Oh yeah! Those shots look great!

(Starcraft 2 should look so good...)

First screens are on the site, wow looks good, though I read somewhere that they would focus on fewer squads this time, hope they can pull it off.

Nah, the Tyrannids will be in the game.

"They say there is another race that they aren't announcing yet...what do you think it's gonna be? It would be idiotic of them not to do 'nids."

Nope, it would be brilliant. An expansion with nids will sell like hotcakes. Personally I want them to release nids and Imperial Guard in the same expansion. I want nids, but I can wait.

There's been a lot more noise about it on the Relic news forums because the same people keep whining about it, with some crying like little girls that it's not in one of the expansions for DOW1. Personally I think that saving them for later because they felt they couldn't do a good job with them in that engine was a good decision, and showed the most dedication to the future of the franchise.

I think they'll be in DOW2...eventually, but whether it's in first release or not isn't that important.

"I can imagine the rabble on forums if they don't include Tyranids."

That's part of why I think it's worth waiting for an expansion...just to hear the whining and crying, threats, and so on...

This comment was edited on Apr 3, 18:39.

You know as much as I like DoW I couldn't bring myself to pick up Soulstorm. There goes my beta invite - never mind I have DoW, Winter, and Crusade?

I'm waiting for it to go on clearance, I doubt it will be that long before this happens! No offense to relic and the team, I just rarely buy PC games at full price anymore. Last one was Sins of a Solar empire, before that...holy crap, galactic Civ 2... it's been a slow period for pc gaming around my house.

Now all I can do id thank about this game....

Only 365 days left!

CHAOS AND LOL'S CONSUME ME!

_________________________________________________
NO COOP = NO PURCHASE
NO MULTICORE SUPPORT = NO BUY
NO NATIVE WIDESCREEN SUPPORT = NO CASH FOR YOU
CRITICAL PATCH released within 2 weeks = RETURN TO STORE
IN GAME ADVERTISING = GO ***** YOURSELVES

Yeah Battle for middle earth passed me by a few years ago, I don't think I enjoyed the demo much. Might see if I can find it cheap somewhere.

From the official site:

"Be sure to check www.dawnofwar2.com tomorrow, Friday April 4, for exciting news and updates!"

Hopefully we'll get some proper screen shots then. WAAAGH!

Not sure if I really like the idea of developing squads during the campaign or not, sounds like more of a balancing headache?

This isn't a new idea. BfME had persistent squads and it wasn't too much of a problem there. In most cases, you are badly outnumbered and the enemy already has an established base, defenses, etc, so your unit power advantage is negated.

Nice work manic. Thanks for saving the lazy buggers a job

Not sure if I really like the idea of developing squads during the campaign or not, sounds like more of a balancing headache? Even if it's just a leader and a few elite units they will be like gods compared to the normal grunts? Like the campaign in Soulstorm, get your leader equipped with wargear and some elite units and rush every map. Have to wait and see I guess.

It looks good anyway

edit: I can imagine the rabble on forums if they don't include Tyranids.

This comment was edited on Apr 3, 14:51.

They say there is another race that they aren't announcing yet...what do you think it's gonna be? It would be idiotic of them not to do 'nids.

You know as much as I like DoW I couldn't bring myself to pick up Soulstorm. There goes my beta invite - never mind I have DoW, Winter, and Crusade?

link to the scans:

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/godkow/dawn-of-war-2-high-quality-scans-78250.phtml

i found this while searching (sorry for the size)

The intel (gathered from the preview and an interview with Producer Mark Noseworthy in the same Belgian magazine, PC Gameplay):

- Uses the Essence 2.0 engine with Havok physics, all optimised for DX10 and multicore support.
- It looks great, think of the DoW intro but with a bit less polygons here and there (in terms of lighting and all that it looks almost exactly the same).
- Units also use CoH-like unit AI for awareness and pathfinding to find cover and such.
- While DoW 2 shares the same (upgraded probably) engine as CoH it won't be "CoH in space", while soldiers in CoH will ask themselves if flanking the enemy is the right option, in DoW2 it will be more like Space Marines asking themselves if they should use their jetpacks to jump over an Ork squad to attack them in the back. Different settings, different kinds of warfare.
- Preview only showed a destroyed city landscape, akin to DoW (but more detailed), other tilesets will offer deserts, jungles, mountains and other cities.
- Only the Orkz and Space Marines were revealed, more races on the way obviously and to be to revealed later this year (though how many isn't known).
- Co-op campaign for both the Orkz and Space Marines, apparently not for the other to-be-revealed races.
- More focus on making units and squads unique; every unit has got a name (at least in the campaign it seems), more details and more animations.
- Relic wants to give players rewards at the end of a mission like wargear (armor, weapons, rare objects); "Let's pimp out squads with cool stuff!", you will see these items in-game as well of course.
- You'll fight your way through the campaign with the same squads.
- You can't control more than six squads! I am not sure if this is campaign-only but the preview made it sound like it wasn't.
- The squads are going to be a lot more interesting than before though.
- A squad leader (one or several?) will need to survive if you want to complete a mission; you really have to look out for your squads and don't treat them like cannon fodder.
- There is a lot more interesting commentary from the units as well; if your SM commander is holding a Thunder Hammer f.e. then the opponent will specifically comment on that, Ork Warchief saying something like "Ooh, nice hammer, but mine is bigger!". The warchief will say something else if the commander doesn't have the hammer.
- The campaign lets Space Marines operate from a spaceship, you'll get a view of an underlying planet and you'll be able to choose from different missions (which are tagged with difficulty colours, green, blue and red).
- Certain reward items won't be useable at once in the campaign, so they'll be taken back to the SM spaceship for research.
- Dreadnought can now also trample Orkz.
- No sea or air units (though jetpacks are still in of course).
- Development team of 55 people has been working on it since September 2005.
- Release in early 2009 or later.

This is just a summary, the preview also describes the battles that were shown but that wasn't really revealing. Also remember that this is a translation based on the impressions of a Belgian gamesjournalist and on a translated-to-Dutch interview, some of the info might be incorrect or poorly worded in the preview/interview itself to start with, you never know with these first-revelation articles.

Man the wait till spring 2009 is gonna be painful!

Oh and Surf you are the lamest troll these boards have ever seen.There have been master trolls on blues and you are not one of them.

Yeah - bummer! I am hoping for some screenshots soon.

do a search for them, the magazine article thats in german is scanned and on the net that has a few screenshots.

i'll see if i can find them, i have them saved on my pc somewhere.

Yeah - bummer! I am hoping for some screenshots soon.

Link redirects to the standard Dawn of War site now :/

Sempai
...still doesnt include the race their fanbase has been screaming for.

Fuck You Relic.

Ah, one of those retards that no matter how many times relic says that the 'Nids' couldn't be done well enough using the DoW engine so they didn't put them in, still insists on crying about it any chance they get.