Full disclosure on my relationship with Mythic

In the interest of full disclosure I'd like to tell you that I accepted a free subscription for the US version of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Yeah, I know, it smells like a bribe, but my reporting on WAR is not going to be influenced. It's hard to remain too principled if somebody is sending you a code telling you that it is valid for all beta phases and the live game itself.

Nevertheless I will still pay for WAR, because my main activity will be on European servers, where my guild is. Playing WAR on a US server means not only a slower ping (not good in a PvP game), but also being 6 to 9 timezones ahead of everyone. I was in a US guild for other games, and it didn't work out, with guild events constantly scheduled for what was 3 am for me.

But then, getting into the European servers might not be all that easy. It's 24 hours before the open beta starts, and the GOA account site is still not up. European community manager Iain Compton posted this comment on my blog yesterday:

"Firstly, there is no doubt about whether Europeans will get an open beta. We announced this in the last newsletter and confirmed it yesterday in our news. The EU open beta has never been in any danger of being postponed, canceled or otherwise missed.

Secondly our website has already been dealing with traffic that makes the expected rush for signups pretty trivial. We get more visits per day that the total number of open beta keys in existence across the world. We have launched major timed events before and we have a lot of experience in making sure that key systems are able to handle the pressure. The account pages are coming, they have been tested thoroughly and we aren't concerned about the stability of the server."

Well, excuse me for being sceptical. I promised I'll keep you all updated on the development, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if some people never got to enter their open beta codes they paid some pre-order fee extra for.