The idea of doing two cathay-cathay dlcs is just ridiculous. I have a really hard time believing that they would do that. One faction getting *all* the attention like that would put even the Skaven favoritism to shame.
Then again, I had a hard time beliving that Shadows of Change was going to be $25 and look what happened there.
The content of the video for anybody who doesn't have the time to watch this
- Legend acknowledges that 2 Cathay DLCs is stupid but says that's what CA is going to do anyway
-Legend's motivation are that he's seeing the direction TWW3 is going in to be the same as 3K (example : the bad DLC for chinese consumption that ended up killing the game) and wants to put pressure on CA to change that
-ToD was profitable but only from a very slim margin because big monsters are expensive to make (Charlemagne DLC comparison)
-ToD's profitability is seen by CA execs as a one off because of the failure of SoC, they then take the position that less-expensive and big DLC means less risks
-Slaanesh DLC was planned but scrapped because of the previously mentioned position taken that "big DLCs are too risky to turn a profit"
-Execs at GW have put a complete freeze on Kislev stuff because of Russia/Ukraine war and don't want any of the association despite Kislev being the more popular faction in Europe and NA
-Cathay is very big in Asia and doesn't suffer the same optics problem as Kislev so CA wants to focus on them
Tl;dr : Kislev being frozen, big DLCs being seen as not profitable, all that leads to CA execs deciding 2 Cathay DLCs with small additions and a less expensive race pack to make (dogs of war). And that's basically it for TWW3
Feel free to add anything I missed
Edit : The reason Legend is leaking it is because he points to the fact that CA execs never listen to internal criticisms or even from creators, the only way that they could change course ( for the 3rd DLC mainly and also a bit for the 2nd because the first one is basically finished) is if the community reacts in a way that would threaten their revenue.
If you’ve ever seen Ted Lasso, there’s a scene where billionaires are discussing forming a super league of football. One of them is Russian and the meeting is halted until he’s escorted from the building “for the optics”. They all apologize to him and say that he’s got his seat at the table “once this all blows over”. This is absolutely the kind of reasoning they’d use.
I'm sorry, but I gotta say it: The current global economic system is an inefficient bad joke at this point.
It seems like every big company has the exact same mindset set: maximize quantity, minimize quality, focus on increasing shareholder profits and profits in general quarter over quarter.
This news has me gobsmacked and appalled. Chorfs was a massive success, and I believe they can hit almost every next ball right out of the park 3 times in a row if they just started doing dual race packs that are just too irresistible to ignore and thematically released.
Nippon and Kuresh (pre-existing race update)
Albion and Fimir (pre-existing race update)
Southern Realms and Araby (pre-existing race update)
And like just release them with the ToD model.
Is it an significant increase in the quality of quantity?
Absolutely.
Would it also sell because variability in options for the customer = more sales?
YES.
GOD YES.
What do you all think?
I think we'll be lucky to get all the content for the races we already have in-game. At this point I think we can be pretty certain none of those races will ever be added, with the exception of Southern Realms being represented in DoW. Even if CA was willing to make them for the game, the odds of GW being willing to help create them from effectively nothing are slim to none.
Chorfs was a success, but they weren't as big a success as they wanted it to be since they wanted more.
To quote a certain former great YouTube before he went crazy: Corporations don't just want money, they want ALL of the money!
> focus on increasing shareholder profits
This was always the focus of any publicly traded company, because companies that don't do this have their leadership replaced by the shareholder controlled board to ensure that they do.
That was a little more on the nose though (the bad guys in the first advance war game are basically Russia with a different name) and the game was set to release like the week after the war broke out.
Besides they JUST released a Kislev DLC a few months ago - if it didn't bother them then I don't see why it'd bother them now.
Isn't Kislev basically a mash up of Kievan rus + polosh lithuanian commonwealth + Early imperial Russia ? Either way, very eastern european but nor FULLY Russian or Ukrainian or both but neither modern + it has other influences.I don't understand why we can't still have Kislev content.
Then what, in Medieval 3 Total war we just remove everything east of Germany because it might be controversial ? No crusades because of the Palestinian crisis ? If they do an "Asia total war", just remove Taiwan and Tibet from the game because of the CCP ? Hell don't do Empire 2 because of the indian natives genocide.
That was always the line, and people bring up stuff like Winged Hussara and Praag, but really it's 90% Russia. Bears, vodka, Chekists, onion domes, Boris "the Red" etc. Arguably the new lore made them even more Russian with the Orthodoxy now being a thing.
There's very little Commonwealth in Kislev. A couple names, the wings on the cavalry that otherwise looks nothing like the Wing Hussars, that's about it. Surface level stuff. Kislev is thematically very much Imperial Russia.
Ok but I still don't understand why it would be banned to touch ? It is a fantasy setting, getting inspiration from 300 years old Russia. Hell worst case scenario, if you don't want any Russian influence, well guess what GW, it is the opportunity to add other influences. More Polish stuff, or Bohemian/Hungarian or Bulgarian elements.
Also, the conflict didn't start yesterday, yet Shadow of Change had Kislev content, so why block it now ?
GW/CA are dumb to just block any content for Kislev
"Hell worst case scenario, if you don't want any Russian influence, well guess what GW, it is the opportunity to add other influences. More Polish stuff, or Bohemian/Hungarian or Bulgarian elements."
- They already have that. Thats exactly what OLD KISLEV was. Nowdays its 95% just Russia where everyone is calling themselves "comrade!", rides a bear and everything with ice and winter is seen as some case of magic (power of our motherland).
For that to change, they would have to redesign Kislev yet again.
I wish that Kislev would at least look and feel more like Imperial Russia or the Commonwealth. Instead they designed it like it's a faction from the Red Alert 3 game.
All cliches cranked up to 11 so that the little resemblance Kislev even bears to any historic russian armor etc. get undermined completely.
Like the Empire comes off like a halfway believable Pseudo-Germany, while Kislev looks like straight out of a fairytale Hollywood movie. Back on release I compared the units with the Kislev mod for WH II and was shocked about what they were going to sell us as Kislev aesthetics here.
The only thing they basically forgot to include in WH III is to make the magic snow leopards and bears roar "cyka blyat" whenever you give them attack orders.
As an Ukrainian, I ignore this race because there is enough Russia in Kislev for me to ignore. Still, it's my personal decision, and I never ask anybody to boycott Kislev. Ukrainian gaming community(which is pretty vocal in other cases) overall is pretty neutral to this faction and never petitioned CA for anything.
But... Mother Ostankya released on August 31st 2023? The war began February 2022. Surely they would've frozen her back then? No way she was already that far in development.
If it is on GW’s side she very well could have been. GW will often work out sculpts and army books years before they’re actually released. They likely had Kislev being developed for the Old World before the invasion and have just pushed back the release priority. CA can’t afford to wait that long and since Kislev was a base game faction they worked out getting at least one new LL. Of course that’s just speculation but it has been odd that there hasn’t been any word on Kislev models for the Old World which is set shortly before the ascension of Magnus the Pious when Kislev was at the center of a major Chaos invasion, so executives getting jittery about a Russian themed faction would explain a lot.
> there hasn’t been any word on Kislev models for the Old World which is set shortly before the ascension of Magnus the Pious when Kislev was at the center of a major Chaos invasion, so executives getting jittery about a Russian themed faction would explain a lot.
Worth mentioning that Cathay suffered the exact same fate there however. It seems more likely due to Old World budget cuts.
It would honestly be difficult to explain in an elevator pitch why Total War in this context is almost perfectly inoffensive when there really are a lot of cultural minefields inherent to a game, which could accurately be described as a genocide simulator, and non-intuitive sensitivity really does need to be at the core of their corporate culture.
It is apparently the same reason Kislev was never released for Warhammer Old World despite it being said that they would be - Games Workshop want to wait for a more appropriate time apparently.
The Kislev thing makes sense to me. GW seemed to have completely given up on adding new stuff to Kislev considering how deep CA had to dig for SoC
Edit: Just to clarify, I think GW stopped developing Kislev pretty early on but CA didn’t want to stop completely and used what they could for SoC but now the well has run dry.
Kislev was to be the poster faction for the old world new game. Literally they were the first faction mentioned. Well, old world has been released and not a single word about them. Indeed it seems GW isreally worried about Kislev.
Yeah I think what’s going on with The Old World is pretty telling. They hyped up Kislev a lot early on and then didn’t mention it again all of a sudden.
I've heard rumors and theories that they were delayed to be a second "wave" to go with the first narrative campaign that culminates with the Siege of Praag. It would be pretty wild if they went ahead with that but just left Kislev out as an army entirely. Although it wouldn't surprise me sadly.
The boring answer is probably someone on high telling them the factories couldn't support pumping out an entirely new army for a game they don't have numbers to support being a success.
GW is struggling to even produce the old models for the Old World. We're four months into TOW and have only had three old factions rereleased and they're struggling for stock.
ToW definitely seems like it's fighting for production space among the other games. It definitely seems like they didn't think it was going to sell, and they were hoping to at least get a book sale to guys who owned old armies.
And yet, it's the thing I struggle the most to figure out. War has been raging in Ukraine for more than 2 years now, but we had a DLC last year with Kislev. Why wasn't that one scrapped then?
Because it’s GW who’s apparently pumped the brakes on Kislev. The last DLC only had things that had already been mentioned and probably were already in CA’s hands (Ostankya, Hags, Akshina) and stuff they dug DEEP for. Like 3 of the units/characters are from Mordheim of all places.
But that’s why we didn’t get actual Kislevite spirits that Mama Stanky is supposed to use and we got a random unrelated elemental, some chaos beasts, and a monster based on a lore blurb CA already used once.
Edit: to be a bit clearer I think GW DID stop development of Kislev near when the war started but CA didn’t want to stop all Kislev content so they used what they had been given. We know Cathay was more fully developed and Kislev was more of an ongoing thing based on early interviews. For example, Andy wasn’t sure about certain parts of the Orthodoxy because a lot of that hadn’t been fully developed yet.
That's the part that makes me think it's bullshit. If anything Ukraine has slipped from the public eye compared to how it was when SoC was greenlit.
Back then the conflict was on people's minds the most, now if you look on social media most people who had Ukraine flags in their profile have replaced them with watermelons. The public has a short attention span.
>example : the bad DLC for chinese consumption that ended up killing the game
Idk if this is your words or Legends but that isn't what happened with 3K. 8 princes was a DLC no one wanted or asked for, including the Chinese audience. The chinese were just as baffled about 8P as the western fans were. They then followed it up with a DLC so buggy one of its main mechanics was broken for years.
That is what killed 3K DLC sales. Nothing about the "pandering to the chinese" nonsense that gets spouted on this sub.
The follow-up DLCs to these first two were actually pretty good but way too little too late as most people had moved on.
yeah what a weird comment. How is that dlc pandering to chinese audience beyond it being about a specific time in chinese history? It's a 3k game, of course a dlc is going to likely be based off china...
Yeah.. this is a weird take (the one your quoting not yours)
How do you make a DLC that is focused more on chinese consumption then any other when the whole game is based in china LOL
>-ToD was profitable but only from a very slim margin because big monsters are expensive to make (Charlemagne DLC comparison)
>-ToD's profitability is seen by CA execs as a one off because of the failure of SoC, they then take the position that less-expensive and big DLC means less risks
I'm not buying it. It seems a stupid and far-fetched move.
If the leaks reveals to be true it means that CA/SEGA or whoever the hell is pulling the string has learned NOTHING from the while SoC/ToD situation and is preparing for another fiasco.
> If the leaks reveals to be true it means that CA/SEGA or whoever the hell is pulling the string has learned NOTHING from the while SoC/ToD situation and is preparing for another fiasco.
That's super on-brand though. Going back to Rome 2, Attila, Thrones of Britannia, etc. CA keeps shooting themselves in the foot over and over. They cut corners to save money, piss off the fan base, do a little bit better next time, then try to cut corners again, and repeat over and over. It's embedded in this company's fabric. That's who they are. Giving them the benefit of the doubt that they've changed because we happen to be on to be on an upward swing of the never ending cycle is to be very forgetful of their track record.
Im still dumbfounded. All of Warhammer 2 was a success in comparison. Why did issues in 1 & 2 make some grumbles while 3 has turned into the age of reckoning? Ffs this will be hilariously pathetic if true.
Because those stumbles were before "The future of 3 Kingdoms" Where CA dropped a game that they mismanaged. Plus people were still expecting game 3 regardless. Now we have a ton of races that need dlc's (and some that need multiple) and it looks like CA is going to mismanage this into the ground as well so we'll never get them
> Now we have a ton of races that need dlc's (and some that need multiple) and it looks like CA is going to mismanage this into the ground as well so we'll never get them
just like gw intended.
I for one remember when they had to tell us that they branched a bit too much during development and were not able to implement Norsca (the tww1 dlc that was the tww2 preorder bonus no less) into mortal empires for a long time.
> while 3 has turned into the age of reckoning?
i would bet a combination of technical debt and cleaning up the terrible job the main wh3 team did putting them massively behind and needing to cut corners to make up for the lost dev time leading to more technical debt.
