I don't think that we should worry that Eternal Crusade is going to be anything like World of Warcraft or its countless legion of clones, from the official FAQ it says this. What kind of game is this? Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade is a 3rd-person Massive Combat RPG. Players select one of the factions of the 41st millennium and fight other players for control of an open, persistent world. As they hack their way through content, players claim territory in massive battles and earn the right to customize and improve their characters in a deep progression system drawn from Warhammer 40,000 lore. What is the gameplay like? Eternal Crusade’s combat is fully action-based – you shoot or swing with a button but whether you pull off a headshot or block that incoming chainsword is entirely based on your skill. In addition, gamepads are fully supported. Both ranged and melee weapons have equal emphasis — as in the iconic battles of Warhammer 40,000. Combat begins at a distance with guns and heavy vehicle-mounted weaponry before progressing to bloody blade-on-blade action with brutal executions. How can you have an RPG system with skill-based combat? Like many action games these days, an underlying RPG system affects how you fight in a variety of fashions. This includes the obvious methods such as modifying your health or the damage when you strike, but character and weapon stats can also change the way you shoot or swing. For example, you can aim in any direction and fire away, but the spread on your shots comes from a variety of factors, including what kind of gun you’re using, its upgrades, and your characters accuracy stat. Your spread may increase while moving and decrease while zooming with a scope, and the extent to which these modifiers affect you may themselves have their own stats! Melee weapons are similarly affected, with the force on an attack compared against the stability of the victim to determine staggering, knockback etc. My personal take on RPG's is that so long a game has character customization it's definitely a RPG, but RPG's can be narrowed down to roles, now some of you are going to slap my face with a fish but think about DayZ where you're playing as a survivor or a bandit in some way that's also roleplaying. RPG doesn't always have to do about stats or whatever but simple roles such as actually being immersed as a tactical marine.
It's probably because up until they changed the webpage for the founder's program release it said "The 1st MMORPG set in the 41st century" on the front of this webpage. Wikipedia says it's an MMORPG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Eternal_Crusade And there is a pinned thread on the front of these forums to advertise the game in MMORPG.com Personally I still see it as RPG but not in the themepark sense of WoW ect, to me the RPG is the setting and adherence to the lore, the advancement (I'm over the moon that it's horizontal and hoping it takes a long long time to unlock everything) etc. The combat type, be it medieval/fantasy MMO fare or FPS fare doesn't effect the genre concerning the RPG elements as far as I can see. In fact this game seems, with it's open world PvP and factions, to be more RPG than so called MMORPGs that have gone all metagaming, minmaxing and with queues and instanced maps.
The problem is with the MMO tag is that, although lots of people know it means "massive multiplayer online", that it was first created years ago during the most popular MMORPG period simply because people were too lazy to type all of the letters in chat (before we had voice chat). So lots of MMORPG players see it simply as a shortening of the the longer acronym.
The issue has less to do with the MMO and more to do with the RPG. RPG has been watered down to the point that any game that you assign any individual skill or stat is considered an RPG these days. I'd consider this game an RPG just because you'll likely have a small handful of stats to invest and you'll have to 'rank up' skills to unlock different skill tiers. I haven't been following this game in nearly enough detail because it's simply too early in development for anything to be nailed down. But is this game still going to use hotkeys for skills? Will it have a limited action set? Will the player have any control of their individual stat points (accuracy, stamina, strenth, etc). These types of things help define the type of game, simply calling it an MMO with or without the RPG means nothing.
Well, for me, it's gonna be an RPG! I'm gonna run around and speak with a growly voice and a thick Norse accent! For Russ! Russ and the Emperor! VLKA FENRYKA! Rawr! T
For the last time, the closest thing EC is close to is Planetside 2, which is an MMOFPS. EC is basically large shooter battles with vehicles and aircraft, and everything is in real time, unlike MMORPGS where everything is turn-based
