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; Ordinance-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.

It should also be known that DoWPro is also one of the few mods for DoW1 that can effectively call itself finally finished as soon as SSPro 3.60 releases, as team leader H0LL0W states that there is no further that they can go with improving the game, as there is likely no foreseeable patches for the core game, even if Relic has returned to support the game however they can following Sega buying them out.

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 (and the addition of the wildly popular Witch Hunters mod, which released the Sisters of Battle as a race far before Soulstorm and was even used as a base by Relic) through the re-implementation of improved textures and particle effects - many already in the game, and others added from scratch. Many of the factions boast some new units, and almost all factions a few new upgrades and/or abilities on top of this. It also 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 woefully incomplete and is time-consuming to leaf through due to it's explanation of the mod. This sprawling database may hinder the speed at which new players can "pick up and play" the modded game should they wish to master it rapidly. 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 of which are game-breaking (as in the game crashes) if not knowingly avoided. Some game engine limitations can 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 or a crash, which must be "manually" avoided by the player using the necrons as there is no other workaround besides not using said slag volcanoes. Additionally, because it focuses on Vanilla DoW's metagame, the upgrade tree is dense and clunky 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, 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 a number of misleading descriptions persist, such as Dark Scythe not detailing that it consumes the health of the firing vehicle (for example). 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 the original 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 the rest of DoW1), 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).

TL;DR: Like every goddamned Mod ever in the history of the world, it has its upsides and downsides, defenders and detractors; it can neither be said to be scheit nor the Emperor's gift to RTS gamers, 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.