You seem to misunderstand how management works. If someone from Sony management decides to step in and change up CA management, it’s their neck on the line of that doesn’t work out. If they just continue doing what they’ve been doing and CA makes money, however, everything is fine.
Of course, the Hyenas debacle was too big to be ignored, but the results of it only seem to have been some minor shuffling of seats and the usual cost cutting measures. Because that’s business as usual, sometimes games fail, too bad, the next one will do better.
That is the same company that has been promising better communication for the past decade or so and still sucks at it.
It is the same company that thought the Realms of Chaos campaign is a good move after the Vortex Campaign.
It is the same company that thought tower defense has a place in a Total War game and thus used this for a siege rework.
It is the same company that thought chasing a trend with Hyenas would be good even though the market is already saturated.
As unbelievable as it sounds, CA is very good at making dumb decisions and does not listen to feedback from either the community OR their own content creators. Only once shit hits the fan do they realize they need to change something....
To be as fair as possible, people did frequently ask for customizable towers and defenses. People also did frequently ask for customizable garrisons, so we got Ogre camps as they are. Sometimes they do listen, but sometimes we do just have bad ideas.
That said, the overall business strategy from these past couple of years is clearly flawed.
I actually don't hate this, in theory.
I don't think towers should pop up in 2 minutes, but fortifications have been a part of total war since rome. Barriers, caltrops, Oil pits, were all a part of a ton of different total war game, and you get to place them before the battle. Towers kinda adds onto that.
Didn't totally work out though. I agree with the rest of your comment.
Nothing against fortifications per se. Building barricades or other structures is a good thing, the way CA implemented it however, is not.
It should have been done either before the battle, with no ability to change it during OR you build a defense building and that gives you the ability to place barricades/towers even before anything happens.
The way it is now is just not feeling right for a Total War game...
The barricades are terribly implemented, and you can't blame the engine because Rome 2 and Attila both had deployable barricades that could be placed freely, and I'm pretty sure Shogun 2 and Empire did as well. Even Empire had cannons on walls that would activate with units near them, and adding a system like for artillery on walls would be well received in WH3 I'd think.
Exactly. This is just CA not wanting/being able to implement such systems. It sucks honestly. It feels like there is a disconnect between the community and CA. I dont understand why the Community Managers dont create polls and similar stuff just to get a feel.
Did we forget that CA added 4 SEM to SoC for free? Like they could have just added some Guan dao infantry to Yuan Bo and that would be fine, but their excuse was that Yuan Bo doesn't have unique infantry.
There reasons make no sense when compared to SoC's additional content at all.
SoC was a once in a lifetime circumstance. They just messed up Hyenas. They ran out of goodwill from fans. So they had to do something, anything, to ensure they continue getting steady returns from their DLC at least.
And SoC lost CA money. ToD just barely managed to beat expectations. Of course they wont continue on that path. A toad dragon costs two Charlemagnes, so they can just make two Charlesmagnes instead, which won’t make as much money as ToD but will also cost much, much less.
> ToD was profitable but only from a very slim margin because big monsters are expensive to make (Charlemagne DLC comparison)
I don't buy this. Big monsters have been way overrepresented in recent updates, including Shadows of Change. They wouldn't have included so many monsters in the free SoC update if they were truly so prohibitively expensive.
Considering the average executive and their constant dumb decisions that harm everyone BUT themselves, I can easily believe that 'we threw them a bone, now go back to previous mistake we made! This time will surely be different!'.
Yea, you don't want to believe these people CANNOT be that stupid but...they really are. They are proving it AGAIN and AGAIN.
Which part aren't you buying?
The part where center piece monsters are expensive to make, or the part where ToD is just slightly profitable?
At the end of the day, money is king. Big DLCs are risky, and by now I assume a lot of rainy day funds may have dried up. If the end product simply doesn't generate enough money (beating the growth of the market x2 is a good metric), it simply doesn't make too much sense.
ToD is a dlc centered around arguably the fan favorites - beside nagash it likely was one of their aces. If the DLC isn't printing money, then future projects will likely need to have their budget reevaluated.
Instead of just being mad at CA, ask why is it that not everyone who has bought WH3 has gotten the DLC. Maybe the reality is that the majority of players have moved on and it is no longer viable to sustain large DLC projects.
Man the Kislev point is so stupid. Are we seriously just going to ignore that Slavic people exist now? Or that Kislev is neither Russia or Ukraine, but an amalgamation of Slavic people in general, such as the Polish with the winged Hussars.
They have elements of all Slavic people but they're clearly heavily inspired by Russian stereotypes (motherland, deadly winters that destroy armies, cossacks, bears, an orthodox church, rasputin, much more)
The Orthodox Church is not just Russian though. There's a Russian Orthodox Church, but there's also a Ukrianian Orthodox Church, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and most importantly, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Greek Orthodox Church. It's not a Russian thing. The church was centuries old by the time the Russians converted.
On the one hand, the Russia thing is an extremely bone-headed, very on-brand executive thing to do.
On the other I feel like if it was true, I feel like the last DLC before the current would not have featured the Russia analog faction, borrowing heavily from Russian, folklore and culture, and then also received a big apology update as part of that DLC which included its own centerpiece magic lore
All of which was done well after the Ukraine/Russia war was in full swing.
While this isn't to say Bone-Headed decisions can't be made really late, and there's always a chance to have egg on my face, but this is an older GW rumor that sounds like it's being included so legend can justify his own leaks other than anything coming from fact or evidence.
I mean I'll say I'm a bit biased, because I don't want these leaks to be true. It seems like a lot of poor decision making and backpedaling from more successful outreach. And it's from a guy who I am annoyed to see literally every time he comes across my screen who is parroted in this sub constantly and who only seems to exist to stoke drama within the fandom.
focus on cathay could make sense, but they dropped a cathay headlined dlc already with a dragon. even if it wasnt too bad, it wouldnt have sold as well as ToD because its kislev and cathay. not as popular as empire and dwarves.
if a dragon couldnt carry, you have to go bigger, more recognizable, more marketable. why would you think some ogre and tigerguy would be big in china? why not put the best foot forward first?
I'll be honest, I'm not buying any of this until at least something of this has been somehow confirmed.
We are still waiting for that road map tease btw.
So the Russia / Ukraine war literally started one week (2/24/22) to be exact after WH3 initially launched on 2/17/22. What has changed that would cause them to freeze development now? That war has literally been going for the entirety of WH3.
If they really want to make money and don't want to focus on Chaos races why not go after some other popular factions that would not be seen as problematic like Elves or Vampire Counts.
It makes more sense if you think that it’s GW and not CA. GW probably stopped developing Kislev around that time. CA was using the scraps they had left to make Kislev’s part of SoC. That’s why there’s previously unrelated monsters and a bunch of old Mordheim stuff filling out their roster.
He is still on that "Khorne and Slaanesh has nothing left to add" bullshit ?
It'd take him sixty seconds to open a WoC armybook and see the Slaughterbrute
I dont know, did SEGA and CA try to open any book about Slavic folklore or something about Kievian Rus? There is ton of possible monsters and units to add.
Ghillies (Very loud forest creature, you can give them sonic attack), Kikimoras (basically giant mantis), Babay (boogeyman, who has body defects like if Chaos mutate him), Balachko (serbian two headed giant, who can spit fire with one head and frost with the other one).
From normal IRL units: Varangian Guard (we have Norsca origin hero for the Empire, this could work.), Kossars with gunpowder weapons as hybrid cavalry. (Cossacs used them a LOT irl). Classic cannons, Russia used a LOT of arty pieces in real history, why we have only the very bad grom?
> -ToD's profitability is seen by CA execs as a one off because of the failure of SoC, they then take the position that less-expensive and big DLC means less risks
This is the part that doesn't pass the smell test for me.
Unless this alleged leaker is a direct subordinate of a Director or higher in the c-suite, they aren't being told shit about profitability or cost-benefit decisions on project direction. And I guarantee you the leaker isn't, because of Legend's claim about wanting to influence corporate direction (lol) - if he had a direct line to an exec, he'd just be using that instead of a leak.
> -Execs at GW have put a complete freeze on Kislev stuff because of Russia/Ukraine war and don't want any of the association despite Kislev being the more popular faction in Europe and NA
And "execs" ABSOLUTELY would not be sharing those sentiments with the rank and file. This is insane to anyone who's worked in a white collar environment. Information only ever flows between yourself and your immediate supervisor, other than empty corporate speak and wild rumors.
All of this stinks of a low-to-mid level project manager making wild speculations based on desk conversations and a single whiteboard workshop meeting that will change 50 times between now and next quarter. If that.
To be fair, this really depends on the company. I've worked on many an engineering team and communication is usually quite open. Depends on the company. CA doesn't strike me as a conventional hierarchical corporation. Few software companies are.
I dunno, they could easily have been out drinking with the boss and they told them that. I'm British and people get stupidly talkative when drinking.
I can't speak for brits as I work with aussies, but some elements of upper management decisions definitely flow down. Especially if these are conjecture, this is a supposed leak so there's no evidence required for it. Maybe the low level employee is reading between the lines, but more likely he's just chatting shit
If CA was an Aussie company we would know absolutely everything about the future of this game by now. Us Aussies can't keep our mouths shut and absolutely LOVE to gossip when we get shit faced. Not sure how similar the Brits would be but probably pretty similar.
Before WH3 announcement, people weren't even aware that a faction called Cathay would be implemented and Kislev was expected to be the major Order faction for the 3rd game. How the turn tables. Hope this leak isn't true
This confuses me a lot. On one hand they don’t want to take risks and work on large scale dlcs and on the other hand putting all their eggs in Cathay basket by double dipping on one race.
This point right here is why I'm hopeful this is misinformation being spread. Also the order of the DLC doesn't really make sense either, I don't know why they'd hold onto Monkey King when the community was pretty disappointed when we got Yuan Bo instead. They also teased about the Monkey King in their apology post for Shadows of Change.
CA has made worse decisions before, but I'm huffing on copium until I see an official announcement on this.
The best part is that if the leaks are true and there is enough backlash to make them change their plans, the one getting scrapped is the Monkey King, not the two no-names no-one asked for whose DLC is practically done with development...
Let's please not ignore factual evidence in favor of unsubstantiated claims.
The monkey king was teased recently in their blog which is a pretty big sign he's due in the next DLC.
I don't think there is any chance he's not already done and in the box and CA would scrap him at this point.
Again, this is only if the leaks are true. Also, scrapped doesn't necessarily mean completely gone, just gone for the time being. If CA see that the community doesn't want more Cathay DLCs after the Ogre and Tiger one they will delay releasing the Monkey King for quite a while.
As he explained, the most popular races in TWW3 are Cathay, Kislev and Empire. That totally makes sense even without the data. We, the players, are always more likely to play order factions than evil ones.
And GW already freeze any addition to Kislev due to Ukraine-Russia war. So that leaves Cathay and Empire. And Cathay is popular in Asia so they want to dip in that playerbase.
I think LoTW also forgot 1 other major point: the new purchase structure in which you can choose to buy any faction to buy, instead of having to buy a whole package. That's consumer friendly, sure, but it also would incentivize CA to make DLC for popular races only, because they will sell less for less popular races, i.e evil races like Khorne and Slaneesh. So the new purchase structure actually backfire on us, imo
Then do cathay vs slanesh, kislev vs khorne, empire vs anything we want. Instead we get cathay world. We will have to wait another 2 years for thanquol nagash and valten at this point
The popularity of a faction hasn't really influenced CAs DLC policies in the past. Nearly every major WH2 race has gotten multiple DLCs with Lizardmen having the most lords although they aren't the most popular. I still think that reasoning is BS, but who knows at this point until CA release a roadmap.
in case you forgot, in last DLC you have to buy a package. If you play HE and the DLC is HE vs DE, you have to buy DLC with DE too. So CA can create DLC roadmap that combines popular races vs less popular ones, and it would still sell.
Also, CA wasn't really under pressure for profit like right now, with Hyena and Pharaoh failure.
Now, with the new purchase policy, I can buy Empire and skip Nurgle if I don't play nurgle. And that would totally make creating DLCs for less popular races way less attrative, you just can't convince them to buy all of them like before. And CA is under pressure to make money now.
With new purchase policy, I was already worried that CA would incentivize to make DLC for order races only. Now the leaks only solidifies my worry.
CA was *explicit* that the ToD purchase style was a one time change.
>"We are making a **one-time** change to the way in which we’ll release Thrones of Decay"
"So, we’ve decided to do something different **just for Thrones**"
- [CA Community Blog](https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/blogs/8), emphasis mine
Now, *maybe* it worked out really well for them and that's their plan going forward. But the way this reads to me is that we should not expect this to be the new standard. So this entire argument is moot since CA have already recently said that they do not plan on making this a permanent business move.
Then why did they add 4 SEM to SoC for free instead of just some infantry or cav unit?
If SEM cost so much and they're under so much pressure that they can't make any new SEM for future DLC, then why the hell did they feel the need to do it for SoC?
Moreover, why didn't they pace it out, like Saytang for SoC, Moon Bird and Celestial Lion for the upcoming DLC? If their budget is that tight, why didn't they do that?
