Hey

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You guys remember that one time when I was all like, ‘Man, Games Workshop really pisses me off with their Space Mehren preference. What ever happened to honest competition?’

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Looks like you’ll be holding your breath for even longer if you’re like me. Coming this April, the next new update flying at you in a…THUNDERHAWK!…is an update for…THE BLOOD ANGELS! Yeah I just said that. Keep in mind, this is following an update for the Space Wolves and an entirely new very minor Space Mehren faction, the Legion of the Damned. No Imperial Guard update…no Ork update…no new Chaos units…just another update and more units for a Space Mehren faction, not even one of the cool ones too. Its the Blood Angels…if there was a slightly homosexual chapter of Space Mehrens…it would be them.

Take this as you will. But I will be adding Games Workshop to my already growing list of things I have sworn a blood oath against.

Really…? Did they really need another unit that looks like it can rape anything, both physically and metaphorically, without any chance of defeat?

Games Workshop Employee: Hey guys!

40k Players: Yeah?

GWE: We got a new update comin’ out next month for a 40k faction. Can ya guess who it is?

Necron Players: Necrons? We haven’t gotten one since the last time a C’tan was roaming about.

Ork Players: Orks maybe?

Chaos Players: Chaos perhaps? They’ve been really getting fucked with the new editions, they could use a buff.

GWE: NOPE! XD! SPACE WOLVES! Ain’t it just great? A faction within an already super powerful army needed an update far more than just an entire army with rules from 1984, don’tchyathink?

40k Players: Die in a fire Games Workshop.

GWE: But wait, dere’s more! We’re releasing a new unit just before Christmas!

40k Players: I knew I could count on you Games Workshop, I just knew you wouldn’t let us down and side with Space Marines.

GWE: It’s the Legion of the Damned! They have skull helmets and murals of ancient battles inscribed on their armor!

*Shows picture*

Chaos Player: Finally a cool unit for Chaos that doesn’t look like its from 1995!

GWE: It’s for the Space Mehrens, noob. Play a real faction, hahahahahlolwut!

I’ve waited so long for my dreams to come true. I’m just kidding, that was too dramatic. But the news really was swell. THQ, or Relic, or whoever is in charge of press releases, announced the other day the title of their new expansion for the innovative and popular RTS Dawn of War II along with several screen shots and a short teaser trailer. Chaos Rising will grace the computer game landscape in Spring 2010, tentatively anyways. The way the video game business is these days with pushing release dates back en masse it could very well come out Christmas 2011. But I digress.

The story, can’t forget the story, is set in the same system as Dawn of War II (the system containing the Blood Raven Space Marines Chapter’s recruiting worlds) wherein a world long ago swallowed into the Warp reappears. Several cadres of armed to the teeth Angels of Death are sent down to investigate and low and behold there’s some good old Chaos Space Marine action waitin’ for ‘em. Avitus, Tarkus, Thaddeus, Davian Thule (now Dreadnought) and, of course, the voiceless Commander (Insert Name Here) will encounter their age old enemies in the form of the Black Legion. One can only hope Abbadon the Despoiler will make an appearance.

Chaos Rising will implement several good ideas I and several other Warhammer 40,000/Dawn of War players have had. Whilst playing the Chaos Space Marines in multiplayer mode, the player will have available to them all four of the Dark Gods of Chaos (Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaneesh, and Nurgle) to choose from. This means, as I infer from the teaser (Bloodletters), that the player will get specialized units to choose from depending upon which God they chose (I.E. Bloodletters of Khorne or Horrors of Tzeentch or Plaguebringers of Nurgle) and different bonuses. This is, however, a claim made before the release date and an inference made from a short teaser, but I can hope. As always, the other factions (Space Marines, Orks, Tyranids, and Eldar) will receive a number of new units; how many, I can’t say, but I’m sure it’ll be one or two per.

ALSO! As a final thought before I forget, Chaos Dreadnoughts! They weren’t in the original Dawn of War or the expansions for Chaos to construct, but the banner picture for the expansion’s official website contains, front and center, a Black Legion Dreadnought.

And now it’s right here!

I will preface this with the fact that if it has anything at all to do with Warhammer 40,000 I will buy, play, or maybe kill a man to get it depending on how cool it is. So keep in mind that if something has Warhammer and/or 40,000 in its title I will do my best to enjoy it.

Word may or may have not reached your ears about the long awaited Warhammer 40,000 MMO. If it has, you’ll probably be waiting for it even longer than you have due to its slated release date (2011). If it hasn’t, then I’ll freshen up your memory.

