f13.net

If this has been posted already, ignore.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6166560.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0 (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6166560.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0)

I love Dawn of War and the expansions.  If they can maintain the same level of quality, maybe it'll be worth playing.  Hell, just do something different!

Except that Relic isn't working on that game. Oh well...

Yeah I have no idea how much resource sharing goes on between THQ's studios.  Hopefully enough to head off suckage.

Could be cool if I get to play a Tyranid. Otherwise I curse their very existence. I love me some Tyranids.

Weird.

Would still rather someone directly translate the table top game into a computer game.

I'd be happy if they made more games like Chaos Gate.

Be nice if he had any idea at all about the IP.

Nice move beating World of Starcraft to the market though.

How have they beaten WoS to market? I don't see either game available for purchase at the moment.

Oh THAT's where Kelly Flock wound-up.

Given what I've seen some of you folks say about GW's business model for WH, it seems appropriate they'd pair up.

Awesome!  I hope they do a good job with it.  I am a recent convert to the GW universe and am really getting into their lore.

Like others, I wish someone would make a game more faithful to the tabletop game though.

MMORTS's thus far haven't really taken off. A MMO that's turn-based... well there are probably examples out there, but they aren't exactly dominating the market either.

I'd expect WH 40K to be another MMORPG.

They dearly and desperately don't want that, because they make an obcene amount off of the miniatures.

They'll still make money off the miniatures.

But I bet cash-money that the quality of gameplay in tourneys and such will rise when people can practice over the internet.

I agree with you personally, but they have been shit-scared of hurting their primary business in this way for many years, and so have maintained that their multiplayer software remain crippled. I was honestly surprised that they allowed proper MP with DoW...

Ah yes, the nonsense theory that online versions of games destroy the popularity of the offline version (http://www.partypoker.com). Corporate shills at GW need to grow some balls.

Interesting, hope it's heavily pvp based with starships, solar systems you can capture, ground inasions and Titan's.  Going to be disappointed if it's just a clone of WAR on a couple of planets with lasers instead of swords.

With people still spewing nonsense like this, you'd still have to rate the chances of this thing getting developed at no more than 50%.

I'm kind of disappointed that Mythic didn't get 40k. I'd have more faith in them than in random_dev_team_zero_mmog_xp_1.

That said, after the Climax fiasco you never know...

Blizzard is making WoS.

(edit: ...and everyone else has a deadline)

I bet people would buy virtual miniatures.

Especially if they came with the physical ones...

It'd also help with rules adjudication.  There's a gaming store here that holds big 'come play table top wargames' days a couple times a week, I've seen people go back and forth over this or that rule or whatever... A lot of that could be solved if there was a WH40k:O that did it a certain way.  Then everyone would go that route.

--
Alkiera

If I can make an Eldar that can become a Harlequin, sign my ass up.

RTS seems unlikely.
FPS seems likely but I won't be able to play because I suck.
RPG seems likely but no one has made a gun rpg that didn't blow.

I'd rather not see a group with any rpg experience do this game. Try something different, y'know? Warhammer fantasy is one thing, but 40k should be the second attempt at PlanetSide (not fps necessarily - I just mean a competitive action game. Vehicles and mechs suck for fps anyways).


As much as I like Relic, I wouldn't want it to be them either. I'd rather see the great companies that are left in the PC space spend their money and time making 3 or 4 normal games, instead of blowing it all on an MMO.

I'm guessing it'll be something along the lines of Planetside/Tabula Rasa/Huxley

Hopefully, they'll take a page or three from Space Hulk and/or Necromunda, and include smaller, and shorter squad based missions, as well as the larger planetary defense/invasion stuff.  Though, I'll settle for just about anything as long as it's not WoW in space.

Assuming it ever sees the light of day, of course. 

It looks like Joe Madureira is at Vigil. http://www.joemadfan.com/

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Madureira


I wouldn't mind seeing his art style all over the game.

WoW has guns!

I still remember being in an all-dwarven-hunter group in WoW final beta, out in the leper gnome area outside Gadgetzan.  A leper gnome would run by, and 5 dwarves with guns would open up on him.  The sound of the rifles going off over and over was amazing.  That's what a firefight SHOULD sound like.

--
Alkiera

hehe in wow my first group was all hunters. We did every 5 man instance in the game other than lbrs and ubrs with them. Those zones just sucked way to much ass for line of sight. This was long before the hunter buffs it would even be easier now and yes it was hilarious hearing all the guns firing off.

5 ice traps pick a target hunters mark it and subject it to the firing squad rinse and repeat.

Tazelbain's point still stands.

How has no one picked up on the "gun" "blow" pun? :)

Interesting about WH40k MMO. I wish it would be an RTS but think it'll be more standard. While it's definitely not Warhammer RP, it is still THQ.

Heh, that is also a problem. A Major one. The rules are layered upon layered, they release army books on a roughly quarterly basis for the two main systems which supercede the older versions of that army's list and often break parts of their systems and rulesets, the designers and people playing the battle reports often ignore or are oblivious to various important rules (and special rules) and so on. They could do a "Warhammer(40k)" computer battles game, based on but not exactly following their TT rules, but using their exact game system would be a nightmare of Vanguardian proportions..

Now that you remind me, the fact that no one has done a digital WH translation is probably due to the fact that every dev who looks at the stack of books and actually read through them all has shot himself to get out of the contract.

--
Alkiera

You shut your mouth. Just shut your fucking mouth! I'll kill you. I will KILL you.

They feel so much better in third person to me.

And even more, with a gamepad. Haha.

I prefer typical FPS combat for a soldier though (unless there's a lot of acrobatic/jumping stuff to do....Then I want third person).

My two predictions for this game. Microtransactions and Consoles.

I guess my prediction is "Space Hulk".

I say that because I don't believe that anyone has the imagination to make a mmog that is not 'one player : one character' based.

I fear garthik is right about Consoles though.

Granado Espadrille (http://www.granadoespada.sg/en/)

Fighting Legends.

Heck, Ultima Online, the way most people played it...

I need new shoes.  Pink ones.

It's a new week.  I need new shoes, too.

