Emperor: Battle for Dune

Editor

The game had no editor, but because of the rising demand from the fans, Westwood patched the game, and released a map editor. They also released six map packs as an example to well built maps. After the editor was out, Westwood lost interest in the game and moved its support to one of their fans known as Gabblehopper at FED2K.

Music

Beside Frank Klepacki (Westwood's house composer at the time), Westwood Studio brought another two music composers for Emperor: battle for Dune. This way, each of them composed music tracks for different houses, so that way they accomplished that each of the house, Atreides, Ordos, and the Harkonnen possess similar yet unique music style that marks a certain house.

Online servers

The game's online servers were migrated from the official Westwood Online infrastructure to the community-run XWIS (XCC WOL IRC Server), under approval and sponsorship from EA's German office on 20 October 2005. The Westwood Online domains have acted as a redirect to XWIS services since then, requiring no additional steps from the user to access the servers short of registering an account.

Ordos

We finally learn the name of the icy home planet of the Ordos: Draconis IV.

Plot (Dune 2000 spoiler!)

This game is a sequel to Dune 2000, but when finished with Ordos. In the last scene of Ordos House in Dune 2000, Lady Elara uses her Gob Jabbar to kill the Emperor, and that piece of animation is even used as intro for this game. By this, Westwood breaks the tradition of making add-ons and sequels as if the good guys have won in the predecessor.

Pre-order code

Those that pre-ordered Emperor: Battle for Dune, received special code that unlocks three units for multiplayer mode on the official Westwood Online server as a timed exclusive.

Information also contributed by Henry Aloni and Jornand de Buisonjé