So this is my first post (hellos everyone! But more importantly my greenskin pals ). I was wondering about npc units for anyone and everyone's factions. I know that except for the tyranids, there'll be minimal npc support. I can understand this but why not have a player command a group of Boyz or have cultist in the background as the cannon fodder. Just having single guys running around seems a little strange. Also who wants to be a little guardian or a guardsmen just walking around and getting stepped on by other elites or heros? IDK it would be nice to have a regular battle of the cannon fodder npc's to kinda just grind against eachother doing nothing while real players can alter the battle. It may just be me but I'm having a hard time picturing all 100 players in one game staying and being scattered about in the game. Orks are meant to have the normal Boyz being thrown into the bolter Fire of sm and then the more prestigious odd Boyz or nobz start to come in and play their role. Anyways I'm also concerned about one faction just dominating and being too powerful.
I've heard that you can 'win' this mmo and not just constantly fight for nothing but then if some one wins then there is a loser. I personally just don't want to have inexperienced players ruin my event or campain not because they're bad but because of their inexperience. I don't want to sound like that guy and we'll be new and learning things at one point but when I'm on the battle field krumping some gitz I want to be reinforced by other people who are able to perform with me.
Also if the tyranids act as the lawn mower to trim and down size factions, will they just instantly push the faction back or will that faction be able to fight against the nids and have a chance of winning? I mean once again, I can't see there being a couple of people just carrying the team, it sounds like I need to have 10+ people playing a part in a campaign to win. The more people, the more of a chance for someone to make mistakes etc and im one of those people who could do that but honestly who wants a bunch of players who bring you down make winning for the entire faction very hard.
Will there be divisions for the experience of players? Not levels but areas that get unlocked for them to go to, to play against higher level players on other factions and with the more experienced players on their side? Also giving someone a hero or elite ability seems interesting but how will it be dictated? Also the top level warlords for a faction; how will that be determined? What will they do? There are just a lot of things im wondering about as I get that having a giant WAAAGH! plow through the spiky Boyz or what not being very fun and satisfying but it's more of 'what if my faction can't muster up enough resistance to actually stop the invading faction'? Will there be a safe zone where it's unable to be conquered by anyone else? Sorry just lots of questions and concerns and opinions.

tldr : wall of text.

If you want people to read your post, use paragraphs.

Sometime between 220 and 206 BC, the Great Wall of Text was constructed to defend China from Mongol raiders. Besides its astounding length, the Great Wall is also notable for its complete lack of paragraphs...

Well I had a good laugh after the sudden realization of this 'wall of text'. You guys are right though, so I've put it into a couple of paragraphs. Sorry about the previous organization. My older computer broke so I have to rely on my iPhone.

You could still use a little spacing, but it's ok, I can read it now

The real issue with NPCs is and has always been performance. It's damn near impossible to render that many units on screen - PS2, which has some pretty breathtaking system requirements, bogs down in complex environments at about 100 players, and EC is expected to have several times that. So just on the client end, there's a hard cap on how many units you can handle, and giving each person their own little cadre of grunts would add a totally unpredictable per-player multiplier on top of the already massive rendering difficulty.

With Tyranids, the issue would be compounded by the need for extremely sophisticated horde intelligence that bogs down the server end. It's for this reason that tyranid hordes are not expected to be above ground at launch, and if they do it'll probably be in specific instances with a larger-than-normal proportion of isolated monstrous creatures vs swarms of the little guys.

We'd all love to see more boots on the battlefield but we gotta wait for our computers to catch up to that dream there's been lots of discussion on this but performance limitations have always dictated the consensus. As for your other questions, hopefully the establishment of a strong and easy to join leadership hierarchy will make teamwork more common, and no, players are not expected to be separated by experience since this is purely a horizontal progression game.

Well as for the first paragraph, the idea of leading bots has been debated and squashed many a times.

I am going to try to answer some of the questions I read.

There isn't a lot of info on starting zones.

Tyranids can be fought back but the plan is to have only one server for everyone collectively so it would be almost like a joint effort.

I don't think they are going to do many NPC's seeing as how there is supposed to be one server.

I don't know much about "winning" in this mmo. If you could tell us where you got that from that would be great.

A lot will be explained in the next twitch. You can always look at the past episodes for your questions. A leaked picture says that the alpha is planned on being playable on Feb 3 so there is that to look forward to.

Oh um there was an interview that mentioned it somewhere here: http://gamingbolt.com/warhammer-40k...all-out-online-war-next-gen-consoles-and-more
I know it doesn't say that you win or lose but he doesn't want you to endlessly fight for nothing. Also I can't expect all the answers to a game that will come out in the fall time next year but thanks for yours anyways.

Welcome to the forums!


As Luciasar said, every NPC that is rendered, could be on e more real player. Right now it is not planned that you can play as a guardian or cultist or guardsman. (For guardsmen, there are many discussions on how to implement Imperial guard (which will not happen at release, or for a considerable amount of time thereafter.).)

Everyfaction is going to have atleast some save (uncapturable) territory with their main base or something like that.

The Top level Warlords (Warcouncil) will presumably consist of some people that get voted there, some people maybe choosen from the devs, maybe some positions through performance. It is not fully thought out yet.

Tyranids will infect territory, then you have to go back there and clean them up.

Yes a Squad or even better a Guild will be pretty important if you want to invest much time into the game /want to be succesfull / experience all the strategy a game like this has to over.
On the other hand, thats probably all you need, I can see small guilds having a huge impact on winning if they play it right.
On the other hand, I am a strong advocate for good "single player" / "casual player" content, and it seems the devs also have these groups in mind. It will then just play more like a battlefield game I guess, without the big strategy.

The "winning", is for Campaigns. These will presumably last 2-8 weeks, and give you different goals, that are not only cap the most terrritory. We hope that these also help balancing faction population imbalances. They are also supposed to in some way have longer lasting effects /alter the narrative/battlefield?

On the Idea of playing with other of your skill level, I actually kinda like the Idea, but I don't think it will happen. Also it is not as nessecary, because there will be massive battles, so you won't notice if someone is better/worse.