A bit late, but here are some photos of the Warhammer Collector’s Edition box set. If you’re a fan of the Warhammer lore, the graphic novel (blue) Prelude to War will not disappoint as it tackles the back story of Grumlok and Gazbag as pawns of the Dark Elves and the rallying of the Dwarven engineers. Alongside this, The Art of Warhammer Online (red) is fabulously done, bringing a fantasy themed coffee table book to round out the other magazines you have on display.
More photos after the break…
No, this isn’t a spelling error. She likes Marc Jacobs. I like Mark Jacobs.
This is the short note that appears once you load the new WAR Client:
Folks,
A little over three years since work began on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the day of reckoning is now upon us. When we acquired the rights to do a Warhammer Fantasy based MMORPG from Games Workshop back in 2005, I promised them we would create a great and glorious game; a game that they could be proud of and one that would bring Warhammer Fantasy to the entire world. And here we are, about to enter a brand new MMORPG world. Everyone at Mythic hopes that you enjoy your adventures in WAR as much as we have enjoyed creating WAR. We hope that this will be an epic journey for you and for our game as this is but the first step for both of us. What you will see today is just the beginning of WAR’s evolution as we plan on putting even greater effort into enhancing and expanding WAR just as we did with Dark Age of Camelot. Enjoy your Head Start but remember, you have a long road ahead of you so take time to enjoy the scenery along the way.
My thanks go out to every one of you who reads this letter for choosing to be a guest in our world and for pre-ordering our game. My thanks also go out to every member of Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts who helped make this game and this moment possible. It was a truly team effort and it shows.
WAR is now upon us and it is glorious!
Mark Jacobs
VP, GM EA/Mythic Entertainment
Congratulations Mark for putting out a remarkably epic title!
[source]
Ah, the Joys of War!
Thus a few good things must come to an end. And we’re talking of preview weekends and open beta. Today, the Warhammer Herald announced:
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!!!
Texted Kiven today asking what server he’d be playing in. It would be cool if the Pinoys bunched up in one server (actually, 2 servers – one for Order and another for Destruction). The logical choice would be the Oceanic servers but from what I heard, some people have a better pipe connection to the US than Australia depending on your ISP.
The Collectors Edition (me! me!) head start happens on the afternoon of the 14th (US time). Thus far, the game has delivered almost everything I looked for in an MMO including this:
For organization purposes, I think the best place to go to rally into the “living guild” would be over here. Of course, I’m not imposing on anybody. It’s just nice to see a familiar face i nthe battlefield – even if he is your enemy! I’ll probably be found playing at the Darklands or Ironclaw Oceanic servers. On second thought it’s actually more strategic to choose a server that wasn’t in the open beta (like Marius) as a lot of guilds have already chosen these. It’s psychology, no really (!!!), and choosing the “default servers” might cram the queue. Y tu?
P.S. Warhammer Oceanic has a listing of guilds here.
So I clocked in about 5 hours of beta testing Warhammer today. Now I can finally quantify all the excitement that I’ve channeled since World of Warcraft. All in all, Mythic had an interesting take on how video games sort of encourage you to grind the same thing over and over again. After a while, it gets tedious. I realized that I’m not the same gamer I was from 5 years ago. I’m less patient and I have less time to dedicate to gaming (yeah right, I’ve clocked in 5 hours!).
The first five hours of play brings so much engagement to players. Compared to other MMO’s (especially to World of Warcraft), Warhammer: Age of Reckoning has a crap-load of things that can be done in almost all parts of the map. The quests are fun, if not downright stupid – I had to load myself onto a catapult to be flung into the enemy’s castle, and I had to load up unconscious dwarves into barrels and toss them from the castle walls.
Warhammer Online succeeds in bringing something for every gamer, whether you only have 30 minutes, 3 hours, or 10 hours of free time. It’s exactly what I hoped it to be – a breath of fresh air from my previous experiences with online role playing games. It has a Team Fortress 2 co-op flavor to it, which is, I think, why I found it appealing.
To put my beta impressions in a nutshell, unlike other MMO’s that reward players based on how long or how hard they play, Warhammer Online rewards players by simply playing the game at their own pace.
So far the only other Filipino I know who’s playing the open beta is Kiven. We’re both parked on Oceanic servers. We’re playing Chaos. Anyone else into this stuff?
This is probably the most valuable piece of paper in my room right now. It’s been an incessant habit – me checking DataBlitz for anything new even if I very well know that Warhammer Online isn’t coming out till mid September. So I was, after at least visiting the store twice a week for the past month and a half, flabbergasted to see DataBlitz accepting advanced copy reservations of the Collector’s Edition for Warhammer Online.
I was telling Rico how different this would be from Age of Conan, and not trying to justify as to why I bought that game in the first place. Truth is, even if AOC introduced an innovative combat system and a fantastic early game narrative, the game broke where the first island, Tortage, ended. It became clear that AOC was just another MMO with a unique combat system.
Warhammer Online isn’t about interacting with environments, or solo-ing, or role playing. It’s war and conflict all throughout and I guess what makes this appealing to me is that, once I step into the world, everything just falls into place. Here are a few quotes from the Ask the Beta Tester Series:
The Open Group system, along with the much-vaunted Public Quests, seeks to have players collaborating from the earliest levels. Simply by setting foot on the battleground of a Public Quest, a player learns the importance of participating in gameplay with others.
Players who jump in-game from WoW or Age of Conan are going to find a title filled to the brim with fun gameplay and constant WAR. PvP players are going to be ‘coming home’. This is the game you’ve always wanted. Lore nerds and story fans will find plenty to love, and those of us who actually enjoy grouping will see our style of play lauded from fairly early on.
So yeah, Warhammer Online seems to be that Player vs Player oriented MMO that doesn’t promise to be something it’s not.
The Collector’s Ed for WAR (Warhammer: Age of Reckoning) is pretty kick ass. This is the package I ordered, arriving mid September. One of the biggest advantages of the collector’s ed is that I get to participate in open beta without having to apply, XP multiplier tomes, bonus quests, plus a wider library of exclusive titles for my avatar and in game ite– ok I’m rambling.
The truth about these purchases (and people like Kiven very well know this) is that these games actually become cash cows for gamers like us because even though we spend for these, we easily liquidate them by writing reviews and FAQs for local computer game magazines like Game! from Hinge Inquirer and Playground by October 80.
Thus, the advice I have for people who have expensive hobbies — LEARN HOW TO LIQUIDATE YOUR HOBBY!