Hi,

One thing I'm curious about is the size of the environments we're going to be waging war in - as different Warhammer games have done it in completely different ways.

Space Hulk - Tight spaces, claustrophobic and intentionally restrictive.
Space Marine - Medium openness, however at times barren and devoid of enemies.
Dawn of War - Very open, RTS so a little different, but felt like you were on a "battlefield".

And from the livestreams so far we've seen their "test" levels they made to have some skirmishes, which were very awesome, and they seem like the Exterior areas in the Space Marine multiplayer, however it's more the Interiors I'm wondering about and if there is going to be anything on the scale of Space Marine.

Like the single player Manufactorum levels were massive-interior sections where it looks like they were going to put a lot more enemies but then either ran out of time, or thought the flow wasn't right... so you end up running around like an idiot to get to the next enemy section.

While I got a little annoyed with that, I'd love to see that in EC - as if there are big battles, having interior firefights in that size of structure would be extremely epic.

So essentially, will we be seeing things on the Manufactorum scale, or will it mainly be the sort of Multiplayer size areas where there are only a few interiors to enter. Or even will it be like the multiplayer levels where there are massive interior and exterior areas... but all over the maps? Like the one where you can go into the sewers and the shelled high-rises that have multiple levels.

The one we see on the playtest is one of the smaller ones, not sure if they said it was designed for 50 vs 50 fights, the biggest one will be designed with 500 vs 500 fights in mind.

think planetside 2 for a better example of scale. although if the devs pull off the upper end of what they are planning i would say it will end up being bigger.

I thought that would be the case, as they said they wanted those 1000 player battles like you said Joram; I played a bit of Planetside 2 but the bases weren't too large (in the beginning at least, from what I recall of it, and you could be in and out of them at a running pace in about 30 to 60 seconds).

I just wonder if they'd have areas that were "totally" enclosed, like the Manufactorum. For example you're outside in one area, then you'd reach some HUGE super-structure of the Manufactorum that would be so large that the one massive building complex would be a zone unto itself (where the walls go on for miles) and you'd get people battling over it but inside and for control of specific areas inside it, but not the whole thing at once. Imagine when you're Titus in Space Marine running through that complex size.

If they can pull something like that off... I'd be super, super impressed.

me to, it was the base design that finished me with PS2. there was almost nowhere to to mount a proper defense without a bazillion players.

Yeah, the bases were either just small outposts that were captured within 2 minutes, and the larger ones... 10 minutes? I'm looking forward to something where you play an hour before work, and by the time you get back they're still fighting tooth and nail over it. Like the good old days of AV in WoW, haha!

But on a design scale, I bet it's hard to do well and to code so it doesn't chug PCs to high heaven with hundreds of players rammed into it, and when I try to imagine an indoor zone I have to go back to Star Wars Online (whatever it's real name is). As if I remember rightly on the planet Coruscant they have a number of indoor zones that they pull off rather well without them feeling like "outdoor zones with a roof", so if they can get them into EC and have control areas, places you can fortify, and have it just "feeling" at least like you're running along miles of factory space, generator rooms, storage bays, or even just habitation areas.

And going back to Planetside for a moment, that's what I'm hoping this game doesn't become "too" like. As while fun to hop in and out of, I could never play for more than an hour or so without going "Well we've taken this base back and forth about 10 times, time for a pint?". So the objective-gameplay thing is what I'm most looking forward to seeing - as in the livestreams they've shown capture points, so I just wonder what else we're going to see from the game design department.

Considering somewhere around here, Steven said that there will be a dead Titan as a playground and maybe a manufactorum on one of the continents, I guess there should be every kind of enviroment/building etc.