First, I’ll start with its history, dating all the way back to 1994. Blizzard, the company I now call Faggard, wanted to make Warhammer Fantasy into a strategy game. Keep in mind this was back when Blizzard was in its golden age, bringing you such titles as Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft, not when it became the company that created World of Warcraft and labored to create Starcraft: Ghost or whatever the fuck it was called, thank god that failed. Now, Games Workshop, being the elitist Brits that they are, refused to allow an American company to get a hold of their rights to make a computer game out of their precious miniature war games. Blizzard had already made considerable progress on the game before showing it to execs at GW, so it was like when your High School teacher threw out your paper because it was too “offensive” (I speak from experience). So what Blizzard did was take their ball and go home with a sad face on, then it occurred to make WARcraft instead of WARhammer. And it never dawned on GW that their IP was getting raped? Nope. After making millions of dollars off of their Warcraft franchise, Blizzard turned towards GW once again and stole Warhammer 40,000, mutated it into Starcraft, and made even more cash. You can draw the lines for both games if you don’t believe me, 40k (Space Marines-Space Marines, Tyranids-Zerg, Old Ones-Xel’Naga), Fantasy (Orks-Orcs, Empire-Humans, Dark Elves-Undead, Elves-Night and High Elves, Chaos-Burning Legion). They even have the same fucking back-story! Horus (Arthas) betrays his King (Emperor) who is also his father, go figure, after listening to a demon-lich king-thing trapped inside a sword (Chaos Gods). I’m sure Diablo came from somewhere too, but I can’t put a name to it so I’ll give Blizzard credit for it at least. There you have it, so dark the con of Blizzard.

Alright, now that that is over with we can get on to the important stuff. GW waited a hefty 10 years or so to majorly break into the video game market with their release of Dawn of War. Yes, they had some titles here and there before that but none of them were all that great/important, one of them even had a Tau for the main character. Of course, Dawn of War became massively popular and was hailed as the dawn of a new age in RTS (real-time strategy) games.  This led to three expansion packs and a sequal for Dawn of War, a PSP game revolving around turn-based tactics, and a 3rd-person God of War-esque Action game called Space Marine with a TBA release date, but even more than that was that it also drew attention to everything with the word Warhammer in its title. Warhammer Fantasy got an MMO (Age of Reckoning) and a Total War-esque game (Mark of Chaos). If you have been keeping up with the news, EA bought Mythic (who makes Age of Reckoning) and Bioware (who is making the new Star Wars MMO) and I have no doubt in my mind they have their eyes fixed on THQ next (who publishes the 40k stuff). Blizzard and Activision merged to create Blactivision (haha right?) and they’re owned by Vivendi Universal (another monolithic company that owns a different side of the universe). So, in a sense, a line is being drawn in the sand in the game market between EA and Blactivision (who also makes the super-popular Call of Duty games, among others). Eventually they’re going to duke out in a Witch King-Gandalf fight but right now they’re just mustering forces.

Which is where the Warhammer 40,000 MMO comes into play and why it might piss me off. “It has been made clear that although the game will feature relatively in-depth fire-fights with player-formed squads as well as cover and flanking mechanics it is definitely a MMORPG as opposed to a MMOFPS.” That’s word and verse from some marketing exec or whatever when he was being interviewed about the game. I’m sorry, did you just say running around and shooting, which is an FPS,  will not be present in a game based around a setting/mini game in which running around and shooting is a core component? Well, shit, if that’s how we’re doing it nowadays… Yeah, they said flanking and cover and whatnot will be present but let’s be honest here, how many promises made in development are kept through to release? Everyone has a pretty bad track record for that. In addition to that it gets even worse, they’re not even sure they’re going to have vehicles in a game, now wrap your mind around this, based around fucking vehicles! Dreadnoughts, Predator tanks, fuckin’ Baneblades, Fire Prisms, I could go on for pages with vehicles that are used in the mini-game, and they have no idea which ones, if any, will be in it. Alright, I know by now you’re thinking, “This guy is either crazy or retarded, maybe both, I don’t know. It’s 40k! How can it be that bad?” They’re some small kernels of hope here, I will say that. You’re characters will be extremely customizeable (like in the Warhammer Fantasy MMO, which worked there very well) and they are “absolutely no non-combat classes, as that would not make sense with the setting”. Finally a company that cares about making sense. Why would you have a plain-old-healer in a game where even the healer (Apocethary) cuts people in half with a chainsaw-sword? You wouldn’t and that’s why there isn’t one. This is good stuff along with the proposed ability to visit a massive range of different areas, which include abandoned Space Hulks, chaos shrines, deserted battlefields, etc., more good stuff, eh?

I’ll say it myself, I could be totally wrong about this and the game might make you involuntarily ejaculate in your pants when you load it up for the first time. But if they wanted to make it awesome, they would take Planetside, strip away everything about the Planetside setting and apply the Warhammer 40,000 template to it.

For now though, since you have no 40k MMO to play, I will leave you with this:

I just bought this today, though I did not pay full price for it. God help me, I’m involved in another miniatures game. I shouldn’t be surprised with myself though. Once one starts down the dark path of buying small metal and/or plastic men and using said men to engage in fantasy battles with one’s friends, well, there’s just no coming back from that.