DoWpro

Dawn of War Professional, also known as DoWpro, is a Mod for Dawn of War. The mod centers about bringing an experience similar to Vanilla Dawn of War (with better unit scaling and more options for the player throughout the tech tree) while implementing cut or missing content. The mod is notable for being one of the earliest content mods for the original Dawn of War, and implementing a number of unit and tech tree options that were later drawn on by the developers of Dawn of War.

Overview

The groundwork for Dawn of War Professional was laid out from the aftermath of Dawn of War's Winter Assault expansion. In the expansion, a huge number of controversial changes were made to the gameplay and balance of Dawn of War, fundamentally changing how almost every existing army handled to some degree or another, removing hard counters in favor of soft counters, introducing unit obsolesence (many factions now had units that did redundant roles in their armies, but had late-tier versions that were superior, making the early versions mostly irrelevant), and essentially sliding the game from a slower-paced, more tactical game to a much more aggressive one with hard-locked tiers for units and upgrades and almost double the average match time. Dawn of War Professional was designed to appeal to those who weren't fans of the changes, and re-added many of the removed options from Winter Assault, including Chaos Marine special weapons, cut content weapons for the Imperial Guard, and even a removed unit.

As time went on and additional expansions for Dawn of War came out, the mod gradually changed focus - moving from simply restoring and implementing cut content to trying to use the new content in unique ways, and attempting to maintain a balance while keeping the Vanilla game's pacing and tactical options. The Dark Crusade version of DoWpro (DCPro) implemented the new races, wargear upgrades in multiplayer, and the new units for each faction. The final version of the mod, for Soulstorm (SSPro) was even more ambitious, bringing in two new races and almost completely reworking one of them by implementing parts of the Inquisition mod.

The mod has seen continual updates since its original release, with its most recent (and final) update coming out in December of 2017.

Features

Dawn of War Professional focuses primarily on bringing the "feel" of the Vanilla Dawn of War to the later expansions - with the slower pacing, more procedural upgrades, and more robust upgrade options. Much of the original games' cut content was added in the expansion, giving much richer tactical options for each faction, as well as, in general, more toys for each faction to play as. The improved options help ensure that almost every unit in each faction can see some level of gameplay in multiplayer, with the objective being that the player is given more choices as to the composition of their armies.

Dawn of War Professional also implements a number of cosmetic and minor improvements too, in an effort to help keep some of the units closer to fluff. As an example, the World Eaters-exclusive Khorne Berserker in Vanilla is replaced with a Black Legion-style Berserker that includes team colors to make it look like a Khornate unit that happens to be in the warband; a similar case is that Grey Knights for the Space Marines in game are replaced with more generic Vanguard Veterans (with basically the same role). Other changes were made throughout the various factions' tech trees and on a unit-by-unit basis to rebalance the game mechanics more in-line with Vanilla as well (such as removing the fire on the move accuracy "fix" implemented in Winter Assault). Some factions are changed more than others; Necrons use a unique mechanic where they need to expand their area of control and actually gain resources in an effort to actually force them to take and hold territory.

Dawn of War Professional also implemented a Stronghold Assault system, allowing players to use the mod in the campaign mode.

Issues

As a mod that focuses on expanding the Vanilla experience, Dawn of War Professional has a number of issues that make sure it most-assuredly isn't for everyone, as well as a number of gameplay issues all its own.

As a mod hoping to bring the Vanilla Dawn of War experience to the expansions, Dawn of War Professional has a much slower game pace, with a much larger focus on expanding and holding territory as opposed to the much more aggressive fast-tech-and-fight gameplay of Winter Assault, Dark Crusade, and Soulstorm - to compare, a standard 1v1 match in Dark Crusade or Soulstorm can be over in under 20 minutes; it's not uncommon for a match in Dawn of War Professional to take double or even triple this due to the slower game pacing. In spite of this, combat is much more brutal than the original expansions, since retreating is less of a viable option and the right unit deployed at the right time can completely throw a wrench in a player's strategy.

Even though the game is slower in pace, it's also much less forgiving due to focusing on the Vanilla paradigm. Units in general are much more fragile than they are in the originals, especially when it comes to mid-game vehicles and weapons versus the biggest units of the endgame. This ironically makes for a game that while certainly much more varied than Vanilla, also tends to culminate in much more protracted battles over the course of a given match, and can quickly boil down to attrition fights in the worst cases (Orks vs Guard on a huge map for example). While this might be closer to fluff, it also tends to mean that a player can find themselves slowly steamrolled from a few bad mistakes and unable to properly regain momentum, especially if inexperienced, which isn't a terribly fun thing to happen.

The biggest issue that most will probably have with DoWpro is that it fundamentally changes how the factions added in the expansions play, and not always for the better. The Imperial Guard is much more versatile, with notably more options throughout the tech-tree, but also requires considerably more real estate to properly get the most out of, making them harder to play on small maps, and they require much more micromanagement than they did before. The Tau are much more mobile and have more options for both long and short-ranged combat, but their units are much more prone to coming apart when unsupported or used improperly. The Necrons have a new mechanic that is intended to make them play more like more conventional factions, but it also undermines what makes them unique in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm (in that they don't need Requisition). The Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar are considerably different from their original incarnation, with the Sisters being based off the Inquisition mod (giving them a unique flavor all their own, but also making them play completely unlike they did in Soulstorm). Many units are very different from how they're handled in the basic games, so while most follow a very basic internal logic, many are changed so fundamentally that it can alienate players in a very bad way, especially if they preferred how the base games handled certain things (for example, the Tau in DoWpro use a different capper unit entirely).

Dawn of War Professional also changes a number of mechanics. Stealth for example in Professional is much different from the Vanilla "invisible only if not shooting" or Dark Crusade "Always invisible all the time" status, with three specific types of Stealth depending on unit (invisible when in cover, invisible when not attacking, invisible all the time). This means that each unit has its own specific mechanics to learn, and necessitates no small amount of adaptation from the basic game. Even units which keep fundamentally the same unit role they had in the original game may be changed in implementation, to the point where their use is fundamentally different in practice (Such as the Dark Eldar Relic Unit).

Those who want an experience closer to Vanilla will likely enjoy the mod, but those who are fans of how existing factions or mechanics already work certainly won't enjoy it.

Legacy

As one of the earlier mods for Dawn of War, DoWpro is notable for several of its fixes directly influencing the development and improvement of both Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. Several of the changes to gameplay made by DoWpro, most notably unit hardcaps (to prevent late-tier unit spam, something common in Winter Assault) were later put into Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. When the Heavy Weapon team unit was added in Dark Crusade as the new unit for the Imperial Guard, Dawn of War Professional had already had access to the unit for a year - having made the unit work when it was programmed in during Winter Assault, and simply left out due to bugs.

Dawn of War Pro was well-received enough that it had promotional events on the developer's community forum. When the patch cycle of Dawn of War finally ended, Buggo, Relic's Community Manager, went on-record that Dawn of War Professional's handling of many issues that the game had during Winter Assault was the way the game should have been fixed since the beginning.

Links

• http://z15.invisionfree.com/DoWpro/index.php - Official Forum.
• http://www.moddb.com/mods/dowpro - Mod DB page.