I personally don't see why off the PVP playing field they can't be working together, but once each side sees those shiny battlefield objectives they kind of forget who they're working with.

Man has allied with the foul xenos in the past when it has served it's purpose, we will then purge the unclean

Factions look to be Inquisition, Space Marines, Guardsmen and Eldar on the Order side

Chaos Space Marines, Cultists, Demons and Ork's on destruction.

Now there has been some debate that we wont see marine librarians and to avoid this they chose the World Eaters for chaos and the Black Templars for order, this does seem to make sense from a balance PoV since a mage in plate armour seems to be a little OP.

NOW for my big great MMO rant, since I work in the industry and have yes shock ghasp worked for Blizzard (I am no longer affiliated with blizzard and all of these opinions are mine and mine alone).

First off, there is no hold in the story about GW and Blizzard once being in bed together with the first warcraft game, back then the IP's where just more fluid for one and secondly games workshop was more or less unheard of in the US, from what I hear they never saw much GW stuff until the lat 90's when the look and feel of the Warcraft Universe was defined and had been for years, its what comes out of a tolkinesq fantasy setting taken to a comic book look, thats where the similarities end, the old world is a much, much grittier place than Azeroth.

Secondly, don't go whining about the graphics. MMO's will always be "sub - par" graphically to your shiney console mindless FPS games. Why? Because MMO's aren't scripted, the engine has to deal with hundreds of players in your field of vision all doing their own thing, and it has to run on a wide range of machines in order to make it as a mass market franchise, just because you have a big ass alien ware whoppybox sitting in a cryogenic containment field doesn't mean that the average player has, setting the graphic standard low means that more players can run it. As for the "comicbook" feel, well WH40K is not really the most lifelike game to begin with, most of the art work already belong in that box, not just fantasy/sci-fi, It's not like its Frank Frazzetta now is it.

UncleArkie said:

Please tell me this is more wishlisting than actual knowledge. Guardsmen would be cool, but a single Guardsman would die way too often. Perhaps as Sniper, but regular infatry guy?

I don't know why, but I highly doubt demons as playable characters.

UncleArkie said:

Just because Scriptors and sorcerers exist doesn't mean you get to choose that "career". I really hope that there will be more Chapters, Legions, whatever in the game. Perhaps the "chapters" depend on the guild you're belonging to.

schmic1977 said:

One guardsman wouldn't stand too well against a space marine. But if they decide that while a SM player gets to control one marine, a guard player will get a squad it's a different story.

I somehow doubt that. Playing a whole Squad in a MMO... Would be something new. But that would lead to the question about loot. I mean if you kill an enemy and he drops an item ( especially Armour and weapon ). Would the squad Player get as many copies of the item as the squad has members?

Otherwise the members would be equipped differently.

I rather think the regular guard squad is some sort of NPC mob. In my opinion specialised Troops would make more sense as palyable characters ( Sniper, Stormtrooper ).

schmic1977 said:

If they implement squads it would likely be similar to minion masters . Maybe give the squad some special characters (eg commissars) who provide bonuses while they live, along with the grunts who just don't do much beyond shooting and providing cover for the important characters.

Having squad members equipped differently could be interesting, if the cost/rate is balanced for it. But to ease load on the server it's more likely to see custom equipment for the special character(s), while the rest have to use mass produced stuff.

But I agree with you, seeing them do the Imperial Guard as player characters is unlikely for release.

BrotherHostower said:

Well... yes, I've been playing 40K since '88 or '89 I think, quite a few years before Warcracft: Orcs vs Humans even. I actually meant to say 'like Warhammer Online in space'.

I do feverishly hope that they'll go more along the route of SW- The Old Republic, y'know a more story driven mmorpg with epic storylines. What I see now is the bastard child of WOW and WO. Endless grinding for marginal stats increases... I know this is just paranoia speaking because the game is still a long way of from release but it feels like teh creators are just looking at the tabletop game for inspiration (hence the cartoony look and manic shootout gameplay.) They shoudl take a look more at the novels and the RPG,; because as we all know, the tabletop game has become just the tip of the huge iceberg that is the rich universe of 40K

Bilateralrope said:

They could do it by giving Imperial Guard player characters access to vehicles.

Anyway, I'd like to see the Eldar as a playable faction. Although I have issue with them siding with order, given that the Eldar will turn against anyone if it is to their advantage. Multiple factions would be ideal, but as someone said it dilutes the economy. My experience playing Warhammer Online revealed that on the roleplay servers it was very difficult to form teams as fewer players were available. So I guess it will be just two teams.

I would like to see a three faction set up. From what I've seen of other MMO's I think it's way foward (otherwise Warhammer Online was great and they could learn a lot from it) as otherwise servers get dominated by one side or another, unless they come up other balancing factors (like Aions npc faction although that game was crap).

The factions being Imperium (Space marines, Inquisitors, Imperial Guard, SoB), Chaos (CSM, Renegades, Deamons, Dark eldar eventually), Xeno's (Eldar, Tau, Orks).

Also of course it depends on what races are included from the start, hell, 4 factions might work better.

As for IG I would like to see a choice between Vehicle based and a 'pet' class.

Re: Imperial Guard, they could certainly do a similar take to how City of Villains did 'Masterminds'. You play the 'main' person, so Commisar, IG Captain, whatever and you have the ability to summon 'minions', as you grow in power so do your minions and you gain the ability to summon extra minions with different powers, perhaps a medic who heals your other minions, a heavy weapons trooper with missile launcher, even at the highest levels perhaps such things as a an Imperial Assassin, etc.

It worked very well in CoV I found and provided a very different, interesting and versatile class that claimed a space all it's own.

I just found this article about it. Some points from it:

- 4 factions: Eldar, Imperium, Orks and Chaos.

- No tanks on release, they might get added in an expansion.

- Tyranids are the major PVE enemy.

- Set in Segmentum Tempestus so the Tau are extremely unlikely to show up.