From the team behind the popular game “Warhammer: Vermintide 2” launches on November 30, 2022 the next title, “Warhammer 40.000: Darktide“, on Steam. After the predecessor was already extremely successful, the Beta of Darktide has already attracted a large number of players.
What is the Warhammer franchise? Warhammer is a large fantasy universe, similar to the Warcraft franchise. The tabletop game of Warhammer was released in 1983 and since then the universe has continued to grow. Today, there are numerous games in the series on Steam. The main feature is that Warhammer has both a fantasy version and a dark sci-fi setting in the year 40,000.
MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus believes that in a perfect world, the biggest MMORPG today would be World of Warhammer.
What is Darktide about? The latest installment, Darktide, will be a co-op shooter set in a dystopian fantasy world. The player acts on behalf of the Inquisitor and can fight against Chaos and its followers as imperial soldiers with up to 3 other people. The goal: to gain control over the megacity Tertium.
Here you can see a trailer for Darktide:
Vermintide 2 and Darktide attract numerous players
What do the player numbers in Vermintide 2 look like? The absolute peak number of players in Vermintide 2 is 104,134 people and was reached within the last 30 days (as of November 25, 2022, via SteamCharts).
The huge success recently was partly achieved due to several special promotions, during which Vermintide was repeatedly discounted and was even available for free for a short time.
At the beginning of November 2022, it was even a top trend on Steam, even though Vermintide 2 is already 4 years old.
What do the player numbers for Darktide look like? Although the game has not been released yet, it has already managed to gather many players. Just the Beta had a peak of 78,744 players (via SteamCharts). This is remarkable, given that only pre-order customers have access to this Beta. Therefore, the numbers could rise again at release.
Is Darktide worth it? MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus is a big Warhammer fan who has already spent 120 hours in Vermintide 2.
He has also already played the Beta of Darktide. His thoughts on it:
“Darktide is fun, but had some weaknesses in the Beta compared to Vermintide. Even though 40k shines with futuristic firearms and technology, all of this somehow seems to be missing in the gameplay of Darktide. I haven’t really shot much; most of the time, I was still standing in front of the enemies with a club or something similar.
It also comes to the fact that Darktide is actually too dark for me. Strange that I say such a thing, but the levels all look somehow monotonous. Sure, we play somewhere in the sewer of a monstrous city. No light gets in there. However, I’ve lost my orientation significantly more often than I would admit.
The classes play differently and are very interesting with their abilities, but I miss the facets and jabs of the well-known characters from Vermintide. I can’t give a clear recommendation, but I can’t say that Darktide is not worth it.
Fans of Warhammer 40k and dystopian science fiction in general will get their money’s worth; I will certainly play a few dozen hours as well. But it’s just not Vermintide.”
MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus
How much does Darktide cost? The official launch of Darktide will take place on November 30, 2022. If you pre-order the game, you have the opportunity to play the pre-order Beta until release.
You can currently pre-order the game on Steam for €39.99. The “Imperial Edition,” which includes additional content as well as the soundtrack alongside the main game, is available for €59.99.
Currently, there is a great autumn sale on Steam 2022: At the moment, there are 22 games in a bundle for €6 – including some classic games.