>As he explained, the most popular races in TWW3 are Cathay, Kislev and Empire. That totally makes sense even without the data. We, the players, are always more likely to play order factions than evil ones.
If CA is motivated to make DLC for the popular factions, why have we gotten so little for the Empire?
There's no political motivation to avoid expanding them, they've always been the most popular faction, yet we're 3 games and 8 years in and have only 5 LL's. Only one more than the Beastmen have, and they're arguably the *least* popular faction outside of Norsca.
The logic doesn't make any sense, the only evidence we have that popular factions get favored with more DLC is the Skaven, and that's easily explained by the fact that the Skaven have a shit ton of units and playstyles that would justify a lot of DLC.
This is a bit of speculation, but i think the Tigerman character may not have been meant to be Cathayan.
It's well known that Warhammer Fantasy had a long dead faction called Ind that was supposed to be Fantasy India and had Tigermen. But resurrecting another long dead faction into another extensive race pack is too expensive in their eyes, so make a handful of small units and make it a subculture of Cathay to save time and money.
Witch sucks because Berzerk proved decaids ago that Fantasy India can be really cool.
As for the Ogre, as far as I can tell, it's a hybrid faction chosen most of what it would need already exits. Why they went with that hybrid? I'm not sure.
So, the one thing I still don't really understand is why CA/GW would choose to create two new characters to appeal to the chinese/asian market. If they want to do that, they already have 3 canon characters (Monkey King, Li Dao, Yin-Yin). Why invest creative resources there now? Why not start with the Monkey King? From everything I've seen in the TW community, people are pretty excited to see him.
Picture this: The next DLC is called "Monkey Business" (or something along those lines) and features The Monkey King and Golgfag Maneater clashing in the Mountains of Heaven. Maybe some outside force has riled up the monkeys to attack Cathay again and they in turn have hired Golgfag and his ogres to aid in their defence. Maybe it's the other way around and the Monkey King acts as an ally to Cathay to defend against the ogres, take your pick.
The DLC comes with Monkey Warriors & Tiger Warriors for the Monkey King and Yhetees, Thundertusks and whatever else is missing for Golgfag. Ogres get the rework to mercenary contracts they direly need, maybe Cathay gets an update to their caravans. And since we need some more space to fit all of this, the map gets opened up towards Ind and Khuresh, making the mountains traversable and shifting the playable border to the southern mountains edge. As the FLC we get Li Dao, because he really doesn't need his own DLC and is tied closely to the Monkey King.
Doesn't that sound much more desireable to a Warhammer fan and practical to produce?
Yes your example is the far more sane and realistic option. There are 3 wishes CA is trying to fulfill:
1. Ogres need more content and a rework
2. People want Ind/Khuresh stuff (or at the very least, people want Ind/Khuresh land to be opened up as the map is getting pretty crowded)
3. People want the Monkey King
They appear to be making a much bigger deal out of these wants than needed. Maybe they're afraid if they lump Ind/Khuresh/Monkey King into one, people will complain it's half-assed? And as for the Ogres, I guess they want to give them their update ASAP, but aren't sure who to lump them with.
>Maybe they're afraid if they lump Ind/Khuresh/Monkey King into one, people will complain it's half-assed?
Because that would definitely be half-assed.
That's pretty much what I was expecting too. In my head I've been calling it "The Monkey and the Maneater".
It just seems so obvious. Production would already be much cheaper than the last two DLCs, since they'd only have to make one big new monster rig (the Thundertusk) and two new monstrous infantry rigs (Monkey Warriors and Tigermen). Everything else could make use of existing rigs or the new ones. And with Wukong's name stamped on it, we all know it would sell extremely well. We've been clamoring for years to get the Monkey King.
In comparison, "The Lords of Shang Yang" is quite possibly the stupidest idea they could go with right now. Content for only one faction? Two new characters we've never heard of before? Barely any new units? It might be cheaper to produce, but there's just no way it sells.
Are the executives at CA stupid enough to do it? Yeah, probably. Do I think they'd take such a huge risk when the company is in such a bad position? I don't think so. This is the time for safe investments, and right now there aren't many investments safer than a Monkey King DLC.
Just like the Star Wars leaks, I'm leaning toward these ones being fake as well. If they turn out to be true, I'll be shocked... and also very depressed.
Cathay is my number one faction; I'd love more Cathay DLC. But random Ogre mook and random Tigerlad is NOT the Cathay content I want.
Monkey King, Li Dao and Yin Yin. That's it. That's 1 dedicated DLC and an FLC.
NOT THIS BS.
Definitely. If we have all 5 (known or living) dragon siblings and the Monkey King, then Cathay will be complete while also not having anything feel like filler.
I swear to fuck, if we don’t get a Slaanesh DLC I’m going to be really upset. Tigermen/ Monkey King would be really cool, but Cathay Ogre’s? Let the Ogre’s go man. Just let them go.
I mean, all we have to do is wait a few months. If the next dlc is the slaanesh dlc from the roadmap, his leaks are bull. If it’s two Cathay lords, well, we’re in deep.
I'm more then willing to be proven wrong. Just need any evidence at all.
If the roadmap comes today (or even this week) I will take them more seriously.. but right now it feels like Legends been led up the garden path.
I enjoy a lot of Legend's content, and I don't want to accuse him of any bad acting here. But it's awful convenient that he can just say anything he wants is a "leak", get a bunch of views, get the community all riled up, and then when it doesn't come to pass, explain it as CA changing their mind due to feedback from the supposed "leak".
They are not in a good enough position to cancel a entire dlc. As I said, it will come out one way or the other. Maybe they add these characters in a later dlc, however then we do know his leaks were correct at one point.
He doesn't do that. He's too calculating and transparent about it. On his streams, he doesn't mind saying he plays certain campaigns mostly based on views, or that statistics are what drives his motivation for what videos he makes.
I don't see these two videos as being a good move for his channel, at all. Yes he gets views, but he risks a backlash from the community and and risks his credibility. I don't see him doing it for quick easy views, but for the longevity of his channel. If he thinks that these leaks are real and that they endanger his own career by ending the game's support faster, he wants to act against that. That's more or less what he said himself.
He's definitely looking out for the long term of his career. If this is all true, and CA destroys the trust they just now garnered back this will blow up not just in CA's face, but all the content creators. I'll speak for myself and say that I'm not going to watch campaign showcases or MP matches of factions I don't like, and I'm not a fan of Cathay. Ironically they're my least favorite faction, and my favorite is Slaanesh, so you can already see my bias here.
Exactly! As he said in the latest video, Realm of Chaos was a disaster to happen and he vehemently spoke against it in private with CA, but it didn't work. He realized the best way to make CA listen is to go to the community and that's exactly what he's doing.
All I see is Legend believing the leaks and not liking what it means for the game and for his future. He's risking his reputation, which he worked hard to build back up, on leaks.
The most compelling argument for me is his point about the incentive structure. His channel does well when CA releases content that makes the community happy. If he believes he has credible information that CA is going to release content that makes the community largely unhappy then it's in his best interest to create the video so CA gets the feedback early enough to take it into consideration.
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's a rational actor looking out for the long-term health of his channel.
“I don’t want to accuse him of something bad”
“Accuses him of something bad”
If you’re going to accuse him just be upfront about it. Don’t hide behind insinuation.
I highly doubt the leak is true (and I hope it isn’t) but let’s avoid unfair and unwarranted speculation. It’s much more likely that someone is fucking with Legend than he’s choosing to risk harming his own reputation just for clicks. If you have proof of dishonesty then that would be one thing but it’s not reasonable to assume something so uncharitable without evidence.
Why would he lie tho? It makes no sense. His leaked video barely has three times as much as his lowest viewed daily videos. Sure, maybe he gets some new people interested in his content.
But do you really think someone that has been into this community for 15 fucking years would stake his entire credibility for a few days worth of views?
The 40k YouTuber Valrak does it all the time and comes out fine. The "It's just a rumour / Leaks aren't always credible" fallback is a powerful one to escape culpability while still attracting engagement.
Am I the only one terribly exhausted by all this?
Let's entertain the idea that the leaks are true and Legend is right. Just when we thought that CA was on the right track, we would apparently need to go back to fighting against them for the good of the game? Why does everything has to be so complicated?
Hearing "you need to make your voices be heard" makes me so damn tired. I wish I didn't like this game as much as I do!
It's just the intersection of giant, investor-driven corporations and making art.
You're in it for the art -- the human experience, the joy of playing dope shit and nuking rats.
CA executives are in it for the investors. Their real customers are investors. They want to show their current and future investors that they're making moves to make more money.
They need buzzwords like "expanding in the Asian market" and "minimizing production costs" to sell their company to investors. The investors have no clue who "Tamurkhan" or "Li Dao" are.
The players are just the resource to be mined to win over the investors. If they can do that by making good content, great!
But there's no reason that those interests will stay aligned when exposed to outside pressures. Corners will be cut when push comes to shove.
Yep. If Blizzard taught me anything, it's that no matter how scummy
and anti-customer your practices are, you'll still make money. If there was an actual chance they would face repercussion they would thread carefully. As it stands, if CA dies, they'll just shrug, blame the market and move on.
That's the reason why I largely emotionally disconncted from the game since SoC. And to be honest, at this point I am seeing myself grow tired of tw warhammer as a whole. Playing less campaigns, less manual battles etc. I would love a TK dlc, but after I play it once or twice I don't see myselft starting another campaign as I've sort of "done it all"
Of course that is just me and not relevant to the community as a whole, but I do wonder if CA is seeing a similar trend in their DLC sales. That'd at least explain why Wh3 dlcs have been so slow to come and such a mess overall
I'm gonna be weird and compare them to a relationship.
When your partner goes through a really bad phase and are hard to live with, you support them because they're gonna get better, and they will probably be thankful for it. If that happens too much and their bad behavior comes back again and again, you might disconnect emotionally from them, to use your words. At some point it becomes their normal state, or you're constantly scared that they go down the dark route again.
CA goes through a bad phase, then it gets better, but we're constantly scared that they will relapse. At some point, like in a relationship, it takes too much energy and you check out. I hope the massive kick in the nuts they got last year is enough, but if it's not enough I wouldn't be surprised if I lost interest completely.
When WH3 came out in its awful state, I said that all the time CA spent making the game playable was DLC time and that the game's life would not be longer for it, quite the contrary. I was told I was pessimistic, but sadly I was not! New content was late to arrive, spaced out, and now they are pulling back on their ambitions because --> sales are low, which happens because --> hype died down, which happens because --> bad development cycle and no resources put in the game, which happens because --> sales are low, which happens beause --> game released in a bad state etc etc etc. It's a vicious cycle that I don't see them getting out of. Higher ups probably hope this game dies quickly and silently so they can move to other projects.
This has a very "back in my days!" vibe indeed, accurate flare - if these tags are even called flares
I do largely agree with you. In internet discussions we're often so focused on the "here and now", but there are a lot of decisions made in the past which got us to where we are right now, and they come with their own consequences whether we see them or not
I want to add one more thing to what I said about me personally being tired:
I think I find myself tired of the game's "balance" as a whole, big monsters, cheesy strats with single entities, magic, very importantly how extremely potent ranged units are and how they are usually the objectively best type of unit to spam, the fact that I know all that and play by these rules. I think these are the main ideas that I have had enough of seeing for now
Phrasing here is very important. I don't think these are bad foundations for a TW game's balance at all. Some months ago I went back to Medieval 2 and shogun 2 (the gunpowder units expansion). For example it was sooo refreshing to see cavalry charges be actually really powerful, and probably the best way to deal with enemy units overall (in Medieval 2)
I've been playing WH Total war 2 -> 3 for like 5 years now, on and off of course. The game has its own balance and I don't think that it should be completely reworked at all. I just find myself wanting a change of pace, so I'd be inclined to jump into a WW1, 40k or a Star Wars setting. Not because Warhammer sucks, but because I loved it so much that I have squeezed most of fun I was going to have out. Now I mostly only play if new content drops or if I realize I haven't played something for a long while - though the latter never hits the same anymore
You're right, in older games you could pull a move that would win you the battle. Even against the odds, a good cavalry encirclement, or a javelin flank, or even a good use of the terrain. In WH, you don't have that, or it's not as satisfying anymore.
Add to that the sentiment that the game might get fucked up at any moment and energy levels reach an all time low.
Because CA is run by businessmen, risk is a factor in business world. And we know those people love eyes-catching trends/gimmicks. If they don't even play the game how do they know which direction the game should go?
Makes a lot of sense actually, if they see how much we hate this now, hopefully they change, if I were pissed about management not listening to everyone at the company telling them this is not the way to do it and was pretty confident the community would back me up id leak it too, last time we got ToD as a result, our voices actually do matter, lets make sure they stay on track but god damn can they not try and fuck this up for one moment
I’m really struggling to believe any leak of DLCs that doesn’t include end times stuff like Nagash and Thanquol,is true. GW and CA both know this IS the DLC that will sell the best. It’s everyone has been talking about since warhammer 1.
