MaggikWabbit6

Well, possibly new. Just got my subscription from PCZoneDecember issue UK. Has this to say:
"Dawn if War II divided the fans when it crashed down onto our hard-drive and flexing it's power armoured muscles and ranting about the warp. The new gameplay and exclusion of everyone's favourite Nutcases, the Chaos Space Marines, turned many people off, as did the inclusion of Games For Windows Live. Nevertheless, Relic have decided to give he fans some of what they wanted with DOWII's first expansion, Chaos Rising.
Boasting a new and improved campaign that addresses DOW2's issues of map repetition and limited battlefield objectives, Chaos rising picks up where DOW2 left off, allowing your xenophobic genetically engineered super-soldiers to become even more super. This means a higher level cap, new combat abilities and lots of shiny new toys for your troops to play with.
A lot of attention has been given to the depth of the campaign too. Top of the list of new features is "corruption", a new story and gameplay mechanic that ties into the corrupting influence of Chaos.
Throughout the campaign the player will be faced with moral choices, such as whether to risk destroying a sacred building during a battle. Going against the principles and ideology of the Blood Ravens chapter will add to your corruption level. The bad news is that this will turn you to the dark side of the Warp, but the good is that you will unlock new chaos-like powers or wargear.
Like all true evil, however such powerful abilities and equipment are paid for dearly, with an ability that increases your damage, for example, draining your health at the same time.
DOW2's story promises to be a little more interesting, with the return of Elphias (the leader of the chaos forces in DOWC) and an increase in communication between such characters and you.
If this wasn't enough the maps are recieving soem love too, with a wider variety of battlefields and the arrival of, in the words of Relic, "catastophic destructive events" later on in the story. An attempt to outshine starcraft 2's rising lava, perhaps?
Like the original DOW expansion, DC, Chaos rising will be playable stand-alone, and those who own the core game will be able to access the new choas faction when in multiplayer. With all these fixes, features and a new faction, Relic look set to repeat their history of delivery solid dawn of war expansions."

Also 3 pics, don't have a scanner, so descriptions:
Pic 1: Close up of a Blood Raven with a thunderhammer and jetpack hitting a Chaos Space Marine with a pistol and chainsword in an urban environment.
Pic 2: Zoomed out shot of a long range battle between SM and CSM. On SM side, ASM, Devs and a Dreadnought. On CSM side, Dreadnought, Plague marines, Predator and something that could be nurgle demons or mutants or chaos spawn (too small to see clearly). Snowy ruin environemt.
Pic 3: SM, FC and devastor fighting and old style bloodletter on juggernaut of khorne in hand to hand. Jungle environment.

Sorry if this is known, but I onyl pop in here infrequently but thought you might like to know this.

Cortlendt

Are nurgle goo effects reused from tyranids?

Sir Guppy

nice info, thanks. I like the stuff about the campaign changes, because I did enjoy the campaign in DoW2 i just knew is sucked at the same time.

SpaceMarineFan

I thought Eliphas was with the World Bearers, and I thought he was dead.
Didn't he like.. explode?

Deionarra

Scanning pictures from the magazine would be an infringement of copyright.

So don't do that unless you want to be banned.


Maybe Nurgle stuck his pieces back together.

alisbin

i seem to remember that when you beat the stronghold he was sent by the whoever he was serving (don't recall which chaos god or prince it was) to somewhere in the warp to be tortured for his failure, maybe his sentence got cut short so he could cause some havoc and redeem himself.

Ifitmovesnukeit

I believe the quote was "Fear not Apostle- the basilica is reserved for those who may redeem themselves", thus implying that Eliphas had failed beyond redemption. So either something intervened to give him another chance (perhaps the daemon prince was acting outside its authority in sentencing him), or more likely the whole thing will be retconned.

However: This preview has actually aroused my curiosity- I'd like to see more about the "catastrophic destructive events" stuff because if there's one thing DoWII didn't lack, it was beautiful landscapes and scenery. Let's hope it's a little bit more than "lol, blow up the dam" from C&C:Generals...

