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Few names in the massively multiplayer online gaming industry hold as much clout as the often quoted Mark Jacobs. Having been a part of the online gaming industry since the early 1980s, Mark has been a fundamental factor in the gradual evolution of massively multiplayer online gaming. With the release of Mythic Entertainment’s latest MMORPG, Warhammer Online, it looks like Mark has again played a fundamental role in the evolution of MMO gaming. But with any MMOG, the work isn’t done when the game is released, and the Ten Ton Hammer staff sat down with Mark to discuss the future of Warhammer and his thoughts on their initial launch. We hope you enjoy the discussion!

Ten Ton Hammer: What’s your general sense of how the launch went? We’re past the first weekend and into the first real week; how do you think things went?

Mark Jacobs: I think it was the smoothest launch in MMO history. For six days there were no crashes. No real emergency patches. No downtime. Not only did the entire game not crash, but no servers even crashed. So for the first six days, things were fabulous. Of course that evening we had two crashes and then two more after that, but that’s the only real blemish on the record.

But when you have 55 servers up, that’s some pretty good up-time.

Ten Ton Hammer: How are you dealing with game balance? Obviously you had plenty of testing in beta, but now you’re seeing it in full speed. How are you dealing with the class balances, faction balances, etc.?

Mark: It’s about what we expected. We got a lot of it right. The beta testers told us a lot, but they didn’t tell us everything. They never do. So, we have our strike teams looking at everything - the reports, the metrics - and we’re going to balance things. No MMO ever comes out fully balanced.

I think we’re certainly in better shape than where we were with Camelot. Are we perfect? No. I’d be hard pressed to think of any MMO, especially one that’s PvP geared that is, within sixty days, didn’t have some major balancing adjustments to the game. Hopefully we won’t be making major adjustments, but we’re certainly going to be balancing things.

When you have 55 servers and they’re busy almost all day every day, you get a lot more data than when you do during beta.

Read more at Ten Ton Hammer!

Status: All servers are back online!

Greetings!

At 12:00 Noon EDT, Badlands, Skull Throne, Volkmar, and Dark Crag will be coming down in order to clone the server over to their respective cloned servers. As mentioned in this previous announcement multiple servers will be cloned in order to better spread budding populations and reduce queue times across the board during peak playing times.

Please be sure to read the following thread for the full details:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=297

We anticipate the downtime to last 4 hours and return by 4:00 PM EDT. Please watch this post for information and updates. Thank you!

UPDATE 1:58 PM EDT:

Additional servers have been cloned and are ready for action. Characters from Badlands are now also on Mordheim, characters from Dark Crag are now also on Eerie Downs, characters from Skull Throne are now also on Tower of Doom and characters from Volkmar are now also on Magnus.

We encourage players and guilds currently playing on Badlands, Dark Crag, Skull Throne and Volkmar to play on the newly created clones in order to alleviate long queue times that you have been experiencing.

Greetings!

As mentioned by Mark in this post:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=292

We will be cloning 5 servers in order to improve player experiencing on servers with high populations.

The five selected servers will be brought down for maintenance and a copy will be made of the current existing data, including characters, items, guilds, the auction house, and more. These copies will be loaded onto brand new servers.

Once the copies are made the two servers are entirely separate, if you choose to play on the new server any achievements earned there will not carry over to the previous server and vice versa. You will always be able to return to your character on either server at any time.

Below are the servers being cloned and the names of the new ones they are being copied to, these servers will maintain the same ruleset as their parent:

Phoenix Throne (RP) => White Tower (RP)

Skull Throne (Core) => Tower of Doom (Core)

Volkmar (Core) => Magnus (Core)

Badlands (Core) => Mordheim (Core)

Dark Crag (RvR) => Eerie Downs (RvR)

The cloning process will require several hours of downtime, Phoenix Throne will be cloned first, our anticipated downtime is approximately 7AM EDT this morning. We will then begin cloning the other servers once Phoenix Throne and White tower have been brought back online.
A new herald post will be created for both of these maintenance windows. Thank you and as always watch the Herald for important news and information!

