represent another. And finally, the eldar and orks on another. This forms the basis for three sides, which means that it's much harder to get into a situation where one side curb stomps the other to the point where the losing side quits.

    The last alliance might seem strange until you realize that the eldar aren't above manipulating the hell out of the ork's love for a good fight. As even the other Warhammer MMO showed. Plus, the dichotomy between the prudish eldar and batshit insane orks would make for some grade A comedy.

    Tyranids could be a NPC side until an expansion. Maybe have them be MPVP only. Tau I don't think were even considered for going in, most likely. So that handles them too. Necrons are so insanely overpowered in this genre's context that they'd be raid material. Logistically speaking, the guard tends to fight the necrons in the canon by obliterating the planet in question. IE: Avoiding fighting them altogether.

    Or by just doing what Ciaphas Cain did. Which was pouring about forty million gallons of high octane space gasoline on the necrons, then igniting it from orbit. Despite it essentially causing a planet-wide apocalypse and blowing that section of the planet into orbit, it wasn't a case of Ciaphas applying the "No Kill Like Overkill" theory of threat removal to his job. Since it was implied even that wasn't enough to kill all the necrons due to the Inquisition putting a ban on anyone ever going there again towards the epilogue.

    Suffice to say that they'd be a bit overpowered if players could play them in their normal format.

    Archonex on
  • Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    I'm still holding out for a 40k version of Star Wars: Battlefront.

    You felt empowered and had several classes available with vehicles and shit, but you were far from invulnerable and sometimes it was a meat grind of awesome.

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Brainleech wrote: »
    I agree the temption to shoot an ultramarine in the back as a black templar is too high at times

    They really should have done a deathwatch or inquisitor style of game for 40k if some people wanted to group with the alien and not get burned for it

    I think temporary alliances would be acceptable. However, you would have to limit them. In lore and some games, imperials have teamed up with Eldar to shitkick a common enemy. Tau and Humans make temp. truces while not alliances. Chaos and Orks have been seen to work together. Dark Eldar and Chaos would be an easy match (DE: Slaanesh worshippers, CSM: all the chaos gods). Necrons would have to be alone. Though, they could bullshit a reason to why necs and nids are fighting together (As necs are not food for nids) maybe a C'tan could give the necs a certain hormone or some shit for nids to follow them. Crazy stuff on the top of my heads.

    However, besides SM and Guard, they would all be temporary and could stab each other in the back at any time. SM and guard should be permanent, because Dark Crusade and Soul Storm? The fuck was that shit?

    basically what you wrote is how they handled it in Warhammer and that really left a foul taste in my mouth
    Dwarves on Ulthuan! they offended me far more than anything it seems they had forgotten what the war of the beard and the wars againist chaos were!


    What I ment is an Inquisitor/Dark hersey style of play on one part deathwatch on the other
    Temp alliances where you take a eldar farseer who may have the best intentions for the imperium at the momment and maybe not
    Deathwatch where you may have to kill the imperial guard commander and troops because they in thier fight againist the tau may uncover something else



    battlefront was fun the 2nd battlefront kind of

  • ZzuluZzulu Registered User regular
    edited April 2012
    I'd put Chaos and Orks on one side with imperials/space marines on the other. They even did it in the first Dawn of War RTS game.

    If you absolutely need a 3 pronged war then the Eldar/Tau could work as a third faction since the Eldar see the Tau at worst as their tools and at best as their allies.

    If you want to adhere to lore there's not much else you can do. Yes, temporary alliances are not impossible but having Eldar walking around amongst imperial cities or fighting next to Leman Russ battletanks would make it distinctly not 40K. A lot of the setting is based on the unrelenting hatred between species and the wars sparking off of that

    Zzulu on
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  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    THis is why it would really work as an Inquisitor style of game with all the back room deals and adventures in the name of the Emperor with some rather questionable allies. You don't have to go to Cadain 15a in order to meet with whatever Rep the eldar sent there is a rather large country side

    But then I know there are people with thier own xeno phobic grim dark death watch games they would love to give the lore off

    But as for sides I can see why people have a hard time drawing the line

  • SquiddyBiscuitSquiddyBiscuit Registered User regular
    As someone who doesn't have that in-depth knowledge of WH40K, it seems that the best way to solve the whole faction business in an MMO is to just omitt the "RPG" part and turn it into a RTS or FPS/Action MMO with heavy focus on PVP.
    Each faction is their own alliance, but depending on the balance in the in-game world, temporary truces are set up by the game.
    Say the Necrons, which would be an NPC-race, are amassing numbers and becoming a threat, then the Eldars and Space marines would combine forces temporarily until they've beaten back the threat.

    Same thing with Chaos and Orkz (which could both be player controlled races, the latter controlled as an RTS rather than as a FPS).

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  • KeysierKeysier Registered User regular
    Yeah the entire business of alliances and having races makes 40K a very difficult thing to manipulate into the square peg that is MMO gameplay mechanics (especially current mechanics).

    There have been times when everyone has teamed up with another race in order to get things done, even Space Marine and Chaos, although the idea of "teaming up" here is more the idea of killing someone else before they killed each other that or just straight up manipulation. Of course when I read about SM and Necrons teaming up to fight Nids I was like...uh, fuck, whatever.

    Yet at the same time all these races coexisting in one game, fully playable and killable, is what would make 40k into one of the best games ever.

    I would definitely not be opposed to a Planetside 40K game, where in this case there is a more robust melee system to really fit all the unit types in. I want to see a Terminator with dual lightning claws ripping foes apart in a siege. I'd also want to see something like a single player controlling a small horde of Hormagaunts. I'd want to shit my pants if, once having conquered my foes, a bunch of Necrons just rose from the ground and started storming my shit, only to have an Eversor Assassin ripping into groups and groups of warriors as he charges straight into a Lord and then explodes. The resulting aftermath of a Baneblade coming from the rear to save my lovely Space Marine but from a looming Monolith.

    These ideas are what perpetuate the exaltation of 40k and what it means to people. Having sides or factions where races are placed together would simply kill what 40k revolves around: everyone killing everyone else.

    Too bad this places an extremely heavy burden on anyone even remotely thinking of developing an MMO for this universe

  • MalkorMalkor Registered User regular
    Well it could never be a "traditional" mmorpg.

    My original (and technologically unworkable I'm thinking) deal was that it would be a RTS/FPS/Strategy hybrid. There would be 'pets' attached to almost all the PCs, but still somewhat faithful to the IP. A lone character would be incredibly powerful, but could be overrun. A character surrounded by soldiers would be formidable, but couldn't move as fast tactically or strategically. When working together, they could all gain bonuses and weaknesses from being on the same battlefield or even small bonuses from one unit attempting to move to support another.

    Strategic movement would have to be a relatively important part of the game. It has to take some time for units to move around the wider galaxy, and events like warp-storms and pirates have to slow them down as well (no one will get permanently lost) maybe end up somewhere else or super late, I dunno.

    I think good examples of the strategic part could be a Space Marine squad and their sergeant, or an IG company and the Commissar attached to them. The sergeant of that squad would be more powerful in single combat than the Commissar, but the Commissar is surrounded by meat-shields that could start to whittle down the squad before he would have to. But at the same time, the squad could destroy the entire company with their better fire and morale and just being able to move better.

    I also imagine that I'm only one of a few people that would find the entire thing fun.

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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    So this is no longer an MMO, and thus the thread really doesn't fit here.

    It's probably best that someone just starts up a new thread in G&T proper.

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This discussion has been closed.