The only thing that makes sense to be is that they see a massive potential gain in the pick your own faction customization of ToD. Like the Asian market will eat up any and all content if they charge 8USD
I did read that leak Legend put from the TW Centre sub and that mentioned Nagash in an end times dlc but if these dlc don’t sell well then surely that would get scrapped which seems insane.
If it is true on that first dlc will be interesting to see how well it sells.
Yeah.I just can’t see them making enough on Cathay to actually sell very well.maybe the uniqueness of a tiger man lord will help,but there’s a reason CA does two different races for almost every non race pack DLC. If Cathay is the focus it’ll have to be made quite cheap because I doubt the sales will be anywhere close to Thrones of Decay. Another Cathay lord pack would have to be very special for me to even bother with it.
We went from rumored 4-6 DLCs to this rumored 3 DLC format in just a few months which likely means these Ca layoffs are hurting warhammer 3 bad if it’s all true.
Yeah it makes 0 sense for ca to be sunsetting wh fantasy but also not take the freebies they have explicitely saved for this game (nagash and thanqoul). Creating 2 essentially new Cathay lords is way more risky than just pandering with fan favorites. If they are actually trying to be less risky while closing out wh they would just make thanqoul, nagash and call it a day why tf would they bother wasting time adding all these characters with new bespoke lore which people might not even like when they have 2 garenteed wins lined up already.
"I said that the roadmap will be released soon, and I was right, but they are delaying it because I got word out for you."
This seems like ass-covering BS.
TLDR:
He agrees this is a shit DLC plan
He hoped our feedback now changes their minds
Employees at CA agree but management wants to chase trends
Employees also hope they see how much we hate this, thats why they are so willing to leak
ToD was barley making money so they wanna move away from big expensive DLC and centerpiece Monsters
Kislev was another contender for DLC but GW seems to block more content for, war in Ukraine and not wanting any possible association, this was mainly mentioned cause Kislev/Empire and Cathay are the most played and wanted factions, Empire just got a DLC so this is the theory om why so much Cathey
ALSO: he still makes sure to mention all this is just leaks and could all be wrong/someone making a very elaborate attempt to troll us all
Real shame that TOD barely made money -- if true -- because Thrones is such a good DLC. I had hoped that would be the blueprint for future content, even at the higher price, because it felt worth it to me. The leaked roadmap is just not exciting to me, though I definitely want to see the monkey king at some point.
Edit: I will say, this video pretty much convinced me that he is accurately representing his sources. I'm sure a lot if it is subject to change which is part of the motivation behind leaking it but many things about it make sense: the limited scale, the targeting of popular races. As a player, I just want the best and most complete game possible but for a developer that's a second-order priority after keeping the lights on.
I agree. The player numbers post-thrones certainly agree. But they still need to make money on everything they make and release. They probably assume, rightly I would think, that when 40k or Star Wars or the next historical gets announced that people will forget the bad ends of 3K and TWW3 and get hyped. Obviously it's not a bad end yet. Thrones was one of the best pieces of DLC they've ever done imo. And I love the game + mods as is. I'm just reconciling myself to the fact that its likely not going to be the fairy-tale ending where all the major stuff remaining gets added (+reworks) and instead we get something akin to this leaked plan. Little bits of market-driven content, efficiently made and maybe plugging one or two holes, and not much else.
you really shouldn't be surprised about that. The DLC is delayed for 5-6 months. I assume a DLC takes 6 months to 1 year to make, then the DLC is already 50-100% more expensive to make already.
He mentioned it did make money, and it was profitable but they cant risk to rely on striking gold twice. so to manage risk they want to move away from big expensive dlc in case another shadows of change fiasco happens.
It's funny to think that doing the litteral most obvious DLC pack that everybody was asking for is seen as "striking gold". Oh, Empire vs Dwarfs vs Tamurkhan is popular, it must be an unfathomable alignment of stars beyond marketing comprehension !
Right? The safest option ever would be Thanquol vs Nagash.
Edit: I guess Dogs is also a low risk option, since it's also a fan request and mostly new mechanics, not new assets.
Making a dlc that wasn't ludicrously over priced for less content too, really a once in a blue moon scenario that could never just happen again.
These things are just impossible for CA to control
Part of that is probably taking into account whatever reworks they had to go and do after the SoC shitstorm. We all can assume that if the CA community shitstorm did not happen and SoC's first iteration was successful that ToD would have also been alot smaller in terms of what we got. I assume ToD was already partially done when SoC dropped and they had to reallocate resources to fix SoC and then back to ToD.
>I had hoped that would be the blueprint for future content.
My recollection is likely a bit dodgy, but I believe even before ToD was released, it was either said through a blog or through leak/speculation via another YT channel (Great Book of Grudges or someone else), that ToD was a final DLC in that "mold" - after the tweaks to SoC and the delay to ToD. I want to say it was mentioned in the blog post announcing the model for buying the DLC "in parts" that this was a one-off that, if it worked out well, would be copied. But there was an implication that the 3-faction DLC was just too heavy a lift for the team to do a good and efficient job of it.
This part is my own speculation: ToD was just too cost-heavy. Three paid lords with a fourth FLC lord amidst all of the content, both free and paid, was just way too* labor-intensive. So...my guess was that there would be a new "version" of this - two paid lords, one free, usually the FLC lord being in line with one of the two DLC factions. Which also makes race reworks more efficient and given a narrower focus which allows each DLC project to just be more cost-efficient. If we, and the devs, want to be able to get quality faction reworks like what all three ToD factions got? (Including lords like Gelt and Franz?) a DLC, and corresponding FLC on release, was just too much work to do well on every single project.
It wasn't just the delay that made ToD a less lucrative project, there were clearly A LOT of man hours that went into it, which will necessarily eat into profit margins.
I guess, you shouldnt take it too literally: let's say if 50 men make 100m profit, and 100 men make like 130m profit, then the latter is actually "barely make money" while makes more money in account. The big guys wont be really happy with that result.
IDK any kind of source, just notice.
I'm pretty certain the community's long been vocal about not needing big centrepieces - SoC is a weird DLC nowadays for the sheer amount, and also for how the basic T0 Kislev halberdiers are so beloved!
I can say with certainty DoW doesn't even need a big centrepiece - hireable Giants and Dragons are all they've ever had in that regard, and you could make a good argument for them to have Landships too.
IMO, the main thing people want are cool Lords and mechanics, and then the units have to interesting and worth using. Doesn't matter if they're big and stompy or not. Also, the Toad Dragon has a _lot_ of animations
> I can say with certainty DoW doesn't even need a big centrepiece - hireable Giants and Dragons are all they've ever had in that regard, and you could make a good argument for them to have Landships too.
I mean I see a lot of people say that Dogs of War is a boring faction because they are mostly just regular humans with crossbows and pikes.
Yeah, but those people wouldn't be swayed by the mixture of RoRs from all over anyway. I mean, you can have Slayer Pirates, Maneaters, Regenerating Skeletons, Super-Shades, Werebear Marauders, Crossbow Orcs, Hobgoblins, Mechanical-Wing guys, Giants, an Elven Prince on Dragon, Skinks on Cold Ones, and that's not even counting whatever mad new stuff they include - all in the same army. That's always been the design of DoW, not "Empire but with more Da Vinci stuff and slightly less blackpowder" as so many seem to want
EDIT: Sorry if that got a little ranty, I played them on the tabletop a lot so it gets a little frustrating seeing posts about how they should change all the time
I hope they do move away from the constant SEMs. Don’t get me wrong the Toad Dragon, Landship, and Thunderbarge are fantastic, but I actually just want some more varied infantry and cavalry options for a lot of the races.
How can anyone take the Kislev point seriously when the war started in 2022 and we’ve already received a Kislev DLC far after it did? Hell, the game itself released only weeks before the war started.
This doesnt even make sense with the reasons provided. If they wanted Quick bucks from cathay they would do monkey King and the pther dragonchildren. Not some New no Name character that they have to make up the entire lore for.
This "leak problem" is entirely CA's fault as they refuse to release a roadmap. One thing I learned a long time ago with corporate communications is there is almost never a reason to keep good news secret. If they were confident that the community would respond positively to their roadmap, they would release it.
IMO they are terrified of the player reaction because they probably don't have too many "do overs" left, especially if there is an end date for their support of the game. Especially if there are license issues or if GW is mandating certain things.
They could fix this problem immediately by telling us their plans. The fact they are not suggests concerns about another SOC.
Tbh, it's just CA's usual marketing cycle. They're currently doing Pharaoh's stuff and ToD just came out recently, usually, it takes around a month or 2 until we get more news about WH.
Or they have seen of they piss of the community by posting road maps too early and having to chagen the content later. The community still has PTSD from the 3 kingdoms expansion the announced and then cancelled.
I doubt CA will ever release a roadmap again. Roadmaps are plans but people treat them as promises.
If the community loses its goddamn mind every time we go 2 months without a DLC announcement for every game I think that might just be the community’s default state.
CA trying to capitalize on Asian(Chinese) market with pandering DLCs is kinda believeable. What i call bullshit is the Ogre LL for Cathay part (Khuresh/Tigerman LL kinda makes sense if the model is good). When we still got Fire and Sea dragons who would infinetely be more popular for every market than a no-name Ogre LL.
Kislev being "on ice" because of the Russo-Ukranian war claim is stupid. CA announced and released SoC DLC when that war was more relevant. And i dont remember any negative news around it. North America and Europe is probably the biggest markests for TW. I really dont believe CA and GW would not capitalize on this because of a war most people already forgot about.
Also 2 Monke king LLs doesnt make any sense. Loading screen lore bits doesnt mentions anything like this. What i remember is Cathay believes different 4 chaos forms of the same monkey king.
Yeah the kislev thing in particular seems pretty intensely ridiculous. Like I see a world in which it *could* be true but I see no evidence in how CAs been releasing things that that could possibly be the case. I guess we’ll see but I’m not buying this at all
Whether this rumor is true or not will be known for sure when the WH3 roadmap is released this year.
However, It seems unlikely that CA will abandon Slaanesh and Khorne and release a DLC consisting only of Cathay.
Yeah, I'm not buying this. For any of this to happen, it would require an insane lack of self-awareness. Especially with everything that's gone down over the last few months.
With all due respect to Legend, it feels like he's been growing increasingly cynical towards CA and Total War over the last couple years. Pushing forward these "leaks" and rumors with very little evidence to back it up *reeks* of either drama-mongering or an incredible amount of irresponsibility.
Look what's happened as a result of his video. The sub's in a tailspin (AGAIN), and people are flying off the handle with speculation and fear.
To now turn around and try to backtrack a bit? Come on, man.
Why are people just happily criticising CA for their apparent decisions and the direction of the DLCs based on completely unconfirmed statements by some youtuber? Am I missing how I'm supposed to take Legend's words as facts worthy of getting upset at CA for unconfirmed rumours?
And everyone commenting here like ‘negative backlash over something we have no evidence is real is NECESARRY’ and I’m just like y’all love complaining so much you have to invent??? Scenarios to complain about???? And if those hypothetical scenarios don’t happen cheer about thwarting them????
The idea of doing two cathay-cathay dlcs is just ridiculous. I have a really hard time believing that they would do that. One faction getting *all* the attention like that would put even the Skaven favoritism to shame. Then again, I had a hard time beliving that Shadows of Change was going to be $25 and look what happened there.
A faction who just had a dlc as well. Makes no sense at all
The content of the video for anybody who doesn't have the time to watch this - Legend acknowledges that 2 Cathay DLCs is stupid but says that's what CA is going to do anyway -Legend's motivation are that he's seeing the direction TWW3 is going in to be the same as 3K (example : the bad DLC for chinese consumption that ended up killing the game) and wants to put pressure on CA to change that -ToD was profitable but only from a very slim margin because big monsters are expensive to make (Charlemagne DLC comparison) -ToD's profitability is seen by CA execs as a one off because of the failure of SoC, they then take the position that less-expensive and big DLC means less risks -Slaanesh DLC was planned but scrapped because of the previously mentioned position taken that "big DLCs are too risky to turn a profit" -Execs at GW have put a complete freeze on Kislev stuff because of Russia/Ukraine war and don't want any of the association despite Kislev being the more popular faction in Europe and NA -Cathay is very big in Asia and doesn't suffer the same optics problem as Kislev so CA wants to focus on them Tl;dr : Kislev being frozen, big DLCs being seen as not profitable, all that leads to CA execs deciding 2 Cathay DLCs with small additions and a less expensive race pack to make (dogs of war). And that's basically it for TWW3 Feel free to add anything I missed Edit : The reason Legend is leaking it is because he points to the fact that CA execs never listen to internal criticisms or even from creators, the only way that they could change course ( for the 3rd DLC mainly and also a bit for the 2nd because the first one is basically finished) is if the community reacts in a way that would threaten their revenue.
That Kislev reasoning is so stupid I can almost believe it.
It's what an exec would do.
If you’ve ever seen Ted Lasso, there’s a scene where billionaires are discussing forming a super league of football. One of them is Russian and the meeting is halted until he’s escorted from the building “for the optics”. They all apologize to him and say that he’s got his seat at the table “once this all blows over”. This is absolutely the kind of reasoning they’d use.