Folks,

Well, it’s less than an hour till the full launch of the game and I’ve got three very good bits of news to share with you.

(1) First, let’s start with a change to our Code of Conduct. After reviewing the CoC, we’ve decided that it is not necessary to have you click through it every time you enter the game. However, you will need to continue to scroll through the EUALA for the foreseeable future. While we are making it easier to do that it will remain as it is. I’m truly sorry that it is necessary but for now, due to legal reasons, it will still need to be scrolled through and accepted when you enter the game.

(2) On a much lighter and even more important note, as you know one of main priorities for our engineering team over the last few weeks has been to reduce the number of crashes to desktop (CTDs) that are experienced by a small percentage of our players. We applied a client patch yesterday and over the last 24 hours, the aggregate number of CTDs per play hour has decreased by 50%. We are applying another patch that we hope will take the numbers down even further but for now, even with the 50% reduction, the number of CTDs is now at its lowest ever.

(3) Finally, we have some even better news for a large number of our players. Since we launched the Head Start program, we have told people that after launch we would allow them to move characters from a high population server to a low population server free of charge.

Tomorrow morning, we will begin a process to essentially clone (who says you can’t mix sci-fi and fantasy) all character, Auction House and guild information of several of our high population servers to brand new servers. Players and guilds can choose which server (old, new or both!) they wish to play on. Nobody’s characters will be deleted and because they are being copied to clean servers, everyone gets to keep their names and their guild names. As far as we know nobody has done this before in the MMORPG industry and we are proud to be the first to offer this to our players.

So, it is up to you, whether you are just an individual player or guild to stay on the existing server or to move to the new server. Here are the servers that are being moved and the names of their clones:

Phoenix Throne => White Tower

Skull Throne => Tower of Doom

Volkmar => Magnus

Badlands => Mordheim

Dark Crag => Eerie Downs

Once again we have shown our commitment to make WAR the best MMORPG on the market both through our commitment to game development and customer service.

Mark

WAAAGH!!!

WAR comes to the world on Thursday, September 18th at 12:01AM (Midnight) EDT. Join us as we officially launch Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and welcome all to the new dawn of MMO Gaming.

The path has been long but the Reckoning is finally upon us…we’ll see you soon!

Hello everyone,

There are currently 4 servers on which players are experiencing high wait times. All other servers currently have no queue at this time. Players are strongly cautioned against starting their adventures here if they can play elsewhere. All four of these servers have had the number of concurrent users they support raised to the maximum possible.

The servers are:

Volkmar
Skull Throne
Badlands
Dark Crag

Thank you for your cooperation. Have fun!

The WAR is under way and we want everyone to take part. In addition to our starting list of servers for the CE Headstart, we have also added three new Core Servers: Ulthuan, Vortex, and Ungrim. We will continue to add new servers of all types and adjust balances as the day progresses.

Update 2:05PM EDT - NA Server: Bretonnia (Core) is now available, have fun! In addition multiple servers have had their population caps increased.

Update 1:25 PM EDT - NA Server: Tor Elyr (RP/Core) has been opened, players interested in the RP ruleset should begin playing here, thank you!

Update 1:16 PM EDT - We have also added Iron Rock as a Core Server.

WAAAGH!

Over three years in the making, more than a year of Beta, almost a million beta signups, and hundreds of thousands of people standing in waiting.

WAR has Come! And today is your day to claim that which is rightfully yours, conquer your enemies, and bring glory and honor to your realm, forever!

The Collector’s Edition Head Start has begun…Tens of thousands will descend upon WAR and help to usher in the hundreds of thousands that stand waiting…

A new age has started…Welcome to the Age of Reckoning!

See you on the battlefield…WAAAGH!!!

Greetings!

While we’ve provided this information in the past we wanted to be clear on how and when you will receive your Collectors Edition rewards on the characters you create during head start.

