Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade

9TurningMirrors · 9 Jul 2014 at 09:05

Eternal Crusade is a Third Person MMO Shooter set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game is being developed by a company called beHaviour.

Each player controls a character belonging to one of four factions from the 40K universe - Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar or Orks.

The players will be able to spawn transports and light tanks (Rhinos and Predators are confirmed) as well as various infantry classes (see below for a list.)

The original plan was for ongoing campaigns on single server. That idea has now been put on the back burner but instead we will see large maps containing a diverse array of objectives, terrain types, etc.

The game is going into closed Alpha for Founders on Monday, 14th September.

You can pre-order the game here https://www.eternalcrusade.com/join-the-war If you use this referral code EC-2BH716SCLHPX8 we both get an extra 4,000 RTP.

Speculative release date is sometime in the first half of 2016.

The first trailer is for the Space Marines (although featuring Dark Angels I guess it should be first

)

Latest video from the Devs

The Hero and Elite classes function a little like MAXES in PS2 taking in-game resources to spawn and having a timer but have to use a pre-configured loadout.

The basic classes are:

Space Marines

Tactical - basic grunt
Devastator - heavy weapons
Assault - jump pack and melee specialist
Apothecary - combat medic

Orks

Shoota (final name TBD) - general dogsbody
'Eavy/Loota (final name TBD) - big guns
Stormboy (final name TBD) - similar to Assault Marine
Painboy - medic/nutter

Chaos

Tactical - general dude
Havoc - Chaos Heavy Weapons
Raptor - he jumps about and hits people with a big axe
Aspiring Sorcerer - probably similar to the Marine Apothacary

Eldar

Dire Avenger - infantry
Fire Dragon - short ranged anti-tank
Dark Reaper - long ranged anti-infantry
Swooping Hawk - jump pack but shooty not melee
Howling Banshee - melee anti-heavy infantry
Striking Scorpion - melee but with possible stealth
Warlock - psychic support dude.

NB: Eldar get more basic classes because each of their classes is focused on a particular aspect of warfare. The other races have fewer classes but are more flexible in their abilites and loadouts.
Factions

At launch there will be four factions: Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar and Orks.

These are subdivided into:

Space Marines

Ultramarines
Blood Angels
Dark Angels
Space Wolves
Imperial Fists

Eldar

Ulthwe
Biel-Tan
Saim-Hann
Iyanden

Chaos Space Marines

Black Legion
Word Bearers
Iron Warriors
Night Lords
Alpha Legion

Orks

Goffs
Evil Sunz
Bad Moons
Deathskulls
Blood Axes

Each subfaction will have some minor traits to make them feel a bit more like their background counterpart. No details on that as yet.

Pricing Model

The game has a fairly wide pricing model.

There's an option to pay once for the whole thing and unlock all four factions. There is no subscription cost.

Or you can pay to unlock a single faction at a reduced price.

If you don't fancy that then you can play as an Ork for free but your class choices and vehicle options will be limited.

To continue funding the servers there is a cash shop.

Players can buy 'sidegrades' to Hero Classes, Weapons and Vehicles. The sidegrades should work in a similar way to Planetside 2 i.e. a weapon might trade rate of fire for accuracy but overall the intention is that both weapons will be roughly balanced against each other.

Things that require resouces to spawn in-game e.g. Hero Classes will still need those resources.

I myself and really looking forward to this game and have dropped cash for the Captain's back. However, the basic founders package is the cost of the game at release ($40) plus a bonus of $40 worth of in-game currency.

snips86x · 9 Jul 2014 at 09:13

I was excited reading the post and watching the first video as I love the previous games. No longer interested as I think the 3rd Person addition has ruined the strategy of the game

MoridinUK · 9 Jul 2014 at 10:13

I like the look of this, but want some Tau to play!

Martini1991 · 9 Jul 2014 at 10:15

I can see this being janky to be honest.
Wish someone would just bring us a proper sequel to DOW, while I like DOW2, it's just not as good as the first.

Kishywish · 9 Jul 2014 at 10:54

Is a good idea to force the free players into the ork class - there's nothing like a mob of disorderly green players to terrify the other players.

Schnippzle · 9 Jul 2014 at 11:23

Martini1991 said:
I can see this being janky to be honest.
Wish someone would just bring us a proper sequel to DOW, while I like DOW2, it's just not as good as the first.

Agreed 100%. Even the doomed DoW3 was going to stray more from DoW which was a shame.

