Rejoice, brothers! A new black crusade is in the making.

THQ core games boss Danny Bilson has told Eurogamer that development on Dawn of War 3 is well underway at Relic. Eurogamer understand that the third game in the series will take elements from the first and second games and “add something new.” Bilson previously told EG that Dawn of War 3 will “have a much larger strategic component to it, more of a global battle going on with little tactical things, sort of MMO-like.”

Bilson gave a rough estimate for a release date, too, saying the game will likely ship sometime between August 2012 and February 2013. Yesterday, Bilson teased a big new Relic RTS announcement for this year’s Gamescom. “This one’s built to announce at that place,” he said. “I feel like an ass saying it’s fantastic, but it is. And we’re going to do something with it you haven’t seen before.”

Bilson originally said that Dawn of War 3 might end up being “a more digital free-to-play experience,” depending on the success of Company of Heroes Online. CoHO closed down earlier this year, suggesting the new Dawn of War game won’t be free to play, but we could still see features cross over from Relic’s Company of Heroes experiment.

CoHO featured persistent hero units that could be levelled up between multiplayer encounters, unlocking new battlefield abilities in the process. The game also featured a player avatar that could be upgraded to unlock powerful, limited use battlefield abilities like air-strikes. It will be interesting to see if Relic bring any of these multiplayer RPG elements into Dawn of War 3′s multiplayer mode to make it a more “MMO-like” experience.

Relic might also be looking closely at the success of the Last Stand mode, which replaces Dawn of War’s armies with a single hero. Last Stand was released as a standalone game on Steam earlier this year.

Either way, another Dawn of War game is cause for excitement. We’ll know more when the reveal happens at Gamescom in August.

Here's the full link to the article: PcGamer

My personal take on this is that we'll have some form of persistant world, much as in "Dark Crusade", but on a much larger scale. Many 40 K gamers play so-called campaigns in their Hobby-Shops, which consist of several battles in a row, where each victory/loss determines where and how the next battle will be fought. Seems to me that they're trying to emulate that, while also putting a stronger focus on heroes (and hopefully veteran squads). Either way, I'm not too worried about the "MMO"-Lable, as I really believe that to be his simplified way of explaining their intention without giving too much away.

I'm excited, how about you guys?

Update: Relic is planning a large reveal at Gamescom, this year. Check out the DoW III page here on Giantbomb for more news.

So the news about Dark Millennium and the Vigil and Relic layoffs made me remember this game is in development, so I'm going to go ahead and necro this thread. What the fuck is up with DoW III? Have Relic said anything since the planned "big reveal" came and went without anything happening? Like, released any information or images that were planned to be shown at said big reveal? Just seems really odd that the big reveal would end up not panning out and yet they wouldn't reschedule a new reveal for a different event, or just put some of that stuff up on their website. Are we going to have to wait until E3 for any news?

Well at this point yes we're waiting until E3. It's possible it gets bumped even later, the announcemnt of CoH2 could make it their E3 game while DoW3 gets pushed back. These things happen, sadly, but I don't think the game is in danger of being cancelled unless Relic goes away.

@EchoEcho said:

So the news about Dark Millennium and the Vigil and Relic layoffs made me remember this game is in development, so I'm going to go ahead and necro this thread. What the fuck is up with DoW III? Have Relic said anything since the planned "big reveal" came and went without anything happening? Like, released any information or images that were planned to be shown at said big reveal? Just seems really odd that the big reveal would end up not panning out and yet they wouldn't reschedule a new reveal for a different event, or just put some of that stuff up on their website. Are we going to have to wait until E3 for any news?

From what I gather by looking at the evidence of stuff Danny Bison said before getting kicked out of THQ is this : Relic has 2 teams working on COH2 and DOW3, but then the Udraw debacle happened. They restructured their shit and cut staff everywhere. They, I think, cut part of the DOW3 staff and put everyone on COH2. Which means DOW3 is on hold until COH2 ships. Its my theory anyway. It sucks, I know. The only thing we can do to help is to buy COH2 and hope for the best I guess?

Yeah, once I saw the announcement for CoH2 I feared something like this was likely the case. I am all for a new CoH2, of course, but the wait for DoW3 is going to be excruciating, especially since we still don't have so much as a screen shot or teaser to analyze in our free time. In the long run I suppose it is best to put as many people as they can on one project at a time, because the last thing we need is CoH2 or DoW3 (or both) coming out of the oven half baked.

I haven't been following this news, could someone briefly summarize what happened at Relic/THQ such that now it's being delayed?

@Geno said:

I haven't been following this news, could someone briefly summarize what happened at Relic/THQ such that now it's being delayed?

Following THQ's general financial issues, Relic and Vigil had to lay off some staff. As such, Vigil had to knock down the scope for the Dark Millennium online MMO to a more single player-focused game. Since CoH 2 is also in the works, it's reasonable to assume that that game is going to take primacy over getting DoW III out, given the reduced teams that Relic has to work with.

Oh well. As much as I am excited about this, the radical gameplay changes that DOW 2 brought were more side-steps than advancements, besides the varied hero equipment, and DOW 2 ran like shit and had huge load times. Hell, even the expansions ran like shit on my PC. Hopefully the third one will run better.