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DoW 3 Rumours

By Paranoid Kamikaze - 12th September 2014 - 04:43 AM

It has been a little over three years since Dawn of War 2: Retribution and the community has gotten restless of their lack of a sequel. DoW 3 has been long overdue and it has gotten to the point where even Company of Heroes 2 announcements are filled with comments about what people want in the next Warhammer game. I've decided to go ahead and gather any and all evidence I could find of DoW 3 being in development. Please keep in mind that nothing has been confirmed yet.

After Retribution was launched, there were quotes from Danny Bilson(Old THQ exec) saying that DoW 3 was in development and that it would be coming out in early 2013. Needless to say, that didn't work out very well due to THQ going bankrupt and selling off Relic Entertainment to Sega in early 2013. It also didn't work out well for Relic as many of their staff that was working on DoW had to leave. It was revealed during the bankruptcy filings that there was a secret project named "Atlas" being developed by Relic and rumour had it that it was actually DoW 3.

After the sale to Sega and with Relic focused on releasing CoH 2, there were references made of how projects get canceled and have to be rethought. There was even a quote on Eurogamer which said "While Duffy was unable to talk about the specifics on the work done on Dawn of War 3, he did suggest Relic will want to improve its technology before building it.". What this implies is that Relic may have decided to redesign DoW 3 rather than pick up what the other team was working on. Mr. Bilson did promise some rather strange things in store for DoW 3 such as it being "more of a global battle going on with little tactical things, sort of MMO-like". It might not have been feasible in terms of the technology they have available or the new Relic may have decided they didn't like the direction the previous team was going.

There wasn't much to hear about after all this as Relic was just stating how much that were focused on Company of Heroes and wouldn't talk about anything else. After quite some time, in a CoH 2 focused article, there was a rather persistent writer from Eurogamer who finally shed some light on what's going on.

So what, exactly, is going on with Dawn of War?

Duffy keeps his cards close to his chest, as you'd expect, but he does confirm that the rights to the brand survived the closure of THQ and the transition to Sega and remain with Relic. So, the studio is free to make a new Dawn of War game - if it wants.

But will it? Is a new Dawn of War being worked on?

"I can't say," Duffy replies. "We have a brilliant relationship with Games Workshop. We'd love to do something. It's a no comment on that."

It's clear Dawn of War remains close to Relic's heart. The studio even has a Dawn of War franchise design lead, Philippe Boulle, who recently served notice that all the Dawn of War games would be transferred to Steam in a bid to keep their multiplayer portions going.

So it's obvious Dawn of War is still alive. And so I press.

"It's a great franchise," Duffy says. "I love the Dawn of War stuff. It's a strong part of our history. Relic has some strong IPs. Dawn of War is almost an IP in of itself. It gave people the feeling they had from the tabletop. It was a great translation of the world. People at Relic play the game, they love it, and they're very sensitive about doing it right."

Given how lacklustre recent Warhammer 40K licensed games have been, fingers crossed someone somewhere deep within the bowels of Relic Entertainment is beavering away on a new game in the Dawn of War series.

Speaking of the bowels of Relic, the studio is currently around 120 people. That's some way short of its 2007/2008 peak of 180, but Duffy says it's growing: "We're in pretty good shape."

Of those 120, between 65 and 70 are working on COH2 content, but the number varies. Relic now develops using what Duffy calls strike teams that build a piece of content from start to finish "so they can invest in it".

120 minus 70 leaves around 50 people - plenty to be doing secret new things, Duffy says. "Teams come and go. Sizes change. We're very flexible."Source: Eurogamer


What all of this means is that Relic can use the Warhammer 40k IP and has a full team working on a secret project, which everyone assumes is DoW 3. In the quote above, there was also mentioned about a franchise design lead. Due to GFWL shutting down, in order for players of the vanilla game and Chaos Rising to continue playing the game, there had to be a switch from GFWL to Steamworks. There is also some work being done in order to have the battle servers, which are meant to reduce lag, work with DoW 2. With all of that going on, there was also the resurgence of the official community forums. These are brand new forums meant to replace the old forums. With the news of the forums there was also a notice of the new Relic community team.

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From left to right: Val, Jeffery(Noun), and Cynthia


Val and Jeffery have both been around for quite some time, with Noun even being known from DoW 2, and Cynthia is the newcomer here. The most interesting part of this is, of course, Cynthia. She's the first announced brand new staff not working on any other projects. What this means is that she has been hired specifically to work with the DoW community. What any common business sense tells you is that you don't hire people for something unless whatever work it is they're working on gives you enough revenue to keep them employed. They're either really really optimistic about the Steam holiday sales or they're trying to reinvigorate the community in time for a new game.

Oh, and a little nugget I found while browsing the new community forums.

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Looks like Space Marine is out of the picture


Well, that's all the information I could find and there probably won't be anything new until Relic makes an official statement. Like the rest of you, I'll be waiting anxiously for that announcement.

Update: Noun has left Relic
http://community.companyofheroes.com/forum...e-sturmpioneers

Update: Noun is becoming Communications Manager
http://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/co..._getting_fired/

Update: Relic is hiring
http://steamcommunity.com/games/DawnofwarI...061934797580465
http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Career...s=9myaVfwJ&

Update: DoW 3 Domain name updated
http://www.pcgamesn.com/dawn-of-war-3-webs...mingly-involved