Dawn of War II: this one's for the fans

Developer Relic Entertainment has really learned a lot from Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and this time around (meaning Dawn of War II), fans should be really pleased with patch release schedules, better operable online play, and downloadable content (DLC). A multiplayer beta, hosted by Steam, is coming later this month -- January 21 for Soulstorm owners, and January 28 for everyone else.

The gameplay will be significantly improved, according to lead designer Johnny Ebbert. Sounds like there's lots to look forward to:

In Dawn Of War we felt like we really nailed three things. The brutality, brutal melee combat, the dark nature of the universe and we really focused on combat and action while downplaying resource gathering because we wanted you to focus on your guys. And there’s the over the top nature of the universe – we felt we nailed that like nobody else ever did. So in this one – did you play Company Of Heroes? We’re taking all that and we’re bringing some of the innovations over from that franchise, like the cover based combat, the intelligent squad behaviour, the destructible environments. You’ve got buildings you can climb into for protection. and on top of that we’re trying to fix three things that we think are broken with single-player in the RTS.

The first one is, starting over each time you start a new mission. It sucks. Everybody hates doing it so we don’t make you do it any more in the single-player campaign. You carry all your progress over from one mission to the next. Second thing is, we didn’t feel like we rewarded you enough for playing our game, so we’re trying to reward the player a lot more for playing the game. You’ll notice that we constantly shower you with new kinds of weapons, new kinds of armour, new abilities, new traits and new unit types you unlock. Final thing is, we really wanted to enhance the sense of attachment you get with an RTS. In a traditional RTS, it’s hard to get attached because you usually have a bunch of anonymous units that are built to die, so in our campaign we’ve given you command of a strike force and you’ll know everybody by name, and they each have a role on the battlefield. They’ll come with you from mission to mission and they’ll get better as you play, which we found really drives the level of attachment through the roof in relation to other RTS games. We’ve also streamlined the multiplayer quite a bit, making it more action-packed and exciting.

Ebbert also got into the audience aspect of the game, saying their goal with this was to attract players who normally wouldn't play a real-time strategy (RTS) game, of which the RPG elements are partly responsible. Thing is, I'm interested in this and normally I don't play RTS games, so it seems like they've accomplished that goal.

Now, support is something generally very important to PC gamers, so you'll be excited to know they've got a much better system in place for patches and the like. The pipeline with the original was "very difficult", so learning from that, they made it very easy to patch DoW II, meaning you won't have to wait months anymore. Additionally, integrating with Games for Windows LIVE they say will provide great firewall negotiation, better handling of server load, and achievements.  A trailer for the game is up on the client now for those that care to check it out.

Finally, there's the contentious Digital Rights (Restrictions if you prefer) Management (DRM) issue. Having had a chat with one of the team members at Relic recently ("you need protection", he informed me), it's good to hear Ebbert feels the best way to sell well is to reward paying customers, not punish them:

We really want to give our players a top-notch online experience and we want to reward our players for playing our game. We want to give out steady doses of free downloadable content because we believe in rewarding people who buy the game and the reason we don’t like DRM solutions is because they punish the innocent and they have to jump through all these hoops. We don’t want to do that so we’re going with the approach that Valve pioneered to just reward the people who actually bought the game with cool stuff. Free downloadable, regularly accessible stuff that enhances the game and then that’s an incentive for the people who didn’t buy the game to buy it. So we’ve got a really bold, robust strategy for that and we’re going to be revealing more details in about a month, but I think players are going to like it. And everybody wins you know? The people who paid for the game don’t have to go through any fuss and they’re constantly getting new stuff, which keeps the game fresh.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II releases February 23.

Update: The Steam client is required to run the retail version of the game for DRM purposes.