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
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