DoWpro

A Mod for Dawn of War. Short for "Dawn of War Professional."

History and Premise

Much as the Dawn of Steel Mod is frequently joked to have done, Dawn of War: Professional emerged from community resentment, circa Winter Assault. At the time, there was an enormous amount of backlash towards Relic for how they had handled the game; many of the factions actually lost options in the jump to the new game, especially the Orks, Space Marines, and Chaos Marines, and the new tech trees implemented guaranteed not only a faster game, but one that literally revolved around unit obsolescence; once you had a higher-tier unit that outperformed its predecessor of a previous category, the entire game de-volved into spamming that high-tier unit, and the community, especially the players that enjoyed the game for its Fluffy aspects, called foul. On top of everything else, the hard-counter system - something that had made Dawn of War somewhat unique - was removed from the game wholesale.

Dawn of War: Professional's first release emerged some time after Winter Assault's first patch. Prevaricating itself on bringing back the hard-counter system and play-style of the original game. It did so not only by re-instituting the gameplay that the veterans of the community had sought, but by adding a number of things to the game that had been cut out; Ornance-firing Leman Russ Battle Tanks, Guardsmen with Flamers, Heavy Weapons Teams (which would later be added to Dark Crusade), just to name a few. The mod remained active through the Dark Crusade and Soulstorm eras, though it took time to update due to the extremely lax patching schedule given by Relic; it took seven months to patch Dark Crusade, and took damn-near nine to patch Soulstorm - and both patches contained necessary fixes that modding teams simply could not continue work without (such as fixes for the Broadside and Heavy Weapon Team inability to aim, things like Dark Crusade's Burna Bomb Exploit and Soulstorm's Infinite Resource Exploit, and so on). As such, versions of Dawn of War: Professional exist for all versions of Dawn of War after the original; DoWpro for WA, DCpro for DC, and SSpro for Soulstorm. In each time, the end was the same: Maintain the play style of the original Dawn of War whilst implementing the new content and cut content along with it. For the most part, it succeeded, though not always gracefully.

Dawn of War: Professional is noted for being both one of the most popular mods and one of the more-embraced; the Winter Assault version inspired numerous fixes in Dark Crusade (such as hardcaps on elites, though this was not applied unilaterally), and the game inspired several community events on the Relic community forums. When the patch cycle of Dawn of War ended, the community manager of the time, Buggo, was even noted as saying that she wished Dawn of War: Professional had been how the game had been handled along its lifespan.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Dawn of War Pro brings a number of major advantages to the table. Though its focus has always been the re-adding of slashed content, it also manages to heavily re-balance the overall gameplay - which it does even through the re-institution of the hard-counter system and slashed content. Internal balance is intensely improved over the unmodded game, with things like this dramatically toned-down. The game is visually better, with only minimal changes to the actual in-game graphics through the re-implementation of improved textures and particle effects - many already in the game, and others added from scratch (many of the new Sisters of Battle models were donated by the Witch Hunters Mod team, for example). Many of the factions boast some new units, and almost all factions a few new upgrades and/or abilities on top of this. Even better, it includes the DoW Camera Mod and skirmish AI brought about via the Dawn of Skirmish mod team.

It is, however, not all good news, especially for players more familiar with the original, unmodded game. Documentation exists, but it is time-consuming to leaf through due to it's comprehensive explanation of the mod. This may hinder the speed at which new players can "pick up and play" the modded game should they wish to master it rapidly. It should be noted that the game can be readily played however, getting used to the differences between the vanilla game and appreciating the full depth and complexity of the mod will require extensive play, interaction with the playerbase and/or perusal of the aforementioned documentation. A number of bugs plague the game, many of which are inherent in Dawn of War's engine and can't really be fixed (though workarounds exist for some). Some game engine limitations occasionally cause problems with DoWpro's implementation of various faction changes. An example of this is the implementation of slag volcanos amidst the Necron metagame, which can can rarely cause pathfinding issues. These issues are infrequent and rarely cause significant gameplay issues for the player and are therefore tolerated by the mod team. Additionally, because it focuses on Vanilla DoW's metagame, the upgrade tree is a bit more dense and option filled as compared to the stock game. Whilst this leads to better balance higher up in the tech tree, it also means that there's a number of incremental, seemingly-redundant upgrades throughout when compared to the original game - this criticism was recognised by the mod team and a significant process of streamlining and value adding through late DCpro and through SSpro mitigated this to a greater extent. Additionally, not every faction has new units, especially amidst the newer factions, though almost all have new upgrades and/or abilities. In-game documentation is dramatically-better than Dawn of War unmodded, but still had, up until the latest release, a number of misleading descriptions, such as Dark Scythe not detailing that it consumes the health of the firing vehicle (for example). Given the generous scope of the documentation the rare errors are understandable and the mod team has an excellent track record of amending errors when notified. It should be noted that the two most recent races, Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle, are still in development and are not as polished and mature as the older factions. Dark Eldar, for example, in earlier versions, were notoriously vulnerable to Daemon-class units due to a lack of units that did good damage to that armor type, though this was fixed in later updates. Additionally, the mod removes air units, which Dawn of War's engine, admittedly, wasn't really intended to handle in the first place, but if you were a fan of them, they're not around, except for the Necron Scarab Swarm, which became a ground unit again.

Whether or not Dawn of War Pro is your cup of Skub depends heavily on what you're looking for in a mod. As it tries to evoke the original feeling and play-style of the original game, the game is much slower and more strategic, as compared to quick-tech-aggression of say, Dark Crusade or Soulstorm. Many of the modded factions play almost (if not completely) differently from how they do in the unmodded game, to the point where several (such as the Tau and Necrons) play almost like all-new factions compared to the unmodded game. Many gameplay aspects are changed as well; Horrors, for example, are brought back to being anti-infantry (which they were in Vanilla Dawn of War, but were changed in Winter Assault and remained such through Soulstorm), and the rules for Infiltration are markedly different, with some units being able to use Vanilla style infiltration (unable to attack when infiltrating), a new infiltration type (invisible only when in cover), or Dark Crusade-style invisibility (invisible even when attacking).

It should be noted that DoWpro developed over a long period and underwent several design phases. As the maturity of the lead developer Korbah increased, so too did the quality and refinement of the gameplay. Players who tried DoWpro years prior to it's current iteration would find it to be a different experience for this reason and the mod bears a retry for those who took issue with earlier versions. The criticisms levelled at earlier iterations of the mod were systematically addressed over time and whilst some players may still dislike it's style, there is little doubt that DoWpro surpasses most RTS's (including the stock game) in terms of gameplay quality, depth and vision. Very few RTS games exist which offer the gameplay experience that DoWpro affords and this achievement, created by an amateur mod team, should not be taken lightly. DoWpro far outstrips the stock game and its sequel DoWII and although it has it's limitations (small community, minor gameplay engine limitations and minor balance issues) it still represents one of the finest examples of Real Time Strategy available to this day.

TL;DR: Like every goddamned Mod ever in the history of the world, it has its upsides and downsides, defenders and detractors, play it and see if you like it, if you do, that's fine, and if you don't, that's cool, we're all elegen/tg/entlemen here.

Links and Similar Flimflammery

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