In order to receive the in-game items from your Collectors Edition you must have a valid CE Product Key entered (The one that comes with the box) this means you will not be able to use the items and faces during Head Start, however, you can use them on the character you have created as soon as you get your CE Box and associate the code with your game account, and yes you can even change your face!

Once you have your Collector’s Edition simply visit the Mythic Account Center (http://accounts.eamythic.com) associate your product key with your existing Beta Game Account, the same Game Account you used to create your Head Start characters on. The next time you log your Head Start characters in they will receive an in game mail with your rewards!

To use the exclusive Collector’s Edition face for your race take the item out of your mailbox and follow the instructions included on the items tooltip. Bring the face to a dye merchant and apply it like you would a dye in the Marketing Rewards slot on your character window, this will allow you to preview the new face before you change it.

Please Note: This change is permanent and you will be unable to change your face back later, so make sure it’s the face you want!

That’s all there is to it!

Have fun…WAAAGH!!!

WAAAGH!!!

Things are going great as we prepare for the CE Head Start, so well in fact that we’re opening an hour early at 12PM (Noon) EDT!

We hope you came hungry because we’re going to be serving up pure WARsome with a side of RvR for lunch!

(No really I don’t talk like this seriously just looking forward to lunch.)

WAR is Coming…See you there!

Author’s Comment: That’s in 30 minutes from this post!

WAAAGH!!!!

What an awesome week it’s been!

Not only has the feedback been terrific but with your help we’ve been able to get the game in great shape for launch.

Beta started over a year ago and it’s truly amazing to see how far things have come, the community has grown and game just continued to improve more and more.

This has been an awesome experience and we are proud to have shared it all with you. Celebrate this moment because for many WAR is Here!

We now welcome you to take a few hours, catch up on sleep, and to all of our CE Pre-Order customers come on back at 1PM EDT for the opening of Head Start and be the first to blaze your destiny in the forges of WAR!

We cannot wait to begin the journeys to come with all of you and whether you join us in the Standard Edition Head Start or come back for launch on the 18th we look forward to welcoming you and sharing your adventures and victories in our world.

In just a few short minutes the Open Beta servers will be closed at 4AM EDT. Enjoy these last moments and prepare for those to come in the years ahead.

The road has been a long and awesome experience, but you aint seen nothing yet!

It is with our deepest gratitude and thunderous excitement that we officially end Beta. Congratulations, WAR has come and together we will unveil it to the world, a new day rises and with it comes the Age of Reckoning…

We’ll see you on the battlefield…To WAR!!!

Throughout this evening and the wee hours of the morning, you may notice some of the servers listed here coming online.

Please note that any servers that come up before CE Head Start begins at 1:00 PM EDT on Sunday will be wiped. This means that any characters created on these servers before the official beginning of CE Head Start will be erased.

Thanks for your cooperation, and you know what I’m going to say here about keeping an eye on the Herald for updates, right?!

WAAAGH!!!

Things have shifted a bit but in the end you get more WAR!

Early tomorrow morning, Open Beta will end as we shut down all servers and prepare for the coming of the Collector’s Edition Head Start.

We encourage you to take this time to sleep, eat, say hello to your friends and family, feed the pets, etc. and get ready for launch as the CE Head Start kicks off tomorrow (Sunday 9/14) @ 1PM EDT!

Tomorrow afternoon the Age of Reckoning will arrive, will you be ready?

We will see you all on the battlefield very soon…to WAR!

Folks,

I’ve always said that the pre-launch for an MMORPG can be just as chaotic as post-launch. Well, here’s a good example of that in action and in this case it’s good news! Gamestop today put a number of CEs that they still had in their system, up for sale. Thanks to the Vault, yes, I said thanks to the Vault, we found out they were doing so. As you can imagine, we were umm, rather surprised that they had some copies remaining. So, we have been working with them this morning and we are going to give them additional Collector’s Editions pre-order bonus codes (Open Beta, Head Start, and the two in-game bonus items) to cover the remaining CEs. So, if you still want a CE you will be able to get one, complete with all the expected codes for the CE. You will be able to get into the remainder of the Open Beta and of course, the Head Start (starting on the 14th) and get your bonus items.

