I have never seen or played Dawn of War 2 but I have heard the game is very divisive amongst fans especially from people of the first game.

I read comment that people hope Dawn of War 3 will play more like Dawn of War 1.

So can explain to me what is wrong with the second game?

Well, first off singleplayer and multiplayer are practically two different games in Dawn of War 2.

The campaign is story-driven, you have dialogues in the vein of StarCraft between missions and that aspect of the game is actually pretty nice. However, gameplay-wise it's quite awful. You just control several pre-defined space marine squads plus your captain and systematically kill all enemies on the maps with an occasional boss battle thrown in. No base building, no resource management, just collecting loot and improving your squads. It's really dull and boring and not deep at all, just a ridiculous amount of micro managing abilities. Not an RTS, more like some really bad parody of MOBAs.

As for multiplayer, I haven't played it in a while but from what I remember: the scale is much smaller, there's no base building, just taking strategic points and building upgrades and units. I tried to like it but couldn't.

Oh yeah, there's also some "last stand" mode where you control only a hero unit and fight off waves of enemies in coop. Can't quite comment on the expansion campaigns as I've barely touched them. Chaos Rising appeared to be more of the same, Retribution apparently at least introduced campaigns for other races but I have no idea if the gameplay is really any different there than in the base game.

Well, DoW is a RTS more in the classical sense of the term compared to DoW2. Dow2's campaign has zero base building, and consists solely of you having to complete objectives on a map. Also, in DoW2's campaign you have (relative to SM) your force commander squad, a single tactical squad, a single scout squad, a single heavy (ie devastator) squad, and a single assault space marine squad. And each with a unique leader that gains experience and skill points during the campaign (which you spend towards the acquisition of special abilities). There is also wargear to be picked up/won on most maps, which you can give to your various squad leaders (almost, but not quite to the extent of the wargear of dark crusade)
You can't ever have any more of these squads either. You select a couple of them for a mission and that's it(eg. shall I play without tarkus and his tactical squad today, or perhaps without Thaddeus and his assault spacemarines),. That's how the campaign works though you can sometimes start with an extra predator or dreadnaught.
Mechanics wise it is quite similar to Company of Heroes, with cover playing a big role. If you select a squad and mouseover over the terrain, then little green or yellow dots appear to indicate in what positions behind cover the space marines will park themselves if you click to move.

In terms of single player campaign quality, DoW2 is way better than DoW1 even up to winter assault, and at worst it is on par with Dark Crusade. The action is stunning and exquisitely destructive.

So why does it suck compared to DoW1? Well, it only only really sucks wrt to the multiplayer/skirmish imo. DoW2 simply cannot match the spectacular chaos of DoW1 on this front, and of course the basebuilding and expansion adds a certain something to the overall feel that I cannot explain, but that I know is sorely missed in DoW2's multiplayer. I guess one could say DoW2's multiplayer feels far too trivial compared to DoW1.

DoW2 does however have last stand which, from what I understand is quite delightful.
Overall though I'd still say that Dark Crusade is the best 40K game around.

So what are the chances Dawn of War III will bring back the more Classical RTS gameplay of the first 1?

Personally, I loved DOW2. The first one was your standard RTS: Basebuilding, tons of units and whatnot. But, it was terribly bland and I only completed it out of inertia. I never found it interesting at all. The second one reduced the scale to give you just a few units, but each of those was very unique and customizable. It does take a bit of time to unlock options, but once you do, man is it glorious... Every time you use an ability it has such an impact, it makes you feel like such a baddas as you hear Avitus' heavy bolter rain death on the enemy or see enemies flying from Tarkus's grenades or the commander's charge. It's awesome.

Basically, standard macro RTS armies Vs tactical, micro squads.

I really don't know sorry :P I'm guessing in terms of scale it will be somewhere between DoW1 and DoW2, otherwise the walkers wouldn't make sense. I don't think that they'll include walkers that will completely overshadow non-walker units, but at the same time they have to have a significant battlefield presence. That will be lost if they can be held back by just 1 or 2 infantry squads.

Even DoW2 had some sort of bases in multiplayer, except you didn't build them. They were just there from the start (in multiplayer/skirmish specifically), so DoW3 I'd say almost certainly will have some sort of base element. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Personally I'd love a return to a more classical rts dynamic, but only because I love the genre. I realize that compared to a purely tactical strategy approach it doesn't make as much sense lore wise.

