The looming excitement that might be TW warhammer II

So far we have several units and hero/lords that has been shown and as such are certain to appear in the game.
Those are:

Slann
Old blooded
Carnosaur
Saurus warriors (spear and hand weapon)
Temple guards
Skinks (but whether these are cohorts or skirmishers is still unknown)
Stegadon
Bastilodons (Chotek and also just plain, that is nothing on top)
Cold one Cavalry
Terradons

Then there are of course a decent amount that I believe are safe bets, but simple hasn't been fully revealed yet.
These would be:

Skink chief
Skink priest
Kroxigors
Ripperdactyles
Salamanders
Razordons
Ancient Stagadon
Troglodon

In the end I reckon the lizards will get most of the 8th ed. Army book to play with, the only ones that could be left our are the horned one riders since they were last seen in 6th (as far as I remember), swarms and ark of sotek ( but that's mainly because I don't believe swarms are likely).

 

Here is hoping. The Trog would make for a great in game monster. I can't wait to see its animation/design

Good point!

*shudders*

I'll never be able to look at that dragon the same way!

TO WAR!!!

 

Do you think we will end up seeing both of the those units? Maybe the case of just one or the other.

 

Of course it's likely that we'll only see one or the other. But I also seem to recall Creative Assembly, talking about how much they enjoyed the challenge of making all these interesting creatures. This leads me to theorise that they'll bring most of the monsters that are in the 8th ed. At least.

I might be wrong, but we'll see one of them at least

 

One thing is for certain. Some of the units will be cut, no matter what so they can sell them in the lord pack DLC. If the trog and ripper's arent in the base game, even though they will share almost identical animations too other units, they will most likely appear in the DLC.

 

Agreed!

I have similar thoughts on the matter, the unit we might miss are units that are no longer existing as of 8th ed. and then the swarm; folks claim that CA in an interview said that they would be no swarms, but that is an old interview and they might be referring to the first game, of which had no swarms indeed.

Personally swarms isn't a huge favorite of mine, but I would like to see the ark on a Bastiladon, so....

 

DLC is the biggest scam (cash grab) in the video game industry. How many DLCs did CA release for the first game... and at what cost?

Agreed, their exclusion would not be such a big deal.

They could always make the ark function as some sort of area-of-effect ability.

 

Depending on the DLC, some of it was free (whole factions) and some of it was paid (factions/campaigns, Legendary Lords... etc). The cost was.... fair. For most of them.

 

Don't get me wrong, this isn't direct knock on CA, most/all companies are taking advantage of this very same thing. We're sold an incomplete game and have to shell out more money for the missing pieces.

Sadly the only way around it is to wait until the complete game is released much later down the line, or if you're lucky take advantage of sales, etc. Or just accept the cost. Such is life.

In this case it doesn't effect me, as my laptop can't run the game anyways. By the time I have the capabilities to run the game, I'll probably be able to buy the entire trilogy + extra content in one go for mere pennies on the dollar. However, if I could play the game now, I'd be highly tempted too.

 

Luckily we have steam sales but yeah DLC are most of the time a nuisance.
The Britonian DLC was both free and pretty neat. I actually started playing the game for real, because of them. We've also gotten a couple of minor factions for free, during this first half year of the game: Carsteins and various of Orc tribes.
The chaos dlc was just like any other stupid dlc for pre purchase deal, as every game companies are doing, and it sucks. I don't particularly cares for playing Chaos, but for people who do, it's very annoying that they weren't simply in the game to begin with.

 

Meh to be honest, 'DLC for a tabletop videogame makes perfect sense Also the DLC for the total war games are generally fairly good. Especially the warhammer ones. The rome & atilla games have some more questionable stuff simply because there's less difference between a greek and a persian army than between an empire and wood elve army..

As for DLC itself, it heavily differs per game. Plus it's the reason that the prize of games has stagnated. The prize of games has remained the same since the introduction of the euro so about a decade and a half now. I don't think there's anything else so untouched by inflation...

As for countries taking advantage of it, most games are more than on par with older games. The only thing that seems to have gone downhill is that expensions have become less common and worthwhile. And day 1 patches have become common, but that's less to do with DLC and more with digital releases....

