Adeptus Auctores: Introducing Warhammer 40k Eternal Crusade .

Fans are dangerous things. I’m a fan, I know I am dangerous. It is with this in my heart that I sat down with Behaviour Interactive’s Miguel Caron to talk about Warhammer 40,000 Eternal Crusade.

We had a chance to chat before the start of E3 but now is the real start to the crusade with the upcoming Founders Program launch. For those unaware, Behaviour Interactive is the Montreal based studio tasked with bringing His Imperial Majesty’s light to us all. Or in less florid language, they are responsible for Games Workshops Warhammer 40,000 Eternal Crusade, an upcoming MMORPG filled with grimdark.

So why are fans dangerous? Simple. It’s the passion. The passion for what they are fanatical about. The love, the time, everything they have invested in a property. Games Workshop may own the property that is Warhammer, but not in the heart of a fan.

How did it go? In a word… wonderfully.

Miguel is a product of his location and his experiences. Clever, quick witted and passionate. As passionate in what he does that a fan is in their One True Fandom. Fortunately for all of us, he is a fan. He’s direct, he’s honest and he walks in the light of the Emperor.

“I need to convince players to trust me enough to give me a piece of their entertainment time. I make them feel emotions, make them forget the normal boring life. I take this very seriously, people who give me their personal time. My job is to entertain.”

In a way it was potentially an awkward conversation. Was I going to be yet another writer who might need the idea of a Space Marine or Eldar explained to them? Was he going to be another slick talking exec who had a cheat sheet of the right things to say to pass fan approval?

Thankfully no. Thankfully that absolute passion that seems to be bound up in anyone who works in Montreal is present and just as much focused on giving us a world that feels like it is the 41st millennium as the rest of the fans would hope he is.

Hands down, the hour I spent talking to Miguel was easily the most entertaining time I’ve ever had talking to a game developer. Probably because he’s one of us, he’s a fan. He gets it. Warhammer fans always, to me at least, appear to have their own private little language and understanding. This shared understanding was there, this was someone who well… I took an Oath of the Moment so I can’t tell you about the stuff he told me regarding the [REDACTED BY THE HOLY INQUISITION]

This is someone who speaks clearly to his fans and customers. It’s a lesson he has brought with him to Behaviour Interactive. The quickest and easiest example is quite simply how he engages with other people. this isn’t a man who is going to try the tired old marketing trick of $39.99 being a bargain. We as fans of the MMO genre are informed. We can do the research, we can be conversant on the product. I don’t think this is a weakness facing Behaviour Interactive or Miguel himself. If anything it lets them play to their strengths as they’ve been presented. Passion, dedication and a desire to see this property done correctly.

It’s something that clearly stretches through the whole team, if you follow the newsletter you’ve been introduced to them and you can expect them to be hunted down and interviewed here soon. The team isn’t just paying lip service to the intellectual property. They’re collectors, they’re painters, they have the tabletop in their souls just like any Warhammer fan does.

In the next few days we will be discussing the Founders Program, organising a give away of some Founders packs to a few lucky warriors and talking more about the game.

It is however a long road to Arkona and to the war. Over the coming weeks and months we’re all going to make the journey together. There will be much to discuss, plenty to see and most importantly at the end, there will be …well… you know what there will be. Grim Darkness.

For the uninitiated I present to you the familiar text present in all Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000 games and books.

“It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die. Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants — and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.”

I have been your scribe, your Adept Auctor. In Nomine Imperator.