With a Warhammer 40k MMO. (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57994)

(http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/4/47/Shana_bests_kirk.jpg)

Did you even read the article?

ah, look at that. I needs coffee. The first paragraph made it read as if it was Relic doing this. My bad.

Threads merged. Learn to search, noob.

Why is she trying to kill him with an outdoor coat rack?

Kirk likes it rough.

 :awesome_for_real:
 :uhrr:
 :ye_gods:

 :rofl:

 :drill: Mythic and faith in the same sentance.  lol  :drill:

Warhammer 40k, where you can play Force Commander instead of Warrior, Tactical Marine instead of Hunter, Howling Banshee instead of rogue, Apothacary instead of Priest.

Also, I can't wait to kill 10 rats as a Space Marine.  Awesome.

"Kill ten rippers" you mean.  :grin:

W40k's richness, such as it is, is the number of different races each with their own unique touches. If the MMO is just Humans vs Orcs IN SPAAAAAACE then meh. I want me some Tau. Or Necrons.

Plotting on the hypothetical Magical Perfect MMO Machine, 40k could be PvP oriented where scenarios make more sense (getting dropped into battle hot zones) and some randomisation of PvP map layouts could make things interesting. However, the big problem with this lore - even more than Warhammer - is that the various races don't work together at all. Even the various shades of humans don't generally like getting together, let alone "hai guyz, Terminatorz squad neds Eldar and Tau Fire Warriors to raid Necron Pyramid with Chaos Marine boss".

Didn't stop Mythic from shoehorning them into "good and ebil"

What Mythic did to the Warhammer IP could be the subject of a Lifetime movie special.

But W40k is even LESS friendly to dividing up the races into 'sides'.

Going to predict player population imbalance in favour of space marines at this point and suggest that a 20% exp bonus to the opposing side isn't really going to cut it as a solution.

I honestly don't get why people like the Tau or Necrons. To me nether fit with the feel of the universe. I guess they feel tacked on. I guess im kind of a 40k purest. I like Human, Ork, Chaos, Eldar, Tyranid, as the major races.

I guess the Necrons kind of fill the same spot as the Undead in WHF, but I still dont get a good feeling from them.

Tau are space-Stalinists that use pheromonal control, brainwashing, forced sterilisation or outright genocide "for the Greater Good" and they're the closest thing to 'nice guys' in 40K.  :grin:

I am indifferent about the Tau. They're the young, upcoming rapscallions  :why_so_serious:

The necrons are robot space zombies. They fit in very nicely.

It's all about the necrons. They are my favorite race. Tyranid are a close second. Probably, it's because they are both internally stable, infinitely scalable and probably the only two who actually have a shot at ultimate victory.

I thought the Necrons already achieved total victory in the past

then they ran out of food and went to sleep

My impression from reading the manual/lore is that the Tyranid's pretty much are going to win eventually, as the shear amount of force they actually have coming towards our galaxy is impossible to stop.  What we've seen so far is only the very tips of the various arms coming in, as they pretty much have an entire galaxy worth of bio material they've converted and are fully directing at ours.  They write it like its pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Don't really see the Necrons as standing out particularly for taking the galaxy in anything I've read.  Tau actually have the lore that shows them as being the most likely successor to the Empire.  If the Tyranid's weren't going to inevitably eat the galaxy that is.

 :heart: :heart: Tau  :heart: :heart:

They talk the Tyranids up like they will eventually win, everyone is doomed, etc., but that's just all setting the mood IMO. You can make the same point about how they talk up the 'when the Emperor dies the warp entities will wipe out all matter entirely' stuff, etc. In the short term story-wise, they certainly are willing to let the Tyranids lose. (See: Ultramarines, DoW2 single player campaign, etc.)

They could always kill the nids off by simply killing the hivemind. Nids can't win. Also, Necrons > Nids.

In the end the orks will create a waaagh that will tear the galaxy asunder, and then they'll proceed to kill themselves.

Free the Squats.

From what, the tyranids' gullets?  :awesome_for_real:

The Squats live on, under Imperial and GW oppression.

The revolution will come, and Squat bikers will ride again.

So....

Bets on MMOFPS or MMORPG.

Given when this was announced and what has been shown and how many "projects" Vigil has and our first encounter with them and the state of THQ, I'm betting on MMO Vaporware. I could apply for a job and find out though. They're like 10 minutes from me.

You should do it and then write a book about the experience :awesome_for_real:

Updated to what the kids do these days.

Maybe you can use the Vigil dev who retarded up an earlier thread as a reference?  :grin:

The connections never end!

Shut up.

Necrons are Undead, but you are stretching the Blood Elf comparison.

I felt I was stretching a bit more on the Necrons, but mostly I was joking.

This would be the "sarchasm" wouldn't it?

I've read that the empire being held 'alive' is what is actually keeping the chaos doors open, if he actually died then he could kick their asses on their plane, or something.

Every army in wh40k barring the Tau/Eldar are inevitable conquerors of the galaxy kind of hard to sell insanely priced armies if they weren't. I would love if the setting was during the days of the emperor instead of "modern" times. So much more room to do stuff.

I miss the green.

I sadly know not what "the green" is.

Sarcasm used to be represented by green text. Then an edict went out for that to stop. Since that point in time there has been a significant number of sarchasm related injuries.

And we're OK with such injuries.

F13 has decent health coverage you see.

I didn't realise that a 'green sarcasm not cool' edict had been issued. I'm glad though, because it opens up that space for my all new perma-green posting gimmick.


Look how great I am.



EDIT: sig too!

The green was a crutch for those without the ability to read and or communicate effectively.

Was it really?

The green was an off-hand remark I made in a thread that everyone started following.

LEAD US, OH LEADERLY ONE

I'd lead you, but I'd ask your avatar to wash his hands first.

Wings, technically.

Speaking of the inherent inevitability found in the lore, has there ever been any sort of development in that regard? I mean, as long as I've known the story to be (which isn't that long)- the Emperor has always been a carrion-god and there's always been rumors that he's actually dead, and Humanity has always been a step away from getting the grand shanghai from the terrors of the galaxy, and the Tyranids have always been on their way to consume all matter (and we've always only seen the very tip of their vanguard yet!), and and and and...

Have things been on the razor's edge forever?

Yes.

