So on Dawn of War's facebook page they are teasing an announcement to some kind of announcement tomorrow. Imagery in the video appears to be Tyranid related but it could just as easily be some sort of crater.

I haven't seen or heard anything speculated for a Dawn of War 3 but with Total War: WARHAMMER coming out and Relic slowing down on Company of Heroes expansions it seems right for them to announce a new project.

Hopefully this isn't like their last announcement where they teased a new Necron hero for The Last Stand mode. Guess we'll find out tomorrow.

They actually briefly have talked DoW III quite a while ago at this point, so I was worried it wouldn't exist and got cancelled, since we haven't seen it. But hopefully this will be an official announcement.

Hoping it builds off of the way II was going instead of being more traditional. I quite enjoyed 2.

With all these WH games now it seems crazy we haven't seen DoW III yet.

DoW II Retribution was my shit for a little while there.

I personally hope they manage to make a balanced sequel more like Dawn of War 1 than 2, but there's a good chance this could be something completely new and unrelated to either

Don't toy with my heart, Relic! I need DoW 3 in my life.

@artisanbreads: I think a lot of that has to do with Sega acquiring Relic from THQ in the sale. GW chose to reacquire the rights for Dawn of War rather than let it follow with Relic. With the Total War game looking better and better its possible GW said lets do this DoW thing one more time. Article about the whereabouts of Dawn of War from a couple of years ago.

Where is Dawn of War

I hope they get another shot at it. I thought Relic did the IP right with all of the Dawn of War games and Space Marine. I would actually be okay if DoW 3 wasn't an RTS but I know that isn't going to happen. Hell a Space Marine 2 would get me going in ways that few games can.

I've got to agree with you here. I really liked DoW2 (I have the collectors edition of Retribution) at the time but I went back to play it about a month ago and man has it not aged well. I forgot how every mission was just small bands of people running from one small scale fight to another with a shitty bullet sponge boss every couple of levels. I very much doubt it'll be a proper RTS but here's hoping the up the scale a fair bit.

I liked DoW 2's graphics, physics combined with cool looking animations. Last Stand mode was fun, too, but not supported enough with new maps and enemies. If we can get 3.0 of this, that'll probably be worth checking out, but keeping calm about this for now.

As someone who isn't much for RTS games anymore, I really liked Dawn of War II's small-scale tactics stuff and wouldn't mind more of that.

That's exactly where I am. I think there's room to make it a little bigger or change it up, but I liked that formula. To me it was kind of a Tactical ARPG. It's kind of doing, for singleplayer RTS, what DOTA did for multiplayer RTS by pairing it down and making things tactical and focused on basically your screen alone, vs the old RTS model of switching around the map constantly. I hope they don't change that because other games haven't really done it.

I loved the original DoW. I much prefer the 40k brand of Warhammer, so this would interest me a hell of a lot more than the new Total War game.

I am really excited about this!
Even though I prefer warhammer over 40k like most of the crazies out there.

I also really hope this takes a completely different direction or at least stear more towards DoW I

And we have an announcement trailer! Dawn of War 3 is officially happening:

Holy crap, really? I want that! EDIT: Aaaaand... I bought it.

Wow. That CG trailer was way better than the DOW 2 intro CG trailer. What a dreadful, miserable tone.

I loved both DOW games so I'm pretty excited!

OMFG. Imperial Knights, Wraithknights? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Also that scene at the end with all the dead bodies falling from the sky was so good.

Can't wait for this. Hopefully more at E3! Thank the false emperor it's real.

Excited to see more of this, Little bummed that it seems like they are going back to Marine/Eldar/Ork again, hopefully we can get some Tau, Necron, or Imp Guard in there without waiting for 3 expansions.

Wow what a stylish trailer! Unfortunate that they have gone with 3 factions I have no interest in but generally I am keen on this.

Unlike a ton of people I hate the trailer. They dailed up the grimdark even more! Also a disappointing selection of races. I get the Eldar and Space Marines thsoe are super popular. Orks are fun and all, but I always thought they fit better in fantasy, for 40k they have many more interesting aliens, then again Orks are the only thing that stops the whole thing from collapsing in on itself.

