SEGA and Creative Assembly today pushed out a release date for Total War: Warhammer. That’s great — even if it’s not coming out until next year.
But what’s more annoying is the news they paired alongside it: the Chaos Warriors. If you want them, you’ll either have to pre-order or pay afterwards. And not just one or two warriors, but the whole faction.
Around six months, two weeks and six days: that’s how long we have until April 28 next year, which is when Total War: Warhammer is coming out. But more irksome than that was the news that came with it, the fact that the entirety of the Chaos Warriors have been gated off as paid DLC.
You can get the race for free now if you pre-order, but that’s the last thing you should probably do: pre-orders have been shown, time and time again, to be poor value for gamers. And given that Creative Assembly’s record has been like a yoyo the last few years — Alien: Isolation was fantastic, Total War: ATTILA not so much — it makes sense to see proof of quality before jumping in.
Only *four races are listed on the Steam description and the main website. That would make the Chaos Warriors the fifth and a fairly sizeable chunk of the game.
It’s not just missing out on a playable faction: the Chaos Warriors have quest chains of their own, and the DLC page says the entire race is “playable in the Grand Campaign and multiplayer matches; as well as adding entirely new Legendary Lords, Lords, Heroes, Units, Magic Items and more”. Except it’s being gated behind as DLC, and there’s no information on how much it might cost post-launch (although some kind of cataclysmic event would have to occur for Creative Assembly to permanently gate off a whole race only for pre-orders).
Let’s just put this into context: the Chaos race is one of the mainstays of the Warhammer universe, and six months ahead of release it’s already been carved up for profit. Call me old-fashioned, but outlining DLC like that so far ahead of a launch isn’t far from impressive. And if the debacle around Evolve’s over-eager DLC plans were any lesson, it doesn’t sit well with most gamers either.
Update: The Orcs and Goblins are a single race in Total War: Warhammer, rather than two separate factions; I’ve updated the text above to reflect that (and you can see the dialogue in the comments below). Thanks everyone.
Comments
15 responses to “Total War: Warhammer Announces Chaos Warriors As DLC Along With Release Date”
I thought there are only four races with Chaos being the fifth. The Empire, Orcs and Goblins, the Dwarves and Vampire Counts. Who’s the other race? I couldn’t see it listed anywhere???
I counted Orcs and Goblins as two races, but maybe I read that wrong? They read as two separate races to me (which would result in 6).
If that’s the case, then this is worse, but I counted Orcs and Goblins as separate races.
The steam page only specifies 4 races, covering orcs and goblins as greenskins.
I have heard rumblings that the glorious Skaven master race are going to be brought into the fold quickly… this pleases me greatly.
Sigh, it begins…
Want my high elves 🙁
We knew Chaos had to appear somehow, the first game is the old world map, and that means you have Chaos sitting there up the top, I am guessing Chaos will be in the game for those that do not preorder just not able to be played.
As for Elves I expect the 3 elven factions to be in the next expandalone, with Lizardmen and Skaven being in the third. Bretonnia could be slotted in with either the second or third expacs depending but I am betting same time as the Elves since they border the wood elf realm.
Eh all good to me
I always knew there would be DLC races, I just expected them to be announced after the game came out. Looks like I’ll be waiting for the complete edition or a Stream sale.
Screw that! I wanted the drinking horn version!
Meh, we knew that this is how the cards would fall and to be perfectly honest, it’s not that bad. We get a decent selection of races in the base game and if you are going to monetize any army, chaos knights is probably your best bet to make meaty DLC. Something like Wood Elves or Tomb Kings would be less enticing to a customer as their unit count, while definitely larger than they were in the past are still small by comparison to Chaos.
Ultimately, if the game is enjoyable and the armies featured in the base game are unique and interesting and offer different play styles then army DLC, even if it is a release day DLC, is perfectly fine.
Surely High Elves would be an obvious go-to for DLC that’s missing from the base game.
Oh absolutely, but people prefer playing the bad guys 😛
Also from a campaign PoV knocking together an Archaon collecting the assorted relics from the chaos gods and uniting the armies under the one banner would work as a self contained story if they set it before end times
It’d be pretty sweet if they released the Tomb Kings as some sort of resurrection of Nagash storyline.
God damn it I hate DLC thats available at launch. If i’m buying the game I want all the content unless it’s just skins/cosmetic boosts for pre ordering. GW are evil and soulless. Why take out chaos when they are one of the key factions? Why no high elves, dark elves, lizardmen, beastmen, ogre kingdoms or tomb kings if you HAVE to remove content?