Dawn of War 2 Multiplayer

Dawn of War 2 is T Minus 9 Days

It is less than 9 days to the release of Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War 2 and I am getting pretty excited. I got to play several multiplayer games over the weekend and must say that I am pretty impressed with the feel of the game. It is really cool, futuristic, and provides an ample supply of realism to get my motor running.

There are a couple of elements that make the game good in my eyes. I really like the territory system in Dawn of War 2 multiplayer. It is a lot like Company of Heroes in that there are three main objects that need to be captured. In Dawn of War these are "Requisition," "Energy," and Victory Points. Requisition is what you need to buy basic units and is generally the most used resource of the game. If you don't have enough of these points you are going to be quickly outnumbered by your opponent who will take over the rest of the map, further increasing the resource gap between you and your opponent.

Energy is necessary to upgrade your base to purchase better units as well as upgrade your units and heroes with better equipment. This process is called "teching" and is incredibly important at higher levels of play. If you tech faster than your opponent you can unleash more power units on him quicker, forcing him from the field of battle and entrenching your force's advantage on the battlefield.

The last objectives that you need to be aware of in this real time strategy game is the Victory points. These points determine the who wins and who looses more than any other objective in the game. If you control these and loose in every other respect, you will be counted the winner as your opponents points are quickly drained away.

This territory system of requisition, energy, and victory points provides very interesting strategic and tactical game play which sets this game high up on the RTS genre. Do you focus on destroying units and gaining a numerical superiority by driving his forces from the field and capturing his economy? Do you go for a balanced approach where you take and hold victory, requisition, and energy points? Do you set up static defensive lines with fall back points or do you keep the game fluid, decapping enemy points in an effort to harass your opponent into a weak position? The answer will depend on your choice of army, commander, and your own style of play.

This leads to the second reason why I am so excited about this game and am thinking I might actually buy Dawn of War 2 - the immense variability of game play available to players.

With four playable factions in the multiplayer, Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War 2 multiplayer appears to be a very well balanced RTS game - much better than Company of Heroes (in my humble opinion). While I play almost exclusively the Space Marines with an Apothecary Commander, I still see a lot of value in the other races. They all have their own advantages and disadvantages.

The Tryanids are a quick and powerful faction that can easily overwhelm forces of smaller numbers. The Orks are a hardy race that has powerful melee forces and relies on effective fighting groups that disrupt and close in on enemy positions. The Eldar are a race that I have yet to nail down on what they are best at - but speed is an incredibly important factor in playing the Eldar along with their massively powerful Tier 3 units. And finally, the Space Marines rely on their powerful unit to deal with overwhelming enemy forces - suppression and knock-back are your friends with the Space Marines more than any other race.

Ahh suppression and knock back, these are two great realism features of Dawn of War 2 multiplayer. It is really fun to sneak a cloaked scout unit that has shotguns equipped up behind an enemy machine gun, lob a grenade, and then watch your squad totally mess with the machine gun as the rest of your Space Marines press the attack. Another equally impressive site is to see a horde of Tryanid Hormagaunts become suppressed by a well placed Devastator team and see all those experience points start jumping up all over your screen. It is simply awesome.

In addition to these great realism effects you have destructible buildings, cover for troops behind walls and rocks, line of sight considerations, grenade lobbing, big vehicles create craters when they fire their weapons, and many more details that create a realistic and authentic gaming experience. It is about as realistic as it can be for a game that has little green men and crazy looking bug-like creatures running around.

These three features (awesome territory system, well balanced factions, and cool realism) make the Dawn of War 2 multiplayer something that you will definitely want to check out if you are interested in that characteristic of RTS games.

But there are a few issues with the multiplayer that I really hope there is a solution for.

The first issue is that dropping is a very common occurrence in the Dawn of War 2 multiplayer beta. A lot of times when you are playing 3v3 games at least one person from either team will drop or will be kicked by the players because their connection is too slow, thier machine is too underpowered, or they have their graphic and audio settings set too high. When players drop, it makes the game very, very difficult for the team that is left with 2 or even 1 player. The AI is not that effective versus human players in multiplayer games, so the game quickly becomes dominated by the other team. This can make games terribly unfun and frustrating.

Another problem that I experience in 3v3 matches is a complete imbalance between the caliber of players on either team. I played in a game last night where the three players on the opposite team had ranks of 23, 21, and 18. My rank was 8 and both of my teammates had a rank of 1. Suffice it to say, we got pwned. This massive imbalance in the Dawn of War 2 multiplayer automatch system can make games very unfun and unfulfilling for those of us trying to check out this feature of the game. How hard would it be to set up a system where very skilled players play other skilled players while novice players play other novice players? Apparently it is impossible because this is an issue in about every single RTS game with multiplayer known to man.

I won't let these problems deter me from buying Dawn of War 2 though - it seems way too fun right now to give up. Besides, I bet a lot of these issues will get cleared up once they release the game for reals in T minus 9 days.