Lionel-Richie

The fact that this is standalone means it's going to be atrociously overpriced. Baaah. > That's my one problem with these standalone expansions...mostly cause the target audience for them are people who ALREADY HAVE THE FIRST GAME.

Not many people are going to jump in with the expansion.

Moep

I dont have a problem with it being full priced, don't find it to be over priced when it has the same size as the original game or maybe even more ;-) (and by the sound of it this is the case here)

Enosh

pfff exploding
that's just a flesh wound

glenn3e

I see you speak for the core demographic here?

CommissarRezail

Well, for map design i say they could easily put in some warp storms and other stuff to shake the place the frack up.

Shuma

You mean like the other 3 DoW standalone Expansions wich were only 30dlls? Yeah, that's "overpriced".

Also, do we know who won the SS campaign? Maybe Eliphas won. IF anything, we know that Awesome is hard to kill, just look at Gorgutz.

Chaos Von Draco

The only thing I know about the SS campaign was that Space Marines lost and it was a great shame on their chapter's history. As for Eliphas who knows maybe he died but was just brought back for the gods amusement.

Makenshi

Eliphas was Chaos Lord in DC, not in SS!

Malachi

Eliphas was in SS? (never bought that ripoff ) [edit: ninja'd]


Does that mean the Force "buttonhead" Commander will finally actually say something?

Steel*Faith

*Kanye West Steps up on stage* I'mma let you guys finish, but uh, Eliphas was one of the best DoW villains of all time! One of the best of all time!!!

Edit: By the way, does it seem like the Bloodcrusher is going to be a Campaign boss, or standard unit? I'm assuming it's going to be either a call-in or a tier 3 unit in MP.

Shuma

Both i'd assume. I don't see why people keep mentioning "campaing-only units" when we had none in DoW2.

Grimdark

To be fair there were some.
Venom brood pre-patch overhaul was MP only, that eldar ranger "boss" is not used in MP, burna boys, stormboys with flamethrowers (same with unusual eqipment combos on SM fellas like plasma guns on ASM, CC tacs or thunderhammer FC with jet pack).

LoneWolf666

IG are not campaign only? Or good ol' Gabriel?

Flip_Lx

really?

please please please just let them do chaos s 4 semi armies thats all i want, upgrade to khorne get these units ontop of standard csm and cultists, choose nurgle get your plaguebearers and deathguard please please i beg you relic dont just do SM but evil again

Akagi_Ryu

To be frank, the lone name Eliphas is enough to make me shiver with excitement. As long as he keeps his lovely, smexy, awesome and awe inspiring voice and has equally awesome lines as in DC... I'm friggin sold.

And as mentioned before, some characters are too awesome for a small thing like exploding into a pool of your own blood to kill them.
As Eliphas the Enheritor would say...
"We WILL be back!!!"

Besides, Lords of Chaos never die. They go back to hell to regroup

[/chaos fanboyism]

Malachi

Yeah, well Eliphas was the best Chaos Lord in DOW hands down, but...

Sindri >>> Eliphas

Akagi_Ryu

Eliphas was the greatest Chaos Lord of all time.

Sindri was the best Chaos Sorcerer of all time.

One does not exclude the other!
Now imagine those two masterminds working in unision!
*mindgasms*

guardsman lover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0puigjMynxs

If only....

Akagi_Ryu

Too much screaming... ears hurt... badly...

On a side note, what does that have to do with anything?

Malachi

Yeah, if only... what?

Todehy

guardsman lover ur post was a fail

guardsman lover

Nevermind, my sense of humor was fail.

Border Patrol

I support Kanye West and all of his decisions.

ChaosReigns

The only thing I'm concerned about with regards to Eliphas return is that Word Bearers are loyal to a fault (it's one of the flaws in their geneseed) and so a Word Bearer, a Dark Apostle especially, would not likely forsake his Legion.

So how is it then that we'll be fighting Black Legionnaires in the campaign? Hopefully Eliphas didn't just idly decide to dump the Word Bearers.

glenn3e

Well, the word bearers were easily allied with the Black Legion during the Horus Heresy. Its of no surprised that such ties still remained, and maybe Eliphas is a representative of the Word Bearers just as that Chaplain was during the HH.

