Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade

Warhammer 40,000 Eternal Crusade is an MMORPG that was announced at E3 2013 and is slated to be released in 2015. It will be available for the PC, PS4 and the Xbox One/Ten.

Now many of you think that this is such wonderful news, right ? Well... This is still up to debate since the game is being developed by the people who have given us such wonderful titles like Wet, Dante's Inferno (PSP), The Lord of the Rings: Conquest (DS) and Naughty Bear. However, Behavior (the guys making this thing) pulled in talent from all around - especially from Funcom Montreal (Age of Conan, The Secret World); recently, Graham McNeill and Anthony Reynolds (known for writing the Ultramarines and Word Bearers series, respectively) have been confirmed to be working alongside them as well. The devs have confirmed that if you buy the game, you unlock all the premium content (IE rest of the races), and that Dark Angels and Iron Warriors are *not* the only Space Marine/Chaos Space Marine chapters present. Orks are the only F2P race as of now, and the devs are hoping this will make them outnumber the rest of the other factions, as each Ork is independently weaker. So, that is a higher than average understanding of 40k lore, and is typically considered a genius fucking idea.

Races

The game will debut with four playable factions and one NPC faction, each including several subgroups, and classes. The class list has been confirmed on the EC forums and it mostly the standard stuff as seen below. Sub-factions will all have unique bonuses which will effect the game such as Space Wolves having access to Rune Priests, Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard and so on. We haven't had full confirmation of each of these effects but they are confirmed as being in.

Orks

Klans: Goffs, Evil Sunz, Deathskulls, Bad Moons, Blood Axes

Classes: Painboys, Stormboys, Loota/'Eavys, Shootas

Elites: Cybork Madboys, Nobs, Meganobs (Probably Weirdboys and Mekboys but not confirmed)

Heroes: Skarboy Kommandos has been confirmed as a hero class. Probably Warbosses. No full heroes announced officially though. (Don't be mistaken by the shop, some of those are heroes - others are elites)

Faction Leader: Skarblitz (a Bad Moon with a Dreadnought's power fist as his Powah Klaw and a thing for smashin' Wolves.)

Sub-faction Leaders: Something they have only just started announcing

Goffs: Luguk 'Edpuncha, known for being the largest Goff on Arhkona and carrier of the kombi rokit shoota called Spare Keys (you know, as in 'Look boss, thiz door is locked', 'No worries grot! I brought my spare keys!' KABLOOY!

Evil Sunz: Brakenek Wazcrash, arrived on Arkhona recently, fought some 'nids and got a cool idea for a plasma cannon design.

Bad Moons: Gazzagug, a warphead and one of the senior members of Skarblitz's tribe.

Deathskulls: TBA

Blood Axes: TBA

Space Marines

Chapters: Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels (A fifth Chapter will be decided by the community, but it's not going to be the Black Templars.

Classes: Tactical Marines, Devastators, Assault Marines, Apothecaries. Techmarines, Librarians and Chaplains are in there but we don't know what kind of character they are.

Elites: Legion of the Damned Legionnaire and Terminators (Not Confirmed for initial Release)

Heroes: Master of Relics

Faction Leader:

Sub-Faction Leaders:

Ultramarines: TBA

Space Wolves: TBA

Blood Angels: Mephiston, Lord of Death

Dark Angels: Interrogator-Chaplain Cassiel

Chaos Space Marines

Legions: Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Black Legion, Night Lords (A fifth Legion will be decided by the community, with the choices being the Alpha Legion, the Red Corsairs, and the Crimson Slaughter.)

Classes: Raptors, Havocs, Tacticals, Aspiring Sorcerers

Elites: Possessed Marine and Terminators (Not Confirmed for initial Release)

Heroes: Fallen Captain

Faction Leader: Abaddon the motherfucking Despoiler, proving that what's gonna go down on Arkhona will be some serious shit.