By the way, if you haven't tried DoW2 yet and you're a fan of 40K, then definitely consider giving it a go. It's great fun :)
I only hope that one day we'll get to see similar games in a warhammer fantasy setting. Mark of Chaos came sort of close. But I want something a bit more classical. (perhaps developers are scared of venturing to close to warcraft, who knows) Oh I wouldn't call it standard at all. Apart from a nonstandard resource system I feel it distinguishes itself with the unique ability to feature 6 vastly different factions that are remarkably well balanced (7 if you count chaos, but they're very similar to SM except for their commander units), and the effortless blend of melee and ranged combat in a scifi setting.
I don't count Soulstorm at all though :P

By the way, did you play Dark Crusade? I'd definitely agree on DoW1 having a pretty bland campaign (Angelos glorious voice during the briefings nonewithstanding). And Winter Assault never managed to keep my attention long enough to finish even 3 of it's campaign missions. Dark Crusade on the other hand I found endlessly fun. The only pity is that the enemy AI never attacks your 'home cities'.

Well, as I said I found it pretty bland, so I don't remember much about it. I played it through the original campaign and persevered because I wanted to know a bit about the whole warhammer 40k stuff, but I found it pretty boring. Make a couple marine squads, give one heavy weapons in case you run into a vehicle, then sweep the map. There was nothing memorable about it. I tried the winter assault campaign but got bored pretty fast, and also tried some other expansion, one of the latter ones. The campaign was a conquest map, which originally looked promising but soon devolved into just a bunch of skirmishes. Boring.

Multiplayer may have been the best thing ever, but I don't do multiplayer so I wouldn't know.

Summarizing: DOW is a proper RTS with base building and micromanagement of your units abilities. DOW2 is more of a RTT with some RPG elements.

Dawn of War 1 is a very polished game, but also a bog standard RTS. The following will be exclusively about campaign which can be played both in SP or in Co-Op with a friend. Dawn of War 2 is a small-scale tactical action RPG and a completely unique among all games that I've ever played - it also happens to be one of my favorite games of all time. The game can be really challenging when played on the highest difficulty settings which is where it'll really test your ability to make fast decisions under pressure and usage of all available resources (it can also be rather chill on low difficulty - so, you know, take your pick)

It also has some superb presentation, with most attacks having a proper amount of punch, explosions being rather spectacular and even retaining some amazing sync kills from the base game. You can get it for ridiculously low price these days, make sure to also grab Chaos Rising (Retribution wasn't nearly as good, sadly) and just... Have fun. The game's amazing.

"Dawn of War is famous for its epic action and those immense clashes are back - but now they're off-the-scale. Wage war with massive armies across violent volcanic terrain or mighty orbital Star Forts."

Pretty high.

Both Dark Crusade and Soulstorm have such a open conquest map for a campaign, but I don't think Soulstorm's campaign is on the same level as that of Dark Crusade. But yeah you're right: it basically is a bunch of skirmishes for the most part (with added features like persistent bases + guard forces in areas you've conquered, and special abilities/units unlocked by certain areas). The levels that are not like that though are the home bases of each faction which are specially designed. E.g. the Imperial Guard home base has a fallen titan with a massive cannon, and you can try to wrestle control of it from the imp guard. Once you have it you can periodically fire it to wipe out everything in a large valley on the map. There's also a bridge that is inaccessible until you take down an artillery regiment that's persistently shelling it. You know, things like that.
But sure, if someone doesn't really like the skirmish type combat of the rest of the areas, then I don't think they'll have a good time with the game.

My biggest issue with Dark Crusade campaign was that only ever two armies fight each other, yet it routinely uses maps for 6+ players. You get these gigantic maps and fights which can last up to an hour, but victor in DoW battles tends to be decided relatively quickly if you play competently enough. Result? 10 minutes of action and the rest is either looking for your opponent or sweeping the map to find his last bastions. Stronghold siege maps were kinda cool tho.

I was fairly disheartened after seeing this and I really hope they'll transfer something from DoW2 as well. RTS genre direly needs innovation, otherwise we can't really be surprised that it's slowly dying out.

Oh my yes, it would've been awesome had the developers included the ability for multiple factions to duke it out on a single map. My favorite DoW multiplayer game was a 4 player free for all on that map with the two rivers and ruined city in the middle. It was one hell of a fight until it was only me and the eldar player left, who I ended up wasting :)

At least in the campaign it's not always one on one. From what I can remember you do get to fight up to three AI players by yourself (edit: or perhaps multiple AI bases instead), but always from the same faction. I can recall some incredibly tough maps where it was a real struggle not to get overwhelmed by the AI.This level for example was one of the toughest fights. I took a screenshot of that same area after I finally managed to fight myself out of my starting location. The chaos space marine corpses littered that area of the map like a big bloody carpet.

That makes me sad.

It's not so much that I don't like skirmishes as it is that I want more than that. It's the same problem I had with Chaos Reborn, I was promised a single player campaign and got a bunch of skirmishes instead, which made the game pointless to me. It's sad that games that would otherwise have the potential to make me like them a lot are wasted due to half assed campaigns and multiplayer focus. Probably one of the reasons I haven't enjoyed an RTS in years.