Via Penny-Arcade, it has been announced that Warhammer 40k is going to be developed into an MMORPG.
This only makes sense. When the Warhammer Fantasy MMORPG was announced, I couldn’t help but ask “why?” The fantasy market of MMORPGs has, to put it lightly, been done to death. While The O has made some points to me that playing a chaos warrior with a tentacle for an arm would, in a word, effingrule, every preview I’ve seen hasn’t even had the appearance of trying to distinguish itself from the 800 pound Troll. Similar heads-up display, similar views, similar quest system from what I can tell. So “why?”
Well, an argument can certainly be made for taking a game with a huge established base and letting them play without having to spend 40 hours painting or, you know, having to see each other in person (for $15 a month.) But a 40k MMORPG… now that’s a Rhino I can hop into! Science fiction is, while not entirely unrepresented, markedly different than WoW, with only some races doing double duty by replacing C’s with K’s.
The translation is a pretty easy one too. In other science fiction settings, they actually have weapons that have a realistic range based on technological development. Not so in 40k! In the intervening ~38,000 years, we’ve lost the ability to have lasers travel very far.
In all seriousness, though, there’s a lot of fun stuff to be played with in the setting. The guilds concept is built right in with there being various Chapters of Space Marines and their Chaos equivalents, tribes of Orks, etc etc. The ability to create your own color scheme for your chapter would be awesome too. And maybe there’ll be a progression in your character where you start out as a lowly scout, and have to earn the genetic mutation necessary to become a full fledged Space Marine (and later, Terminator armor. Plus, when you die, you can be put in a Dreadnought!) We also know that every faction , so an MMORPG is not all that much of a leap. The concept of Hiveworlds means it can make sense that there’s a crapload of people around, too.
The biggest complaint, raised by PA and echoed on the announcement page is that every faction is trying to kill the other faction, so you wouldn’t have the clearly delineated Good/Evil that you find in other games. My first question is… why do you need that? Why can’t there be a lot of different teams to play on, on different planets? If you want to PVP, you can always hop planets! If it really is an important concept, I don’t think there’s any group of WH40K players who never put their guys on “good and evil” teams to play in large matches. Orks regularly marched along with Chaos and occasionally beside the Tyranids somehow versus the Imperial Guard, Space Marine, and Eldar. Any faction that doesn’t fit into the teams can make their appearance as quest monsters, like needing to wipe out a Tau world or repeal a Necron invasion. There are a lot of possibilities there, should the design team choose to explore it.
If the gameplay ends up being solid and not just a lame converted clone, THQ could have a big hit on their hands. Especially with more and more people ready to jump ship on the big one and look for alternatives, this could be a great move.
(And I’ve seen various rumors about some Blood Bowl revivals in different forms. I’ll certainly post about it when I hear more!)
I think the multi-polar, non Good v. Evil conflict system could be really interesting. Besides, thats not to say that you will not be able to toggle alliances with different clans/factions or whatever.
The number of classes and whatnot should also be near limitless. Just think of the number of aspect warriors that exist!
And think how impossible it will be to balance all that crap! Unless, here’s a novel idea, they throw away balance and let characters specialize!
Or, another novel idea, have the game self-balance. It is possible, we have the technology.
No, I think it would be better if Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines were just better than other factions, that way 70% of people playing would play as them. And also it would be better if Dark Eldar were worse than other factions, that way only 3% of people would play as them. It makes sense.
Exactly, lets make the Dark Eldar fast & fragile and the Eldar just fast.
But the Dark Eldar have a cool backstory.
Balanced.
Guys, the game maker encourages us to not be “beardy”, you should just play what you want to play and not worry about balance because they don’t. 🙂
While I am quite excited about both MMO’s, I’m a bit hesitant about the 40K one. I do agree that it will be a fantastic change of pace, but I can already see a challenge they’ll have to work through: character skills. When playing a MMO, it just doesn’t feel right if you don’t have like 80 spells/abilities to choose from clogging up your screen with your interface (anyone who’s played a shaman in WoW understands where I’m coming from ::cough totems cough::). With the exception of the caster like classes in 40K (scryers, chaos mages, that floating tyranid thing who’s name escapes me), all the character do is shoot a gun, swing some claws, and poop out spore mines (which I’m sure Bartoneus will call dibs on). Therefore, all I can see appearing on a space marines interface would be: “Shoot Bolter”, “Throw Frag Grenade”, “Punch”, some sort of fear dispelling effect, and maybe something bizarre like “Activate Second Stomach”. It would be even worse for races like the Tyranids and Necrons where there would be just movement, slashing claws, shooting laser guns, and reassembling from the dead. The only solution I could see would be to let the players play leader roles like captains, hive tyrants, etc and be in charge of minions.
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It would never be done, but I think it would be interesting to ditch the convention life-points/health bar system. I’d love to see something more true to the way the actual game is played on table– where hitting a soldier kills the soldier outright if armor doesn’t save. So, esentially, you the player would have the life of each member of your squad, and they would survive until their armor failed (not a life bar, but a chance factor on each hit).