Sub-faction Leaders

Iron Warriors: TBA

Word Bearers: TBA

Black Legion: Ash'Hy Mok: a badass sorcerer created for the narrative who has been very busy liquifying space marines and eldar alike in the short stories release each week.

Night Lords: TBA

Eldar

Craftworlds: Biel-tan, Saim-Hann, Iyanden, Ulthwé, Altansar

Classes: Swooping Hawks, Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees, Dire Avengers, Dark Reapers, Fire Dragons, and Warlocks

Elites: Wraithguards and Outcast Rangers (Founders only at launch time)

Heroes: Autarchs (Probably Farseers but not confirmed)

Faction Leader: Jain Zar, Phoenix Lord (Lady?) of the Howling Banshees

Sub-Faction Leaders:

Biel-tan: possibly a farseer named Ksenyia, found in one of the short stories, but yet to be fully confirmed.

Saim-Hann: TBA

Iyanden: TBA

Ulthwe: TBA

Altansar: TBA

Tyranids

While Tyranids are confirmed to be in the game, they will not be playable. Instead, they will be an NPC faction, providing enemies for PvE content and acting as a counterbalance to ensure that no one faction remains overwhelmingly dominant over the others.

Possible Future Races

The developers have said that they would like to add all races over time, assuming the game is successful enough. Here is a list of non-launch races that have been mentioned by the devs. Feel free to add to this if you've heard any other tidbits.

Dark Eldar

Unconfirmed, but implied in a newsletter.

Tau

Were noted in an interview by Miguel Caron as being one of the three most requested races, at the time of the interview.

Adepta Sororitas

Were noted in the same interview as being one of the three most requested races. Were also referenced by Creative Director David Ghozland as being on the post-launch list via twitter.

Necrons

Were also one of the three most requested races.

Setting

Notice the planet Simahgr. Take out the 'h' and re-arrange it, and then it spells out as "Sigmar"... clever eh?

Now anyone who has knowledge of Warhammer 40,000 obviously knows the setting. However, the games events will be taking place on the Kharon System, located in the northern part of the Segmentum Obscurus. One of the devs said in an interview that it will follow a planet wide contest for a single undisclosed planet, known as Arkhona, and the events that happen from this game will become canon, but the details are yet to be released. The planet in question is somewhere in the Segmentum Obscurus and was once an effective Imperial settlement, but due to the planets volatile nature, no great foothold could be gained on the planet other than small outposts. The planet was also once inhabited by an alien race, that supposedly was exterminated during the Great Crusade. Now, Tyranids are appearing out of absolutely nowhere, killing everyone left on the planet, apparently coming from the underground of the planet like they had been hibernating there. Weird.

All this calls the playable races to action for different, yet to be revealed reasons, and are now to duke it out on the surface of the planet while the Tyranids eat everything. Lovely.

Arkhona is actually just the primary planet in a system, one that has three different colored suns, for some reason, and with ten planets or moons of playable size, so obviously down the line there will be downloadable content where you start fighting on a new planet.

Arkhona, fifth planet from the three suns, hopefully far enough to not fucking melt in the daylight.

Monetization

Eternal Crusade is partially F2P. Without paying, players can access the game but are limited to Ork Boyz, who cannot advance beyond a certain degree. Those who buy the game have access to all factions and full advancement. There is no monthly subscription, however a cash shop is planned. While Miguel Carron mentioned he will have Pay 2 Win "over [his] dead body", players will be able to pay for gear that is about 20% weaker to equivalent gear that can be found through playing the game normally, as well as cosmetics which do not affect gameplay. But apparently multiple classes and vehicles will be available only through the founder's program, so everybody's a little confused about whether this "sidegrades" concept is true or a stealth cover for a Land Raider's worth of pay-to-win bullshit. It's too early to tell now, but rumors of additional advantages for players who subscribed to the Founder's Program have led many to assume the worst.