<nitpicking> Almost.  When I 40Ked back in the early 90s, the Tyranids had only just came out, so at that stage they weren't definately going to eat everyone.  However, all the other stuff about the emperor and chaos gods and we're all fucked was true back then.

</nitpicking>

Hmm.  Back then was also when Squats went bye-bye.  Did they turn into Tyranids?  I smell a conspiracy!  :tinfoil:

Well, things were awesome for a time when the Emperor was stomping around the galaxy and fucking up Xenos (well, awesome for humanity, bad for everyone else).  Then for whatever reason he decided he wanted to push paper instead and everything goes tits up shortly thereafter (Horus Heresy)

(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f62/Ell130/poster-emperor-horus.jpg)

I think he's actually referring to the actual game time, not past lore (most the races all have a "happy/good period" in their background lore).  And the answer is yes, the game is set in 40K because thats the milenium where all shit is breaking loose, with the empire in a decaying state, and many hostile forces rising up.  It's here that we have the razors edge, and so makes a good time frame to have all the battles take place in.  Go to much further beyond this, and you start to see who actually eats the Galaxy  :awesome_for_real:

As to this:
No, the Tyranids just ate them (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Squat#Extinction)

Won't the making of Chaos Tyranids mess with them completely taking over the galaxy?

Nids already serve tzeentch. They always have.

But its been this way for over 10,000 years. How much time has passed in the lore since the game came out?

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

As far as I know, it's been pretty much parked in M41 forever. 

I guess the big gaming events would be the only real indicator. Have any clue what was the first one?

As far as I know, none (and somebody who has longer term experience with the game can correct me if I'm wrong).  The "current" time is frozen in place roughly in 41K, and always has been.  Thats were all the army books bring you up to, and most of the big scenario's happen.  Of course, that doesn't mean you can't run a campaign and say your fighting several thousand years ago, but the present time for all the races is always in the 41st millennium.

When they release a new edition of the game, they don't advance the lore/plot forward at all, its just a rewrite of the rules and lore.  So originally, the Tyranids weren't a playable race, and there were squats.  Then GW says, "Tyranids are the Enemy.  They have always been the enemy." and rewrite all of history to make it so.  And also rewrite it to say the squats never existed.  I don't think the time frame has moved forward much at all since the very first edition (but not positive on that).

I think it moves ever so slightly. It looks to me like there's stuff from their big story event whatever things in the timeline in the 4th ed rulebook, for example.

That's... silly.  Why don't they want to incorporate past editions?

Because miniatures are involved, among other reasons. Including an army in the rulebooks means making miniatures for them too.

The link off the wiki about why Squats were removed comes down to 1) no designer getting enthusiastic about doing biker space dwarves and 2) the idea that the Demiurg were going to become a better realised space dwarf race than Squats.

The difference comes from GW originally doing Warhammer IN SPAAAAACE, but later thinking about how they could really take things in a different direction under this new setting.

New editions can go one of two ways - a clean-up of rules and lore that make no big changes, or a large shake-up of lore and / or rules. Large shake-ups mean the audience has to re-buy all of the materials and give creatives more freedom. Also, it's not like the new World of Darkness / D&D 4th Ed etc is that compatible with the previous editions either, so GW really isn't doing anything new.

In a lot of ways the lore has changed, but notssomuch in that they've moved forward per se, they've just retconned previous editions' stuff into "it used to be like this, y'know, like, 4,000 years ago."

ie:

Imperial Guard "officially" used to be called Imperial Army.
Dark Angels livery was originally Black, now it's "their livery WAS black, but most changed it to green, except for the Ravenwing, but some of their successor chapters still wear black."
Eldar had their Craftworlds mentioned in the initial text, but were pretty much in-game represented by Mercenaries (not anymore) and Pirates (the concept now reborn as the Dark Eldar.)
Squats were around, then got "eaten" and now never existed.


Other things have had huge changes, and been completely retconned. Chaos for example. In the original Rulebook, published before the Realm of Chaos books, there's not even a mention of Chaos per se. There are instead a couple of warp creatures, like "Zombies". At the time, Circa WFB 3rd Edition, Chaos was a capital-M-minor threat as well, the 4 major chaos gods got minor write-ups in the background, comparable to the Warhammer god of healing. The RoC books basically changed both WH universes more than any single other thing they've written.
Similar things to almost every new vehicle or redone bit of hardware that's introduced and has suddenly always been aroundl or at the very least has been in service for a few decades or centuries.


They do move the timeline forward though - unevenly, and not by much. The battles for Armageddon, first a boxed game, then incorporated into the background for one of their world campaigns which had an army-list book published for it. And now that's "happened". In the throughtime, one nice-looking Blood Angels captain figure got resculpted and named "Dante", given a backstory, then over 10 years or so of our time, he went mad and fell into the black rage, joining the deathcompany, then was killed. Similarly, special character "Sergeant Lysander" was remade into "Captain Lysander". So he got a timeline move, even if most of the stuf around him remains static.

The starter box for the previous edition "Battle for Macragge" was a kind of "historical" scenario, as in the timeline that battle is old, won, and done with.

Generally they have a world event, but the more cynical amongst us know that the result will always be "stalemate" or at best "narrow victory for the XYZ team" which has no real effect anyway. But it's still set in M41, and always will be, since it's the fucking title for the fucking game. "Warhammer 41,000" isn;t going to happen.

I think this is actually more true. While we're definitely frozen in a certain time period, things like the invasion of Hive Fleet Behemoth and Leviathan, the (38th?) Black Crusade, the lifespan of Ciaphus Cain, and all that sort of stuff has a definite place within the time line. The stasis is one less bound in the firm rigidity of "time never moves" and much more in that "we can make up any number of planets/systems/stations/fleets".  W40k didn't invent the lore recon, and not every work is entirely that.

Tyranids have existed in the game since Rogue Trader. And you are wrong they do advance the time line and plot with successive editions. More so their giant organized competitions are actual events in the lore and time line that supposedly are dictated by the results of the tournaments. BattleFleet Gothica takes place during the gothic wars. The wars of Armageddon,the successive black crusades,the tau expansion,various hive fleets all of these things are the time line and plot moving. The universe is so huge is just doesn't really change the overall status of the setting.

