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.

You can go here if you’re interested in signing it.

Thanks Bluesnews.

v2.601
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where mines could be used to destroy newly spawned enemy tanks and prevent further respawn
- Fixed a couple of issues to make COH easier to mod


To further explain the changes that we made to support modding, we added a SCAR query so that modders could find out what products a player owns, allowing them to know if players have access to Tales of Valor units etc. Secondly, some modders that were working on adding new factions for the game found that they were locked out by one of our in-game product checks. We have changed this check so that modders can add new factions to the game.

Surprise! You have a patch!

Edit: Patch Mirror at Worthplaying

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

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.

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.

…it seems like only yesterday me and Rob Cunningham were poring over spaceship drawings in his warehouse-loft over Hastings Street trying to figure out what the thread was that tied it all together while junkies howled and gibbered in the alley beneath us and we contemplated endless galactic suns.

Check out his website for more.

Check this out!

We wanted to share something else special with Homeworld fans this week in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the game. Homeworld continues to be great creative fuel for us, and members of our team will occasionally return to the universe when looking for inspiration, as a way to sharpen their skills, or just to revisit the past. This new desktop wallpaper was created by Senior Artist Dave Cheong and features a scene inspired by the game. Even though we have our hands full with Space Marine, Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, and Company of Heroes Online, Homeworld is where it all began for us. We hope you enjoy it.

Those aren’t ships from any of the released Homeworld games!

(They’re a re-imagining of Kushan Interceptor/HW2 Interceptor. Nice work Dave!)

What do you remember most about the development process of Homeworld?
Quinn: That it was a self-induced struggle, but that the team was so passionate about the game that you had no doubt it was going to succeed. People poured themselves into the game and into Relic, and it showed. Strong relationships were forged that lasted for years after Homeworld shipped, and I realize I had worked with so many great people - it’s fun reminiscing now, thinking about all the stories I just can’t tell!


There were also some crazy standards - good wasn’t good enough, and lots of the game was reworked several times until it felt just right. Sierra was a patient partner though and I think they knew they had something.

There’s a couple of quotes there about possibly another game in the Homeworld universe… maybe you should go read it?

Update: Both Relicnews.com and Relic have been getting reports that the link is not working. It’s a valid link, and works for some people. Something’s wrong on the server side.

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.