Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning: Beta to Close for Two Months
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
EA Mythic has announced that they will be closing down the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta servers for two months, starting October 10th. They say the reason for the shut down is so they can make major improvements to the game and to add polish and new content. The beta will return in early December.
Greetings all!
Recently, all WAR Beta participants received a letter stating our plan to end this phase of the closed beta test this Wednesday, October 10th. We periodically close Beta, our last closure being in March of this year, to focus on major improvements and polish. The next phase of Beta will reopen in early December with plenty of new and improved content, art and systems for our beta-testers.
We are very proud to have reached this point in development. Beta has been going very well and the testing community is extremely active. Excitement around the game continues to grow and the team is looking forward to enhancing many features already in the game as well as continuing to add new features to an already great game.
Based on player feedback, our own observations and our current schedule, we have set the following major development goals:
- Improve open field skirmishes and battlefield objectives with major enhancements.
- Provide players with even more options to customize their character both through their abilities and visual appearance.
- Continue to enhance Public Quests and the PQ System.
- Prepare the elves for their release into the world!
When the beta reopens, we look forward to welcoming back all of our current testers, as well as many new faces. Shortly after re-opening the doors, we will be inviting the first wave of guilds into the beta to really get things rolling.
Thank you!
- The Warhammer: Age of Reckoning Team
;)
Read more here.
Comments
Awesome news!
I agree. This means they're actually listening to testers and instead of ignoring them they're gonna batten down the hatches and get to optimizing and adding new features!
I agree, it's great news!
haha sweet inc EA time, change the game to what they want lol.....
Hopefully the game wont be delay because of the new things being implemented... But i love the way they listen to fans and polish u up the game. Great work guys!
RIP Orc Choppa
I go both ways on this really. It is good that they want to improve the game and make it better. On the other hand what have they been doing until now? It makes it sound as if the game up until now was horrid so they have to go back to the drawing board to try and fix it. They could have kept the beta open and still implemented this stuff and it would have been better for PR I think. I am a negative person though and it seems like more than a few of you think this is good PR so I could be wrong. It just seems like an odd time to completely suspend testing and open it again only 2-3 months away from the "projected" release date. I hope and pray they already have Chaos/human testing complete and that elves is all thats left otherwise they will still have 3-4 months worth of testing at least or have a buggy game at launch. Maybe the stars will align and it will be out on time but I don't see that happening and that makes me sad.
It kinda makes sense to me, regardless of the reason, if they didn't they'd have to cough up for beta servers for another 4 - 6 month and they've already been at it for few month... who'd wanna do that.
I mean, in that length of time, beta testers would have been completing all the release content with several classes lol
I just hope they scrap all the old beta testers and get in some new ones! ie. ME
Hopefully they actually get the beta working properly this time.
I got an invite, clicked the NDA and then nothing and no reply from their web-support. No letter about the beta that I can't access closing either, although I'm on the European portal.
0/10
I am a new player~
Yes they finally noticed the game is not even BETA ready and decided to go back to the drawing board for 2 more months. This is hardly good news. The bad things about the game I have been hearing from the BETA testers appear to be true and the game has a long way to go.
I sense a hefty delay!
When you promise the earth it takes time and EA's money to try to give it.
Warhammer's beta has always been about marketing spin for me. Looks like they finally decided to knuckle down, instead of optimising the game to handle lots of testers in one instance on one particular beta build.
The game was not schedualed for release fior over 6 months anyway. They gotr the feedback they wanted from this phase of beta, now it is time to make the changes they feel are nescessary using that data. Not the end of the world and better to make changes now than after you plunk down the box price.
I miss DAoC
I'm disappointed.
I got my "You've won a spot in beta" email 4 months ago and had been eagerly awaiting my chance to get involved with the game, and found out just two weeks ago that all I needed to do was upgrade my system to get in, and now that I'm in the middle of doing that I find out they're closing the beta for two weeks. 
BETA WOT IS CLOSED in the original sense.
--Ditchdigger
DAoC was the most awesome PvP game since UO untill Mythic desided to screw PvPers over with the ToA expansion.
UO was the most awesome PvP game ever untill EA desided to screw PvPers over, first with the T2A expansion and completely with the UO:R expansion.
Now with EA and Mythic playing for the same team...no thanks!
AmazinAvery, Mythic has not said there is a delay in the release date. Unlike some games they haven't set unrealistically early release dates and needed to change them only a month before they arrive.
Mythic have said this is something that they've done before in the beta and repeatedly say this was expected as well as saying the the beta testers knew about it.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=510087#510087
http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=11052.msg351002#msg351002
You can believe the Devs or not, as you choose. Mythic might have lessened the public splash of all this if they had let more people outside of the beta testers know the schedule, but then what's the point. People will either accept the reasons or refuse to accept it.
