The third full instalment of Relic's Warhammer 40,000 real-time strategy series Dawn of War should apparently be broadly expected 18-24 months after the launch of DoW 2's second standalone expansion Retribution in February 2011. The revelation came from publisher THQ's core games VP Danny Bilson in an interview with Eurogamer.

"Retribution's going to ship in February, and then we start laying out Dawn of War III," Bilson said. "You can probably expect it between 18 months and two years after that."

"It may be a more digital free-to-play experience with all the depth and quality of a Relic RTS," he revealed, similar to Relic's Company of Heroes Online. Currently in beta and launching this fall, CoH Online is free to play but supported by microtransactions.

"It all depends on how COHO does, and how it works and how people respond to it," Bilson said. "If they do that would definitely drive us to... Now Dawn of War III, either way, is going to have a much larger strategic component to it, more of a global battle going on with little tactical things, sort of MMO-like."

Of course, all this may change as it's clearly early days for DoW 3. Bilson himself offers the disclaimer that "We haven't announced anything about it, and it's still in its early formative stage, but I'm just talking to you about the brainstorming going on around it."