They’re nearly as racist as the Imperium, they’re just less proactive. They’re not out there genociding for the sake of genocide, but they have zero compunction about wiping out a civilization if it’s impeding their interests in some way, or if they violate one of their incomprehensibly byzantine social taboos. They’ll do stuff like lead a tyranid hive fleet to a human world to divert it away from one of their craftworlds, instead of simply moving the craftworld. Or humans might settle an uninhabited world, live there for 500 years, and one day the Eldar show up and murder everyone, because literally a million years ago an Eldar wrote a poem on that planet, so they’ve decided its sacred.
“Mon-keigh” is a false cognate. The Mon-Keigh were a race the Eldar wiped out, again, literally a million years ago, and the name has hung around as a pejorative. Sort of like how the Germans were called “Huns” during WWI.
AIUI, the original Warcraft was meant to be a Warhammer Fantasy game, but they couldn’t get the license from GW.
Tychus in Starcraft 2 is probably the closest the Starcraft universe has to an Astarte. He’s been physically welded into his power armor and can’t take it off even for basic functions. When he gets access to the Odin (a large nuclear-armed walking tank), he’s able to detach and use the onboard bathroom, and it causes the unit to become temporarily paralyzed.
GW is so unrelentingly greedy they get in their own way. How many zillions of dollars would they have made if they had made a licensing agreement possible. Heck, people are still playing it today…competitively no less.
I’m reminded of people like my grandfather who was drafted in WWII and gained weight during basic. i.e. His quality of life went up when he went to war. At the very least, military service might allow that underclass hiver to spend some time in fresh air for the first time in his life. But then he’s going to be separated from his family and even if he survives how ever many years in the guard there’s a chance he’ll be retired on some other distant planet. It’s a tough call. Given the choice I might opt for the guard.
GW has been fairly liberal with their license when it comes to video games these last few years. You can find a few decent ones, and a lot of bad ones.
I have played Rogue Trader and I like it (I like that style of game…it is not for everyone which is fine). If you like this kind of game and see a good sale it may be worth a buy.
Maybe it was because of the failure to capitalize on Starcraft that GW opened the floodgates too wide and we got lots of crummy games and a few good ones. But I do see the quality finally getting better lately. I think developers have realized there is a market here for good games and not some quick cash grab with some low effort game.
AIUI, the results of games held at official events have some effect on the ongoing canon, though I don’t know how heavily that’s weighted vs. whatever GW’s loremasters have decided they want to do.
GW used to be very tight-fisted with their IP. I think the concern was that a WH game would pull audience from the table top game. About 10 years ago, they pulled a complete 180 on this policy and started licensing their IPs out to just about anyone who asked. This has led to some really good games (Total War: Warhammer trilogy and Rogue Trader are two particularly good standouts) and a horde of mid- to low-tier crap.