14 DAY TRIAL // One of the pleasant surprises of 2009 was how Relic managed to redefine the real time strategy with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2, which focused on small squads of Space Marines and built clever role playing aspects into the experience, delivering a more focused campaign than the first game in the series. But something we did not talk too much about in 2009 was the Warhammer 40,000 MMO project under development at Vigil Games.
Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, Joe Madureira, who is the leader of development studio Vigil Games, has stated that Darksiders is not a very good indication of how the Warhammer 40,000 MMO will come out. He said that “They are pretty different, though our love of giant armor and weapons will be pretty evident in both. And huge, massively detailed creatures.” As to when his team plans on actually showing off some of their work on the project, Madureira suggested that later in 2010, more information about the project would be offered.
The Warhammer 40,000 MMO promises to deliver epic battles built around squads of players. Although the firefight elements will be important, the structure will apparently still be a traditional one, with skills and hidden calculations determining the results of the combat. The developers are not saying whether they plan to allow vehicles to be used, although a Warhammer 40,000 large scale operation without them would not be possible.
Vigil is also promising a story line set late in the 41st millennium, which includes all the important races of the game universe, although probably not all of them will be playable. Customization of the player character will be crucial to the experience and will bear some resemblance to the model seen in Dawn of War 2. It will be interesting to see what Vigil can do with the setting and if it manages to do better than the Warhammer fantasy MMO.