Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Mythic have finally announced a date for the beginning of Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning’s open beta. It’s 7th September, with the game released proper in a month’s time, on the 18th. They’re expecting it to be very open, with what they hope will be hundreds of thousands of people piling in to stress test the servers. This announcement is only for the N. American servers so far, with open beta invites given to anyone who pre-orders the game. We’ve asked EA when the EU servers will be offering the same, and will let you know. US players can register here.

Meanwhile, you might remember our confusion over the pricing for the UK subs rates on the game. At the time they were announced, the one month price was £10.31, which struck us as odd. We enquired, and have now been told they’re lower.

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Over the years I’ve been following the development of Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning, I’ve noticed one steady trend. It’s the gradual subversion of the formerly calm, carefully paced executive producer Jeff Hickman into Paul Barnett’s comedy sidekick. I blame Barnett entirely for this. That nice man, all gone strange. It’s very telling that when Kieron and I went to visit their studios in Washington DC a couple of years back, I was drawn to Hickman and Kieron to Barnett. What it tells is that Gillen and Barnett are both eccentrics, while Hickman and I are calm, thoughtful and better looking. I digress. The positive result of these personalities at the helm of WAR is seeing both sides appearing in-game. WAR is looking like an MMO that will sit down to tell you a good story, then fart in your face and run away. I stress that this is a good thing. Anyhow, point is, you can see Hickman and Barnett doing their thing in the video below, along with some new in-game footage.

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Two conflicting positions: I have very high hopes for Warhammer Online, and believe it will be a great MMO with fresh ideas, and a unique way of dealing with global conflict. Also: I really worry about Warhammer Online, concerned that by the time it comes out it will have devolved into a very generic WoW clone.

The very first time I saw WAR, back in February 2006, it was more conceptual than physical. They had built a bit of the beginning ground for the Dwarves and Greenskins, and that was just about it. But they had some really exciting ideas. The world of the Games Workshop monolith was going to take some really original approaches to the genre, and the most immediately exciting was the abandoning of levels. Instead they had this fantastic structure in mind that let you micro-manage your character’s skills, picking three at a time and then letting the XP you accrue fill each until it’s complete. This was then broken down into five distinct stages, and, well, it doesn’t exist so it’s not worth explaining. But they were excited about it, and so was I. It’s very telling that the MMO genre seems to have the power to force developers to lose anything that strays too far from the familiar. You’ve got to get a player-base, and if you want them, you’ve got to make it familiar enough. Which means, of course, you’ve got to make it feel like World of Warcraft. Sigh.

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