I think this is way more exciting.

I can understand the disappointment in race selection. I myself would've liked Chaos in there alongside Necrons, but keep in mind that the original Dawn of War launched with only the Space Marines being playable in SP, but ended up having the most races included so far, after Dark Crusade and Soulstorm were added. I get that it sucks waiting for an expansion, but I also understand why you can't launch a game with 10 different factions all at once.

If anything, Relic has done nothing but prove worthy of handling the WH40K license. I have confidence in their ability to do so again.

@cheappoison said:

Unlike a ton of people I hate the trailer. They dailed up the grimdark even more! Also a disappointing selection of races. I get the Eldar and Space Marines thsoe are super popular. Orks are fun and all, but I always thought they fit better in fantasy, for 40k they have many more interesting aliens, then again Orks are the only thing that stops the whole thing from collapsing in on itself.

I think this is way more exciting.

Looks like we are back to it being a full scale RTS. Which I'm totally down for by the way. I know people give the Xenos races a lot of grief but I have to say I love the choices. Eldar always hold a special place in my heart so I'm stoked they are making a return. I love Orks but would much rather see Necrons or Nids be a threat for a change than Orks.

Hopefully there will be a Tau DLC.

100% they'll add to the races, I agree its cool to see more than just space men, elves and orks.

I have to echo the statements of others. The trailer was great, but I hope they have some variety in the factions.

It was great to fight the Tyranids as Space Marines and Imperial Guard; we need humans vs monsters in this.

I`m kinda bummed that it seems like they are going back to the more traditional RTS formula with this one (it seems that way from the screenshots anyway).

Squad management and light rpg elements was the best fit, so it'll be interesting for sure to learn how it plays first hand.

Fuckin A.

Dawn of War is back baby! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I'm so happy that this series is continuing. :D

(I'm sure they'll do more races in the future)

Damn, that's a hot CGI trailer. Nice work to whatever team put that together.

@odinsmana: Multiplayer was always that still even in DoW2. While there was less resource gather and actual building the fights always stemmed around units spawning from base. The multiplayer was quite good and I wished they hadn't been so heavy handed with Eldar nerfs during the original launch but I understood them. I was pretty okay with them until the massive Bansee and Warp Spider nerfs but it was too much and I ultimately just gave up.

I love me some Eldar and always had a soft spot for the silly Space Orks, so yeah I really look forward to that one!

The hype is real. I loved the old school RTS feel for the original Dawn of War games, but Dawn of War 2 is easily one of the most criminally underrated RTS games. It just did so many cool new things to help keep the strategy elements alive but take the genre away from just base building. I know a lot of people aren't in that Hero stuff, but I thought the influx of RPG style mechanics fit in perfect.

I'm curious to see what the actual game of this is going to be like. Surely we'll have a foundation of your typical base building with factions and hero units and the like for skirmish modes. But I'm curious what the Campaign and any other modes will offer. Either way I really hope they keep with the process of making a fully Co Op Campaign, as with DoW 2. Another underrated feature for that title, the Co Op play in that was fantastic.

Also, for those fixin' for some Warhammer 40k right now there's the recently-released Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. It's got giant spaceships duking it out in the grim darkness of the far future, and it's actually got a pretty good campaign to back it up. Check it out! It'll help ease the wait at least somewhat for DoW III

i want my necrons!!

So not even Chaos or Imperial Guard races? What?

Chaos (aren't they always there somewhere) and the Guards could still be npcs in a campaign or something, but for now it seems the game will only allow us to play as one of the three mentioned races. The Imperial Guards often act as the meat shields until the Adeptus Astartes arrive.

Excited. I'd been playing through DoW1 and DoW2 this past week when this announcement came up.

I'm okay with them having limited races at the start. Doing that stuff right takes a lot of time and easier to balance three armies rather than trying to throw in everything at once. I guarantee that more races and campaigns will be added as paid DLC/expansions as time goes on. Right now though they need to nail the game itself.

