Why is DoW2 so upopular?

Dawn of War 2 is a newer game, and has a terrific metascore, and yet somehow, both of Relic's older games are ahead of it on the xfire "hours played" list (Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 1)...

I was just wondering if anybody else here is a Relic Games fan, and had played DoW2...any thoughts about it? I jsut bought it and I'm currently getting better at multiplayer...

 

People might prefer Company of Heroes due to the gameplay, although similar is in a different setting (Space vs world war). Dawn of War 1... Maybe people like the older RTS style instead of the CoH style o.o

 

Some people say the game is too simplistic without base building.

Personally, I am a great fan of the game good single player and multiplayer is fun too. They are also about to release a free DLC this month which I am eagerly awaiting.

 

I really like it, but he fact that there is only four races really burns my balls.

There is an expansion coming out that will add Chaos, but really is it that hard to add maybe another race as well?

 

Chaos in the old DoW is awesome D: Is the expansion gonna be free or do we need to pay for it? ._.

 

I believe it will be stand alone, They will be working on this for about half a year at least, so we will indeed have to pay for it.

 

I think they said something about the expansion coming out in Q2 of 2010. That will also be around the same time as SC2, so I'll prb. pass on the DoW2 expansion, as much as I like the game.

 

I'm with Reizo here. DoW2 reminds me of a gimp CoH. Or a gimp Warcraft 3, depending on the perspective (hero units). It just seems unpolished.

When it first came out, the friggin Tyranids DOMINATED multiplayer. That killed it for me.

Dominated is an understatement.

 

they have been nerfed since, I still find the carnifex spam annoying though, as well as the mass amounts of termagaunts that can actually be produced.. good god.

 

DOW 2 is one of the best multiplayer RTS's that have come out in a while IMO. People are quick to dismiss it because its so different in fundamental ways. The lack of buildings in basses seems to bother people, but I love not having to worry about worker drones are doing and rather focus on my combat units.

The whole game revolves around managing your combat units and maintaing map control. I played DOW II for about 24 hours a week at one point, and honestly if you took our team stats( I mean me and the other 2 people I played with) we were probably one of the top 50 out there.

I am not sure why its not more popular. I just don't think people could cope with the missing macro environment. But honestly I think it makes the game that much better. In other games it was all about who could manage their macro better and get the better units and abilities first, but I feel there is a better mix in this game. A smaller force can always over take big force if you play your cards right. Again this is all just my opinion. Feel free to add me on XBL or Steam BTW... if you ever want to play.

 

Cuz the SP could not have been more boring and mindless. I am not much of an RTS guy, but I have played most of the major games and can honestly say DoW2 is the suck. I finished DoW1 and all the skirmish maps over and over. For me that's saying alot. DoW2 was just so meh... I tried playing it on 3 or 4 different occasions and could never get into it. That's why it is so DRM'd out. When you realize it sucks, you can't sell it used to another sucker. Every sucker has to buy a fresh copy.

 

DoW 1 and CoH has been out for 5 & 3 years ago, and DoW2 has only been out for 8 months, I'm guessing the other 2 games have more players and are more well known so it's only natural that it has less "hours played" than the other two.

I've been playing RTS online since CoH came out and tbh I can't stand CoH anymore after playing it for 3 years. DoW2 may seem a bit unbalanced at first (mostly fixed now & there's also a new update "Last Stand" which includes new maps & balance changes coming next week) but it's so much more exciting and doesn't take as much time as CoH.
(average 1v1 CoH ranked game time: 30-40 minutes,
average 1v1 DoW2 ranked game time: 15-25 minutes)

and @ Thund3rball: just because you can't get into it doesn't mean it sucks. Different people have different tastes in games.

 

Personally I think it's due to the change in style. Much as it's a good game, Dawn of War is also aimed at the Warhammer following market, now many of those were waiting absolutely edge of seat for more races to be released for Dawn of War 1...and some of them were. But some of them weren't; Tyranids namely were one of the most demanded races for Dawn of War, but Relic refused to add them, officially the line was that the engine wasn't advanced enough.

