Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

The patch to fix several issues, including the Last Stand bug where the levels are lost on Last Stand Heroes, is live.

View more for the patch notes…

Read the rest of this entry »

Spotted on Facebook, the lead designer of Chaos Rising, Daniel Kading, narrates a video showcasing some of the enhancements and additions to Dawn of War II.

I’m quite interested to see what they’re going to do with the Space Hulk.

There’s a write up of IGN’s spin with Chaos Rising over at the UK IGN site.

Whereas Dawn of War II allowed players to develop characters from level one to level twenty, Chaos Rising will up the level cap to level thirty providing new items, characters and abilities while adding the newest chapter in the Blood Ravens saga. Players that have their customized soldiers will be able to bring their stats and abilities that they chose forward into the expansion pack if they don’t choose to re-spec their warriors, taking advantage of larger redesigned skill trees. However, all gear acquired from the first game has been lost, forcing your soldiers to reacquire new equipment in the field and as rewards for their missions. For example, Thaddeus had a new lightning claw that provided significant melee damage, and players could pickup meltaguns to destroy vehicles. Fortunately, the number of items that you can acquire in missions has also grown, and players will discover that the supplies your troops acquire are now unique to particular units as well, being assigned instantly to those squads when you pick them up.

They outline a lot of the details of how the influence of Chaos will affect your characters as well. Be warned, there’s quite a few spoilers in this article.

Still haven’t picked up any of the Dawn of War games yet? They’re currently half off on Steam for a limited time.

Dawn of War 2 is running for 19.99 US. Now would be a good time to pick it up especially since the Last Stand was just released.

Steam Powered

Over the last week or so, the Dawn of War 2 site’s been releasing info about the new patch that’s out on October 14th.

It started with the two new maps.

Then came three features about the Last Stand Heroes, the first being the Space Marine Captain, followed by the Ork Mekboy and finally the Eldar Farseer.

Today they posted the patch release notes.

Finally, there’s the Final Wave contest! Be the first to complete the Final Wave in the last stand and post it online and you can win a prize!

Someguy
Edit: There is also a short video from Relic designers, Blake Gilroy and Chris Becker, talking about The Last Stand.

In the coming patch that’s to add Last Stand, there are also a couple of new maps.

Quest’s Heresy (2 Player)

Designed by Stefan Haines, Quest’s Heresy is a 2P map set deep in the Calderis Desert. This imperial mining facility is relatively new but has been exposed to the harsh open desert environment.

and

Hydris Chasm (4 player)

Hydris Chasm is a 4P map designed by Clint Tasker. Originally it was intended to be a jungle map that had multiple water elements including waterfalls and rivers. The artists had other plans though and decided to stretch the jungle tileset to the max, creating a volcanic theme that doesn’t exist on any other multiplayer map. Needless to say after seeing the final result Clint had no issue with this change in style.

Check out the link for pictures of the maps.

While today’s supposed to be all about Homeworld, apparently life still goes on at Relic. It looks like the Dawn of War II facebook group has posted some screenshots from Chaos Rising.

Shown are a Chaos Predator, Dreadnaught and some of the “winter” terrain set.

Will try and update the post if I find a better link for the images.

On the video side of things, there’s a 30 second exclusive video up at the DoW 2 community site.

Ten years ago, on September 28th, 1999, Homeworld was making its way onto store shelves. The release of that game hinted that the future for Relic Entertainment would be bright. Since then, Relic’s developed six additional titles (with another six expansion packs spread amongst them), with more in development.

Relic’s work with THQ on Dawn of War piqued the publisher’s interest in the studio (who until working with Relic on Dawn of War had only released two titles and one expansion) resulting in Relic’s purchase by THQ. As a result, the vast majority of people who have played Relic’s games have been fans of games other than Homeworld. To correct this, on the tenth anniversary of Homeworld’s release, Relicnews.com is proud to announce the rerelease of the Homeworld Raider Retreat standalone demo of Homeworld.

If you’ve found your way to the Relic community after playing Impossible Creatures, one of the Dawn of War games or expansions, Company of Heroes, “The Outfit” or you are learning about Relic for the first time and never had the chance to play Homeworld, Raider Retreat is a great introduction. Raider Retreat is a version of Homeworld that has five single player missions (including one that was not in the original Homeworld). It also allowed unrestricted skirmish against the AI and full multiplayer over LAN.

We touched on this earlier, but now, thanks to GameRanger and Worthplaying, people who missed out on Homeworld and its slow burn multiplayer can now have the chance.

With the death of Homeworld’s built in multiplayer (WON.net), the small but enthusiastic fan base has moved to other venues, mostly using software that simulates a LAN to enable multiplayer. As Homeworld Raider Retreat has full LAN play, and GameRanger was one of the popular services that Homeworld players were using, we contacted Scott Kevill at GameRanger. As a result, GameRanger has added support for Homeworld Raider Retreat into GameRanger.

The Raider Retreat download is just under 200MB. To help us get this relatively large file distributed, we contacted Worthplaying.com. Rainier at Worthplaying’s usually been the first to contact Relicnews.com with patch mirrors when Relic releases a patch or demo and he stepped up to host this as well.

For more information on this release, download links and multiplayer tips, please see the “Homeworld Quickstart Kit” put together by long time community member molo (and others).

THQ officially announced the next expansion to Dawn of War 2. Chaos Rising will feature the traitorous Chaos Space Marines.

Chaos Rising will feature a new Blood Raven single player campaign that return players to Aurelia where a lost ice planet as reappeared from the Warp.

- More wargears, new abilities, and squad level 30 cap(from level 20) are some of the expanded features from the original Dawn of War II.

-The campaign will feature some kind of corruption system which will go back and forth between your loyalty to the Empire and possible heresy in embracing Chaos.

Chaos will also join the other four armies in multiplayer. The other four races will see new units to reinforce their armies.

No official release date, but probably sometime in 2010

via THQ, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising

Few of our moderators have been getting stuff in the mail from THQ. One of them has gotten this.

This was on the back of the box. The Blood Raven emblem is on the back along with the text “MMX” which means 2010.

We’re guessing it is a Dawn of War II expansion, and it’ll probably have the Chaos in it.

Or it could be that THQ is celebrating Intel’s MMX technology. It is currently 1999 and you are waiting on the release of Homeworld.

Update: I got one too, sent from “The Eye of Terror” (with an address of THQ Headquarters in CA). The signer finished his signature with the Symbol of Chaos. I’d say for sure that it means a Chaos expansion for Dawn of War 2 for 2010. - ÜberJumper