Curious how it's going to feel. Big armies will be cool to look at but I'm one of those people who liked the micro of DoW2 and I kind of hate base building.

As long as it doesn't boil down to spamming 'build unit' buttons and just shipping units across the map; the bigger the battle the tougher it is to micro; Total War in my opinion made a misstep of requiring a lot of micro for units to be efficient. This on a larger scale is very difficult to manage.

I don't like that they sacrificed detail up close for the game to handle big unit populations, I love zooming in and looking at the units fight.

While I'd love to have a huge variety out of the gate, the race choice is perfect from a gameplay standpoint:

• Space Marines: Tough, but usually slower and more expensive.
• Eldar: Fast, agile, usually do high damage but fragile.
• Orks: dirt cheap, less effective unit for unit but a hell of a lot of them

So while I'd love to see Chaos and Necrons, these three form a really good triangle of styles. They'll get to the weird shit, don't worry, so as long as they do these three right (i.e. only going with three shows up in the quality of the work) I'm happy with it.

Dawn of War is great but where is my Chaos Gate 2.

@mirado: The only race I never feel they got just right in the games was Dark Eldar in the Soulstorm series. Some could and would say Soulstorm is the worst game in the franchise in terms of balance but overall I just didn't feel they were different enough from Eldar to matter.

Chaos is my second love after the Craftworlds but I'm not sadden my their exclusion but since we are getting larger units, I still say those are Imperial Knights and Wraithknights and not full blown super heavies, I'm curious on the scale of the fights.

That CG trailer really was fantastic. Relic has done the big battles before in those that were awesome but the tone in that is something different and they did it so well. Extremely dark.

I think the game could possibly be different from DoW 1 and 2. To me, from the limited info on the game previously (keep in mind years and years ago) it sounded like it was going to have a strategy overworld (almost like Total War style) which sounded like it would incorporate multiplayer, and then battles separate from that. And those battles would be bigger than 2, but not base building affairs. We will have to see if it ends up that way.

I'm not sure if that conclusion can be drawn? I don't see it.

@zirilius: I mean, they would have to be, right? Unless they really mess with the scaling, even a Warhound would be so large as to render most other troops impossible to see on the same screen. You're talking something that's at least 40 feet tall, and that's a scout. Plus they don't really look like a Warhound:

And I doubt it's a Reaver, as that's even larger. Then again, they're free to change things around to suit the balance of the game; the Space Marines in DoW are not the SMs of the tabletop, who aren't the SMs of the books. Still, with Knights and Wraithknights to perfectly fit the bill of size (even if they are more obscure), I can't see why they wouldn't go with those.

80% of my 150 hours of Dawn of War II across it and its two expansions was Last Stand. I really doubt they'll have something like it again in DoWIII, but I'd be interested if they did.

@artisanbreads: There just seems to be a lot of units on both sides, but it might very well be screenshots from multiplayer or the kind of hybrid thing they did with Retribution. It`s too early to judge, but I just really hope they keep going down that smaller scale (on your side) but with more more complex units thing they did in Dawn of war 2 singleplayer.

Damn, that's a wild trailer.

Thats a cool cinematic but I'm really curious what the gameplay will look like.

I dabbled a bit with Dawn of War and actually played quite a lot of the Dawn of War 2 single player which I found a lot more approachable with it's hero/squad based gameplay.

From what they're saying Dawn of War 3 is a mix of the two which ought to be interesting. I'm not a very good RTS player as I stink at micromanagment, so the limited size squads were a perfect fit for me in DoW2. As long as Dawn of War 3 doesn't go full StarCraft I think I should still be able to hang, and boy do I love the Warhammer 40k universe.

What DOW game is a good one to start off with? I've never played any but want to give one a try! DOW3 looks awesome and has my RTS itch a tingling!

@twi: I think Dawn Of Wars base campaign is fantastic and then move on to Winter aassault. After that go straight to 2 as there aren't many story elements in the last two expansions.

All three parts of Dawn of War 2 are great and while last stands numbers are down its a fun little piece of side content.