DoWpro

Short for "Dawn of War Professional."

Something of a controversial mod, and notable for being one that several in the development team said should have been embraced as everything that Dawn of War should aspire to, DoWPro is one of the most popular and enduring Dawn of War Mods. The controversy comes from the fact that there was a vocal attempt by several on the Dawn of War community's boards to openly get the Mod removed from its modding community, due to its popularity and overpowering number of posts about it as the mod grew.

It was born of the resentment that a surprisingly large chunk of the community had for the developers after Winter Assault completely changed how the game was played, removed the hard counter system, slashed existing content, and basically ruined the game for a great deal of the playerbase. A lot of people didn't like the fact that Winter Assault removed a lot of existing options from various existing factions, "streamlined" the Tech Trees to make the game "faster," and loaded the game with multiple redundant units that became irrelevant as you went up the tech tree. Dawn of War Pro was then made to pick up the slack, and a lot of players were amazed by what was brought to the table; slashed content such as Guardsman Flamers, Ordnance Leman Russes with weapon options, and Sentinels with Autocannons, just to name a few. Before Dark Crusade added Heavy Weapon teams to the Imperial Guard, DoWPro already had them in Winter Assault, adding the unit that had been hedged out during development, and even getting it working.

It wasn't just the Guard that got some love, either; Orks got randomized heads, their tech-tree unfucked, and got back all of their lost weapon and vehicle mods. Chaos Marines got back their scaling upgrades and weapon options, Raptors got back their weapon options, and nonsense like how Winter Assault handled the Space Marines was fixed. Hard counters were brought back, as well.

It cannot be underestimated what a huge impact Dawn of War Pro had on Dawn of War itself. Many of the fixes and improvements made to Dark Crusade solely happened because of the existence of Dawn of War Pro, circa Winter Assault, either inspiring them or outright showing them what to do. In Winter Assault, for example, the game turned into a godless spamfest late-game; Dawn of War Pro handled unit spam by instituting hardcaps for high-tier units such as Tanks and elite infantry. This mechanic of hardcaps was directly cropped and used in Dark Crusade, and though it wasn't applied equally, it's a change that never would have happened without Dawn of War Pro to spur it onwards.

Dawn of War Pro remained active through the days of Dark Crusade and into Soulstorm, with updated versions of the factions eventually hitting and continuing DoWpro's tradition of adding slashed content - in this case, things like Rail Rifles for the Tau - and improving balance (such as dealing with the fact that the bulk of high-HP Tau organic units have either no or minimal regeneration that makes keeping them alive after a battle pointless, or how Kauyon is demonstratably the better upgrade path in DC and SS no matter the situation, and that you're honestly gimping your entire army if you choose otherwise). It is currently working on a Soulstorm version; its current one adds the Dark Eldar and includes similar bugfixes and upgrades.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Dawn of War Pro's greatest contributions to DOW writ large are its instituting of slashed content and improving the metagame through embracing Vanilla Dawn of War's mechanics - the hard caps and slower-paced gameplay - rather than running from them. Whereas a lot of factions in Dawn of War make very little sense mechanically (Eldar having both the best units in the game and able to field the largest army, for example), Dawn of War Pro endeavored to fix this and do its best to keep the game for all sides fun, interesting, and balanced.

This was made possible due to Dawn of War having a very talented community behind it, which included the Dawn of Skirmish AI modders giving a much-better-than-the-standard AI for the game. The modelers for the Witch Hunters Mod would later contribute to DoWPro as well, donating resources for one of the mod's race - The Sisters of Battle.

It's not all good news, of course; Dawn of War Pro can't fix problems existing within the engine, and a lot of its design decisions, though they make sense in context with the rest of the mod, don't sit well with some of the playerbase.

A lot of players do not the fact that the game genuinely is slower-paced and more-tactical than the rapid-fire-frenzy that is the base Dark Crusade or Soulstorm metagames, which are extremely fast-paced affairs, making for a different sort of metagame entirely.

Other complaints stem from how DoWpro altered some of the newcomer factions (such as the Necrons and Tau) to bring them in-line with other factions, which included the Slag Volcano mechanic for the Necrons (obstenibly intended to prevent Necron Base-turtling and effectively force them to spread out and sieze territory like everyone else, but making the faction play much different from how it originally did), or the caps on Fire Warriors (intended to keep players from spamming the ever-loving crap out of what is arguably one of the longest-ranged base infantry units in the game, but not fitting well with a lot of fans of how the Tau originally handled).

Others cite the need to build multiple command center-class units, and various bits with the tech-tree.

TL;DR: Like every goddamned Mod ever in the history of the world, it has its upsides and downsides, defenders and detractors, play it and see if you like it, if you do, that's fine, and if you don't, that's cool, we're all elegen/tg/entlemen here.

Features

• Wargear is now available in both Multiplayer and Skirmish.
• The game includes both the Camera Mod and an AI made by the Dawn of Skirmish team, giving both better views and a comp enemy that can actually pose a legitimate threat, making for a better game experience overall.
• The game's genuinely slower-paced and more tactical, since it's designed to emulate how Vanilla DOW played. This gives a much greater emphasis on unit scaling, tactical unit choices, and upgrading. On the downside, this means that players who enjoyed the faster pace of the later games might not be so fond of it.
• New units and upgrades for every existing race. Have some fun with new Space Marine Commander abilities, Tau Devilfish that can act as medics with upgrades, or the new Inquisitor for the Guard.
• Includes all kinds of particles, textures, and other visual tweaks that, for reasons unclear, the developers left out of Dawn of War's various releases. There's a fucking lot of it, too.
• Includes a lot of cut content. Check out Kasrkin Meltaguns, Chaos Marine Flamers and Missile Launchers, and Pathfinder Rail Rifles, just to name a few.
• One of the bigger DOW Mods, and has a burgeoning community of its own that makes it a bit easier to find games for than some of the other mods (not all, however). Compatible not only with Hamachi and Remobo, but Gamespy and Direct IP games.
• Versions are available for every relase of Dawn of War other than Vanilla. The Dark Crusade version is called DCPro, whereas the Soulstorm version is called SSPro.

Links and Similar Flimflammery

http://z15.invisionfree.com/DoWpro/index.php? - Official Forum.