Yeah, I was about to bring up the Eye of Terror/Black Crusade campaign, but that only pushed Chaos forward a little, and did very little in the grand scheme of things.

Does anyone expect a table top miniatures wargame to have any radical developments in lore? I imagine the line wouldn't be as popular if peace broke out or Chaos blew up the universe.

Peacehammer 40K has a nice ring to it.

Diplomacyhammer 40K: Empire and Chaos Talk It Out.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/BrightHammer40k
 :awesome_for_real:

And the recent 5th edition did move the lore forward very slightly - the Golden Throne is beginning to break down and nobody left alive knows how to fix it any more.

Was "the Machine God is probably the Void Dragon, lives on Mars and secretly runs the Adeptus Mechanicus" in 4th?

Heh.

Useless trivia: Cryptic pitched for the 40K job that went to Vigil. (http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=233258#233258)

Someone needs to go read Mechanicum.  :grin:

Necron codex i believe 4th edition.

The emperor dies, the imperium crumbles into a fraction of its former size and the Tau seize the opportunity to fill the void, consequently becoming the new imperium :why_so_serious:

The ones who created the orks come back and control a waaagh the likes of which the universe has never seen. Everything green ends up dead. Everything not green ends up deader.

Y'know one thing that annoyed me about Starcraft is that I keep getting little random bits of lore confused with 40K. I am also waiting for Roboute Guilliman to come back to life and lead the Ultramarines to victory for the Empire once more, unless they've changed that bit of lore that hinted that might be happening and now he's a half-Necron, half-Tyranid servant of chaos that rides a hover bike.

I like BrightHammer so much more then Warhammer. Can I get a MMO out of that instead?

(http://1d4chan.org/images/1/14/Commissarhugs.jpg)

Doubt that is going to happen, all of the primarchs are pretty much mortal fucktards now. No longer are they demigods of ass kickery.

Seriously? Hadn't played for a while but I thought the Primarchs were all pretty firmly in, "Lord those Gods of bygone days descended from the Emperor's seed." Have they been retconned into normal marines or actually brought back in one or two cases or something?

There is a series of books called the Horus Heresy that is telling the tale of the event through various perspectives. The first 4-5 books are focused on Horus and the events leading up to him being corrupted. With othre books being focused on a specific legion or the newest one is about the Mechanicus.While still badass they are very much mortal. Most of them are completely unaware of what the warp is and have no psyker powers to speak of. Physically still bad asses but no longer demigods.Psykers themselves are banned and the concept of Daemons is considered dangerous superstition. It retcons almost all previously established lore.

It doesn't so much retcon all previous lore but rather it shows how far into barbarism the Imperium has fallen without the direct guidance of the Emperor to keep it on course. The lore has always been that the Imperium was originally founded on principles of enlightenment and rationalism and has since become mired in superstition and ignorance. Mind you after being told that gods don't exist and magic is all nonsense only to have a bunch of gods pop out of the woodwork to say hello and do magic at you, it's possible to see the change in a more pragmatic way.

Librarians and sorcery existed within the chapters until sorcery was banned by decree. Which means the warp and its nature was known to at least the Space Marines and for certain the primarchs. To now sorcery is absolutely unknown and psykers across the board are banned. With knowledge of the warp being a completely heretical concept. It is a substantial change.

To be fair that part of the original lore wasn't well thought out and I think the new version as told in the HH series and in the Visions of Heresy books is simply papering over a gap that was always there. They needed to set up the Pre-Heresy Imperium as a beacon of progressive rationality to emphasise the shock of the Heresy itself and the subsequent slide into a technological dark age. In the new timeline, sorcery has been banned and definitely exists because the Emperor has had to castigate Magnus at the very least and possibly others. So it's possible at a stretch to see how the old lore can fit the new version albeit in a skewed way. From the point of view of a Marine or an Imperial historian from the 41st Millennium, Librarians and such have always existed and the Emperor banned their use - and the subsequent betrayal of Horus who was tricked by the falsity of the warp proved his divine wisdom.

In most cases, the lore is told from a point of view that can introduce doubt. It's what the people writig it down believe, coloured by their prejudices, unreliable record keeping, dogma and the paranoia of the Imperial machine itself. There are few instances - especially when dealing with the details of the early history of the Imperium - where an unequivocally external voice says 'this is what happened'.

All of the new lore is pretty much contained in those Vision books. The lack of knowledge of the warp is extremely stupid tho. They have warp travel,psykers at one point were not banned, they are traveling the galaxy encountering all sorts of warp phenomena,sorcery and psykers. Yet not even the primarchs are aware or warned of the capabilities and risks associated with it. You cant have librarians that are not aware of what the warp is. Its not possible, and librarians did exist at some point even in the current lore. Most of the training a librarian or any imperial psyker goes through is how to resist the predations of the warp.
So being wholesale ignorant of the warp would be impossible. Let alone why would the Emperor not tell his most trusted generals of the risks it posed leaving them completely vulnerable to it. And then you have Primarchs and SM's having the use of sorcery and psykers being banned. Yet the emperors right hand man (forget his name) a mortal is an extremely powerful psyker who uses his abilities openly.

What's the point of making people ignorant of the Warp? So much of their backstory was built upon that it seems kind of silly to throw that all away?

So current lore has the Primarchs as NOT being near-gods possessed by extraordinarily long life spans, godlike good looks and swarthiness, and sometimes wings'n'things? That was some kind of juxtaposition between the truth of the olden times growing Empire and the current theocratic and dogma-ruled Empire?

I think it makes sense to me that 10,000 years ago, before warp storms and the Eldar Chaos Gods, not much was known about the warp and its perils. Now, it sorta makes sense that the common folk don't know much about it. Perhaps W40K authors just really like writing about people being surprised with hidden knowledge and the Imperium of man is just so big there's no end of people to surprise.

Well the Primarchs definitely are somewhat godlike and are functionally immortal however it's likely that later Imperial scholars have talked them up even further in the intervening millennia. The Space Marines of that era are far more badass than the watered down ones in M.41 and the Primarchs are clearly a whole level above them.