9TurningMirrors · 9 Jul 2014 at 14:39

It sounds as if people think this is meant to be some kind of RTS a la DoW, which it is not.

It is similar to PS2 with each player controlling a single character at a time.

The release of this pre-alpha footage is a mixed blessing, I admit. On the one hand it does look a bit ropey. On the other, I remember the state of PA in alpha...it had less content than this....

mortals · 9 Jul 2014 at 15:13

Being based on WH40K could make this a good RPG

200 ork players running around yelling WAAAGGHH!!! on voice comms

I personally don't like the whole 3rd person shooter MMO idea tho

I would also like to see a new WH40K DoW made (like the original)

Strife212 · 9 Jul 2014 at 15:22

Hopefully it's good, shovelware developer though...

Gruber · 9 Jul 2014 at 15:37

I not very optimistic about this. I thought GW had got the hang of the computer games industry recently teaming up with relic and creative assembly.
Having said that, I've just bought Space Hulk and it's a bit dull.

As people have said, DoW3, but with more titans. I want some epic scale action!

IronWarrior · 9 Jul 2014 at 16:55

Just brought the Warrior Pack and registered my two player characters, I honestly can't believe my name wasn't reserved already, it's crazy.

Clearly, my main is going to be a Iron Warrior and my second is a Ultramarine.

Not sure what to do with the other two slots, maybe a Eldar but I can't think of a name for it yet.

I'm still ****ed that this game is just Space Marine but bigger. It needs first person badly.

9TurningMirrors · 11 Jul 2014 at 22:27

Update with today's twitch.tv Q&A session.

http://www.twitch.tv/40kcrusade/b/546586715

Clip notes:
05:40 Some Tac Marine play.
07:00 Predator in action. Each faction's vehicles will have a proper racial feel. So Orks get the equivalent of Ramshackle, Eldar stuff hovers, etc.

24:00 Devastators including supression mechanic, using terrain to brace heavy bolter.

27:00 Players can spawn from buildings, or Rhinos.

28:00 Four sizes of location (the places that dictate who controls a territory)
Outpost - few scattered buildings, one or two control points.
Depot - Larger, provides supply. The more supply the better its defences.
Fortress - Holding this will grant abilities to commanders
Stronghold - the focal point of the hoped for 500 player battles. Will require armour, heroes, multiple classes working in concert to take these places.

31:00 Spawn rooms will have multiple exit points to befuddle spawn camping.

32:00 Devs think that Sisters of Battle are a Space Marine faction. :rolleyes:

But they want to put in as many factions as they can, eventually. Possibly with inter-faction allying.

33:00 Being saved after being put into a downed state so that you can be executed/saved. Support classes can get you back up multiple times, other classes only once.

34:00 Drop Pods are going to be in but expensive to use.

35:00 Aiming for 500 vs 500 matches. Slightly slower paced, more tactical gameplay than Space Marine. Rhino does look like more than four Marines can get in it!

36:30 Different weapons have different attack and blocking values. You can only guard for a limited amount of time.

39:00 Loadouts have a number of points. Each piece of equipment takes up X or Y points to balance things out.

Marine classes on the loadout screen are:
Tactical
Assault
Devastator
Apothacary
Terminator
Chaplain
Librarian

Classes are a bucket rather than a straitjacket. The progression tree can cover several classes, but some things will be restricted from certain classes.

41:05 Hero classes - they want them to be powerful but take resources and have a cool down. Resource Points are generated at a fixed rate over time.

42:00 The faction leaders get their own budget of RP which they can allocate to particular areas of the battlefield.

43:20 There will be chapter specific classes in the game but they are still being worked on.

46:50 Faction differences in combat - e.g. Eldar weapons will be more focused e.g. Eldar good at short ranged, have long ranged specialists, weaker mid-range. Fastest bikes. Strong psychics.

49:00 They want to have meaningful territory control. There will be permanent effects. Territories don't just flip - they have to be held and reinforced to use them.

50:00 There will be overarching objectives on the planet told as part of the campaign's story. These will be your main goals, not just trading territory back and forth.

52:00 It will be a living world: hidden areas, secrets to uncover, not static.

53:00 Psykers have a number of warp charges. These don't regenerate on their own. Perils of the Warp builds up as you use your psychic powers.

56:00 Sorcerer being worked on and will hopefully be demoed soon.

56:30 No super heavies or Lords of War at launch. The experience is primarily an infantry experience. Titans would invalidate players so they would not want to put them on the battlefield.