Game Features

Read more about the game here

The game will be mostly PvP, happening on one planet at a time. ,A new planet will be rolled out when a planet is conquered No, the game will have multiple continents, with campaigns lasting from a week to unconfirmed, with the actual campaign goals set by a player controlled War Council. When the campaign is over you either win or fucking lose (tears) and move onto the next campaign, with new planets perhaps coming later. Tyranids are NPCs and will be used in part to keep things a little bit balanced if player faction numbers are too unequal or one faction is dominating for other reasons. They will also constitute the PvE content, probably all of it. In short:

• PVP oriented with splashes of PVE
• Tyranids are the PVE and are as such not playable. They work perfectly for PvE, and you couldn't balance them properly. Tyranid Warrior >> Space Marine >> Termagaunt.
• Combat is visceral/skill based over-the-shoulder dakka/melee, much like Space Marine.
• Vehicles confirmed.
• Procedurally Generated content. After planets are conquered a new one is made. All dungeons/PVE content is procedurally generated.
• The devs are also regularly interacting with the fans. Which is pretty much unheard of. Ask some fucking questions.
• Players will all get their own space ship which acts as player housing, that you can decorate as you like. Guilds can combine their ships together for larger housing and more options (like guild banking)
• Class customization: Assaults can trade their jump packs in for extra armor or a shield(confirmed), healer classes may potentially(not yet confirmed) be able to become support/engineer classes, as in Mekboy with a Kustum Force Field or whathaveyou.
• Day/Night cycle
• Weather, which will affect combat
• Friendly fire (if they can find a fair way to implement it)
• Dreads, if they figure out how to implement it
• Perils of the Warp
• Red ones go Fasta
• Executions which give bonus XP when performed and prevent a downed enemy from being revived, but leave the player vulnerable during the execution animation
• Reviving (talking about examples where a fellow player revives his battle brother)
• Bleed-out, with the option to bleed faster (probably for avoiding executions). ala Gears of war
• Crouching, which ties in to the Cover system.
• Players can climb over obstacles.
• Classes that use jetpacks can wall jump.
• No P2W, devs are vehemently against buying power.
  • Some gear can be bought, but it will be of inferior quality compared to gear earned through in-game methods or otherwise not a true upgrade.
• Miguel has a weird thing about Ork butts, as in two interviews he's described Ork butts and executions in the same sentence.
• There's been some talk about "multiplayer narrative", which basically means that there are several 'War Councils' (leaders of the factions as chosen by the players in those factions), who will be able to create objectives and put in-game resources towards specific goals and warzones as they see fit, therefore, when you enter the game, you could do the objectives assigned by the WC, do one of the slightly more generic, but ultimately "for the cause" daily/weekly/month objectives that the game will generate, or go of with your buddies and stomp 'nids. All of which ultimately help your faction. I suppose you could always charge of a do whatever the hell you want to, that is always good (Especially FreeToWAAAGH Ork Boys are expected to do this, as they are freelancers without Klans for the most, which frankly is goddamn fluffy).
• Playable Elite and Hero characters (with a few minutes to a day's worth of cool down. Some of these are gonna smack some heads in).
• Sonic blasters (but no Noise Marines).

See also

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
• Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millenium, which was canceled then un-canceled then turned into Eternal Crusade

Links

• Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
• Meet the Team Video Notice how the opening looks strangely familiar.
• An interview with the developers, lots of information.
• Official Forum
• Meet the Team 2 This video shows some very early game footage.
• Full Pre-Alpha Footage Gameplay
• Wars of Arkhona Official Trailer

Gallery

• 
  "We go where we wilt, we slay who we wilt. Let the Emperor judge the righteousness of our deeds!"
• 
  "In the name of the Dark Gods, we will bring down the rotting edifice that is the Imperium!"
• 
  "I reckon these humies are just puny soft gits who need a good stompin!"
• 
  "How foolish they seem to our eyes. Once, all this was ours, and it will come back to us!"
• 
  Where Ultramarines: The Movie had bolters that looked too big, this promotional artwork of the Tyranid reveal has bolters that look too small.