In the beginning the Warp wasn't understood very well. Perhaps not even the Emperor truly knew what it was. Magnus played with it because he didn't understand the dangers and the Emperor told him not to. It's possible that even a psyker might not understand the warp if he's trying to frame it in the wrong context - and for a rationalist and progressive society 'a madly howling alternate reality filled with predatory gods' is not going to be your first guess. It becomes clear that the Emperor finally does turn his attention to the Warp - probably at about the same time that he tries to build his own section of Webway behind the Golden Throne. He finds out that Magnus is still playing with 'magic' despite being told not to and sics the Space Wolves on the Thousand Sons to get them to stop. Meanwhile he's too distracted to note what the Word Bearers are doing and what Horus is up to until Istvaan at which point it's all too late.

That's pretty much my impression from when I was at GW and dates back at least 10 years so I'd say that not a lot has actually changed, more of it has been filled out and made consistent. There clearly are still some parts that don't make complete sense but I'm not sure how much of that is down to legacy stuff that can't be retconned and how much of it is simply oversight.

I really want to read the Horus Heresy series but am confronted with the fact that books are not cheap and these sort of sci-fi/fantasy books are usually semi-decent trashy stuff that I could blow through in an afternoon. Are they actually well written and worth looking at if you're into 40K lore or will I feel like I just wasted a load of money on fanfic?

I depends.  Any book by Dan Abnett is pure gold.  Some of the others are hit or miss in my opinion.  I only picked up Abnett's first book in the Horus Heresy series, so I can't tell you how the later ones are.

For the most part, I'm really enjoying them.  Descent of Angels is really the only one so far that I've been like WTF IS THIS SHIT?  They're certainly not particularly deep or anything more than space marine pulp fluff though.  

They are pretty patchy to be honest. The first one is really good, later ones fluctuate from 'acceptable' to 'execrable'. Dan Abnett does a really good job of building a complex character around Horus and then Graham McNeill writes him as a one-dimensional muppet in the next book. Likewise in Fulgrim, you get to see some of the biggest players in the 40k milieu parade around proving how dumb they are.

They are physically badass but that is it. Horus is brought down by a single zombie with a poison blade. Space Marines are more badass in this era they are functionally immortal (as far as they are aware). And it is commented on in Legion that the need to replenish SM ranks so quickly has already started to corrupt their genome. Which in turn leads them to be susceptible to corruption.



Ignorance of the warp is the only vaguely feasible way that Horus can become corrupted and it not being instantly apparent. Knowledge of the warp has to be present. Navigators,librarians,Magnus and his entire chapter who in turn trained every chapters librarians,advanced technology based on the warp,astropaths,the beacon,Entire Alpha legion,Word bearers,The emperor is trying to tunnel into the Eldar Webway at the moment which requires vast amounts of warp knowledge. It definitely looks like GW is using the old lore of the emperor being the reincarnation of all of earths pre-historic shamans. There is various hints throughout the newer books. Basically ignorance of the warp is just a clumsy tool to justify the primarchs being idiots and being unaware that Horus became tainted. And to allow him to become tainted in the first place.

Its obvious that there is no way they could be ignorant of essentially the largest threat they would face.

@nowhere They vary in quality but all are above par for GW stuff. I do admit that i have read a few with an e-book reader instead of purchasing them. :oops: They are going to stretch out this series for as LONG as possible. The worst part is that they are not consistent with each other at all. In the first 4-5 books the warp is completely unknown. In Legion the Alpha Legion is completely aware of the warp and employs psykers themselves. Horus is represented as a completely badass but mortal being. While fulgrim beats an avatar to death with his bare hands.

It's not just a poison blade, it's pretty much AnythingBane. The zombie was specifically crafted to live long enough to stick Horus with it.


There are going to be 13 books in total in the series, that was announced before Horus Rising was published.

I think it's possible to have knowledge of the warp in a scientific sense without appreciating what a threat it represents. The navigators can do what they do without having to understand Bad Stuff that's in there. If the Emperor says 'don't touch this stuff' then most of the Primarchs and the legions are going to do just that unquestioningly. Because he's the Emperor and they are his fanatically loyal followers. Only Magnus and Lorgar to begin with are disobedient, Rogal Dorn, Roboute Guilleman and the like wouldn't even be able to conceive of disobeying such a clear edict.

That's what I figured.  Dan Abnett is heads and tails above pretty much every other writer they have in their stable.  I enjoy Sandy Mitchell (Ciaphas Cain series) and Graham McNeill (Ultramarines & others) to a point, but most of the others I don't even bother with anymore.

And you can tell Black Library (http://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/Default.asp?offset=0&disp=24&game=40K&producttype=NULL&stockstatus=In%20stock&sortby=Releasedate%20DESC&lettersort=&army=) knows this, because any Abnett book has his name in a font as big as the title of the book.

The problem is that Librarians trained by Magnus at one point existed in most of the legions. You cannot be a trained psyker without explicit knowledge of the warp. Its the entire basis of the training. So even if redacted later unless the emperor wiped their memory they would know. Navigators can physically see the warp entities when they navigate. They fall prey to them on a regular basis. Vessels bearing scratch marks from daemons is a common occurrence. You can be scientifically aware of natural predators in the warp without them being "gods". They are exposed to all sorts of exotic life it is not that strange of a concept. It took exactly one encounter with the warp for the most loyal of marines to start to grasp what really lived in the warp. Their ships have shielding specifically to block out daemons.

There is no meshing it. It just does not make any kind of rational sense. All the Emperor had to do was explain the warp and daemons are extradimensional aliens that feed and corrupt the material world.

Mike Lee is pretty good as is Gav Thorpe. I think the HH series comes under a lot more editorial scrutiny than the other series because even some of the not so great authors manage to produce decent books in that series. Ben Counter comes to mind here, his stuff in the series is head and shoulders above things like the Soul Drinkers trilogy. Even Graham McNeill who I think is the single worst writer on the team doesn't always suck when writing HH books.


@ Gryeyes, I agree with most of what you say. I still think that prior to the Heresy, understanding of the Warp was insufficient. Knowing there are beings in the Warp isn't the same thing as appreciating the true nature of those beings. The Emperor can say they are extra-dimensional aliens but that's not really true. The true nature of daemons and Warp powers is entirely outside the rational context of the early Imperium and its way of framing the universe.  It'll be interesting to see how later books either retcon or rationalise that - particularly the librarians issue.

