Waaagh! WH40k: Eternal Crusade On Steam Early Access
Not very MMO-y yet
Dead games cast long shadows. Any Warhammer 40,000 MMO is competing with how I imagined Vigil's doomed Dark Millenium would be before it was gutted then scrapped in publisher THQ's collapse. So yeah, Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade [official site] does look a bit bum compared to my beautiful dead gamewife, but it actually exists and is a game you could play this very day. After a stretch selling alpha access directly themselves, developers Behaviour Interactive (them lot behind Naughty Bear and Wet, yep) have launched the MMO shooter on Steam Early Access.
As is, Eternal Crusade is a class-based shooter with Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines throwing down in 16v16 battles, riding vehicles and swinging chainswords and blasting zapguns and casting magic spells and all that. The plan for the full game is to have far, far larger battles and PlanetSide-ish persistent warfare to control territory. The Eldar and Orks will join the fray later too, and a co-operative mode is planned as well. There's no firm word on when it'll get those things, though.
Eternal Crusade is £31.99 on Steam right now. As ever with early access, be aware that many things may--or may not--change and at a pace you might not like. The game does now have the backing of publishers Bandai Namco, mind.
Here's a new "in-engine cinematic" making Eternal Crusade look far more exciting (and prettier) than anything I've seen of the actual game:
For example, this recent dev livestream has some live gameplay which looks like a so-so shooter:
