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Sorry if I misunderstood you, but if you re-read your post, it sounds like you are severely trashing the game, and the people that mostly do that are WoW fanboys. Also, the devs didn’t want to cut anything. They told EA they are going to need a few more months to make things work right. EA said no. They had no choice but to make the best out of it. Since then, they comletely revamped how the cities and the endgame works.

It may have been to get the game out before WotLK, but that wasn’t the dev’s decision, that was EA’s. Also, They are extremely confident that this game is going to change the way people look at MMOs for the better. It’s gonna be a great game.

About the beta and pre-order stuff:

@ Cyrenic’s comment

If you bought the CE just for the open beta access, you are crazy. That’s an extra $30 just for one month of play that gets wiped. Pre-ordering the CE gives the exact same benefits as pre-ordering the standard edition, but the CE is awesome because of all the other stuff that comes in it.

And for those wanting info, CE pre-order customers get into the closed beta this weekend. They are sending out the invites in waves all this week so you can start downloading the client. Thing is, open beta starts next week, so we don’t get in much before them. Also, CE pre-orders get into the headstart just a little bit earlier.

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This is not what I would want from a WH40k MMO. The Grim Darkness of the Far Future should not be comfortable and player-friendly; I don’t want to see Imperial Guard troops with boosted hitpoints and better armor to keep them from being cut down like wheat. I don’t want to spend ANY time leisurely farming squigs.

Having players play as squad commanders instead of individual soldiers might help this. So you could buy and recruit squads like you buy ships in EVE; Imperial Guard soldiers are paper-thin, but they’re also dirt cheep. When you join your squad to others to form an army, you get something that looks functionally similar to a proper 40k army. You spend time training up your command skills, to get better weapons and better morale for your folks, and access to more powerful squads. All in all, I’m seeing something pretty EVE like in execution, except without the spaceships.

It would require some innovation, though; some trying things that haven’t really been seen in MMOs before, and some smart thinking about how to juggle awesome, horrendously destructive PvP with a learning curve that doesn’t smack new players in the face. The problem, though, is that innovation on this sort of scale isn’t something that happens very often in MMOs . . . and never, I don’t think, with licensed properties.

Also, doesn’t Relic/THQ own the WH40k videogame license?

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NOt to mention that most Sci-fi MMOs have been less than spectacular. True, we’re not spoiled for examples. But even a license isn’t enough to guarantee a user-base (SWG anyone?)

Pretty much, I can only see one company with the franchise and experience to make a good, viable Sci-fi MMO. And they don’t much want to cannibalize their WOW user-base

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And the preorder-for-beta-access thing is not even remotely new – that’s how I beta-tested City of Heroes back in, what, 2003? If you’re excited about the game, preordering gets you a bonus taste and them some server stress-testers. If not, well, you can either wait for a free trial offer post-launch (they’d better do one), or apply to get into the closed beta just like everyone else did. If you didn’t get picked, like I didn’t, well…sucks to be us, no? But betas are for testing and bug-fixing, not (primarily) to try the game for free, even if that’s how many of us tend to use them.

What I *don’t* like is when a company invites beta-testers, gets a bunch of free work out of them, and then says “Oh, well, to keep testing you’ll have to preorder.” DDO, for example. They invited me into alpha-testing, got my input for months, and then my computer broke down and I come back to find that I’ve been summarily ejected in favor of johnny-come-latelies with better cash-flow.

PS: A 40K MMO is in development, by someone else.

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I hear you loud and clear. I am so tired of the fantasy genre with regard to the MMORPG style of game. Flogging a dead horse doesn’t even describe it.

I know many gamers who play WoW, but would gladly leave if “a half decent sci-fi MMO came out.”

Also, doing another fantasy game seems like a poor business choice to me. Why try to compete with other fantasy genre games when you could do sci-fi and have relatively little (if any) competition?

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http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=64363

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If you pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition, they’re going to start inviting CE pre order people into the beta next week. You also get a “preview weekend” (I’m assuming that’s the start of open beta, but before anyone else gets in) and the open beta, then the headstart before the actual game release.

More detailed info from Mark Jacobs can be found here: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/108139367/p1/?2

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2 world wars and 1 world cup, doo dah.. doo dah..

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