Im curious what is the 13th book? Are they going to not include the Siege of Terra in the novels? That seems a pretty huge event to contain in a single book. And is Black Library going to publish other pre-heresy era novels?

No idea, I suspect that Alan Merrett is orchestrating it somewhere.

My problem with Mike Lee is the only stuff of his I've read is the Malus Darkblade books.  I don't know where he ends and Abnett begins on those.

The only Thorpe I've read is The Last Chancers Omnibus.  It was a decent read, but I've yet to move onto his other works.  Decent stuff I admit.

Nagash the Sorceror is Mike Lee's best solo foray to date. It's one of the Time of Legends books which will become a series of trilogies each dealing with a central character in the Warhammer canon (the other two released so far are Heldenhammer and Malekith). It's very good and has a distinctly different ambience to most Warhammer novels.

Let Gav write about Dwarfs and it will probably be very readable indeed. Even in Malekith which is notionally about the origins of the Dark Elves, the best parts are the bits where Gav can eulogise about the Dwarfs. Grudgebearer and Angels of Darkness are likewise well worth your time.

While Iain is here answering questions....

What happened between William King and the Black Library?  The Gotrek & Felix books were good entertainment reads that came out in a reasonable time period, but the continuation by a new author just looks bad.

For the record: none of this lore will have any impact on gameplay.

That is all.  :why_so_serious:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
 :uhrr: *gnashing of teeth   :ye_gods:

Well, it is 10,000 year old lore. Ive never actually played the TT game. I am just a dork and it is an awesome setting. Pretty much same deal with shadowrun.

I've never played the tabletop game myself.  Read a lot of the books though.  Went in one day to see how the tabletop game was played.  Sounded interesting.  Asked how much the started set was.  "$50".  Walked out and never looked back. 

Already have enough expensive hobbies.

I don't think this was posted.

WOW has peaked.  40k is waiting! (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/thq-quot-warcraft-has-peaked-quot)

Bill King is still nominally a BL author, he just hasn't written anything for a while. I remember bumping into him in Bugmans a couple of years back so there was no falling out with GW or anything. IIRC, Andy Jones (who was BL head at the time) really wanted more Gotrek and Felix books to go with the big relaunch of BL and the general new pace of publication. Bill King was busy with some other projects but said he didn't mind if other authors took his ball and ran with it - hence the later sequels.

Iain, if you ever see those guys. Can you punch them in the throat for me for that horrible 40k RPG launch then cancel shit they pulled. Thanks.

Interesting. He seemed to go from churning out a couple books a year for GW to writing nothing at all, so I had assumed there was some kind of disagreement with management.

Thanks for the response.

Big talk for a title with no release date. Or screenshots. Or website.

Also, we might start playing for the IP, but we stay for the game mechanics.

I wonder if they are going for a Mature rating. Be difficult to do WH:40k justice otherwise.

Amazing, this was almost the exact same ideology WAR had.  It's worked wonders for them!

Almost definitely not. I think there's quite a lot they'd be able to get in, thematically, without an M on the box. Keep Khorne's fountains of blood and Slaanesh's hermaphroditic dicktits out of it and you're in the clear.

Let's be blunt and note that Mark Jacobs is probably not going to sign onto this project, thereby allowing for some reasonable interest in the end product.

Somewhat off topic but seeing as we're discussing 40K lore, I would fucking love to see an Inquisitor RPG. Especially with some of the writing talent from KoTOR II (not game talent so much). I would love to see a good, mature, dark RPG that leaves you wondering if you really are the good guy at some points and I think the Inquisitor setting really has a lot of room for that. I also want to shoot heretics in the face.

Dark  Heresy is probably what you want.  Inqusitors retinue.   

Ya, the aborted PnP wh40k game is pretty much exactly that. The books offer a pretty awesome look into wh40k. Give me a Vampires:bloodlines game set in the wh40k universe and i will die a happy man.

Um, Dark Heresy (the aforementioned 40K PNP game) is still being published and developed for, just by a different publisher now.

This. And not only a big "This" but they have a lot of leeway as far as publishing dollars which they didn't realistically have before. It was a dick move but it's been more than salvaged.

Also Gotrek and Felix made their first appearances in the late 80s. They've been doing the different author thing for a while now.

So Dark Heresy is being developed and published by an entirely new group of people? Or did some of them transfer with the IP?

Its FFG/Black Industries, the same people who publish the Warhammer Fantasy RPG.

I see for some reason i always had the impression they sold of that part of their company.

I didn't explain it clearly. The former Black Industries stuff is now published by FFG (Fantasy Flight Games) under license from GW, along with other new stuff. I don't know if they use the same writers but it would be sort of surprising if they didn't, most RPG authors are freelancers.

Just because Poor Soln's post was locked instead of merged to the bottom of this:

I guess this is the official official announcement  :awesome_for_real:

Seeing as I enjoy the "please dont link to a blog linking to a story" here is the direct link.

Vigil Games (http://www.vigilgames.com/games_40k.php)

Full text. The HUGE WALL OF IT.

How is this related to Lum's new job that he can't talk about? Or did I fall into the sarchasm?

How is this new considering that's the same stub page that was there the last time this topic came up a few weeks ago?

heh

Random MMO blogger posted about it today, and someone got excited?

Probably just a few more stops have been pulled.  You can't pull out all the stops at once or you'd wreck it.  You have to pull out the stops a few at a time.  The fact that Blizzard left so many stops in place when they developed WoW is what will be their downfall.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24146


Wonder if WAR will survive until 2012 (though 2013 is probably a safer bet for 40k's release).

I'm thinking it wont even last the whole of 2010.

This is a retardly obvious statement, should it ever come true. Someone was really reaching for a point.

It's only obvious if you think WHO has enough gas to coast into 2012 before EA pull the plug.  Depending on what sort of miracle Muzyka can pull out of his ass, I doubt it will take more than a month or two after the launch of Aion for it to start to hemorrhage players more so than it already is.  And with AoC starting to sorta, kinda, maybe turn their game around, I could see it starting to leech some subs from WHO as well.