So, if you still want a CE with all the keys, you can still get them. Quantities are quite limited (these are not new units but part of the original 60K) so if you want a CE and you want to get into the Open Beta and enjoy the full Head Start, get your orders in quickly. How’s that for a nice way to start your day, courtesy of Gamestop and Mythic?

Mark

WAAAGH!!!

Can’t get enough of Open Beta but you’re ready to finally start your journey in the Age of Reckoning?

Starting Sunday, September 14th all Collectors Edition Pre-Order players will be invited to join us as we kick off WAR and officially end Open Beta.

On Tuesday, September 16th all Standard Edition Pre-Order players will join the ranks of Collectors Edition players as we prepare to release WAR to the world next Thursday, September 18th.

Make sure you’ve used your Open Beta code to download the client from FilePlanet and have registered your Head Start code in the Mythic Account Center so you don’t miss a minute of action!

WAR is Coming - We’ll see you there!

Author’s Comment: Can’t wait to see you all in-game!

I don’t think there is a person out there that reads the various WAR sites that to put it nicely, GOA dropped the ball with their handling of the EU open Beta. I wasn’t even going to blog on this untill I log on this afternoon and see the following on the WAR-Europe homepage.

Since we launched our new validation system yesterday, players have been flooding onto the beta servers. We’ve been working on the systems constantly and at the moment more than 70,000 fans are able to play. Some of you however have tried to validate your codes and have received a message saying that they were invalid. If this is the case, please take note of the following points:

The letter ‘I’ can sometimes look like the number ‘1′
Likewise on some printed sheets, the letters ‘D’ and ‘O’ may be hard to tell apart
A zero will be printed as an ‘O’ with a line through it.
Please ensure that you are only trying to validate an open beta code, headstart or bonus item codes are not valid at this time, the system will now reject these codes immediately to make it easier for you and to prevent the wrong codes from being submitted.

Previously when you validated your code, there was a delay between the confirmation email and you being able to access the servers, our technicians have worked to remove this delay and now you will be able to patch and play as soon as your confirmation email is received. The last remaining 10,000 players who were waiting for access can now join the action on the servers

What’s wrong with this you may say, 3 days and GOA are getting the ball rolling, little late but better late than never right?
My issue is this, I am one man, and by the law of averages my experiences are going to be echoed by the experiences of a fair number of other EU players out there and Guess What?

I havent gotten my Open Beta Access yet!

Now the way I look at things there is one of two things going on here, either I am incredibly unlucky and my activation, which I filled the form out within an hour of it going live with the alternate activation, being lost in the shuffle. Or GOA are sugar coating exactly how quickly they have gotten their hands on the ball.

As I said I am a bit of a numbers person, and by the numbers the sugar coating of the truth seems a far more likely scenario than the chance that I am one of very few people that have fallen through the cracks.

Sure this could just be frustration talking, and yeah when Mark Jacobs made his blog post about how people are reacting he had a valid stand point as to “it is only a Game” however take into consideration what Paul Barnett said way back at E3 2006:

What we are making is a total hobby experience, we want you to buy this game and never buy another one,We want you to spend all your time playing it…
…Imagination is, I’ve played the game and then I want to talk about it, go on to websites, draw pictures about it, have T-Shirts, I want to think about what I am going to do when I play next week. I talk to my friends all about it.
If you get skill, commitment and imagination you get a hobby ecperience and a hobby experience and a hobby experience should grab you to the core of your being and be the only thing you want to do and that’s the game we are making.

Now we all know the Dev’s at Mythic are doing a fantastic job and if they have created half the product that Paul enthuses in that presentation, is it really any wonder that there are fans out there that have spent the past year counting down the time till they can FINALLY get their hands on a working (if not released) copy of the game for themselves? And then get hit with a series of episodes which so far has taken 3 days out of the 11 day beta period away from them. Personally I can see why there is are a lot of proverbial sniper scopes aimed at GOA right now

Well I guess I just wanted to share my hurt really

Orlock

PS. Keep tuned we have plans for the next Podcast of Reckoning in the works… oh and another Parody

WAAAGH!!!