Fridays are going to be regular twitch.tv livestream (hopefully)

Next things they want to show off include the Day/Night Cycle.

Animations will be motion captured, but they stress that this video is still pre-Alpha stuff.

Access to the game for Founders will be January at the latest...possibly before.

01:05:30 A Predator has crew positions for driver, main gunner, side sponsons and hatch gunner.

01:07:19 WAAAAAAGH! (No, really.)

Deific · 11 Jul 2014 at 23:30

Paying to play as Hero classes? Screams p2w. Planetside 2 is also p2w.

9TurningMirrors · 12 Jul 2014 at 01:12

Possibly I need to make it clearer.

A few Hero classes are unlockable as part of the Founders Program.

There will be different but equivalent versions available to those who buy the game later.

Once you have unlocked a Hero class you get to spawn it by buying in-game requisition points.

Dumping of the Original Post for historical record.

TLDR: Space Marine + Planetside 2 = Eternal Crusade.

Warhammer 40,000 Eternal Crusade is a third person MMO shooter. Each player controls a character belonging to one of four factions from the 40K universe - Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar or Orks.

The players will be able to spawn transports and light tanks (Rhinos and Predators are confirmed) as well as various infantry classes (see below for a list.) Battle will take place on a 'single' server so there will hopefully be the kind of battles we see in a large TT game.

There will be a limited amount of PVE in the form of instanced raids against AI Tyranids. Interestingly, Tyranids will also spawn and attack the dominant faction with increasing numbers.

You can pre-order the game here https://www.eternalcrusade.com/join-the-war If you use this referral code EC-2BH716SCLHPX8 we both get an extra 4,000 RTP.

Although it isn't scheduled for release for a good eighteen months (late 2015/early 2016) the developers, Behaviour have relented to fan pressure and opened up not only pre-orders for the game but also the embryonic cash shop.

The first trailer is for the Space Marines (although featuring Dark Angels I guess it should be first

)

Latest 'pre-alpha' footage.

Still very early days. A lot of people are going to die performing execution moves on a large battlefield, I think.

Eternal Crusade (aka EC) will take place on a 'single server' a la Eve using Pikka server technology to avoid the network issues that were the bane of Space Marine. They are expecting to host fights with 'hundreds of players' per area.

At the moment we only have pre-alpha shots of the in game models. Much of which is looking pretty darned similar to Space Marine. However, there are going to be many more classes per faction when the ability to unlock Elite and Hero classes is factored in.

The Hero and Elite classes function a little like MAXES in PS2 taking in-game resources to spawn and having a timer but have to use a pre-configured loadout.

The basic classes are:

Space Marines

Tactical - basic grunt
Devastator - heavy weapons
Assault - jump pack and melee specialist
Apothecary - combat medic

Orks

Shoota (final name TBD) - general dogsbody
'Eavy/Loota (final name TBD) - big guns
Stormboy (final name TBD) - similar to Assault Marine
Painboy - medic/nutter

Chaos

Tactical - general dude
Havoc - Chaos Heavy Weapons
Raptor - he jumps about and hits people with a big axe
Aspiring Sorcerer - probably similar to the Marine Apothacary

Eldar

Dire Avenger - infantry
Fire Dragon - short ranged anti-tank
Dark Reaper - long ranged anti-infantry
Swooping Hawk - jump pack but shooty not melee
Howling Banshee - melee anti-heavy infantry
Striking Scorpion - melee but with possible stealth
Warlock - psychic support dude.

NB: Eldar get more basic classes because each of their classes is focused on a particular aspect of warfare. The other races have fewer classes but are more flexible in their abilites and loadouts.
Factions

At launch there will be four factions: Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar and Orks.

These are subdivided into:

Space Marines

Ultramarines
Blood Angels
Dark Angels
Space Wolves

Eldar

Ulthwe
Biel-Tan
Saim-Hann
Iyanden

Chaos Space Marines

Black Legion
Word Bearers
Iron Warriors
Night Lords

Orks

Goffs
Evil Sunz
Bad Moons
Deathskulls

Early models have been shown. These are pre-Alpha shots so a lot of work yet to be done.

Pricing Model

I confess to finding this a little confused as Behaviour seem to have gone for every popular option.

Want to play for free? Then you can hop onto the Ork faction although your classes and vehicle access will be limited.

Behaviour are hoping this will a) make Orks act as the Zerg faction by default and b) draw people into the game.

Like microtransactions? Then at launch you will be able to pay for one or more of the factions of your choice?

Prefer to buy the whole thing in one go with no subscription costs? Then buy one of the Founders packs.

These unlock all four factions. As a thank you to Founders you also get $40 worth of in-game currency to spend in the Founders Store.

Except you can also buy a subscription which will give you an increasing number of RTP per month.

The Cash Shop

Weirdly the fans demanded that Behaviour open this thing up early so that they could throw money at them. The developers have obliged but some of the prices are a little on the high side.

For example, you can buy a Limited Edition Ferrox Pattern Bolter for $35.

There are only 2,500 of each of these to purchase and like Planetside 2 they are a side grade to the normal bolters that the less well-off amongst us will be using.

The Founders store also offers the ability to unlock Hero classes for each faction. Equivalent but different Hero classes will be available to unlock using in-game XP latter in the game. E.g. Founders can unlock the 'Outcast Ranger'. Later on everybody will be able to unlock 'The Ranger'.

There are two heroes for each faction plus a couple of bits of extra fancy looking armour and two player vehicles such as Marine Attack Bikes and Eldar Vypers. Heavier vehicles such as Predators have been confirmed.

Some of the items added to the Founders Store over the next year and a half will not be available purchasable by non-founders once the game launches.

There will however be the opportunity to unlock equivalent options.

As I said, prices are a little high; the head developer has said they are looking into the pricing model.

Then again, they have sold a couple of hundred of each of the limited edition weapons at $35 a pop.

However, being a Founder isn't just about giving Behaviour more money for a game that they already have funded!

Founders will get to join in with the Alpha and Beta testing of the game as it is developed (in batches, mind you).

The War Itself

The war is going to take place on a planet called Arkhona. We don't have much in the way of detail on this place yet but Founders will get to run around on their ship as it travels to Arkhona.

Don't expect a full ship but we will have access to the firing ranges to help test and balance weapons, a personal quarters and the ability to examine and equip those arguably priced Founders things.

Just in case one of the four playable factions gets a little too fiesty the Tyranids will be showing up as NPCs that will attack any faction that gets too powerful.

The other function of the Tyranids is to act as the baddies in PvE raids taking place under the surface of the planet. This is only going to be a minor aspect of the game compared to the actual PvP war.

The extensive Game FAQ can be found here. The devs are pretty good at answering questions on the forum and then updating the FAQ.

I myself and really looking forward to this game and have dropped cash for the Captain's back. However, the basic founders package is the cost of the game at release ($40) plus a bonus of $40 worth of in-game currency.

I'll keep this updated as more information comes out.

NB: I am starting a new thread as I now have access to my proper account.
Have added latest YouTube footage.

Kelt · 12 Jul 2014 at 01:15

Martini1991 said:
I can see this being janky to be honest.
Wish someone would just bring us a proper sequel to DOW, while I like DOW2, it's just not as good as the first.

Yep, sod this MMO malarkey, not up my street at all.

IronWarrior · 12 Jul 2014 at 01:32

No, Warhammer 40,000 demands a proper FPS game, not just a other RTS/DOW clone.

I'm a little worried about the game so far, it's still no different to Space Marine but just on a bigger scale. I hate the fact that it's all third person, that just screams that the Devs are all console players.

I also hope the vehicles like the Predator can be used by one player. I want to move my Predator and fire the turret myself and not require a full crew.

Shamikebab · 12 Jul 2014 at 01:58

Need an Epic scale RTS game, not an MMO cash in. This looks poor so far

9TurningMirrors · 7 Sep 2014 at 17:21

New Trailer with gravelly-voiced man!

YouTube Footage No8

Summary: "Katie Fleming, Steven Lumpkin, and Alexis Leveque recently showed off a 9v9 battle. Later on, Ghislain Barbe showcased the new Space Marine model, updates to the grenades, and jump packs. The show finished up with a Q&A and cake!"

Apologies for not updating in a while but I've just switched jobs and things have been a bit heretic...I mean hectic!

Hurlbag · 7 Sep 2014 at 18:06

A real shame it's not first person, personally I don't get the appeal for third person at all. Also I don't know if anyone else feels the same way but, Space Marines rolling about? doesn't that seem a tad ridiculous in all that armor? I know they're super humans and whatnot but it doesn't sit well with me.

Schnippzle · 8 Sep 2014 at 12:24

I can't help but approach this with some trepidation.