 

One thing i am interested in, is the Lizardmen's voice acting. Beastmen don't speak english, so CA actually gave them the official Beastmen language from the army books. So what will happen too the scalies? I know the slaan can talk via telepaphy, and skinks can talk a bit, but what about saurus? Will they just roar and snarl or will they make some sort of language for them aswell? I'm also interested what tone the creatures will have in their voice.

 

The price hasn't stagnated though. The cost has simply been layered on through the use of DLC, skins, packs, etc. It's an illusion designed to get you to spend way more than you would if it were offered all in one package. The cost is "hidden" in a way, since you pay over time and the total cost goes more unnoticed. The same is true for "free" games that require you to pay huge sums of money over time to get the full experience of the game.

At the end of this Total War Warhammer trilogy, it would be interesting to add up the total cost of all 3 games + all dlc. I would bet that it is probably more than you might think. Furthermore, if all of it was packaged together right from the start and offered to consumers, many would be hesitate to pay multiple hundreds of dollars for it (which is what the cost of all the segmented parts adds up to).

At the end of the day it is a business like any other, with the goal of maximizing profits. Somewhere along the line they discovered that this was the best way to squeeze extra money out of consumers. If it wasn't, then they wouldn't be doing it.

 

You know I always felt like there is certain DLC's that are worth it and then certain that just feel like cash ins. When it come to the Total War DLC's this varies quit substantially, but this doesn't bother me as much, since CA seems to be a company that really does want to keep it costumers happy and learns from the biggest screw ups. Really that's where I would like to see every company, but it's at least nice that CA does act like rational fair people, unlike other companies #Cough#EA#Cough#Ubisoft#Cough....
I really like as mentioned that they already have given us quite a bit fair content. For instance the DLC I have bought, the Wood elves, had a really nice size of content and I don't really feel like it was uncalled for. They probably wouldn't have been capable of finishing the game or even making it, had they put in all the content they have put out so far, it's really nice that they do want to give all races in Warhammer a proper treatment and I can understand that this requires certain transactions between consumers for this to be profitable. The cool thing about it is that they are still in the game, whether one purchases them or not, which means that I can still fight chaos, I just can't play as them.
I'm a little torn when it comes to other aspects of DLC, certain things probably should have been in the core game, also the Chaos DLC seemed like a pre purchase case in, as I already mentioned. Even though it might have been higher ups from SEGA, whom pushed for it, it's still not a particularly cool move...

Really If one can find the DLC one wants on sale on Steam, for something like 25% off, I generally reckon they are worth checking out. Since I generally believe Triple A games are way to expensive. I also don't mind waiting a bit or Steam Sales ... Not when it comes to Lizards on dinosaurs! That Game I'll buy on release!

 

It has though (at least in a lot of cases)

Let's take the total war game as an example:
Currently on steam the base game is 59,99. This is what AAA games have Always been around here ever since the euro.

The DLC totals 59,94. This includes the following:

The beastmen DLC: a new race & completly new campaign at 17,49
The woodelves DLC: a new race & a completly new campaign a 17,49
The blood for the bloodgod dlc: blood and gore at 2:49
The chaos warriors: a new race & at the time the first horde race in the game at 7:49
The king and the warlord: 2 new factions at 7,49
The grim and the dark: mostly just a bunch of units at 7,49.
A bunch of free dlc: introducig brettonia, and bunch of units and one or two factions (the savage orcs came from this I think)

The beastmen and woodelves DLC are both essentially minor expensions when compared to old games and come at the prize those used to come at.

The blood for the bloodgod is literally just there to avoid a higher age-rating and kind of irrelevan anyway.

The 3 remaining paid DLC's introduce 1 new race, 2 new factions with some minor campaign chances & a bunch of lords & unit. Put together this is again comparable to a expansion from the older days. If we assume these 3 less interesting DLC's also paid for the free DLC this would again be an acceptable expansion. Though individually these 3 DLC's are a bit of a let-down.

