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I can see how it’s more profitable, but there was a time when one could pay extra for a ‘gold edition’ with both original expansion, OR, just get the expansion for much less.

But they’ve figured out that if they hook a new person with a 40$ ‘expandalone’, they’ll want to get the original which has far more content, and so they rake in 80$ instead of the 50 – 75$ that a ‘gold’ edition would’ve made.

And then you have games that never have ‘package deal’ versions until they’re obsolete, like The Sims series on PC. The Sims 2 has a great deal of content for 50$, but when that gets old, you have to pay 30$ a pop to add more gameplay in 1 – 5 hour increments*. Evil. They pump out new console titles, each very tight in scope and unsatisfying(The Sims Series’ expandalones) about as often as they pump out actual expansions, probably using the same creative mill. More evil. Now they’ve announced The Sims 3 for PC, which will surely add a decent amount of content while no doubt cutting back 90% of what the expansions added. See a pattern?

(*guestimate as to how long it’d take to play with the narrowly focused gameplay or items that each expansion adds)

But I digress, EA’s decision to repeatedly hold back their cashcow series in order to ensure they can easily mint more money later, is a tad off-topic. Or maybe not.. It’s nice to see a game you like coming out sooner, but I wonder how many man-hours are spent making sure a game is just addictive enough you’ll shell out for an expansion or expandalone, but just unsatifying enough that it’s never ‘complete’ and always needs more. That must be a very delicate balance.

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I was most disappointed by the distinct lack of voiceover guy saying “INDEED” every other paragraph.

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I only bought it and kept it because of the Sisters of Battle. I’m a huge Sisters fan since 2nd edition TT, and I wanted my battle-broads officially sanctioned in the game. Bought it, took it back after reading it was crap, caved a week later and bought it for keeps. I’m week willed for 40k when it involves the SoBs :(

@neoanderthal – They’re alright. Less flamey than in the TT, but battle sisters are still your meat and potatoes. All the units have pretty much the exact same stats (like the TT) you just outfit them differently, and they have different costs. Knowing that an exact transition to PC isn’t possible in DoW as it exists now, I feel they did a pretty good job.

The faith points system is…odd. I get why they implemented it like they did (scaling, scaling, scaling!) but it could easily be left out completely and just replaced with timer-and-tier limited powers like the other races (seeing as all the abilities have timers anyway).

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I haven’t really played DoW since Winter Assault, but I have to admit that at least with WA, you didn’t feel like you absolutely had no chance in defeating the Chaos Marines with regular ‘guardies, as has so often been the case with tabletop 40K.

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Actually, Tom Chick’s review in GfW said pretty much the same stuff. It seems a reasonable consensus. I love RTS games in general, and Dawn of War in particular. But this *is* the third expansion, and the races *are* just flavored versions of the existing races, and the Risk/Rise-of-Nations campaign thing *was* already done in the last one, so…

I don’t think it’s particularly harsh or controversial to label this as:
Might be fun if you love Dawn of War and want to add anything you can to it, and can get it cheap. But not really a stand-out big hit.

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I enjoyed it despite its limitations, but that may be due to the scarcity of WH40K games out there. With Games Workshop still haemorrhaging money, you would think they could squeeze a bit more cash out of their IP licensing operations – get a carve out from the exclusivity clauses for the odd RPG, or start licensing stuff from their back catalogue to start-up outfits (imagine what Vic Davis’s take on “the Horus Heresy” boardgame might look like).

But maybe it’s all in development and DoW2 and the much-touted 40K MMORPG will make it all good. No more missing Tyranids. No more aged graphics and colour-by-numbers gameplay. No more pigs trotting along the ground when they could take wing and fly.

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