Yupp, (both of those factors made me play both of those games quite alot, even thorug Warhammer online wasn't THAT good.) It is inportant that you feel like the caracter you are playing. Alot of hardcore warhammer 40K fans will play this game and if they manage to get the characters to feel and look like they fit in to the warhammer 40K universe sooo many will overlook any flaws the game might have. So a realistic artstyle is VERY important
Indeed. Warhammer Online was plagued with problems and a textbook example of bad design dragging a game steadily into the graveyard not perfect, but it did well at creating a good look and feel for characters and factions and customisation (until the endgame, where everyone had to wear armour with exactly the same look or suffer serious stat penalties). If I had to give an example of the balance towards realism and (ideally) extent of customisation I'd like to see, it'd probably be best summed up by this image: (right click, view image - you need to see this in full size) Six chaos space marines, all looking very different, but all of them having an air of malice and threat. And all dripping with awesome. With bonus points for one in captured armour, complete with defaced aquila. No excessive stylisation or iconic looks were required. You don't look at them and think "Meh, loyalists with horns and a couple of spikes". They look downright dangerous, and fundamentally different in a way that goes beyond what weapons they're carrying or what colour their armour is painted.
The looks and feel is one of the most important things you NEED TO NAIL in a Warhammer/ warhammr40K game. There is a reason people like it so much. It's style is dark, heroic, epic and bad-ass. They NEED to make this game challenging, interactive and cool. If they fail at any of those three they might aswell just close the game right then and there. They also need to have a use of all the classes/weapons. We need for tactical marines to be unable to take down a looted tank without a rocketlauncher. Cause I don't want to get to drive around i my bad-ass tank and suddenly be destroyed by a single tactical marine with a 25 kill count, simply by him using some kind of C4 equivelent.
Those Night Lords do indeed look intimidating, but im hoping they do justice to the hardcore mutation aspects of Chaos too. This is where a more realistic artstyle might bring out the sheer horror more than a stylized one could, thus making Chaos feel like the monsters they are.
I'd also say its realistic. Even if he does appear to be standing next to a spotlight (that's a lot of glare!)
If you look at all the art in the codexes, it's all realistic, and I don't really understand what you mean by the table to being based on stylized and random ideas, the miniatures sure don't seem random, or stylized. And as such, the game should match. This is the GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE we're talking about here, you can't possibly represent that with stylized graphics.
You can always have options to tone down the graphics and detail included, if it's really that much of a problem.