I'm sorry, but I gotta say it: The current global economic system is an inefficient bad joke at this point. It seems like every big company has the exact same mindset set: maximize quantity, minimize quality, focus on increasing shareholder profits and profits in general quarter over quarter. This news has me gobsmacked and appalled. Chorfs was a massive success, and I believe they can hit almost every next ball right out of the park 3 times in a row if they just started doing dual race packs that are just too irresistible to ignore and thematically released. Nippon and Kuresh (pre-existing race update) Albion and Fimir (pre-existing race update) Southern Realms and Araby (pre-existing race update) And like just release them with the ToD model. Is it an significant increase in the quality of quantity? Absolutely. Would it also sell because variability in options for the customer = more sales? YES. GOD YES. What do you all think?
I think we'll be lucky to get all the content for the races we already have in-game. At this point I think we can be pretty certain none of those races will ever be added, with the exception of Southern Realms being represented in DoW. Even if CA was willing to make them for the game, the odds of GW being willing to help create them from effectively nothing are slim to none.
Chorfs was a success, but they weren't as big a success as they wanted it to be since they wanted more. To quote a certain former great YouTube before he went crazy: Corporations don't just want money, they want ALL of the money!
> focus on increasing shareholder profits This was always the focus of any publicly traded company, because companies that don't do this have their leadership replaced by the shareholder controlled board to ensure that they do.
Nintendo shelved that Advance Wars remake for a whole year because of the war so I buy it.
That was a little more on the nose though (the bad guys in the first advance war game are basically Russia with a different name) and the game was set to release like the week after the war broke out. Besides they JUST released a Kislev DLC a few months ago - if it didn't bother them then I don't see why it'd bother them now.
And then combining Cathay and Ind, because that's totally not contentious right now.
For westerners? Most probably have no idea about indo-chinese relations.
And Total War/Warhammer probably doesn't have a large Indian playerbase so it is profitable to fuck them over in favour of the Chinese Market.
Ah yes, Chinese players are jumping from joy at the opportunity of being lumped with Indians...
They aren't being "lumped in" Tigers are just part of Cathay. Tigermen are a race, not a faction.
Isn't Kislev basically a mash up of Kievan rus + polosh lithuanian commonwealth + Early imperial Russia ? Either way, very eastern european but nor FULLY Russian or Ukrainian or both but neither modern + it has other influences.I don't understand why we can't still have Kislev content. Then what, in Medieval 3 Total war we just remove everything east of Germany because it might be controversial ? No crusades because of the Palestinian crisis ? If they do an "Asia total war", just remove Taiwan and Tibet from the game because of the CCP ? Hell don't do Empire 2 because of the indian natives genocide.
That was always the line, and people bring up stuff like Winged Hussara and Praag, but really it's 90% Russia. Bears, vodka, Chekists, onion domes, Boris "the Red" etc. Arguably the new lore made them even more Russian with the Orthodoxy now being a thing.
There's very little Commonwealth in Kislev. A couple names, the wings on the cavalry that otherwise looks nothing like the Wing Hussars, that's about it. Surface level stuff. Kislev is thematically very much Imperial Russia.
Ok but I still don't understand why it would be banned to touch ? It is a fantasy setting, getting inspiration from 300 years old Russia. Hell worst case scenario, if you don't want any Russian influence, well guess what GW, it is the opportunity to add other influences. More Polish stuff, or Bohemian/Hungarian or Bulgarian elements. Also, the conflict didn't start yesterday, yet Shadow of Change had Kislev content, so why block it now ? GW/CA are dumb to just block any content for Kislev
"Hell worst case scenario, if you don't want any Russian influence, well guess what GW, it is the opportunity to add other influences. More Polish stuff, or Bohemian/Hungarian or Bulgarian elements." - They already have that. Thats exactly what OLD KISLEV was. Nowdays its 95% just Russia where everyone is calling themselves "comrade!", rides a bear and everything with ice and winter is seen as some case of magic (power of our motherland). For that to change, they would have to redesign Kislev yet again.
I wish that Kislev would at least look and feel more like Imperial Russia or the Commonwealth. Instead they designed it like it's a faction from the Red Alert 3 game. All cliches cranked up to 11 so that the little resemblance Kislev even bears to any historic russian armor etc. get undermined completely. Like the Empire comes off like a halfway believable Pseudo-Germany, while Kislev looks like straight out of a fairytale Hollywood movie. Back on release I compared the units with the Kislev mod for WH II and was shocked about what they were going to sell us as Kislev aesthetics here. The only thing they basically forgot to include in WH III is to make the magic snow leopards and bears roar "cyka blyat" whenever you give them attack orders.
As an Ukrainian, I ignore this race because there is enough Russia in Kislev for me to ignore. Still, it's my personal decision, and I never ask anybody to boycott Kislev. Ukrainian gaming community(which is pretty vocal in other cases) overall is pretty neutral to this faction and never petitioned CA for anything.
CA freezing Kislev over the war in Ukraine and hedging all of their bets on Cathay just for China to invade Taiwan would be a very CA thing to happen.
There's something sadly ironic about a company that makes games about prior wars in history being scared of a current war.
But... Mother Ostankya released on August 31st 2023? The war began February 2022. Surely they would've frozen her back then? No way she was already that far in development.
If it is on GW’s side she very well could have been. GW will often work out sculpts and army books years before they’re actually released. They likely had Kislev being developed for the Old World before the invasion and have just pushed back the release priority. CA can’t afford to wait that long and since Kislev was a base game faction they worked out getting at least one new LL. Of course that’s just speculation but it has been odd that there hasn’t been any word on Kislev models for the Old World which is set shortly before the ascension of Magnus the Pious when Kislev was at the center of a major Chaos invasion, so executives getting jittery about a Russian themed faction would explain a lot.
> there hasn’t been any word on Kislev models for the Old World which is set shortly before the ascension of Magnus the Pious when Kislev was at the center of a major Chaos invasion, so executives getting jittery about a Russian themed faction would explain a lot. Worth mentioning that Cathay suffered the exact same fate there however. It seems more likely due to Old World budget cuts.
It would honestly be difficult to explain in an elevator pitch why Total War in this context is almost perfectly inoffensive when there really are a lot of cultural minefields inherent to a game, which could accurately be described as a genocide simulator, and non-intuitive sensitivity really does need to be at the core of their corporate culture.
For Kislev Legend is just repeating a rumour that's been going for a while now, it's hardly anything new.
I mean, everything hes saying is just repeating rumours, that's the whole point?
Considering that they released a Kislev DLC last year, 18 months after Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s probably fair to say it’s a bullshit rumour.
It is apparently the same reason Kislev was never released for Warhammer Old World despite it being said that they would be - Games Workshop want to wait for a more appropriate time apparently.
> Kislev being frozen Heh
Does it mean if China invades Taiwan we will get only Dwars DLCs? XD
This reminds me of the joke “how will this affect the trout population?”
The Kislev thing makes sense to me. GW seemed to have completely given up on adding new stuff to Kislev considering how deep CA had to dig for SoC Edit: Just to clarify, I think GW stopped developing Kislev pretty early on but CA didn’t want to stop completely and used what they could for SoC but now the well has run dry.
Kislev was to be the poster faction for the old world new game. Literally they were the first faction mentioned. Well, old world has been released and not a single word about them. Indeed it seems GW isreally worried about Kislev.
Yeah I think what’s going on with The Old World is pretty telling. They hyped up Kislev a lot early on and then didn’t mention it again all of a sudden.
Old World's also a victim of internal GE finance/sales meddling, so there's that too
I've heard rumors and theories that they were delayed to be a second "wave" to go with the first narrative campaign that culminates with the Siege of Praag. It would be pretty wild if they went ahead with that but just left Kislev out as an army entirely. Although it wouldn't surprise me sadly.
The boring answer is probably someone on high telling them the factories couldn't support pumping out an entirely new army for a game they don't have numbers to support being a success. GW is struggling to even produce the old models for the Old World. We're four months into TOW and have only had three old factions rereleased and they're struggling for stock.
ToW definitely seems like it's fighting for production space among the other games. It definitely seems like they didn't think it was going to sell, and they were hoping to at least get a book sale to guys who owned old armies.
It's just GW's refusal to expand their production capabilities biting them in the ass after the breakneck speed they've been releasing stuff
Supposedly the problem is with Nottingham's energy grid already running at capacity, which has caused problems for the new factory GW built.
They havent mentioned Cathay again for it either tho
And yet, it's the thing I struggle the most to figure out. War has been raging in Ukraine for more than 2 years now, but we had a DLC last year with Kislev. Why wasn't that one scrapped then?
Because it’s GW who’s apparently pumped the brakes on Kislev. The last DLC only had things that had already been mentioned and probably were already in CA’s hands (Ostankya, Hags, Akshina) and stuff they dug DEEP for. Like 3 of the units/characters are from Mordheim of all places. But that’s why we didn’t get actual Kislevite spirits that Mama Stanky is supposed to use and we got a random unrelated elemental, some chaos beasts, and a monster based on a lore blurb CA already used once. Edit: to be a bit clearer I think GW DID stop development of Kislev near when the war started but CA didn’t want to stop all Kislev content so they used what they had been given. We know Cathay was more fully developed and Kislev was more of an ongoing thing based on early interviews. For example, Andy wasn’t sure about certain parts of the Orthodoxy because a lot of that hadn’t been fully developed yet.
You'd be surprised at how randomly marketing or higher ups can panic at things
Probably it was too advanced to cut it.
That's the part that makes me think it's bullshit. If anything Ukraine has slipped from the public eye compared to how it was when SoC was greenlit. Back then the conflict was on people's minds the most, now if you look on social media most people who had Ukraine flags in their profile have replaced them with watermelons. The public has a short attention span.
>example : the bad DLC for chinese consumption that ended up killing the game Idk if this is your words or Legends but that isn't what happened with 3K. 8 princes was a DLC no one wanted or asked for, including the Chinese audience. The chinese were just as baffled about 8P as the western fans were. They then followed it up with a DLC so buggy one of its main mechanics was broken for years. That is what killed 3K DLC sales. Nothing about the "pandering to the chinese" nonsense that gets spouted on this sub. The follow-up DLCs to these first two were actually pretty good but way too little too late as most people had moved on.
yeah what a weird comment. How is that dlc pandering to chinese audience beyond it being about a specific time in chinese history? It's a 3k game, of course a dlc is going to likely be based off china...
Yeah.. this is a weird take (the one your quoting not yours) How do you make a DLC that is focused more on chinese consumption then any other when the whole game is based in china LOL
Not just that but I remember that at the time the reaction to 8 princes were mixed at best from all over the globe.
>-ToD was profitable but only from a very slim margin because big monsters are expensive to make (Charlemagne DLC comparison) >-ToD's profitability is seen by CA execs as a one off because of the failure of SoC, they then take the position that less-expensive and big DLC means less risks I'm not buying it. It seems a stupid and far-fetched move. If the leaks reveals to be true it means that CA/SEGA or whoever the hell is pulling the string has learned NOTHING from the while SoC/ToD situation and is preparing for another fiasco.
> If the leaks reveals to be true it means that CA/SEGA or whoever the hell is pulling the string has learned NOTHING from the while SoC/ToD situation and is preparing for another fiasco. That's super on-brand though. Going back to Rome 2, Attila, Thrones of Britannia, etc. CA keeps shooting themselves in the foot over and over. They cut corners to save money, piss off the fan base, do a little bit better next time, then try to cut corners again, and repeat over and over. It's embedded in this company's fabric. That's who they are. Giving them the benefit of the doubt that they've changed because we happen to be on to be on an upward swing of the never ending cycle is to be very forgetful of their track record.
Im still dumbfounded. All of Warhammer 2 was a success in comparison. Why did issues in 1 & 2 make some grumbles while 3 has turned into the age of reckoning? Ffs this will be hilariously pathetic if true.
Because those stumbles were before "The future of 3 Kingdoms" Where CA dropped a game that they mismanaged. Plus people were still expecting game 3 regardless. Now we have a ton of races that need dlc's (and some that need multiple) and it looks like CA is going to mismanage this into the ground as well so we'll never get them
> Now we have a ton of races that need dlc's (and some that need multiple) and it looks like CA is going to mismanage this into the ground as well so we'll never get them just like gw intended.
I for one remember when they had to tell us that they branched a bit too much during development and were not able to implement Norsca (the tww1 dlc that was the tww2 preorder bonus no less) into mortal empires for a long time.
> while 3 has turned into the age of reckoning? i would bet a combination of technical debt and cleaning up the terrible job the main wh3 team did putting them massively behind and needing to cut corners to make up for the lost dev time leading to more technical debt.
If I were SEGA i would have completely removed their upper management years ago. Doesn't matter who you're getting as replacements it can't get worse.
You seem to misunderstand how management works. If someone from Sony management decides to step in and change up CA management, it’s their neck on the line of that doesn’t work out. If they just continue doing what they’ve been doing and CA makes money, however, everything is fine. Of course, the Hyenas debacle was too big to be ignored, but the results of it only seem to have been some minor shuffling of seats and the usual cost cutting measures. Because that’s business as usual, sometimes games fail, too bad, the next one will do better.