First piece of released concept artwork.

http://www.vigilgames.com/img/WH40KOnline/WH40K_Online_Concept.jpg

Don't we already have about 20 years worth of released concept art to work from?  :oh_i_see:

Pretty sure that image is posted elsewhere in this thread. Every time this thread gets bumped my hopes soar.  :heartbreak:

Most of that art contains excrement secreting dick nipples and the like.

Thats what I was thinking.

Some website people don't like recently posted An Early Look At The Warhammer 40K MMO (http://kotaku.com/5415951/an-early-look-at-the-warhammer-40k-mmo/gallery/)


A 40k fan site followed that up with the following (http://www.warhammer40konline.net/index.php?/topic/710-setting-the-record-straight/page__s__c28f26208406bf0131907d693927e68a).


Anyway, main reason I'm bumping this old thread is below.

On the same fansite is a rumour thread (http://www.warhammer40konline.net/index.php?/topic/670-rumors/page__gopid__5209&#entry5209).

Going to quote the OP in full just because I thought it was funny (e.g. global chat, later on, cease and desist, lawsuits etc) and for the  :drillf: fun of rereading it a couple of years after release, not because I actually believe a word.

If the artist did leak something, I think it is understandable he be fired for leaking, not because of the images.

If he was fired because those images were leaked by someone else, it is insane to fire him because this is 40K, where the images have been in the public domain for decades.

I don't think we'll have to worry about this actually ever happening...

Ignoring that painful truth, this is a great example of a marketing person who has no idea what they are dealing with on the consumer level. Things like that get said by them because they need to differentiate their product from the existing one in the consumers mind. If they actually knew the product and consumer, they'd know this is like saying "When Door is completed, it will likely create the situation where two simultaneous portals exist in the house, the Archway and the Door."

When "journalists" do it, I just want to shoot things.

I  :heart: marketing folks who don't know their product or customer well enough.  :why_so_serious:

THQ Inc. F3Q10 (Qtr End 12/31/09) Earnings Call Transcript (http://seekingalpha.com/article/186501-thq-inc-f3q10-qtr-end-12-31-09-earnings-call-transcript?page=-1&find=%22highest+ranking+revenue+opportunity%22)


Old thread, but I thought the above might be of interest to people planning to attend E3.

I want to be optimistic, but deep in my soul I know we'll get: Forces of the imperium! Speeeeeece Marine (tank), Imperial Priest (healer/buffs), Assasin (DPS), Inquisitor (Mage). Plus, despite everyone having guns the combat will be 90% melee. In that sense I guess it fits since the table top game's guns have the range of pellet gun and it boils down to a rush to get your troops into melee.

If they make the Commissar as a pet class though, it will be brilliant.

As long as they stick to the right idea. Every MMO has a pet class that has pets follow them around to do their fighting for them. A brave new game needs to step up and make a pet that follows you around and shoots you in the back of the head whenever you're not in combat.

I just don't think Warhammer lends itself that well to MMO.  I was excited for WAR, and well, we all know how that went, and I don't expect 40k to be different.  RTS or turned based strategy seem to be a fine way to play Warhammer 40k on the computer, and I just don't see this translating into something compelling.  There is a part of my that is just like YEAH 40k MMO SWEEEEEEEEET, but the cynical/rational side of me says, its going to be a run of the mill MMO with a 40k skin.

Haha, that would be awesome.  You could make it so that you have the choice of fighting with the help of a Commissar or not.  Having him gives you a boost to your combat stats and he helps shoot the mob.  However, if you don't kill something that agro's you and you try to flee, he fucking executes you.

Logic fail?

Yeah, I missed the part where warcraft had 30 years of turn based table top gaming under its belt.  Good point.

I'm a ton more interested in 40k than fantasy Warhammer. But the odds of this being a good MMO are pretty long.

Any IP can skip genres with the right game, right kind of marketing and enough of it before launch.

Unfortunately, we usually just end up with one or two of those things at best.

I'll be curious to see if THQ takes this opportunity as seriously as Blizzard did and unlocks the right budget for both.

I'm interested to see if they follow the DPS, BOP path or try something new.  The initial 40k design should be far enough removed from AoC and WAR launches so that they have a good idea what went wrong.

Given all the cool technology that's available in the 40k universe I would be much happier with a playstyle more similar to COD2 than WoW.  My favourite weapon in any online game is still the M1 Garand, bland basic, does the job well and makes a cool spring noise when empty, I can't imagine wanting to play 40k online if I have to farm a purple Orc slaying +4 DPS bolter for the goal of watching someone's health bar tick slowly downwards.  This is likely to be such a waste of a good IP.

Warhammer 40k Online E3 Details - Warhammer 40K Online (http://www.warhammer40konline.net/index.php?/topic/1021-warhammer-40k-online-e3-details/)

Does Imperium include Space Marines? No Space Marines == total fail.

Well, pisspoo. I was hoping for Tau, but I could live with those factions. I gave Anarchy Online 2 years, I can give a 40K MMORPG a month. Ass-uming the info is in any way accurate.

I don't buy any of that as legit.

The lore stuff I could care less about, but the gameplay is more or less exactly how I imagined they would implement a 40k MMO. Even if this was from a completely bunk source, that's still probably how the game will end up turning out.

Also "Imperium" covers both IG and Space Marines... along with Sisters of Battle, Witchhunters, etc, etc. It would be a pretty radical departure to make them all just different classes on the same team.

If they're doing it MMO-style, I'd imagine they do it either Rogue Trader or Inquisitor style. Space Marines can be Deathwatch, which gives them a reason to be running around in very small numbers and also armed with non-standard gear.

"Kill ten termagants and bring me their tails."

This is what I fully expect.  I'd love to see something like Planetside but 40k, but I just don't think it'll happen.  You could definitely see the potential in a game like that though.

Of course, one thing that is interesting is how they would handle how many "points" units are worth.  By which I mean, a single standard space marine would curb stomp a single standard ork boy.   They could maybe get around this by having Orks control a small squad of orks or something (think Gibberlings in Allods Online), just to give it that ork horde feeling of having lots of squishier units, rather than a few elite units.  I'd doubly love it if they had some sort of resource flow from controlling points in zones that allowed your faction to spawn vehicles or something when you gained enough (sort of Dawn of War 2 style, but less so).     Anyway, there are tons of ways they could make the game awesome, but also tons of ways they could make the game really bad, and given the track record of MMOs in general, i'm gonna go with bad.