Lionel-Richie

I mean $40, like the CoH standalone expansion and Soulstorm. I believe DC was $40 as well. WA was only $30.

I guess what bugs me is that those of us who were loyal in buying the first game can't get like an "upgrade" version that's not standalone price.

CommissarRezail

Yeah I very much agree, about the overpriced of "EXPANSION" it just pisses me off, thats why i didnt get Tatles of valor, because tales of valor was most defintely not worth 40 bucks. I mean who where they kidding when they thought of htese prices.

I rather wait for prices of expansion to go down before paying full price of anything.

Shuma

Funny, i bought all the DoW expansions for 30 dlls with the exception of SS wich i bought for 7dlls from Steam and the first CoH expansion for 30 dlls.

WhiteDeVile

Yeah but you propably did that a couple of months after the release, just like I did, and it sometimes sucks, when everybody is hyped up, already has the game, talks about it, your friends play online together, and you have to wait cause you've got no funds to buy the "release price".

But in the long term, its very satisfying to know that you've bought 3 or 4 games for the price of a single newly released one, and you only had to be patient in order to do that.

I myself have DoW, DC, DoW2, CoH and ToV, and the only one I preordered was DoW2, sadly... I wish I didn't, it wasn't worth the price I payed.

Shuma

I actually bought both WA and DC the day they came out and it was still 30 bucks. In Walmart.

The Voltr0n

Sooo excited , buying this the day it comes out

Croaxleigh

The amount that various people paid for DoW and CoH expansions isn't the topic here... while it was a good example of the price of past stand-alone expansions, the continuing discussion of who got the better deal has nothing to do with Chaos Rising.

BL4zD

I hope the MP is separate Chaos armies rather than a generic hodgepodge of units. The campaign sounds exciting, though. That at least makes sense that our space marines would increasingly serve the Chaos gods in single player. That will be incredible if our marines are mutated over time according to our in-game choices!

I may have to wait for the expansion to drop from the normal $30 price to $20 sale due to financial issues It'll be the first time I haven't been able to support Relic's development of my favorite franchise. Tales of Valor also left a slight bitter aftertaste in my mouth but that's for another section of the forums...

LoneWolf666

Of course it is. Following the philosophy of "one race per expansion" Relic decided to include five new ones in Chaos Rising, one for each Chaos god + undivided, with a revolutionary approach to ease the balancing efforts by bringing the total number of races to nine.

Yeah, totally gonna happen.

BL4zD

I hardly think that a corrupted IG faction with call ins specific to Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, or Slaanesh dependent on commander choice would constitute "five new" races bringing the total to 9 in one expansion.

It would make a lot more sense to do it that way *and* matches the current set-up of commander specific call-ins than just tossing everything together on the battlefield. I'm not even sure Games Workshop would be down with that...at least I hope not. Fans need to make our voices heard now about how undesirable that would be.

stranger

Fans need to stop ranting about everything they don't like and learn to enjoy what they're given as far as content goes. Even if relic team members skim topics here every so often, the xp is way past design, so that would achieve nothing sans creating a huge fuss on the forums...

Also from your post it did seem you were hoping for 5 distinct chaos races.

Flip_Lx

It wouldnt be really hard to impliment the Chaos god "factions" just make them an upgrade choice similar to the way tau in DoW1 picked their relic unit, just move that "tech" choice down to say teir 2 and wha-la all done

Malachi

Yeah, we would have to have commanders that are not god-alligned. Cause a Sorceror with a Khornate army wouldn't make much sense.

Not that we didn't have this already

MinoSLO

@Flip Lx
Great idea!
Simple yet effective. Not likely though, since the game is probably set in stone for the most part

Kushan's_Wrath

Looks like something's going to happen tomorrow.

FooF

Hmm....

Teasing with new info. Maybe a trailer or or more screenshots perhaps?

LoneWolf666

I have misinterpreted your post then. Like stranger said, it seemed you wanted distinct factions. What you have described seems plausible, only I'd change the "corrupted IG faction" to CSM.