Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Gets Series-Wide Multiplayer Overhaul

[Cognimancer]

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Gets Series-Wide Multiplayer Overhaul

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and its assorted sequels will survive the GameSpy server shutdown.

The infamous GameSpy shutdown [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/133492-Glu-to-Turn-Off-GameSpy-Multiplayer-Servers-Next-Month-Update] will take effect in just a couple days, killing the multiplayer functionality of a lot of popular games. The list of victims includes Relic's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War series of strategy games - or so we thought. A last-minute patch from the developers has been released for all seven games in the Dawn of War franchise, completely replacing their multiplayer infrastructure to save them from the shutdown.

The most recent title in the series, Dawn of War II: Retribution, uses Steamworks to handle its multiplayer - but older entries relied on GameSpy and other "external" servers. Relic, not wanting to see its back catalogue lose a huge part of its value, devised a plan to migrate the games' multiplayer services to more stable homes. Each game in the series is being integrated with the hosting and matchmaking system Relic developed for Company of Heroes 2 - which actually means that the Dawn of War multiplayer isn't just being preserved, it's being improved.

"This update - and continued further support for DoW and DoW2 - is a big step for us at Relic," writes Dawn of War design lead Philippe Boulle. "It's a concrete signal of support for the Dawn of War franchise from us and from SEGA as a whole."

Dawn of War now joins Halo: Combat Evolved [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134444-Halo-For-PC-Saved-From-Gamespy-Shutdown-With-Official-Patch] in the "saved by patches" lifeboat. It's good to see a developer watching out for its older games, especially in this age of fire-and-forget releases.

Source: Steam Community [http://steamcommunity.com/games/56400/announcements/detail/1819765326660319167]

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[Uratoh]

Still only playing Dark Crusade for its single player campaign mode. But WHAT a single player campaign mode.

 

[Starke]

Wait, so they have or haven't removed GFWL from DoW2 yet?

EDIT: Great, they've saved Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising for a whopping 32 days.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

... I was so excited. I thought there was a new game or something in the works. This isn't bad news, of course but..

I remember seeing news about Dawn of War 3 long ago. Maybe a game where Chaos isn't heavily favored and there was balance.

Dreams are made to break your heart, kids. Write that down. That's a life lesson.

 

[CorvusFerreum]

Nice to see, when developers still care. Not that you couldn't work around it, but these are great games. Saving the Multiplayer is a great move on their part.

 

[fix-the-spade]

This whole ordeal strikes me very odd. If those were console games, I undersant, almost NO chance of playing them anymore. But these are PC games, so they will have no problem in the long run...

It is better to move the entire player base in one go and avoid forcing them to use third party software. It avoids fragmentation and it means you get to say the online features are still there and be telling the whole truth.

Compared to EA's little maneuver of putting all the Battlefield games on sale then announcing support ends on Saturday this is positively saintly. Even with VPNs it's pretty much going to kill off the random pub player that everyone needs to keep their servers populated, you can't have 24 v24 arranged games very often.

 

[kajinking]

... I was so excited. I thought there was a new game or something in the works. This isn't bad news, of course but..

I remember seeing news about Dawn of War 3 long ago. Maybe a game where Chaos isn't heavily favored and there was balance.

Dreams are made to break your heart, kids. Write that down. That's a life lesson.

If you interested there's a community mod (Elite Mod) for DOW:2 Retribution that gets played quite heavily still. They made a lot of balance passes, added new units with custom models, they even added in a whole new faction (Grey Knights). I've watched enough casts of the modded game to know Chaos isn't overly broken (the Orks may take that award with their Nob squad and painboy combo).


This would be Idrid's channel he casts elite mod regularly.

 

[vallorn]

... I was so excited. I thought there was a new game or something in the works. This isn't bad news, of course but..

I remember seeing news about Dawn of War 3 long ago. Maybe a game where Chaos isn't heavily favored and there was balance.

Dreams are made to break your heart, kids. Write that down. That's a life lesson.

There's always one faction, just look at Dawn of Eldar for the original Dawn of War and it's expansions.

And yeah we could have played it either way but you know? It's still REALLY nice to see a game developer like Relic (Who's art director drew for Extra Credits this week) having respect for it's players and not treating them like cash cows. Yes EA I mean you.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

alright Relic, CoH 2 is now forgiven, you are back in my list of top developers, you guys have proven me, after your post launch support above and beyond the call of duty for CoH 1, and your support of the dawn of war series, that you have love for your art


once this patch lands i think ill grab chaos rising and finish my DoW2 collection, if i dont have to deal with shitty GFWL ever again ill be one happy man

 

[Neverhoodian]

Good on ya, Relic. I consider the first game and its expansions to be one of the best RTS experiences out there (it's also what got me interested in the WH40k universe). Seeing continued support for the game makes me happy, even if I don't really benefit from it. I suck at RTS games to the point where I struggle against Normal AI opponents. As such, the very thought of competing against other flesh and blood players is downright laughable, particularly when they've got years of experience.

... I was so excited. I thought there was a new game or something in the works. This isn't bad news, of course but..

I remember seeing news about Dawn of War 3 long ago. Maybe a game where Chaos isn't heavily favored and there was balance.

Dreams are made to break your heart, kids. Write that down. That's a life lesson.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

 

[Kahani]

Cool. I never cared for the multiplayer in these games at all, but it's always nice to see a developer that doesn't seem to actively hate their customers.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Awww man, I saw Dawn of War in the news section and got really excited, was hoping for a "3" to appear somewhere.

Still, as everyone else has said, nice one Relic. I discovered the Elite mod For DoW2: Retribution and Unlimited Apocalypse for DoW: Soulstorm (Titans in DoW. Yes!) so I've been playing them quite a bit recently.

 

[General Torg]

Soooo......does this mean I can finally play the single player again? GFWL always stopped me for one reason or another.

 

[AstaresPanda]

glory to the immortal god Emperor of mankind. Hopfully they will start supporting dow2 again or at least to get everyone interested abit more then BOOM DAWN OF WAR 3 TRAILER, that will top the 1st and 2nd game intros

 

[Asun]

Very good. Between this and their announcement to get rid of GFWL in DOW 2 here is hoping for some kind of continuation of this series somewhere down the road

 

[Elijah Newton]

Awesome. It's such a little thing and I've played this game into the ground, through the Earth's molten core and out the other side, but I was bummed to think that even after all that it was done.

Well done, Relic. Well done indeed.