Company of Heroes Online: Like Company of Heroes, only Online

[Lum]

(Oh wait, CoH was online too)  

Anyone else playing this?

http://www.companyofheroes.com/

Pluses:
* it's COMPLETELY FREE (there's a cash shop but I haven't seen much reason to spend money, or even see if it works)
* it's essentially identical to Company of Heroes (the original, no expansion nations)
* Commanders are persistent and you have to level up unlocks instead of game by game (this may be a minus, too)
* IT'S NOT STARCRAFT 2. Cover and firing arcs play a huge role and your units will actually defend themselves and take cover. I know, this will BLOW YOUR MIND if you played SC2.

Minuses:
* Other people play this game. My first 2v2 today, my teammate immediately said "you better not blow this game" and then proceeded to blow the game
* Lots more people play Axis so if you want to drive over people with Panzers (note: you do) you'll have to wait on the 12 ranger spammers to queue up.

[Malakili]

I seem to remember a thread about this a few months ago.  As someone who likes the Relic RTS games, I am tempted to give this a try, but I played the crap out of CoH already, and I'm not really all that interested in just playing it again now.   Is it anything new, or simply free to play CoH multiplayer?  Its not a bad thing, its just not a new thing...

[Stormwaltz]

I don't play any RTS that:

1) forces me to play against other people

2) isn't pause-able

I like Company of Heroes, but I'm not touching this with a ten foot cattle prod.

[taolurker]

The Province newspaper reports that Brian R. Wood, a designer on Company of Heroes, died in a car accident Friday while protecting his pregnant wife. He was 33.

Gamepro article
Gamasutra

The first thing Erin Wood wants her baby to know is that Dad, Brian, died to save their lives.

“. . . In his final act he did the only thing that would save us,” said Wood, 31.

With an out-of-control Chevy Blazer bearing down on him, the 33-year old North Vancouver man braked and swerved his Subaru wagon so that he would take the force of the head-on collision, saving his wife of five years, pregnant with their first baby..

“All the policeman say that if we had hit the car head-on all of us would be dead. At the very last second (Brian) braked really hard and turned right so that he would be put in the path of the SUV and not me and the baby, and that is the only thing that saved us both.

“I am not going to waste the gift he gave us.”

The accident happened Friday as the Woods were making their way to a family home on Whidbey Island in Washington State.

A Chevy Blazer, with four occupants, crossed the centre line when the driver tried to take her sweater off while driving, asking the other front passenger to take the wheel at the time.

Original Vancouver paper

[HaemishM]

I've tried to download the goddamn thing since I got into the closed beta. I have never been able to download and patch the game, and every time I try and fail, my desire to play gets less and less.

[Lum]

I don't play any RTS that:

1) forces me to play against other people

2) isn't pause-able

I like Company of Heroes, but I'm not touching this with a ten foot cattle prod.

It includes the single player version from the original game, which is pausable, but you probably already have that.

[Lum]

I seem to remember a thread about this a few months ago.  As someone who likes the Relic RTS games, I am tempted to give this a try, but I played the crap out of CoH already, and I'm not really all that interested in just playing it again now.   Is it anything new, or simply free to play CoH multiplayer?  Its not a bad thing, its just not a new thing...

It's 99% the same as CoH multiplayer. Differences:

* multiplayer actually works - CoH multiplayer would usually die if two players behind different NATs would try to play. The multiplayer code seems far more stable now.
* The commander tree unlocks, there's a lot of new ones. They aren't game changing.

[ffc]

* it's COMPLETELY FREE (there's a cash shop but I haven't seen much reason to spend money, or even see if it works)

Free sounds good.  At the very least I can play the single player game which I missed but wanted to check out after liking DoW II.  The 6.54GB client started downloading at 1.1MB/sec but it has now dropped to 200 KB/s.  I will diligently stare at the download screen until speeds increase.

[birdsguts]

I've tried to download the goddamn thing since I got into the closed beta. I have never been able to download and patch the game, and every time I try and fail, my desire to play gets less and less.

I'm in relatively the same boat.
Signed up maybe a few days ago or so... maybe a week. Tried an install and ran into some rubbish with the downloader and just gave up and went back to whatever I was doing. I might give it a go though this weekend. Depends. Hard drive space is precious right now.

OP makes it sound alot better than I assumed it would be though, so that's a big lure right there. Maybe I'll clear something else out.

[ffc]

The downloader crashed the first time I ran it but it was a firewall issue.  Maybe try looking into that.

[HaemishM]

Finally got the goddamn thing to finish the download at work late yesterday. Today was the opening of the LotRO F2P, so that won out over this.

[birdsguts]

For me the issue turned out the be the initial setup.exe downloader. For whatever reason when it tried to connect to download the setup files for the visual C library it just couldn't hit the link correctly. All I had to do was open "details" after the error occurred and just copy paste the link and install it manually.

Just putting this here for anyone else who runs into that problem. Downloading now... will try the game out later tonight at work.