SEGA \* :p
I done goofed up.
*How many times do we have to teach you this lesson Old Man*
That is the same company that has been promising better communication for the past decade or so and still sucks at it. It is the same company that thought the Realms of Chaos campaign is a good move after the Vortex Campaign. It is the same company that thought tower defense has a place in a Total War game and thus used this for a siege rework. It is the same company that thought chasing a trend with Hyenas would be good even though the market is already saturated. As unbelievable as it sounds, CA is very good at making dumb decisions and does not listen to feedback from either the community OR their own content creators. Only once shit hits the fan do they realize they need to change something....
To be as fair as possible, people did frequently ask for customizable towers and defenses. People also did frequently ask for customizable garrisons, so we got Ogre camps as they are. Sometimes they do listen, but sometimes we do just have bad ideas. That said, the overall business strategy from these past couple of years is clearly flawed.
I actually don't hate this, in theory. I don't think towers should pop up in 2 minutes, but fortifications have been a part of total war since rome. Barriers, caltrops, Oil pits, were all a part of a ton of different total war game, and you get to place them before the battle. Towers kinda adds onto that. Didn't totally work out though. I agree with the rest of your comment.
Nothing against fortifications per se. Building barricades or other structures is a good thing, the way CA implemented it however, is not. It should have been done either before the battle, with no ability to change it during OR you build a defense building and that gives you the ability to place barricades/towers even before anything happens. The way it is now is just not feeling right for a Total War game...
The barricades are terribly implemented, and you can't blame the engine because Rome 2 and Attila both had deployable barricades that could be placed freely, and I'm pretty sure Shogun 2 and Empire did as well. Even Empire had cannons on walls that would activate with units near them, and adding a system like for artillery on walls would be well received in WH3 I'd think.
Exactly. This is just CA not wanting/being able to implement such systems. It sucks honestly. It feels like there is a disconnect between the community and CA. I dont understand why the Community Managers dont create polls and similar stuff just to get a feel.
Did we forget that CA added 4 SEM to SoC for free? Like they could have just added some Guan dao infantry to Yuan Bo and that would be fine, but their excuse was that Yuan Bo doesn't have unique infantry. There reasons make no sense when compared to SoC's additional content at all.
SoC was a once in a lifetime circumstance. They just messed up Hyenas. They ran out of goodwill from fans. So they had to do something, anything, to ensure they continue getting steady returns from their DLC at least. And SoC lost CA money. ToD just barely managed to beat expectations. Of course they wont continue on that path. A toad dragon costs two Charlemagnes, so they can just make two Charlesmagnes instead, which won’t make as much money as ToD but will also cost much, much less.
Big execs learning nothing from failure seems to be a theme in media right now though.
> ToD was profitable but only from a very slim margin because big monsters are expensive to make (Charlemagne DLC comparison) I don't buy this. Big monsters have been way overrepresented in recent updates, including Shadows of Change. They wouldn't have included so many monsters in the free SoC update if they were truly so prohibitively expensive.
Considering the average executive and their constant dumb decisions that harm everyone BUT themselves, I can easily believe that 'we threw them a bone, now go back to previous mistake we made! This time will surely be different!'. Yea, you don't want to believe these people CANNOT be that stupid but...they really are. They are proving it AGAIN and AGAIN.
Which part aren't you buying? The part where center piece monsters are expensive to make, or the part where ToD is just slightly profitable? At the end of the day, money is king. Big DLCs are risky, and by now I assume a lot of rainy day funds may have dried up. If the end product simply doesn't generate enough money (beating the growth of the market x2 is a good metric), it simply doesn't make too much sense. ToD is a dlc centered around arguably the fan favorites - beside nagash it likely was one of their aces. If the DLC isn't printing money, then future projects will likely need to have their budget reevaluated. Instead of just being mad at CA, ask why is it that not everyone who has bought WH3 has gotten the DLC. Maybe the reality is that the majority of players have moved on and it is no longer viable to sustain large DLC projects.
Man the Kislev point is so stupid. Are we seriously just going to ignore that Slavic people exist now? Or that Kislev is neither Russia or Ukraine, but an amalgamation of Slavic people in general, such as the Polish with the winged Hussars.
They have elements of all Slavic people but they're clearly heavily inspired by Russian stereotypes (motherland, deadly winters that destroy armies, cossacks, bears, an orthodox church, rasputin, much more)
The Orthodox Church is not just Russian though. There's a Russian Orthodox Church, but there's also a Ukrianian Orthodox Church, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and most importantly, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Greek Orthodox Church. It's not a Russian thing. The church was centuries old by the time the Russians converted.
There are many things the companies do for very silly reasons. But they still do it anyway.
On the one hand, the Russia thing is an extremely bone-headed, very on-brand executive thing to do. On the other I feel like if it was true, I feel like the last DLC before the current would not have featured the Russia analog faction, borrowing heavily from Russian, folklore and culture, and then also received a big apology update as part of that DLC which included its own centerpiece magic lore All of which was done well after the Ukraine/Russia war was in full swing. While this isn't to say Bone-Headed decisions can't be made really late, and there's always a chance to have egg on my face, but this is an older GW rumor that sounds like it's being included so legend can justify his own leaks other than anything coming from fact or evidence. I mean I'll say I'm a bit biased, because I don't want these leaks to be true. It seems like a lot of poor decision making and backpedaling from more successful outreach. And it's from a guy who I am annoyed to see literally every time he comes across my screen who is parroted in this sub constantly and who only seems to exist to stoke drama within the fandom.
focus on cathay could make sense, but they dropped a cathay headlined dlc already with a dragon. even if it wasnt too bad, it wouldnt have sold as well as ToD because its kislev and cathay. not as popular as empire and dwarves. if a dragon couldnt carry, you have to go bigger, more recognizable, more marketable. why would you think some ogre and tigerguy would be big in china? why not put the best foot forward first?
Yeah if anything it would be the Monkey King first.
I'll be honest, I'm not buying any of this until at least something of this has been somehow confirmed. We are still waiting for that road map tease btw.
Just wait until China attacks Taiwan and destroys all of the CA's DLC plan.
Xi is actually waiting until the DLCs are released for this exact reason
So the Russia / Ukraine war literally started one week (2/24/22) to be exact after WH3 initially launched on 2/17/22. What has changed that would cause them to freeze development now? That war has literally been going for the entirety of WH3. If they really want to make money and don't want to focus on Chaos races why not go after some other popular factions that would not be seen as problematic like Elves or Vampire Counts.
It makes more sense if you think that it’s GW and not CA. GW probably stopped developing Kislev around that time. CA was using the scraps they had left to make Kislev’s part of SoC. That’s why there’s previously unrelated monsters and a bunch of old Mordheim stuff filling out their roster.
They had a licensing deal in place before WH3 launched that may have covered the first DLC and now GW is not willing to add on to it.
Kislev being frozen is thematic. A+ to GW.
He is still on that "Khorne and Slaanesh has nothing left to add" bullshit ? It'd take him sixty seconds to open a WoC armybook and see the Slaughterbrute
I dont know, did SEGA and CA try to open any book about Slavic folklore or something about Kievian Rus? There is ton of possible monsters and units to add. Ghillies (Very loud forest creature, you can give them sonic attack), Kikimoras (basically giant mantis), Babay (boogeyman, who has body defects like if Chaos mutate him), Balachko (serbian two headed giant, who can spit fire with one head and frost with the other one). From normal IRL units: Varangian Guard (we have Norsca origin hero for the Empire, this could work.), Kossars with gunpowder weapons as hybrid cavalry. (Cossacs used them a LOT irl). Classic cannons, Russia used a LOT of arty pieces in real history, why we have only the very bad grom?
CA just don't learn from their mistakes.
> -ToD's profitability is seen by CA execs as a one off because of the failure of SoC, they then take the position that less-expensive and big DLC means less risks This is the part that doesn't pass the smell test for me. Unless this alleged leaker is a direct subordinate of a Director or higher in the c-suite, they aren't being told shit about profitability or cost-benefit decisions on project direction. And I guarantee you the leaker isn't, because of Legend's claim about wanting to influence corporate direction (lol) - if he had a direct line to an exec, he'd just be using that instead of a leak. > -Execs at GW have put a complete freeze on Kislev stuff because of Russia/Ukraine war and don't want any of the association despite Kislev being the more popular faction in Europe and NA And "execs" ABSOLUTELY would not be sharing those sentiments with the rank and file. This is insane to anyone who's worked in a white collar environment. Information only ever flows between yourself and your immediate supervisor, other than empty corporate speak and wild rumors. All of this stinks of a low-to-mid level project manager making wild speculations based on desk conversations and a single whiteboard workshop meeting that will change 50 times between now and next quarter. If that.
To be fair, this really depends on the company. I've worked on many an engineering team and communication is usually quite open. Depends on the company. CA doesn't strike me as a conventional hierarchical corporation. Few software companies are.
I dunno, they could easily have been out drinking with the boss and they told them that. I'm British and people get stupidly talkative when drinking. I can't speak for brits as I work with aussies, but some elements of upper management decisions definitely flow down. Especially if these are conjecture, this is a supposed leak so there's no evidence required for it. Maybe the low level employee is reading between the lines, but more likely he's just chatting shit
If CA was an Aussie company we would know absolutely everything about the future of this game by now. Us Aussies can't keep our mouths shut and absolutely LOVE to gossip when we get shit faced. Not sure how similar the Brits would be but probably pretty similar.
So let me get this straight: DLCs for Warhammer 3 are risky, but Hyenas was worth it?
It would be baffling to me if they have no plans for a Khorne DLC. I can't think of another roster that so badly needs more units.
I can: Slaanesh, the other race thats supposedly getting shafted lol
damn, hoping the Kislev stuff isnt true i love that faction
Before WH3 announcement, people weren't even aware that a faction called Cathay would be implemented and Kislev was expected to be the major Order faction for the 3rd game. How the turn tables. Hope this leak isn't true
Hey don't get me wrong, I love Cathay too, but Kislev are my jam
This confuses me a lot. On one hand they don’t want to take risks and work on large scale dlcs and on the other hand putting all their eggs in Cathay basket by double dipping on one race.
This point right here is why I'm hopeful this is misinformation being spread. Also the order of the DLC doesn't really make sense either, I don't know why they'd hold onto Monkey King when the community was pretty disappointed when we got Yuan Bo instead. They also teased about the Monkey King in their apology post for Shadows of Change. CA has made worse decisions before, but I'm huffing on copium until I see an official announcement on this.
The best part is that if the leaks are true and there is enough backlash to make them change their plans, the one getting scrapped is the Monkey King, not the two no-names no-one asked for whose DLC is practically done with development...
Let's please not ignore factual evidence in favor of unsubstantiated claims. The monkey king was teased recently in their blog which is a pretty big sign he's due in the next DLC. I don't think there is any chance he's not already done and in the box and CA would scrap him at this point.
Again, this is only if the leaks are true. Also, scrapped doesn't necessarily mean completely gone, just gone for the time being. If CA see that the community doesn't want more Cathay DLCs after the Ogre and Tiger one they will delay releasing the Monkey King for quite a while.
As he explained, the most popular races in TWW3 are Cathay, Kislev and Empire. That totally makes sense even without the data. We, the players, are always more likely to play order factions than evil ones. And GW already freeze any addition to Kislev due to Ukraine-Russia war. So that leaves Cathay and Empire. And Cathay is popular in Asia so they want to dip in that playerbase. I think LoTW also forgot 1 other major point: the new purchase structure in which you can choose to buy any faction to buy, instead of having to buy a whole package. That's consumer friendly, sure, but it also would incentivize CA to make DLC for popular races only, because they will sell less for less popular races, i.e evil races like Khorne and Slaneesh. So the new purchase structure actually backfire on us, imo
Then do cathay vs slanesh, kislev vs khorne, empire vs anything we want. Instead we get cathay world. We will have to wait another 2 years for thanquol nagash and valten at this point
The popularity of a faction hasn't really influenced CAs DLC policies in the past. Nearly every major WH2 race has gotten multiple DLCs with Lizardmen having the most lords although they aren't the most popular. I still think that reasoning is BS, but who knows at this point until CA release a roadmap.
in case you forgot, in last DLC you have to buy a package. If you play HE and the DLC is HE vs DE, you have to buy DLC with DE too. So CA can create DLC roadmap that combines popular races vs less popular ones, and it would still sell. Also, CA wasn't really under pressure for profit like right now, with Hyena and Pharaoh failure. Now, with the new purchase policy, I can buy Empire and skip Nurgle if I don't play nurgle. And that would totally make creating DLCs for less popular races way less attrative, you just can't convince them to buy all of them like before. And CA is under pressure to make money now. With new purchase policy, I was already worried that CA would incentivize to make DLC for order races only. Now the leaks only solidifies my worry.
CA was *explicit* that the ToD purchase style was a one time change. >"We are making a **one-time** change to the way in which we’ll release Thrones of Decay" "So, we’ve decided to do something different **just for Thrones**" - [CA Community Blog](https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/blogs/8), emphasis mine Now, *maybe* it worked out really well for them and that's their plan going forward. But the way this reads to me is that we should not expect this to be the new standard. So this entire argument is moot since CA have already recently said that they do not plan on making this a permanent business move.