WAR is Coming and the world is ready. Hundreds of thousands of players will descend upon the Age of Reckoning this Sunday, September 7th.

In order to make this world-wide event the best it can be we’re welcoming all Preview Weekend attendees back for two more days to rev things up and get the party started. We invite all Preview Weekend players to join us for Preview Weekend+ this Friday, 9/5 and Saturday, 9/6 starting tomorrow morning.

This epic weekend will be one to remember as you herald in Open Beta and the Age of Reckoning to the entire world!

The tides of WAR are coming…we’ll see you on the battlefield!

Preview Weekend+ has started allowing the 100,000 testers to return for a final systems check before the big day this Sunday, September 7th.

Greetings!

Since bringing the Account Center live it has come to our attention that some Target Pre-Order customers are encountering errors when attempting to register their keys.

We have discovered that due to mis-printing the letter “Q” is displaying as an “O”. Pre-Order keys will never contain “O” or “0″. Be sure that in any scenario where there appears to be an O that you enter “Q” instead.

We apologize for this inconvenience. Thank you!

Author’s Comment: This is actually happening a lot! Happened to a few people I know already

If you happen to be interested in Warhammer Online’s open beta, FilePlanet.com just launched sign-ups for the open beta for Warhammer Online.

EA AND MYTHIC ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCE THAT WARHAMMER® ONLINE: AGE OF RECKONING™HAS GONE GOLD

Award-Winning Fantasy MMORPG Marches Toward Sept. 18th Launch

FAIRFAX, Va. - August 26, 2008 - GET READY FOR THE WORLDWIDE WAAAGH! Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Mythic Entertainment today announced that the highly-anticipated MMORPG, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR), has gone gold and will open its servers on September 18, 2008 at an MSRP of $49.99 in North America.

“We’ve done our best to create the next great MMORPG experience, but it’s the fans that will bring our world to life,” said Mark Jacobs, vice president at EA and general manager of Mythic Entertainment. “The Day of Reckoning approaches and it’s going to be glorious! It’s time to go to WAR.”

Based on the popular tabletop game from Games Workshop, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is an epic fantasy MMORPG featuring innovative Realm vs. Realm™ game play that pits the forces of Order and Destruction against one another on the battlefield to determine the fate of nations.

Awarded “Best Online Game” at the recent Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, “Best PC Game” of E3 by G4’s X-Play and “Best MMO” of E3 by IGN, WAR has been well-received by critics and by the gaming community as an accessible and engaging MMO title. Tens of thousands of players have already joined the battle in the closed beta, and soon the time will be at hand for players the world over to pledge their allegiance to the armies of WAR.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is scheduled to launch simultaneously in North America, Europe, and Oceania on September 18, 2008. Available for PC, WAR is rated “T” for Teen by the ESRB. For more information, visit http://www.warhammeronline.com/.

###

About Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™
Experience the glory of Realm vs. Realm™! Declare your allegiance and join hundreds of thousands of mighty heroes on the battlefields of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the new MMORPG from Mythic Entertainment, the creators of Dark Age of Camelot™. Enter a grim fantasy world of perpetual conflict to fight for the Realms of Order (Dwarfs, High Elves, and Empire) or Destruction (Greenskins, Dark Elves, and Chaos). Invade enemy lands, besiege imposing fortresses, and sack sprawling capital cities for the glory of your Realm. Wield devastating magic and deadly weapons, battle monstrous creatures, and join your brothers-in-arms in epic Public Quests™. Climb the Bastion Stair, carry your Guild Banner into battle, and unlock the infinite secrets of the Tome of Knowledge as you travel the world. Sharpen your blade and unleash your inner mutation; the Age of Reckoning has begun and WAR IS EVERYWHERE!

About Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world’s leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, cellular handsets and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names: EA SPORTS™, EA™, EA SPORTS Freestyle™ and POGO™. In fiscal 2008, EA posted GAAP net revenue of $3.67 billion and had 27 titles that sold more than one million copies. EA’s homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA’s products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS Freestyle, POGO, Mythic Entertainment, Dark Age of Camelot, Public Quests, Realm vs. Realm, and Game Time are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Games Workshop, Warhammer, Warhammer Online, Age of Reckoning, and all associated marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations, units, illustrations and images from the Warhammer world are either ®, ™ and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2008. Used under license by Electronic Arts Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Author’s Comment: I always thought they go gold when they announce the release date, I guess not. Anybody know if a game can ever become silver, or bronze?…

If you have preordered Warhammer Online from Amazon.com, we wanted to let you know that your codes will not be mailed to you. Instead, you can find them in your Media Library in your Amazon.com account. Here’s how to access your codes:

Select “Your Account” from the upper-right corner of the Amazon.com screen.

Select “View Your Media Library” from the right column in the “Where’s my stuff” section near the top of the page.

Log in if necessary.

When the Media Library page appears, at the top of the screen you will see several tabs, one of which is called “Downloads”. Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the word Downloads.

Select Bonus Items.

You should see all the codes you have access to here.

The Warhammer Online closed beta “preview weekend” has come to an end today. All servers are shut and many of you are eagerly awaiting to get in for the open beta which is schedule to open shortly. We’ve had a chance here at Warhammer Geek to play for the past week or two and we have a lot to say about it (listen in for the podcast which should be available soon(tm)). The wiki is starting to shape up and we have been collecting information already to plug into there and update.

For those of you who haven’t played yet, be impressed. This game is all around one of the best titles the staff here as played and many of us haven’t even got into the Tier 3 area’s yet. The public quest system is better than we expected as the quests are not as isolated as you may have thought.

I won’t spoil the fun though, make sure to get out there and try the game before it launches. If you do not have a pre-order key and you live in the United States, Target super markets are selling the open beta key’s (without having to pre-order the game) for 99 cents.

New screenshots will be uploaded shortly however the wiki will be more populated with them on the individual pages.

The NDA for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is now down. This will let us express ourselves a bit more with our content and will allow us now to fill in the empty gaps on the wiki which we have been waiting to do for the last few months.

Stay tuned, make an account on our wiki, and fill in what you see fit! It’s all open now!
 
 
 

The news posts from us (Warhammer Geek) should slowly start picking up again within the next week or two as everybody returns from vacation and short term plans. As for Warhammer Online, the suspense has been building drastically as important information and dates are starting to be released. Below is a small culmination of game important facts.
 
 
Open Beta Date / NDA Drop: August 15th, 2008*
Official Launch Date: September 18th, 2008
 
 
Subscription Fees:
* Monthly Subscription: $14.99 USD
* 3-Month Subscription: $41.97 ($13.99 per month)
* 6-Month Subscription: $77.94 ($12.99 per month)
 
 
Minimum System Specs for WAR:
For Windows XP

· 2.5 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
· 2 Gigabyte RAM
· A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
· At least 15 GB of hard drive space
 
 
Pre-Order Package Includes:
* Open beta admission: Pre-order customers can experience the glory of battle and the thrill of WAR by participating in the open beta test.
* Head Start program: Players can begin their adventures in the Age of Reckoning before the game’s official launch.
* Bonus in-game items: Players can equip their characters with two bonus in-game items by pre-ordering from select retail partners.
* Universal Fighting System™ Battle Deck: The Emperor Karl Franz and Tchar’zanek, dread Champion of Tzeentch, go head-to-head in this exclusive collectible card game from Fantasy Flight Games. (Available in a limited supply from select retailers.)
 
 
 
* Open beta invitations given out by the CE Pre-Order will activate at this time. If purchased through the EA Store, codes will be sent out August 13, 2008.