When people heard Tyranids were going to be in the second game, there was a lot of excitement, but then in changing the style of the game from large to small scale; they also ruined it.

The fun of Warhammer, and the attraction of the Tyranids and Orks were the huge armies you could use, and in the Tyranids case, specialisation. When they changed this scaling, and the size of the game, it was utterly ruined for a lot of people who'd wanted to play them as they'd expected the second game would be; bigger, faster and 'shinier'.
Unfortunately, the key crux of that is that a lot of the players waiting for the race were dissapointed, as quite frankly, they suited the larger playstyle of Dawn of War 1, far, far better than they ever will the smaller arena of Dawn of War 2.

Throw in your average RTS player enjoying reasonable/large scale battles and the management going along with it (especially with the likes of Supreme Commander out there emphasising BIG is doable), and Dawn of War 2 not only for all intended purposes, crippled the Tyranid (and Ork) race, but also put off a lot of gamers who wanted a medium/large scale strategy game (Dawn of War 1 firmly being a medium scale game).

Throw these together and you lose a lot of the original prime audience of DoW2. Whilst the smaller scale of combat will appeal to a different audience, and those who enjoy a more 'hero' unit style; you've lost a large percentage of the key audience who might have been following from Dawn of War 1, and quite frankly, the game hasn't exactly been heavily pushed, I've not heard much about it for a few months now, meaning you've got a smaller potential purchasing base.

Ironically, I think Relic have themselves to blame for the 'lack' of success of Dawn of War 2, by both heavily altering the gameplay formula of it's predecessor, and also removing one of the key factors in the new playable race (the SWARM).
Starcraft was also originally going to be Warhammer40K based, and I think something along the lines of the Zerg in the scale, along with mass variation of units etc, is what a lot of players had originally anticipated in the Tyranids as a DoW playable race.

 

The tyranids are a joke. One of the cool things about them is that in the tabletop they are so very, very customizable. Did Relic do anything with that? Nope. Also, when a player ranks up, units get cool new looks. For example, the force commander gets cool looking amour, the eldar warlock gets horns, the ork warboos gets cool spikes.... what does the tryranids get? A color stripe on the back...... WTH!

I honestly wish they would have just updated the graphics on dow1 and shipped that instead.

 

Funny, CoH was about micromanagement and map control.

I'll admit, I dismissed the game early as a nerfed CoH. It sounds like a different experience after they patched it up.

 

No it sucks. They dumbed it down so much even a casual RTS guy like me did a total face palm at the lameness.

 

lol I hope your comment prefers to the singleplayer and skirmishes with computer AIs only. Coz if you tell me you're prefering to the online matches pretty much everyone I know will be facepalming at your post.

 

Well im a pretty casual RTS guy, didnt suck for me. Its your opinion that the game sucks, the game doesnt actually suck.

 

Relic's only great game was the Homeworld series. Sure there's Company of Heroes but that is 'just another WWII game'. Never really looked at anything else by them since CoH.

 

Ok well, as far as I am concerned CoH was the best RTS ever made, and I mean that...I just want something different at the moment, hence DoW2.

As far as the compaign, I think its a MASSIVE improvement on DoW1, and I am surprised that everybody doesn't agree with that one...

 

I think Starcraft was the greatest RTS game ever. If there was a runner up though. CoH would be it.

While Homeworld was and still is a revolutionary RTS, CoH really took the RTS game away from base management and more towards micromanagement. The mix of terrain, flanks, territories, rewards, and surpression really was like no other RTS. It reminded me of a evolved Warcraft 3.

 

COH and DOW2 isn't that different in terms of game mechanics. and i'm tired of the WWII games, thus DOW2 is my pick

 

Agreed, although I pick DoW2 not because I'm tried of WWII, it's because once you played DoW2 you start to realise that in CoH there are so much more "down" time (ie. the time you need to walk to a point and then capture it is way too long & kinda boring, DoW2 fixes that)
I wish they could make CoH's game speed a bit faster...

 

The thing is the SP in DoW2 isn't an RTS... it's more like a half-baked Action/RPG hybrid. You basically run through a corridor, duck behind cover, shoot, send in the FC, rinse-repeat. And sadly that part of it isn't even that much fun. I tried and tried to like this game but it is just very poor.

