So what, maybe I'm just whining, but I think it's hilarious anyhow.

I am so curious why this game was popular, because compared to other RTSs, it blew. The fact is most people can't handle a real RTS and have to play a simplified game like DoW to win.

hahah you suck n00b. DoW blows, I win everytime because there is no depth to the game.

I'm a troll. I have 4,561 different ways to hide my IP.

Dawn of war was an excellent game, you must just be bad at it.

There are a number of mischaracterizations in this thread.

1. DoW is not about zerging as there's no way to spam and rush the points. Hard caps, single production paths (like RedAlert/Dune it's ineffecient to build multiple production buildings) and the nature of the carefully balanced build times and resource gathering times leads to 3 distinct phases.
Harassment/Gathering, tech counters, and endgame.
This is very different from every other RTS other than CoH, RA, and Dune series.

2. DoW is not popular. It is akin to Battle for Middle Earth 2. Vanilla DoW had less players than Conquest:Frontier Wars (although it's about the same in originality and depth), WITH international releases!

3. Dark Crusade adds 2 races which you do not need the original game to play. This is a first for any RTS. Stand alone expansion that allows you to play games using content from versions you did not purchase. Stealth system is now the same as Starcraft (traditional RTS stealth). Campaign mode that is promised to be a future multiplayer option (ok, so promises dont count).

4. CoH had a signifigant amount of the Aurora engine rewritten. While it's partially the same, it's only partial.

Specifically, the ability to transfer custom content a la completely custom Army and Banner/Insignia textures, the quality of the Aurora engine/graphics and the fact Relic didnt make the 8th mockery of WH40k is quite laudable.

I am a big fan of the Aurora Engine specifically, but not so much the gameplay. It's hard to find someone who doesn't like the way the maps, "squads", CoH individual AI, voices and particle effects are implemented. The pathing still sucks.

Is DoW game of the year 2004? What else? Total War? I dont think so.

[Edited by - Jack9 on December 3, 2006 10:17:35 PM]

I agree with it winning the RTS award, I really like how gathering resources is done through capturing points on the map, as I absolutely loath the get the supplies, drop the supplies drone units in RTS games.