Dawn of War 3 starts over with traditional RTS mode, turrets, and free skins
Initiate tactical withdrawl!
About a month and a half after launch, Dawn of War 3 is making something of an about-turn.
In an announcement made to the community forums, Relic has outlined a pretty drastic change of plans for its online play: the game will now feature an Annihilation mode - just like the first Dawn of War - which requires you to completely wipe out your opponent's key structures for victory; plus constructible turrets unique to each faction; a new map designed specifically for the mode; and some free skins, too. The update will go live on Tuesday, June 20th.
In fact there are two Annihilation modes: Annihilation Classic, and Annihilation with Defenses. Classic is the traditionally vanilla RTS experience, whilst with Defenses will see turrets already constructed at various strategic points on the map, which should delight the turtlers out there.
Until now, Dawn of War 3 has stuck resolutely to its vision of competitive, objective-based online play, but took some agressive criticism for that lack of flexibility. We loved Dawn of War's audacious gamble on the genre's future in our review, but without a classic mode like Annhilitaion, we also agreed that it certainly launched a little sparse on the ground.
It'll be interesting to see how the balancing and mechanics that were built around its competitive Power Core mode play out in Annihilation, and we're excited to try it out. Sometimes, you just have to give the people what they want.