You have barely any units, it doesn't really matter which ones you use and the AI is pathetic. As I said it is so dumbed down from DoW1 games I can't understand how this has anything to do with strategy? RTS is not the right description at all, it should be called an RTK (Real Time Kindergarten).

If you want a good RTS this is not it. Also the fiery hoops this POS makes you jump through just to install it is another joke. Not too mention all the other hassles of having to be logged into GFWL just to save your game. AND you can't save at any point like DoW1, you have to complete the whole mission. So if the wife says "we have to go" and you want to come back later to your game, you get to start all over again later on.

I can't understand how people don't see the writing on the wall with this game. It has pretty graphics and zero depth. It is the most shallow *cough* strategy *cough* (if you can even say that work in context of DoW2) game I have ever played. This game is pretty, boring and a good candidate for Coaster Of The Year since you can't resell or trade it.

 

Your opinion has been noted and accepted.

As far as popularity goes DOW2 is always at 2k+ players on Steam, and a game is always available. That's popular enough for me.

I played the original DoW at a 1400+ level, and I still prefer DOW2.

Plus... Chaos is coming.

 

Thanks for typing all that out Thund3r. I do agree with some of your points about the SP campaign but then again it doesn't matter much for me coz I only care about multiplayer (which is pretty awesome and totally different from SP).

Yup I'm excited for Chaos too. Wish they could add 2+ races instead of just adding Chaos + some new units though.

 

I love all of the DoW games, but DoW2 isnt as fun to me because your limited in single player to just the space marines... thats kinda boring.

With Warhammer 40K there are SO many races that everyone that made this game popular (the 40K players that bought this like it was the holy grail of games) now kind of feel left out because all the work went into the multitude of races in DoW and in 2 they just left you with space marines. Sure you get a bit bigger field in multiplayer, but its severly lacking all things considered.

Plus theres no way to mod the game. DoW had some INSANE mods out there and i havent really found anything for DoW2 so thats also kind of a let down

Still its a great game and i love the play style, i just whish there was ALOT more to it than there is.

 

Any mod recommendations for DOW?

 

Let's not forget that vanilla DOW was the same way, a campaign which was SM only, and multiplayer which had just four races. The expansions brought all the other races (I heart my Necrons) and expanded campaigns, so let's afford them the same opportunities to improve with the upcoming expansions.

We'll have Chaos soon, and at least the Imperial Guard will also be added by this time next year.

 

Yea, the unpopularity is probably due to the difference in game play. I was a big fan of DoW but I really like base building and those types of games (big CnC fan, if the formula ain't broke, don't fix it) so I didn't really enjoy DoW II, I guess it's all a matter of taste though

 

Firestorm Over Kronus and Inquisition Daemonhunt are two of the more popular mods.

 

Kevin_Jack's reccomendations are good. I also like the Total War mod. It allows for an insane amount of units on the board (i think it triples or quadruples your pop cap)

I'm at work cou i cant really get links for you but IGN (i think it is) has a whole section for DoW mods. Plus you can actually get the editing tool from Relic that is freely available and mod the game yourself/work off of others mods.

DoW2 doesnt allow this last i heard because relic wont release the editing tools for us.

@Kevin_Jack 2.0
I understand what you're saying and yes DoW was just as vanilla (though ALOT more unit possibilities than DoW2) but now that relic has shown what it can do we kind of expect a new game to be superior to the original, not cut down with slightly better graphics.

Plus DoW was HUGELY popular because the last game we had for Warhammer 40K was space hulk i believe... and that game was pretty much crap compared to DoW so they set the bar pretty high for themselves.

But i still think DoW2 is a great game... different than what i like most in DoW, but no so bad that i dont enjoy it and expect ALOT more expansions from them (hopefully quick, i want my Eldar and Necron campaigns )

 

@ Kevin and Kamin. Thanks for the recommendations.

I'm pretty new to DOW and had only bought DOW2 a couple months ago. I'm glad I got the complete THQ pack and will deff. be installing DOW, along with some of the mods.