Bye bye, NDA! - 8.19.2008

The NDA is now officially lifted!

Folks,

As of now, the Non Disclosure portions of our Beta Testing Agreement is now officially lifted. From this point on players may now freely talk about their experiences in the game as well as post screenshots, videos, etc. We will be sending an email out to all our current players with full details about the lift over the next 24 hours. Players with access to our forums can also see the letter there. Players may not talk about nor reprint posts from our forums and our Test Servers (currently Deathsword) are still fully covered by the confidentiality portions of our Beta Testing Agreement. So, other than that, free feel to talk about and share your experiences in WAR.

My thanks go out to everyone who has beta tested and continues to beta test WAR. It has been with your help and feedback that WAR is where it is today. We really appreciate your effort.

WAR is almost upon us!

Mark Jacobs
VP, GM Mythic Entertainment

-Matt Graham

And now, we wait... - 8.18.2008

Okay, so after the period of unlocking, I was prompted to open up the new folder that was created by clicking the "Play" button. I ran "setup" and I'm assuming that it installed, but it seemed like it didn't take long enough.


It then brought me to the "EA Mythic Patcher Login" where I put in the same information that I used at the Mythic Account Center. It quickly did something (pictured right) and just went back to the login screen.

So, I think that I'm as far as I can be for now. I guess I just sit and wait for now with a useless extra 9.x gigs on my machine until September 7th.

The wait is gunna be painful. I'm one of those Collector's Edition pre-orders that didn't get into closed beta because my machine is not up to par. I'm not running a bad machine by any means. I was probably just a tad bit under the bar that Mythic had set for what kind of machines they wanted to allow entrance into closed beta. I can wait, but it will be painful. >.>

-Matt Graham

WinPlanet is Win - 8.18.2008

Okay, so FilePlanet isn't complete fail - at least for me anyways. Many people over at Warhammer Alliance are still having problems with the downloader - some can't even load the FilePlanet web page!

After a few hours, my download completed. After that, I received an error. I clicked "retry" and it brought me to the screenshot you see in this post.

So, apparently the file is currently being "unlocked". The screenshot was taken about 10 minutes ago. Right now, the green bar is at about 70-75%. I'm excited to see what happens next. :D

-Matt Graham

FailPlanet is Fail - 8.18.2008

UPDATE: I waited the 50 minutes that it told me to wait for the next availability check and my download has started. It's downloading at about 1 MB/sec. The estimated time remaining is a little over 3 hours.

So, the WAR beta download client is now available - I use the word "available" loosely.

Supposedly, you are able to begin downloading the client today, but the FilePlanet download manager seems to say "Est. date available: Tue, Aug 19,2008". So, ya... Some people are saying that their download has started and that everything is cool, some claim that spamming "Check Now" will eventually start your download, and some even say that spamming "Check Now" screws you over.

I'd guess that this isn't going as smoothly as Mythic anticipated - especially considering the delay for allowing people to start downloading the client was so that they would find a better way than their previous means (torrent).

I'm just gunna sit back and watch the QQ's fall from the sky as I spam "Check Now".

-Matt Graham

Back! - 8.7.2008

I'm back! Well, actually I got back last night, but I didn't feel like blogging. So, quite a lot happened while I was gone - of course. I could never go AFK without some big news coming out, that'd just be absurd!

First, I'd like to give some props to Regis from Wizard Sandwenches, errr, Wizards and Wenches for opening up a forum for the WAR blogging community called Blog Warhammer.

Second, I'd like to point out the awesomeness of the fact that Warhammer Online now has an official release date - September 18th.

Next, I'd like to point out even more awesomeness because anyone that pre-ordered the Collector's Edition will be able to get into closed beta as soon as next week. That's me! W00t!

And last, I'd like to let everyone know that "My Little Greenskin" is DEFINITELY not dead. It's just that I've either been busy or not around lately. The third issue will hopefully come soon.

I might post some opinion stuff later tonight. If not, I'll get something up tomorrow.

-Matt Graham

Keen's E3 Adventure - 7.18.2008

Keen, from over at Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog, wrote up an awesome account of everything he saw, WAR related, at E3. The article talks about some cool new things that I haven't heard about in WAR before, and there is only one single piece of information that I'm a little disappointed by - that's pretty good. You should read the whole article, but I'm going to point out a few things that I liked to hear.

"Over 400 armor sets in the game."

"Over 114 different dye colors based on Games Workshops paints for the miniatures."

"The King encounter (he looks cool by the way) will be more than simply a “tank and spank” encounter. While fighting the Chaos king you’ll see voids opening around you and the floor breaking apart with chaos swirling all around and the pillars in the room falling. Adam sounded really excited."

"NEW ADDITION TO THE GAME: RvR Fortresses. These “uber keeps” (quote from Adam) of 'RvR Goodness' (quote from Mark Jacobs) act as an additional barrier between players and capital cities. They have also replaced the Capital cities in the battlefronts that had theirs taken away. These will offer very interesting RvR encounters. [...] A realm must capture 2/3 Fortresses to make the enemy Capital vulnerable."