Counterpoint: ORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKSORKS!
WAAAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!!

 :awesome_for_real:

I expected the Tyranids to be a PVE faction, but I can't find any way to believe the rest of that list isn't bullshit.

'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go
'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go
Through da universe!
'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go
'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go 'Ere we go
Don' know where 'till we get there!

The half-assed design I've had in my head for a 40k game has always been you get a little squad of dudes rather than just one character, I'm not sure there's a better way to do justice to the original game when turning it into a MMORPG. Basically like the ST:O away team.

Hmm... I was just thinking that it would be cool seeing having lots of different abilities explained by having a number of specialists in your squad and being able to do a quick check of your health based on the number of men left standing. Then it occurred to me the natural result of that would be 1) gankers would have a really easy time of picking off people who were wounded, 2) Losing men should really mean losing abilities, which means that the worse you're injured the less well you can fight so the guy that gets the first serious hit is is practically guaranteed victory.

Damn it why do some cool ideas have to have such unpleasant gameplay consequences? Also I would really, really love a good Inquisitor RPG. I just hope this doesn't end up being a reskin of WaR or something.

Is anything going on at Vigil? I was looking at LinkedIn for a separate matter and noticed that in about three weeks Vigil has seen Neal Kettler (listed as Lead Programmer, also seen it as Lead Server Programmer), Colin Post (Senior UI Artist) and Chuck Suong (Senior Animator) have all left to join other studios (and so has Capen Apple, but he's just a QA Tester). Suong is the only one I can see who has been explicitly linked to the Warhammer 40K MMO, but it's interesting that several senior people have left very close together.

Guess we'll see at E3.

People come and go, so it could be just a coincidence. Still, the timing is chuckle-worthy if you tie the departure with this (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28417/THQ_Warhammer_40K_MMO_Doesnt_Need_A_Million_Subscribers.php) announcement, in which THQ's CEO Brian Farrell downplayed WH40K's need for a large subscriber base. They're now on record as having low initial investment, low expectations as well as being low on staff.

I like the IP so I still have my hopes, even though Darksiders was full of meh.

I read his comments and think we should probably expect WAR40K to follow the Cryptic "profitable at 100K players" strategy.

Let's hope that doesn't mean they follow the 'ship a complete piece of crap' strategy, too.  Although I've never been a big Warhammer fan, the setting is pretty cool and a 40k MMO does rather interest me, so I hope it comes out playable and fun enough to play for at least while.

The more I've thought it about, the more I think an MMORPG 40k game would be a waste.   A FPS/action game ala planetside would be better in my opinion.  I just can't be fucked to care about levels in a 40k game

Aiming for a profitable 100k game is fine.  It's whether they want to build on an existing game or just make a launch-and-forget which will matter.  I would much prefer a company aim for a reasonable number and budget accordingly than try to beat WoW and then make mistake after mistake because they're trying too hard to recoup the investment when they see they can't do it.

I'll be playing it whatever they do. It could castrate me and kill my parents and I'd still play it.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100224

Wrong thread?

No, I feel about 40K the way Ethan feels about Starcraft 2.

Why come they couldnt pick a different IP to play with?  I mean... Warhammer is terribly played-out right now, even in the FLGS.  People moved on from it years ago.  (sigh)   I swear it's still like designers are 5+ years behind the times.  Where is my Iron Kingdoms MMO dammit!

I'm with Malakili really, if you grok on it a while you get a bit of a pit in your stomach.  Does indeed seem a bit of a waste if not a total mistake.  40k via Planetside or ww2o, or perhaps a next-gen collectible MMORTS would've indeed been more compelling, as we've said i dunno how many times already in these forums.  As an RvR diku??   blehck.  

You can have FPS + tons RPG elements still

In fact that would be dreamy

Eh, maybe maybe not.  Maybe some sort of light RPG elements like unlocking a new ammo for your bolter, or a new choppa or something, but the moment I have to even THINK about "Killing 10 termagants" or saying "LFG Space Hulk" I'm so far gone you'll have to look in Dawn of War to find me.

Maybe in the sense that there's no right thread to link to a ctrl-alt-del comic in.

Haha!  Will vitriolic quips ever stop being fashionably edgy?  Oh internet, you complete me.

On the other hand, I had forgotten Ctrl-alt-del existed.  Odd.  It's been years I think and yet there appears to be no growth.

I think it's pretty unlikely that in a MMO game you are going to avoid people wanting form groups in order to complete missions/locations.

I guess my point was, too much emphasis on PvE in 40k is going to be utterly uninteresting to me.   What I want is something that emulates the  table top battles, except with many players controlling individual units (or possible small squads of units) instead of one player controlling the entire army.     I don't want to have to "do" Space Hulk to farm my master crafted bolter, or upgraded chainsword, or whatever, is my point.  I assumed that meaning got through but I sort of just summarized it as "LFG Space Hulk" so I apologize if my meaning was lost in my snarky short hand.

Well the fanbase is people who play W40K RTS games and people who tabletop minatures battles. Both of those don't really have a connection with Diku.

I'd like to see something like a more lavish, more beautiful, version of Shattered Galaxy with a little more of a tech tree. I thought the 6-10 unit squad size was excellent for a massive game.

It must have been a pretty tough decision and I'm sure they analysed a lot of metrics. MMORTS hasn't made anyone a vast amount of money, not compared to diku. On the other hand Warhammer Online may have proved that they should be looking elsewhere than avatar-based gameplay.

I'm sure it was decided in the usual way of a large group of passionate people all arguing different corners without giving an inch for hours until someone just said "screw it. we'll do XXX".

What I would like to see is a heavily tactical action rpg with heavy emphasis on group play (to simulate the rts aspect), but for a low budget game, I doubt we will see much innovation. Which is sad, because WH40k seems like the perfect IP to break out of the diku mold.

I just hope there is at least one class in there (Ork or IG) able to control multiple henchmen as a mechanic.

I want to direct my squad of cannon fodder to tactically wipe the floor with some Space Marine  :grin:

I was thinking the same. 

We probably don't need two active threads for this game.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19395.0