If this wasn't planned as the doomsayers claim then wouldn't Mythic have delayed the annoucnement until AFTER the MMORPG.COM Q&A session? Instead they announce it right before knowing they're going to have to face public questions which are going to focus on this.
For those ex-SWG'ers cheer up!
Instead of waiting for a WAR NGE to happen after release....now we get it even before the game is finished woot!
J/K
I completely support the Dev here. A good MMo will usually take 3-4 years to make it done properly. Now they could take another year and it would still be inside 4 years of development.
This just proves that Mythic are the one powering the "release button", and not EA. Everyone should be happy about that, since it won't become another craptatic Vanguard. (And no fear that it becomes a DF vaporware either: Mythic has actually produce a great MMO title already, and everybody knows EA actually "exist" and with loads of money, unlike Adventu.... who?...)
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
LoL, its funny how alot of people who are posting dont even understand what a beta test is. A beta test is a pre-build of the game designed for... TESTING. No duh its not finished yet. They are "fine tuning" the game. The next beta will probably be the stress test phase where they invite a TON of people in and put thier servers through rigourous testing and what not. Im amazed at all the people saying crap like "I sense a hefty delay!" So please, understand what a beta test is before saying "WTFOMG beta is closed, WAR must be vaporware"
What they don't understand is that the current beta phase is a mid to early one. They hear beta they think stress test. Well this is the real beta the find the major weak points and areas that need more work before you ship so you have enough time to fix them before you ship, beta phase. That being said what are they doing. They are closing beta (most likely will internally test the next few rounds of major sweeping patches) Then they will open beta again and the world will be similar to the previous one but with more refined content. The next beta step is more people to find out the smaller areas and issues that need work for release. Then after that Stress test. Then gold.
This being said the fact that Elves are just entering the game does not look good ill admit this much.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
Wow...
I'm starting to think devs have the fear of Vanguard in them.
That's a good thing though.
What they don't understand is that the current beta phase is a mid to early one. They hear beta they think stress test. Well this is the real beta the find the major weak points and areas that need more work before you ship so you have enough time to fix them before you ship, beta phase. That being said what are they doing. They are closing beta (most likely will internally test the next few rounds of major sweeping patches) Then they will open beta again and the world will be similar to the previous one but with more refined content. The next beta step is more people to find out the smaller areas and issues that need work for release. Then after that Stress test. Then gold.
This being said the fact that Elves are just entering the game does not look good ill admit this much.
I'm not sure why Elves just entering the game is an issue to you.....everyone's known exactly how they're handling the racial pairings and classes. Theyve always done one racial pairing in at a time and then worked closely with that racial pairings to get the classes, lands, quests, pvp areas and such prepared and tested instead of doing it all at once and overloading themselves and opening a can of possible bug whoopass.
They've been doing it that way since they released the dwarves and the orcs, which is why after seeing how much better the later pairings came out they decided to improve on the orcs and dwarves. Which is totally a good thing since working this way gives them the time to compare and balance with a much more refined view than trying to do everything at once. They're initially only concerned with the direct racial pairings from what I can tell and not how a say dwarves and chaos pairings add up since the dwarves are not in direct conflict with them.
Elves were last and always have been listed as the last pairing to go into the game. And they' only just started releasing information on them what a month ago?
Anywho It is an unusual beta process but they've said from beginning that their beta process is being done completely different from other companies usual styles which alot of us are used too. Im not concerned until i start seeing Vanguard style NDA breaking outcry, if it comes to that then I will be very concerned.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
I don't think its game over or anything , but with 6 months or less to go now and adding a two sides into the game seems a little late, in the process.
It maybe fine, but to me thats not enough time to do the best you could.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
Uhmmmm... you do realise that they moved the release date back because they wanted to redo the Dwarven/Greenskin areas. correct?
This is not them saying, "Uhhh oh we messed up time to fix stuff", this is them implementing a plan they already had in motion.
Honestly they could delay the game an additional 3 or 4 months if they wanted, and the game still would not be 'ready' for a lot of people. No matter how polished a game is upon release there are always those who cry "they released a beta".
There will always be a bug they missed or feature they just could not put in upon release.
Let's actually let them release the game before we decide that they released it to soon...
ahaha I've been waiting about 4 months to get into beta already - stick another 2 on there guaranteed - can do that with one hand behind my back, bring it on WAR.
They better hold true to that promise I saw that said everyone that signed up for beta will get in before release for waiting. Else I'm taking my cash elsewhere even if the entire wow population goes there when they do release.