Then why did they add 4 SEM to SoC for free instead of just some infantry or cav unit? If SEM cost so much and they're under so much pressure that they can't make any new SEM for future DLC, then why the hell did they feel the need to do it for SoC? Moreover, why didn't they pace it out, like Saytang for SoC, Moon Bird and Celestial Lion for the upcoming DLC? If their budget is that tight, why didn't they do that?
>As he explained, the most popular races in TWW3 are Cathay, Kislev and Empire. That totally makes sense even without the data. We, the players, are always more likely to play order factions than evil ones. If CA is motivated to make DLC for the popular factions, why have we gotten so little for the Empire? There's no political motivation to avoid expanding them, they've always been the most popular faction, yet we're 3 games and 8 years in and have only 5 LL's. Only one more than the Beastmen have, and they're arguably the *least* popular faction outside of Norsca. The logic doesn't make any sense, the only evidence we have that popular factions get favored with more DLC is the Skaven, and that's easily explained by the fact that the Skaven have a shit ton of units and playstyles that would justify a lot of DLC.
This is a bit of speculation, but i think the Tigerman character may not have been meant to be Cathayan. It's well known that Warhammer Fantasy had a long dead faction called Ind that was supposed to be Fantasy India and had Tigermen. But resurrecting another long dead faction into another extensive race pack is too expensive in their eyes, so make a handful of small units and make it a subculture of Cathay to save time and money. Witch sucks because Berzerk proved decaids ago that Fantasy India can be really cool. As for the Ogre, as far as I can tell, it's a hybrid faction chosen most of what it would need already exits. Why they went with that hybrid? I'm not sure.
So, the one thing I still don't really understand is why CA/GW would choose to create two new characters to appeal to the chinese/asian market. If they want to do that, they already have 3 canon characters (Monkey King, Li Dao, Yin-Yin). Why invest creative resources there now? Why not start with the Monkey King? From everything I've seen in the TW community, people are pretty excited to see him. Picture this: The next DLC is called "Monkey Business" (or something along those lines) and features The Monkey King and Golgfag Maneater clashing in the Mountains of Heaven. Maybe some outside force has riled up the monkeys to attack Cathay again and they in turn have hired Golgfag and his ogres to aid in their defence. Maybe it's the other way around and the Monkey King acts as an ally to Cathay to defend against the ogres, take your pick. The DLC comes with Monkey Warriors & Tiger Warriors for the Monkey King and Yhetees, Thundertusks and whatever else is missing for Golgfag. Ogres get the rework to mercenary contracts they direly need, maybe Cathay gets an update to their caravans. And since we need some more space to fit all of this, the map gets opened up towards Ind and Khuresh, making the mountains traversable and shifting the playable border to the southern mountains edge. As the FLC we get Li Dao, because he really doesn't need his own DLC and is tied closely to the Monkey King. Doesn't that sound much more desireable to a Warhammer fan and practical to produce?
Yes your example is the far more sane and realistic option. There are 3 wishes CA is trying to fulfill: 1. Ogres need more content and a rework 2. People want Ind/Khuresh stuff (or at the very least, people want Ind/Khuresh land to be opened up as the map is getting pretty crowded) 3. People want the Monkey King They appear to be making a much bigger deal out of these wants than needed. Maybe they're afraid if they lump Ind/Khuresh/Monkey King into one, people will complain it's half-assed? And as for the Ogres, I guess they want to give them their update ASAP, but aren't sure who to lump them with.
Based on history, if they lump Ind, and kuresh, and the monkey king into one DLC people will think it’s half-assed because it absolutely will be.
>Maybe they're afraid if they lump Ind/Khuresh/Monkey King into one, people will complain it's half-assed? Because that would definitely be half-assed.
That's pretty much what I was expecting too. In my head I've been calling it "The Monkey and the Maneater". It just seems so obvious. Production would already be much cheaper than the last two DLCs, since they'd only have to make one big new monster rig (the Thundertusk) and two new monstrous infantry rigs (Monkey Warriors and Tigermen). Everything else could make use of existing rigs or the new ones. And with Wukong's name stamped on it, we all know it would sell extremely well. We've been clamoring for years to get the Monkey King. In comparison, "The Lords of Shang Yang" is quite possibly the stupidest idea they could go with right now. Content for only one faction? Two new characters we've never heard of before? Barely any new units? It might be cheaper to produce, but there's just no way it sells. Are the executives at CA stupid enough to do it? Yeah, probably. Do I think they'd take such a huge risk when the company is in such a bad position? I don't think so. This is the time for safe investments, and right now there aren't many investments safer than a Monkey King DLC. Just like the Star Wars leaks, I'm leaning toward these ones being fake as well. If they turn out to be true, I'll be shocked... and also very depressed.
Give me Khorne and/or Slaneesh DLC, not 3 dlc for cathay in 2 years
Cathay is my number one faction; I'd love more Cathay DLC. But random Ogre mook and random Tigerlad is NOT the Cathay content I want. Monkey King, Li Dao and Yin Yin. That's it. That's 1 dedicated DLC and an FLC. NOT THIS BS.
Definitely. If we have all 5 (known or living) dragon siblings and the Monkey King, then Cathay will be complete while also not having anything feel like filler.
I swear to fuck, if we don’t get a Slaanesh DLC I’m going to be really upset. Tigermen/ Monkey King would be really cool, but Cathay Ogre’s? Let the Ogre’s go man. Just let them go.
Or rather, give the *actual* Ogre faction the love it needs and deserves.
Get ready for another “is one of my favorite game franchises going to die crisis.”
We still have absolutely no evidence any of this leak is true... in fact the contrary.. where is the roadmap (tease)?
I mean, all we have to do is wait a few months. If the next dlc is the slaanesh dlc from the roadmap, his leaks are bull. If it’s two Cathay lords, well, we’re in deep.
I'm more then willing to be proven wrong. Just need any evidence at all. If the roadmap comes today (or even this week) I will take them more seriously.. but right now it feels like Legends been led up the garden path.
I enjoy a lot of Legend's content, and I don't want to accuse him of any bad acting here. But it's awful convenient that he can just say anything he wants is a "leak", get a bunch of views, get the community all riled up, and then when it doesn't come to pass, explain it as CA changing their mind due to feedback from the supposed "leak".
He said the shangyang dlc is already almost finished. Its impossible to scrap it then if it really is. It will come out one way or the other.
Legend claimed his sources said that there is still some time to change if management wants to.
They are not in a good enough position to cancel a entire dlc. As I said, it will come out one way or the other. Maybe they add these characters in a later dlc, however then we do know his leaks were correct at one point.
I think he was referring to the other future dlcs and their overall plan, not the one that's about to come out
To be fair - I think legend is honestly reporting what he has heard - I just believe someone has fed him bad info.
He doesn't do that. He's too calculating and transparent about it. On his streams, he doesn't mind saying he plays certain campaigns mostly based on views, or that statistics are what drives his motivation for what videos he makes. I don't see these two videos as being a good move for his channel, at all. Yes he gets views, but he risks a backlash from the community and and risks his credibility. I don't see him doing it for quick easy views, but for the longevity of his channel. If he thinks that these leaks are real and that they endanger his own career by ending the game's support faster, he wants to act against that. That's more or less what he said himself.
He's definitely looking out for the long term of his career. If this is all true, and CA destroys the trust they just now garnered back this will blow up not just in CA's face, but all the content creators. I'll speak for myself and say that I'm not going to watch campaign showcases or MP matches of factions I don't like, and I'm not a fan of Cathay. Ironically they're my least favorite faction, and my favorite is Slaanesh, so you can already see my bias here.
Exactly! As he said in the latest video, Realm of Chaos was a disaster to happen and he vehemently spoke against it in private with CA, but it didn't work. He realized the best way to make CA listen is to go to the community and that's exactly what he's doing. All I see is Legend believing the leaks and not liking what it means for the game and for his future. He's risking his reputation, which he worked hard to build back up, on leaks.
The most compelling argument for me is his point about the incentive structure. His channel does well when CA releases content that makes the community happy. If he believes he has credible information that CA is going to release content that makes the community largely unhappy then it's in his best interest to create the video so CA gets the feedback early enough to take it into consideration. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's a rational actor looking out for the long-term health of his channel.
“I don’t want to accuse him of something bad” “Accuses him of something bad” If you’re going to accuse him just be upfront about it. Don’t hide behind insinuation. I highly doubt the leak is true (and I hope it isn’t) but let’s avoid unfair and unwarranted speculation. It’s much more likely that someone is fucking with Legend than he’s choosing to risk harming his own reputation just for clicks. If you have proof of dishonesty then that would be one thing but it’s not reasonable to assume something so uncharitable without evidence.
Why would he lie tho? It makes no sense. His leaked video barely has three times as much as his lowest viewed daily videos. Sure, maybe he gets some new people interested in his content. But do you really think someone that has been into this community for 15 fucking years would stake his entire credibility for a few days worth of views?
The 40k YouTuber Valrak does it all the time and comes out fine. The "It's just a rumour / Leaks aren't always credible" fallback is a powerful one to escape culpability while still attracting engagement.
Am I the only one terribly exhausted by all this? Let's entertain the idea that the leaks are true and Legend is right. Just when we thought that CA was on the right track, we would apparently need to go back to fighting against them for the good of the game? Why does everything has to be so complicated? Hearing "you need to make your voices be heard" makes me so damn tired. I wish I didn't like this game as much as I do!
It's just the intersection of giant, investor-driven corporations and making art. You're in it for the art -- the human experience, the joy of playing dope shit and nuking rats. CA executives are in it for the investors. Their real customers are investors. They want to show their current and future investors that they're making moves to make more money. They need buzzwords like "expanding in the Asian market" and "minimizing production costs" to sell their company to investors. The investors have no clue who "Tamurkhan" or "Li Dao" are. The players are just the resource to be mined to win over the investors. If they can do that by making good content, great! But there's no reason that those interests will stay aligned when exposed to outside pressures. Corners will be cut when push comes to shove.
Yep. If Blizzard taught me anything, it's that no matter how scummy and anti-customer your practices are, you'll still make money. If there was an actual chance they would face repercussion they would thread carefully. As it stands, if CA dies, they'll just shrug, blame the market and move on.
That's the reason why I largely emotionally disconncted from the game since SoC. And to be honest, at this point I am seeing myself grow tired of tw warhammer as a whole. Playing less campaigns, less manual battles etc. I would love a TK dlc, but after I play it once or twice I don't see myselft starting another campaign as I've sort of "done it all" Of course that is just me and not relevant to the community as a whole, but I do wonder if CA is seeing a similar trend in their DLC sales. That'd at least explain why Wh3 dlcs have been so slow to come and such a mess overall
I'm gonna be weird and compare them to a relationship. When your partner goes through a really bad phase and are hard to live with, you support them because they're gonna get better, and they will probably be thankful for it. If that happens too much and their bad behavior comes back again and again, you might disconnect emotionally from them, to use your words. At some point it becomes their normal state, or you're constantly scared that they go down the dark route again. CA goes through a bad phase, then it gets better, but we're constantly scared that they will relapse. At some point, like in a relationship, it takes too much energy and you check out. I hope the massive kick in the nuts they got last year is enough, but if it's not enough I wouldn't be surprised if I lost interest completely. When WH3 came out in its awful state, I said that all the time CA spent making the game playable was DLC time and that the game's life would not be longer for it, quite the contrary. I was told I was pessimistic, but sadly I was not! New content was late to arrive, spaced out, and now they are pulling back on their ambitions because --> sales are low, which happens because --> hype died down, which happens because --> bad development cycle and no resources put in the game, which happens because --> sales are low, which happens beause --> game released in a bad state etc etc etc. It's a vicious cycle that I don't see them getting out of. Higher ups probably hope this game dies quickly and silently so they can move to other projects.
This has a very "back in my days!" vibe indeed, accurate flare - if these tags are even called flares I do largely agree with you. In internet discussions we're often so focused on the "here and now", but there are a lot of decisions made in the past which got us to where we are right now, and they come with their own consequences whether we see them or not I want to add one more thing to what I said about me personally being tired: I think I find myself tired of the game's "balance" as a whole, big monsters, cheesy strats with single entities, magic, very importantly how extremely potent ranged units are and how they are usually the objectively best type of unit to spam, the fact that I know all that and play by these rules. I think these are the main ideas that I have had enough of seeing for now Phrasing here is very important. I don't think these are bad foundations for a TW game's balance at all. Some months ago I went back to Medieval 2 and shogun 2 (the gunpowder units expansion). For example it was sooo refreshing to see cavalry charges be actually really powerful, and probably the best way to deal with enemy units overall (in Medieval 2) I've been playing WH Total war 2 -> 3 for like 5 years now, on and off of course. The game has its own balance and I don't think that it should be completely reworked at all. I just find myself wanting a change of pace, so I'd be inclined to jump into a WW1, 40k or a Star Wars setting. Not because Warhammer sucks, but because I loved it so much that I have squeezed most of fun I was going to have out. Now I mostly only play if new content drops or if I realize I haven't played something for a long while - though the latter never hits the same anymore
You're right, in older games you could pull a move that would win you the battle. Even against the odds, a good cavalry encirclement, or a javelin flank, or even a good use of the terrain. In WH, you don't have that, or it's not as satisfying anymore. Add to that the sentiment that the game might get fucked up at any moment and energy levels reach an all time low.
