For quite some time I was worried about the state of my preorder. Games Warehouse emailed me saying they probably would not have enough stock to fulfil my order, but luckily they secured enough stock and now the Open Beta access code is attached to my account.

Who else has got their open beta code in the beta center? Where did you get it from?

If you’re in Australia try using Games Warehouse, although they may be out of stock by now. Otherwise EB Games is always a good choice, although I’ve heard good things about GAME (although, they’re still new to Sydney).

People have been confused with a number of issues regarding Condemned by Fire and the closed beta. It’s good to see Mythic has cleared up misconceptions:

Greetings all,

Below is a brief FAQ to help alleviate some questions concerning the beta promotion included with BOOM! Studios’ Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning comic: Condemned By Fire.

Do I still have to register my code by May 31st in order to qualify for the beta contest?

The deadline has been extended to June 14th in order to enter your code.

How do I register multiple keys on the same Beta Center account?

As stated we only allow one key per Beta Center Account.

What phase of beta are the winners given access to?

Winners will be invited to CLOSED beta.

Thank you,

The Community Team

I was especially worried about the whole closed/open beta confusion, so it’s great to see I still have my chance to get into closed. I’m also relieved that I didn’t order 5 copies of Condemned by Fire.

[ Source: WAR Herald ]

The largest wave of beta invitations yet is coming up!

With the closed beta testing of Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ marching onwards, we are pleased to announce that we are stepping up the pace; within days the largest beta invitation wave yet seen will be sent out to hungry testers-to-be all over Europe! In other words, keep an eye at your inbox in the near future.

We wish you all good luck, and further wish to extend our gratitude to our current testers for creating such a positive community and we are confident the lucky new testers will feel welcome!

Naturally, we will update you when the invitations are sent out. See you all on the battlefield!

Pity this is only for Europeans but I’m assuming the US will get some more invitations soon too…hopefully.

Source: WAR-Europe

I’m pretty sure this can be considered official. Mark Jacobs has clearly stated that the Open Beta will most likely be a month before launch. The full quote is below:

"As to when, it’s pretty safe to say that we are going to follow what has become conventional wisdom within the MMO community to have an OB about a month before launch. It certainly is possible we might extend it by a bit or even shrink it but no decision has been made yet. And since we haven’t locked in a date yet other than to say Fall 2008…"

Also some other points:

• The NDA will be lifted "quite a while before" the Open Beta
• The head start will start after the Open Beta ends

Well there goes our fantasy of getting months of free play time in beta…or was that just me?

Read the full post here.

Just a day after Guild beta keys were being sent out EA Mythic’s Community Coordinator James Nichols has posted a mini-announcement on the Warhammer Alliance forums in regards to the Guild beta contest that was held some time ago:

Hey all,

We still fully intend to honor the contest, and I’m happy to announce have been selected and will be notified shortly

Why were we waiting so long? Well development of a game is fluid in some respects, with our extended release schedule it allowed us to take more time to make sure that when guild beta happens it serves it’s full purpose. We don’t want guilds to come in and tell us stuff we already know, we want to work together to find things that weren’t apparent to us…guilds are a vital part to a games longevity and community.

They are often times large, organized groups of people that can work in unison to provide us with feedback and insight from an angle we can’t really achieve with in house testing and individual beta participants.

If we brought such a specialized group of people into a beta that wasn’t ready for them much of that momentum would be lost and the program itself wouldn’t be as effective.

We’re really excited for Guild Beta and we have some great groups of people. We’ll have some announcements coming up concerning it but for now we’re just getting everything in order. Exciting times are ahead, stay tuned!

Lucky guilds. I should’ve planned ahead and got into a guild ages ago. Still, I can be an awesome guildie, so if you have a spare key or win one in the contest, mind sending it my way? I listen, will be a very good healer and will do as told…or not (but seriously, I’d heterosexually love you if you did).

It seems quite definitely that the keys for long-awaited Guild beta are finally being sent out. There has been no official announcement from Mythic (yet) but quite a few members of the WAR community are saying their guild members have begun receiving their keys via email.

Of course, I’ll keep monitoring this and keep everyone updated!

EDIT: Okay, I’m sure this can be considered confirmed now as more reports are coming in that the keys have indeed started to be sent.

[ Find more information @ Warhammer Alliance and Warhammer Vault via Warhammer Geek ]

Well Iain Compton from the European WAR team has given the vaguest answer the world has ever seen (slight hyperbole):

We don’t have a firm ETA for that part of the site yet but it will definitely be open before the open beta begins. As soon as it is open there will be news announcing the fact and, no doubt the regular community sites will also be reporting on it too.

What we now realize is that that part of the site will be launched at some point. Great, we should be able to pinpoint the date now! (sarcasm is great, right?)

Not sure if this is under NDA (if it is I’m sorry, but I didn’t sign anything as I’m not in the beta), but it’s interesting and I don’t like pretending certain news doesn’t happen. My aim is to report on everything that may interest Warhammer Online fans, which is what I’m doing now.

Anyway, I’ve got word that the recent focus phase, which dealt with Tier 3 combat has ended (or will be ending very shortly). The phase lasted for just over a week apparently, and it makes sense that the next phase will move onto Tier 4 (although that is not confirmed, just speculation).

This message was delivered to current beta testers:

The beta servers will be closing down this evening at around 17:00 BST (18:00 CET). This will bring to an end the current Tier 3 focus test and allow the technical teams to prepare the way for the second part of this phase. This will require a few days of downtime and we will bring you more details of what you can look forward to next over the course of this week. Thanks for all your feedback and testing, keep an eye on the announcements for more details as we have them.

Good to see that the test is progressing nicely (it seems).

At the announcement that 1 in 5 Condemned by Fire copies would contain a code to gain access to the beta I eagerly ordered five copies. Shortly after that however I cancelled my order as I lost my eagerness to get into the closed beta and I believe I read somewhere that it’s for North American residents only (although it may have meant only people using the North American Beta Center…).

Anyway, at New York Comic Con EA Mythic’s Community Relations Director, Robert Mull showed off the amazing intricacies of the scratch-off technology within the graphic novel in all it’s glory (end sarcasm). The video below is fairly fluffy, but it gives you a brief look at the comics, and exactly where to scratch when you get your copies so you can start entering the code into the beta center asap.

[ Source: The Greenskin ]