Microsoft’s decision to drop its troubled Games For Windows Live service continues to have ramifications on titles that implemented the technology and must now un-implement it, lest they become unplayable relics of another, more infuriating time. The latest victim is Relic’s Dawn of War II, which expunged itself of GFWL a few days ago. Unfortunately, the cons associated with the change are somewhat non-trivial.
There’s a post on the game’s community hub on Steam that outlines the significant alterations that arrived with Dawn of War II‘s newest update. It seems the game was so integrated with Games for Windows Live, removing it not only killed some multiplayer features, including LAN play and referee functions, but affect saved games as well:
Saved games and replays will not load in the Steam-only version
Experience and player levels will not transfer from the “Games for Windows Live” version to the Steam-only version; these players will see their levels reset to zero
It does counter with the following benefits, thanks to moving from GFWL to Relic’s own servers:
A more stable multi-player experience for our community
Lag from one player will not affect others
No more connection problems between peers caused by firewalls/NAT’s [sic] being mis-configured
Prevents certain types of cheats/hacks
Helps to address those that continually attempt to disconnect before losing a match
Greater control over de-bugging and technical issues if and when they arise
It’s hard to say how many people are affected by the update, though one disgruntled player reports they’ve lost “four hundred hours of gameplay”. That would certainly be upsetting… to put it mildly.
Dawn of War II — Chaos Rising Patch Notes/Updates [Steam, via RPS]
Comments
16 responses to “Dawn of War II Dumps Games For Windows Live, Comes At A Price”
It’s a price I’m willing to pay.
+1
Yay, first GameSpy and now GFWL. Decrepit servers begone. Although I’ve lost command & conquers online features in the process, but its not like those servers were full anymore. I think I got to level 7 in DOWII because I really don’t like the game
Yeah, same. Starting fresh wouldn’t be much hassle to me, but I can’t really summon the motivation to do it anyway. They moved away from the base-building awesomeness of the original Dawn of War and tried to ride the MOBA-wave of micro-management and tactics so beloved by esports.
And it rocks!
Booo. Exact opposite. Moar base-building, moar units!
Different strokes for different folks. I find both 1 and 2 fun anyway.
I find that I beg to differ. There’s always something about always keeping an eye around my base and micro managing attacks from 2 fronts to be more rewarding than MOBA style play
I know there were supposed to be benefits for requiring connection to an online service for a single player game, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they are.
(Yes, I know DoW2 has multiplayer as well, but at least multiplayer gamers were *getting* something from that particular devil’s bargain.)
The game won’t even launch for me. 🙁
You know what games totally work without feature loss? The ones that don’t integrate these bullshit platforms and allowed the users to take responsibility for hosting their own stuff if they wanted.
To this day I can still set up a Quake 1 dedicated server.
Meh, DoW II was crap compared to the original anyway.
Dark Crusade remains my favourite entry in the series. I respect that they tried something similar with Retribution and its meta-game was pretty solid, but the base mechanics were a crippling weakness.
Yeah. They threw out everything that made DoW so great in the first place and replaced it with nothing of substance. Instead we got a stupid RPG-like levelling system and not much else. Everything was dumbed down and the entire game had about as much depth as my budgie’s water bowl.
I’m talking purely about the competitive multiplayer here.
I bought it on the last Steam sale and never played it so this only great news for me.
bring back base building 🙁