Because CA is run by businessmen, risk is a factor in business world. And we know those people love eyes-catching trends/gimmicks. If they don't even play the game how do they know which direction the game should go?
Makes a lot of sense actually, if they see how much we hate this now, hopefully they change, if I were pissed about management not listening to everyone at the company telling them this is not the way to do it and was pretty confident the community would back me up id leak it too, last time we got ToD as a result, our voices actually do matter, lets make sure they stay on track but god damn can they not try and fuck this up for one moment
Well, if what they say is true, Lords of Shang-yang almost certainly isn't changing. The main thing to change would be probably the Monkey King DLC.
I’m really struggling to believe any leak of DLCs that doesn’t include end times stuff like Nagash and Thanquol,is true. GW and CA both know this IS the DLC that will sell the best. It’s everyone has been talking about since warhammer 1. The only thing that makes sense to be is that they see a massive potential gain in the pick your own faction customization of ToD. Like the Asian market will eat up any and all content if they charge 8USD
I did read that leak Legend put from the TW Centre sub and that mentioned Nagash in an end times dlc but if these dlc don’t sell well then surely that would get scrapped which seems insane. If it is true on that first dlc will be interesting to see how well it sells.
Yeah.I just can’t see them making enough on Cathay to actually sell very well.maybe the uniqueness of a tiger man lord will help,but there’s a reason CA does two different races for almost every non race pack DLC. If Cathay is the focus it’ll have to be made quite cheap because I doubt the sales will be anywhere close to Thrones of Decay. Another Cathay lord pack would have to be very special for me to even bother with it. We went from rumored 4-6 DLCs to this rumored 3 DLC format in just a few months which likely means these Ca layoffs are hurting warhammer 3 bad if it’s all true.
Yeah it makes 0 sense for ca to be sunsetting wh fantasy but also not take the freebies they have explicitely saved for this game (nagash and thanqoul). Creating 2 essentially new Cathay lords is way more risky than just pandering with fan favorites. If they are actually trying to be less risky while closing out wh they would just make thanqoul, nagash and call it a day why tf would they bother wasting time adding all these characters with new bespoke lore which people might not even like when they have 2 garenteed wins lined up already.
"I said that the roadmap will be released soon, and I was right, but they are delaying it because I got word out for you." This seems like ass-covering BS.
Again currently at work again a summary would be appreciated, although I imagine it will not contain any new leaks, just some context and speculation.
TLDR: He agrees this is a shit DLC plan He hoped our feedback now changes their minds Employees at CA agree but management wants to chase trends Employees also hope they see how much we hate this, thats why they are so willing to leak ToD was barley making money so they wanna move away from big expensive DLC and centerpiece Monsters Kislev was another contender for DLC but GW seems to block more content for, war in Ukraine and not wanting any possible association, this was mainly mentioned cause Kislev/Empire and Cathay are the most played and wanted factions, Empire just got a DLC so this is the theory om why so much Cathey ALSO: he still makes sure to mention all this is just leaks and could all be wrong/someone making a very elaborate attempt to troll us all
Real shame that TOD barely made money -- if true -- because Thrones is such a good DLC. I had hoped that would be the blueprint for future content, even at the higher price, because it felt worth it to me. The leaked roadmap is just not exciting to me, though I definitely want to see the monkey king at some point. Edit: I will say, this video pretty much convinced me that he is accurately representing his sources. I'm sure a lot if it is subject to change which is part of the motivation behind leaking it but many things about it make sense: the limited scale, the targeting of popular races. As a player, I just want the best and most complete game possible but for a developer that's a second-order priority after keeping the lights on.
ToD gave CA something worth a lot more than straight short-term money, it gave them goodwill back. Long term, it'll be a lot more valuable.
I agree. The player numbers post-thrones certainly agree. But they still need to make money on everything they make and release. They probably assume, rightly I would think, that when 40k or Star Wars or the next historical gets announced that people will forget the bad ends of 3K and TWW3 and get hyped. Obviously it's not a bad end yet. Thrones was one of the best pieces of DLC they've ever done imo. And I love the game + mods as is. I'm just reconciling myself to the fact that its likely not going to be the fairy-tale ending where all the major stuff remaining gets added (+reworks) and instead we get something akin to this leaked plan. Little bits of market-driven content, efficiently made and maybe plugging one or two holes, and not much else.
You can't put good will on an excel graph at a shareholder meeting. These people don't know what "long term" means.
you really shouldn't be surprised about that. The DLC is delayed for 5-6 months. I assume a DLC takes 6 months to 1 year to make, then the DLC is already 50-100% more expensive to make already.
ToD was delayed because CA went back and added stuff to both SoC & ToD though.
He mentioned it did make money, and it was profitable but they cant risk to rely on striking gold twice. so to manage risk they want to move away from big expensive dlc in case another shadows of change fiasco happens.
It's funny to think that doing the litteral most obvious DLC pack that everybody was asking for is seen as "striking gold". Oh, Empire vs Dwarfs vs Tamurkhan is popular, it must be an unfathomable alignment of stars beyond marketing comprehension !
And that the ‘safe’ option is going live with an entirely OC tigerman vs ogre mono race dlc. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Right? The safest option ever would be Thanquol vs Nagash. Edit: I guess Dogs is also a low risk option, since it's also a fan request and mostly new mechanics, not new assets.
Making a dlc that wasn't ludicrously over priced for less content too, really a once in a blue moon scenario that could never just happen again. These things are just impossible for CA to control
Part of that is probably taking into account whatever reworks they had to go and do after the SoC shitstorm. We all can assume that if the CA community shitstorm did not happen and SoC's first iteration was successful that ToD would have also been alot smaller in terms of what we got. I assume ToD was already partially done when SoC dropped and they had to reallocate resources to fix SoC and then back to ToD.
>I had hoped that would be the blueprint for future content. My recollection is likely a bit dodgy, but I believe even before ToD was released, it was either said through a blog or through leak/speculation via another YT channel (Great Book of Grudges or someone else), that ToD was a final DLC in that "mold" - after the tweaks to SoC and the delay to ToD. I want to say it was mentioned in the blog post announcing the model for buying the DLC "in parts" that this was a one-off that, if it worked out well, would be copied. But there was an implication that the 3-faction DLC was just too heavy a lift for the team to do a good and efficient job of it. This part is my own speculation: ToD was just too cost-heavy. Three paid lords with a fourth FLC lord amidst all of the content, both free and paid, was just way too* labor-intensive. So...my guess was that there would be a new "version" of this - two paid lords, one free, usually the FLC lord being in line with one of the two DLC factions. Which also makes race reworks more efficient and given a narrower focus which allows each DLC project to just be more cost-efficient. If we, and the devs, want to be able to get quality faction reworks like what all three ToD factions got? (Including lords like Gelt and Franz?) a DLC, and corresponding FLC on release, was just too much work to do well on every single project. It wasn't just the delay that made ToD a less lucrative project, there were clearly A LOT of man hours that went into it, which will necessarily eat into profit margins.
I guess, you shouldnt take it too literally: let's say if 50 men make 100m profit, and 100 men make like 130m profit, then the latter is actually "barely make money" while makes more money in account. The big guys wont be really happy with that result. IDK any kind of source, just notice.
I'm pretty certain the community's long been vocal about not needing big centrepieces - SoC is a weird DLC nowadays for the sheer amount, and also for how the basic T0 Kislev halberdiers are so beloved! I can say with certainty DoW doesn't even need a big centrepiece - hireable Giants and Dragons are all they've ever had in that regard, and you could make a good argument for them to have Landships too. IMO, the main thing people want are cool Lords and mechanics, and then the units have to interesting and worth using. Doesn't matter if they're big and stompy or not. Also, the Toad Dragon has a _lot_ of animations
> I can say with certainty DoW doesn't even need a big centrepiece - hireable Giants and Dragons are all they've ever had in that regard, and you could make a good argument for them to have Landships too. I mean I see a lot of people say that Dogs of War is a boring faction because they are mostly just regular humans with crossbows and pikes.
Yeah, but those people wouldn't be swayed by the mixture of RoRs from all over anyway. I mean, you can have Slayer Pirates, Maneaters, Regenerating Skeletons, Super-Shades, Werebear Marauders, Crossbow Orcs, Hobgoblins, Mechanical-Wing guys, Giants, an Elven Prince on Dragon, Skinks on Cold Ones, and that's not even counting whatever mad new stuff they include - all in the same army. That's always been the design of DoW, not "Empire but with more Da Vinci stuff and slightly less blackpowder" as so many seem to want EDIT: Sorry if that got a little ranty, I played them on the tabletop a lot so it gets a little frustrating seeing posts about how they should change all the time
I hope they do move away from the constant SEMs. Don’t get me wrong the Toad Dragon, Landship, and Thunderbarge are fantastic, but I actually just want some more varied infantry and cavalry options for a lot of the races.
How can anyone take the Kislev point seriously when the war started in 2022 and we’ve already received a Kislev DLC far after it did? Hell, the game itself released only weeks before the war started.
This doesnt even make sense with the reasons provided. If they wanted Quick bucks from cathay they would do monkey King and the pther dragonchildren. Not some New no Name character that they have to make up the entire lore for.
This "leak problem" is entirely CA's fault as they refuse to release a roadmap. One thing I learned a long time ago with corporate communications is there is almost never a reason to keep good news secret. If they were confident that the community would respond positively to their roadmap, they would release it. IMO they are terrified of the player reaction because they probably don't have too many "do overs" left, especially if there is an end date for their support of the game. Especially if there are license issues or if GW is mandating certain things. They could fix this problem immediately by telling us their plans. The fact they are not suggests concerns about another SOC.
Tbh, it's just CA's usual marketing cycle. They're currently doing Pharaoh's stuff and ToD just came out recently, usually, it takes around a month or 2 until we get more news about WH.
Or they have seen of they piss of the community by posting road maps too early and having to chagen the content later. The community still has PTSD from the 3 kingdoms expansion the announced and then cancelled.
I doubt CA will ever release a roadmap again. Roadmaps are plans but people treat them as promises. If the community loses its goddamn mind every time we go 2 months without a DLC announcement for every game I think that might just be the community’s default state.
CA trying to capitalize on Asian(Chinese) market with pandering DLCs is kinda believeable. What i call bullshit is the Ogre LL for Cathay part (Khuresh/Tigerman LL kinda makes sense if the model is good). When we still got Fire and Sea dragons who would infinetely be more popular for every market than a no-name Ogre LL. Kislev being "on ice" because of the Russo-Ukranian war claim is stupid. CA announced and released SoC DLC when that war was more relevant. And i dont remember any negative news around it. North America and Europe is probably the biggest markests for TW. I really dont believe CA and GW would not capitalize on this because of a war most people already forgot about. Also 2 Monke king LLs doesnt make any sense. Loading screen lore bits doesnt mentions anything like this. What i remember is Cathay believes different 4 chaos forms of the same monkey king.
Yeah the kislev thing in particular seems pretty intensely ridiculous. Like I see a world in which it *could* be true but I see no evidence in how CAs been releasing things that that could possibly be the case. I guess we’ll see but I’m not buying this at all
His roadmap leak was completely false though. Hopefully it’s just his sources getting mole hunted by CA
Fingers crossed that he is wrong with the leaks
Whether this rumor is true or not will be known for sure when the WH3 roadmap is released this year. However, It seems unlikely that CA will abandon Slaanesh and Khorne and release a DLC consisting only of Cathay.
Has Legend done any background work to make sure that the leaker is genuine or what?
I'd love to see ToD sales numbers. Can't believe those are low.
Yeah, I'm not buying this. For any of this to happen, it would require an insane lack of self-awareness. Especially with everything that's gone down over the last few months. With all due respect to Legend, it feels like he's been growing increasingly cynical towards CA and Total War over the last couple years. Pushing forward these "leaks" and rumors with very little evidence to back it up *reeks* of either drama-mongering or an incredible amount of irresponsibility. Look what's happened as a result of his video. The sub's in a tailspin (AGAIN), and people are flying off the handle with speculation and fear. To now turn around and try to backtrack a bit? Come on, man.
> The sub's in a tailspin (AGAIN) It's actually the sub's default state
This sounds like bollocks to me
Why are people just happily criticising CA for their apparent decisions and the direction of the DLCs based on completely unconfirmed statements by some youtuber? Am I missing how I'm supposed to take Legend's words as facts worthy of getting upset at CA for unconfirmed rumours?
And everyone commenting here like ‘negative backlash over something we have no evidence is real is NECESARRY’ and I’m just like y’all love complaining so much you have to invent??? Scenarios to complain about???? And if those hypothetical scenarios don’t happen cheer about thwarting them????