Hi there,
I have been playing Dow now on and off since around 2009. I am an ex-Amiga (commodore) gamer, and fell in love with Dow I after reading the first four books of the Horus Heresy, the Grey Knights Omnibus, and anything I could on inquisitors Eisenhorn and Ravenor. Back in 2009, as an old shroomer, I was also frequently interacting with real elves in real reality, well, according to Timothy Leary's definition, not modern day and age 'shrinks'. And, the both the Eldar and Space Marine Races, even the Tau, fit perfectly into my reality model at the time, as futuristic races, aligned with the ancient elves and the samurai, even the colors and names of the various races.
Now, I do not play dow much any more. One, because I grew a bit tired of DoW 1, Two because DoW II and DoW III, even unique in their own way and often with a lot nicer graphics and interfaces, deviated too far from the original SCORE (DoW I & The Warhammer Universe). Sure, Blacklibrary probably have deviated quite a bit since the original Horus Heresy and Dan Abnett sure looks like he has aged, but haven't we all? The AI tends to cheat more than it did in DoW I, and I always used the improved old DoW I - AI mod.
Also, Steam, which I used to use has done something with the graphics, so that it is near impossible to run my DoW I on my PC any more at my old and preferred graphics settings.
So, what I am asking for here, would it be too much to ask to return all of the races and their original form from DoW I with the original clans, troops and colors in DoW III? Or, a remake of DoW I using the foundation that it provided so well, base building, and the units etc., but with some additional elements from DoW III (I do like some of the elements introduced into DoW III, it has nice graphics and a slick control interface, but it is still very lacking in building a base and/or forward bases). Also, I find DoW I and the ability to zoom anywhere on any character is missing, and now the characters look more like some digital interpolations of a previously very analogue and very possible futuristic universe.
The way I see it, DoW III is more of a remake of DoW II, which removed the element of base building entirely from DoW I, plus changed gameplay and the Tau race among others and introduced some goofy looking inquisitors that looked like withes, albeit without their broomsticks. This is still ok, having various forms of gameplay, but if one deviates too far from the foundation, ever read The Foundation Series?, or The Ten Commandments, one looses touch with reality all together.
So, Relic, if you read this, is it possible to create a game from the ground up (DoW IV? - my lucky number?), from DoW I (and Homeworld - both great games, prolly the best ever on the PC), with the most cherished aspect portals and perspectives and facets from DoW II & III, as well as host it on your own servers, perhaps available on both PS4 and iPads, with both PvP and PvE (my preference, I prefer to play against AI, not other humanoids), perhaps an advanced version of the old skirmishes which left the user in control, but still fairly simple to use? (Essentially a hybrid version built upon the foundation (at least 73%) of DoW I, with an entirely new slick interface, better graphics, beefed up explosions, bigger maps and new improved and easy to use multiplayer (PvE and PvP) interface and with say the 13% (or less) coolest elements introduced in DoW II and 14% (or more) coolest elements introduced in DoW III).
I mean, the Solaris, come-on, what happened to the Land Raider? And Deathwatch as Space Marines? Why not Chaos Space Marines, the Emperors Children (in Pink) and Alpha (in Black) - my two favorite races to play against in PvE in Skirmish, pretty much with any other races.
In my opinion, they are all good, all the other races, except for the Chaos Space Marines, not that they too do not contain elements of 'goodness', but on the other end of the spectrum wrt Eldar Biel-Tan Clan (whom are allied with the Dark Eldar) or Tau'n or Necrons Verdus Prime or SM Luna(r) Wolves - omitted in DoW I - why?, or Orcs Big Choppaz (all with white armour in DoW I), The Sisters of Battle and The Entire Imperial Guard as guarding the Emperor of Mankind cannot be a bad thing. I don't consider the Tyranids bad, sure they are Xenos, but not Demons or Heretics. There are many Xenos (grasshoppers?) on this planet of ours (Earth - or Terra?), that live in harmony with us, as long as we leave them alone that is. But that has more to do with the myth of the Alien movie/book franchise (What was that alien ship actually doing down on that planet and who sent out the distress call, and why?). Clue: Mining is Bad (for anything, especially souls).
Lets tell our souls to stop mining each other and lets recreate the past from our collective memories, in harmony and cocreation, with elements from the future that were more real 10 years ago than they are today. Without being grounded in the past, how can we expect to continue to exist into the future? No wonder the inquisitors, the actual ones in the future, told me years ago, right now, based on the path you are on, there are no humans in the future, well, they are there, now, but we will be gone, maybe forever, if we do not change course. Trying to use our feeble technology to play a game of one-up-man-ship on the real elves (Eldar) when we do not even know what existed before the big bang, is a very dangerous game, because they, amongst other good races, are the Guardians of that Domain.
So, up until this point, just some food for thought, I only write emails like this about once per year, to anyone, so please tell me it was not a complete waste of time!
Now onto my questions - in order for me to play DoW again.....
How about brushing up the graphics of DoW I with new graphics settings on Steam that actually work?
Do you offer DoW I as a standalone game install, outside of Steam or any third party provider?
Peace, and if you need assistance from my soul, to make it happen in any way (the food for thought or any other creative endeavour) just ask for Tj or Cj by the tall Totem Pole, in Stanley Park, if it is still there...
Tj aka Seawolf23 (ussn23)
Comments
SharKnight
Soul storm its the worst expansion in the DOW franchise.
Not only was the game shipped with more bugs than you can imagine, it still has a lot of them, pathing and animation glitches which where not present in previous expansions, let alone the game keeps crashing.
Then you have a campaign that looks like a cheap wannabe reskin for Dark Crusade. With awful loading times.
The two new races have terrible textures and are super imbalanced, now the whole game is quite unbalanced, this happens when you try to implement 2 new races to an already complex 7 race system.
The Air units where a complete mistake, since the whole game and maps where designed with ground skirmishes in mind, so the airships feel completely alien and just do not belong there.
I could go on and on, but to me it seems like people just like it because it has more content rather than quality, thats why for me Dark Crusade will always be the definitive and where DOW 1 should had stopped. All Soulstorm did was split the player base.
Dark Crusade while imba at launch, the last patch it had made it balanced in the sense that you had a unit to take you out of any possible situation. This having the units of the other 7 races in mind of course.