Adeptus Auctores - Too Much Of A Good Thing .

Warhammer has been with us for a long time at this point in our lives. There are probably readers who are both fans of the IP and younger than it. Naturally Eternal Crusade isn’t the first foray of Games Workshop into the digital arena, nor will it have been the first MMO based on a Warhammer IP.

If you want a particularly good track record of the exploits of Games Workshop and the video game incarnations, look no further than Mr Totalbiscuit.

The video in question is from March in this year, so don’t expect much in the way of Eternal Crusade to be present.

Location Location Location

While we may never know exactly what THQ had planned with Warhammer 40,000 Dark Millenium Online, there is one ear worm that would have inevitably been raised while discussing it. Games demand hype after all, excitement can’t be contained for long before it bursts out all over the place or curdles into a form of resentment. What’s the ear worm?

“Bears, Bears, Bears.” – Paul Barnett

There is an honest and overbearing temptation towards hype. Hype gets your blood up for a game you want. Hype tries to instill faith in the product. Hype can carry a fan through the long time between announcement and reality. Granted the problem with hype is reasonably often, the reality doesn’t quite hold up to the promises of before.

I personally enjoyed the hype surrounding Warhammer Age of Reckoning. I loved the enthusiasm of Paul Barnett and Josh Drescher. It’s because of them talking up their game, for good or for ill, that I am here talking to you about another game. It is because of that hype and my desire for the only other Warhammer MMO we have ever had that I have had the pleasure of travelling to meet developers and talk about their games.

BeTrue

Hype is easy to sell and hard to actually live up to. There’s every possibility that Behaviour Interactive could have given into the siren call of hype. Would we blame them now? Possibly not. Certainly there are veterans of MMOs who would see the hype for what it is and might find their desire for the game somewhat dampened as a result of the same old cycle. There may be new people coming into the genre thanks to youtube coverage of it from fans.

A great place to start the hype cycle would have been the Developer Livestreams. After all, every Friday there’s that chance to show off development and answer questions. A few tidbits dropped here and there could do wonders.

If you’re looking for a livestream this Friday though, you’re in luck!  However there haven’t been any for the last two weeks. Not because of any issues with the game, but because they have listened to fans. We can only watch the early footage so many times without being able to get our own hands on it.

“Bolters that shoot tiny Bolters that shoot las blasts!” – Not actually a Miguel Caron quote at all.

Hype would be easy. Since THQ was dissolved and Dark Millenium Online closed, there’s not been the Warhammer 40,000 experience for us to sink our teeth into. Relic spoiled us with Dawn of War and Space Marine. Given the option of continuing to show off what we know and possibly get into trouble by releasing information (even if with the best of intentions) Behaviour Interactive have rightly decided that there can be too much of a good thing. We’ll see more developer livestreams when they have something new for us to chew on.

Something New

I’m not in the game production so I can’t fall back on the good old fashioned “Soon™” for anything I have heard that is coming down the line. Battle Brother Terry O’Brien over at MMORPG recently outlined the transparency in Behaviour Interactives approach to the development of Eternal Crusade. Between that article and the collected Q&A you can find on the forums there are a few things to be looking forward to in the short term. Though as with anything, that’s Soon™

NVidia may have accidentally leaked the fact that a 6v6 arena mode was coming but it’s better than that. It’ll actually be a 10 vs 10 module that hopefully will let us get some of the blood lust out while we wait for other early access modules.

The Rogue Trader store will also be getting new items and new pricing in it. That will be over the next month or two but as we approach the end of the year, things can get busy.

Free 2 Waaagh will also be getting more details which is something that hopefully will please anyone who is interested in Eternal Crusade but isn’t quite prepared yet to part with their 40,000 pennies.

Required Reading

In the end we’ve some time to go before the early access modules land. There’s some distance between where we are and our landing on the surface of Arkhona. That doesn’t mean we have to be deprived of Warhammer 40,000 in the meantime. I will ask you, loyal soliders of the Imperium (or heretics or Xenos scum, whichever calls to you the most) to consider joining in on the forums more. Certainly I know I have been lax in that regard and idle hands are an affront to the Emperor.

After all if we can as Terry O’Brien cleverly put it, BeHeard, we should join in and do exactly that. It’ll be a long road to Arkhona but at the end of it we’ll be able to look back and see as few bears, bears, bears as possible.

No promises that we won’t hear at least one “Squigs, Squigs, SQUIGS YA GIT”.

We’ll close this week with a bookend. Where Totalbiscuit laid out the incarnations of Warhammer 40,000 games for us at the start of the article, here he is a few years ago laying out the lore we will be playing with and the probable inevitable end of over confident players.

There is after all still that computer only faction.

– Adepus Auctores