Warhammer 40k MMO by Vigil/THQ

[ashrik]

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).

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

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.

[gryeyes]

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. 

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.

[AutomaticZen]

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.

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.

[Ratman_tf]

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.

[AutomaticZen]

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.

[UnSub]

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.

Diplomacyhammer 40K: Empire and Chaos Talk It Out.

[Simond]

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

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?

[Rishathra]

Occasionally, Orkz will leave their home worlds on a WAAAGH!, best described as a combination of a mass migration and a galaxy-wide rock 'n roll concert tour. Orkz on a WAAAGH! describe their goals as "Bein' da toughest." "Making lotsa neat fings and deff tek."

At times, a WAAAGH! will pass through populated Imperial systems, which often draws the attention of the Imperial Navy. Typically, these conflicts are limited to a handful of warning volleys by the an Imperial blockade, followed by an Orkish retreat and a comm message along the lines of "Uhh...Sorry boss, we's gonna go build fings somewhere else."

Heh.

[UnSub]

Useless trivia: Cryptic pitched for the 40K job that went to Vigil.

[JWIV]

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

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?

Someone needs to go read Mechanicum. 

[gryeyes]

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

Necron codex i believe 4th edition.

[Zzulo]

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

[Hindenburg]

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.

[NowhereMan]

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.

[Fordel]

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

[Teleku]

[gryeyes]

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.

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

[NowhereMan]

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?

[gryeyes]

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.

[IainC]

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.

[gryeyes]

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.

[IainC]

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'.

[gryeyes]

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.

[Trippy]

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?

[ashrik]

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.

[IainC]

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?

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.

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?

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.

[NowhereMan]

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?

[AutomaticZen]

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.

[JWIV]

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?

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.  

[IainC]

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.

[gryeyes]

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.

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.

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?

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. 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.

[IainC]

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

[AutomaticZen]

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.

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 knows this, because any Abnett book has his name in a font as big as the title of the book.

[gryeyes]

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.

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.

[IainC]

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 knows this, because any Abnett book has his name in a font as big as the title of the book.

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.