Well, at least GOA, the European publisher, tries to bring it to Europe. They are not above trying.

Today the Open Beta of Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning (WAR) should start. GOA confirmed yesterday their authentication centre will be online on 9:30 CEST (8:30 BST). Well, it’s not working as intended. And I have serious doubts the Open Beta servers are really opened today afternoon. Oh, and choosing a Flash-solution for account access is plain bad, very bad web usability. Form follows function!

I know GOA from my old DAoC days and since then they are infamous for their very bad costumer support and communication (if not the worst in the whole MMORPG branch worldwide), patch delays, server stability etc. I really cannot understand why EA-Mythic chose GOA for WAR’s European publishing.

I hope I can virtually travel through the lands of Warhammer Online today.

[Update]

Open Beta Servers were available a couple of minutes after 17:00 CE(S)T. Patching my Closed Beta client went nearly smooth and I was able to enter the servers. Exorbitant lags made playing not much fun. So far I guess coupled with my old (trusty) PC, WAR will not be very enjoyable for me.

And even when the graphics are not much better than World of Warcraft (at least on my lower settings), my FPS seem to drop into the cellar (a saying in Germany).

Judging the official reports from GOA that they have 5000 players currently online (obviously on 18 servers) and the system is that laggy, I fear the worst when the thousands and thousands of non-Closed Beta testers get onto the servers. The unofficial WAR forums (there aren’t any official ones in Europe) are swarmed by raging WAR customers. Yes, I wrote customers and not players.

I updated the first day of my travels.

The early bird catches the train

Well, I got a bit distracted over the last week, because I got invited to the Closed Beta Test of  Warhammer Online.