"The combat looked fluid, polished, and extremely fun."

"Adam’s Zealot was only level 2 yet he was able to hold his ground against level 7 players because of how scenario’s work - they boost player’s abilities so that everyone feels on equal footing. It was working quite well."

That's a good sized list right there, and I'm only pointing out the things that REALLY caught my eye. Now, there is one thing that I'm a little disappointed about.

"There are no instanced raid dungeons. [...] Most dungeons are public where anyone can enter and fight but the bosses are instanced."

I'm gunna have to see that play out. I'm sure I'll be able to handle it, but it may be difficult at first because I'm coming over from WoW.

There you have it. Some awesome information! Thanks for the great article, Keen!

-Matt Graham

The Realm War - 7.13.2008

Remember that third button on the main Warhammer website that was always blocked out? There was the Home button, the Herald button, and a button that could not be read. I always thought that it would end up being the official WAR forums, but it turns out that it's the page for the Realm War. Now, I've never played DAoC, but I hear that game had something that sounds very similar. Think WoW Armory. At least, that's what I expect.


I'm a little disappointed that it wasn't official forums, but at the same time I'm really happy with the surprise that I got.

-Matt Graham

Oh, Boy... - 7.12.2008

So, I'm gone for just a few days and EA Mythic, or shall I say Mythic Entertainment, performs an air raid on the MMO community. So, let's go through this last week in review. (I'll probably be posting more opinionated articles about each separate piece of news periodically.)

1. EA Mythic is changing their name back to Mythic Entertainment. They will remain a part of EA, they are simply just changing the name. It must be a zen thing or something.
2. Warhammer Online will be using Punkbuster as their method to fight against cheaters and hackers. No surprise there. Punkbuster is seen in almost every online EA game - at least the ones I play.
3. Guild Beta began yesterday. I'm still waiting for the word about Chrono Chaos's beta acceptance.. :p
4. Four, you heard it, four capital cities are are being removed from the game for launch. Maybe they'll be back in future patches or expansions - they'd better be.
5. Four has become the unlucky number in the WAR universe because it's also been reported that four classes are being removed from the game - 2 tanks, and 2 melee DPS. The Dwarf Hammerer, Knight of the Blazing Sun, Dark Elf Blackguard, and Orc Choppa are no longer going to be playable classes in WAR. I'm personally gunna miss the Choppa.

Wow. At least that's all of the bad news for now. I dunno if I could take anymore blows like this in one sitting. I was expecting announcements as far as a release date or something of the sort, but wow, just wow.

I'm probably not as upset about this as most of the other bloggers out there, but it definitely changes the way I look at the game. I think that Mythic might have jumped a little to quick to these decisions. Quite honestly, I'd rather have the game delayed until something like May 2009 with all the cities, classes, other features, etc. in the game, than have what you could call an unfinished or over-polished product and have it in my hands in a few months.

Oh well. I'm still loving the way this game is looking and I'm still looking forward to open beta.

-Matt Graham

X-Play Extended Interview - 6.24.2008

Three days ago, I posted the G4 X-Play WAR interview with Paul and Jeff. Today, I'm posting the seven and a half minute extended interview. Once again, there is really nothing new, but it is actually quite interesting/entertaining. Not that I wasn't already, but I'm officially convinced that Paul Barnett is the most exciting game designer - ever. Sorry Jeffy K, you're awesome, but Paul is awesome-er.



-Matt Graham

"It's fantasy with all the crap bits taken out." - 6.21.2008

I'm not really a fan of G4 after all the major changes they made to the station a few years ago, but I made it a point to watch the WAR interview with Jeff and Paul on X-Play at 8:00 EST last night (Morgan Webb is a bonus) - and, of course, I forgot about it. However, thanks to Keen and Graev, I was able to see it. I knew it wouldn't be too long before it showed up on the net.

It's a very basic interview. There is nothing really new to see, but the gameplay footage in the video does look very nice. And as always, Paul makes some funny comments. The video is below. Enjoy!



-Matt Graham

New WAR Preview at IGN - 6.20.2008

A new hands-on preview for WAR was posted on IGN just a little while ago! The preview isn't amazing or terribly in-depth, rather, it's pretty basic, but it does help me to believe that this game will be great. I couldn't help but chuckle when I read the following from the article:

"If a developer's confidence equated directly to the excellence of a video game, then Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning would easily be one of the best MMOs ever made. There are very few developers as confident or as colorful as EA Mythic's Paul Barnett."

I think I'm officially a Paul Barnett fanboy.

Anyways, the preview would, of course, not be complete without videos to go along with it - FIVE videos that is. All five of the new videos are fresh and informative - I'll include one below on this post. Enjoy.



-Matt Graham