Anyways, essentially it's 60,- for the base game, then about 20,- for each of 3 reasonable expansions. They might not be the greatest expansions, but they're also not the worst excuses for an expansion I've ever seen.... The only real difference is that gaming has become large and mainstream enough that they now push out more at a quicker rate (in this case we have 3 "expansions" in under a year, that's rather quick). But the actual value hasn't diminished. Obviously there's companies that abuse it, but most are fine to be honest.

Also it sort of depends on what you expect the "base-game" to actually entail I suppose. Personally I think that a lot of the bashing of DLC's comes from people who have no idea what goes into developing a game and simply want everything handed to them for free. They just see a trailer and immeadiatly shout that this totally should've been in the base-game cuz reasons. It's hilarious the things I've seen people claim should be in the base-game on the internet....

 

I agree that most of the DLC problematic comes from certain companies simply spams DLC for no good reason

 

In fairness, there's also companies that spam entire games for no good reason, and those have been around forever virtually everything with a yearly release of a "main" game isn't worth buying every time unless you're really really really into it. The fifa's and cod's of the world really only become worthwhile after 2 or 3 iterations have actually added something meaningfull.

 

Took a quick gander at steam:



This is exactly what I meant by "hidden" or layered costs of the game. The sum cost of the DLC is the same amount as the actual game ($0.35 less to be fair). The cost for the entire gaming experience for the first game of the trilogy comes to a whopping $143.63. So when you say that game prices have remained stagnant, that is not really true. The game prices have indeed increased, but where/when you pay has been shifted. It's clever marketing. If people had to pay for the entirety up front, it might not seem like such an attractive offer.

Of course no one forces you to buy the extra content, just like you are under no obligation to buy the game in the first place. At the end of the day however, the full gaming experience has become much more expensive. If we assume that the remaining two games plus their corresponding dlc offerings each cost the same $143.63, then you are looking at $430.89 for the entire game. That is extremely expensive (subjectively of course). If the entire game was released right from the start with that sort of price tag, I would bet you that they wouldn't sell nearly so many copies and their profits would be a shadow of what they are now.

In regards to how much of this dlc is truly & genuinely "extra" content vs. "missing" content is up for debate. Discussion in that realm will be highly subjective. Since I haven't played the game myself, I can't really weigh in on that. But I am certain that opinions will widely vary with strong proponents adamantly defending each point of view... and everything in between. All I argue is that dlc is a clever way to rake in more cash. If it wasn't, then companies would abandon it for a more profitable strategy.

It feels very similar to people who claim they got a free cell/mobile phone. It isn't free, it's built into the price of the 2 or 3 year plan you sign onto. More often than not, it ends up being more expensive than buying the phone outright and picking up a separate plan.

To each their own I suppose.

 

Compare it to total war Rome, an total war game from before steam was a thing, on steam the base game is currently 7,99 the expansion Alexander the great is 3,99 and there is another expansion "barbarian invasion" which has by now been included in the base game. As you can see with the Alexander expansion being roughly half the prize of the base-game, the DLC for warhammer isn't exactly more expensive, there's simply more of it. Especially if you agree with me that the DLC is essentially 3 expansions worth of stuff, two good ones and one mediocre one.

And yea, it largely depends on what you view was "extra" and as "missing" content. Naturally there are cases of "missing content, but so far most people I encounter claiming that something is missing content tend to claim that virtually everything is missing content which makes the discussion a tad difficult (and this goes for nearly every single game). Anyway, as with everything, just decide for yourself if it's worth it, the DLC for this total war game is definitly worth it. Apart from maybe Blood for the bloodgod sicne that's merely graphical.

As for it being a clever strategy, the biggest advantage is that it significantly increases the shelflife of a game. If you can release DLC 5 year later someone might buy the base game, plus it's free advertisement for the base-game. On the other hand physical expansions generally only sold to the people already having the base-game.

 

The main difference seems to be the amount of dlc now a days per game. Where the quality differs quite a bit from game to game, the total war generally has a decent level of commitment to them. I won't say that all the dlc they make are worth it, but the wood elves was difinitely quite interesting and I still haven't played all the way through the special wood elves campaign, nor have a played as the other faction. So all in all good quality for the purchase.

I reckon one could simply start with this second edition of the game, and get quite an experience simply fro that game alone. After all who needs anyone but lizardmen