Relic Entertainment’s Community Manager, Thunder, recently sat down with the folks over at
Gamereplays.org in order to answer some questions about Dawn of War 2, currently available as an open multiplayer beta through Steam and scheduled for official release on February 19. The interview appears in full below:

Gamereplays: GFWL had to certify every patch in UaW which took a week or two, will this also be the case with Dawn of War II?

Thunder: Yes, there is a formal certification process for our code patches that involves GFWL approval. This is to ensure we’re maintaining LIVE in a secure state. It also provides us with an extra layer of product testing before the game is updated.

However, we are free to update DOWII with new content like multiplayer maps and balance changes without entering certification, which is the most common type of update.

Ongoing tweaks to DOWII will not be hindered by GFWL in any way.

Gamereplays: The beta playtest was well received by the CoH players in the beginning, are there any plans for something similar for DoW2?

Thunder: The DOW II multiplayer beta is essentially our CoH balance playtest right now. I don’t know of future plans to follow the model set by CoH, and I’m not sure we’d want to follow that exact same path.

Gamereplays: So far we’ve seen five maps, three 3v3 and two 1v1, will there be more on release? Or will we be seeing more in DLC perhaps?

Thunder: Yes, there will be more maps available when the game releases and beyond.

Gamereplays: We heard there were big plans for the Librarian, will we be seeing him in the first game or do we have to wait for DLC or expansions?

Thunder: No comment.

Gamereplays:When the beta is released will it be open until the game is released, or do you plan on ending it earlier?

Thunder: The beta will be shut down once DOW II ships to stores. It will run for about four weeks in total, which I think is plenty of time for players to give it a try and get a sense of the state of balance.

Gamereplays: Why was GFWL chosen over something like Relic Online 2.0?

Thunder: We wanted to maximize the size of our multiplayer community and GFWL allows us to do that. We’ve already had over 11 thousand concurrent players playing the Beta and with LIVE, that number can go into the millions without skipping a beat. The long term growth of our franchise is very important to us.

Gamereplays: With the inclusion of possible future content - particularly things that might introduce new units - would it be designed with singleplayer in mind first and then tailored for multiplayer, or vice-versa?

Thunder: I think that any additions to the game will be tailored to be fun, first and foremost. In DOW II, singleplayer and multiplayer are truly two different game types, so I think we’ll keep that philosophy.

Gamereplays: Will the beta have a large influence on balance or is it primarily for bug fixing?

Thunder: We’re definitely looking for balance feedback in the beta. This will be the largest group of players to ever play DOW II multiplayer, so we’re looking for trends and feedback for the purposes of making future balance tweaks.

Source

Highlights from the interview confirm that more multiplayer maps will be available upon the game’s release (only five maps are included in the beta).

Having been completely silent on the “official” forums (Relic does not maintain an official forum, but communicates with the community through the Relicnews.com site), it’s nice to see some evidence that the developers are at least aware of the feedback we’ve been offering, the best and most constructive example of which can be found here. In fact, the review is so comprehensive, accurate, and well-presented that I’ve been hesitant to write up my own, as it would be mostly redundant.

In addition to the Gamereplays interview, the developers also held a live chat over IRC on Sunday (click here for transcript). It has been confirmed that there will be a zero-day patch with the release of Dawn of War 2 based on bug and balance feedback from beta testers, both internally and from the public release. While they purportedly wanted to include an observer mode with the game, it looks like this feature will need to wait for a future patch. Fortunately, lobby chat and replay mode functionality will be added back in to the game for its February release, and two new maps, which Relic claims will be significantly better than the five (mediocre) maps currently included, will be available for download at release or within the first week.

Lastly, the live chat session reveals that Dawn of War 2 will require Steam in order to play, and which will also take care of distributing updates and new content for the game. Windows Live is still required to actually play the game (unfortunately).

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