WAR Account Center all set up

The WAR Herald posted today that Mythic’s account center was ready to receive Open Beta codes and Head start codes. Graev and I both have our accounts all set up and flagged for Closed Beta, Open Beta, and Head Start now. All we have left to do is add our “special in-game item” code and we’ll be completely ready for WAR’s launch.

I was expecting the NDA to drop today, given that Mythic said to us at E3 we would see it drop in the first two weeks of August, but the Herald now says we have to wait until next week for more information.  Personally, I’m not at all bothered by this.  I’ve been extremely busy lately and this will give me more time to finish up my movies and writeups for you guys.  On the topic of our NDA drop coverage, I’m still happily accepting requests for specific questions or details that you want answered.  Feel free to leave a comment here or contact us by email.

This weekend I will post a list of what I’m going to write about and what movies I have recorded.

  • Didn’t a very prominent Mythic figure say publicly that any game that still has an NDA place X weeks from launch you should be very worried about?

    Anyone else find it funny that it’s about to happen to Mythic’s own game?

  • As I’ve said before, my system for judging a company’s confidence in its product is based on how early the NDA is lifted. I give the game one point for every week before launch that the NDA is lifted. A score of 1 or less means big trouble, 2-4 is okay but not great, 4-8 is good to great and anything higher than that is nirvana….

    Mark

    you mean this ?

  • I’m not sure why they’re waiting really, but I’m too busy conquering PQs and Scenarios to worry about it . . .

  • Once again the EU get shafted. We don’t even have an account centre and I’ve had the damned CE for months.

  • Keen,

    You’d better start downloading the game client if you haven’t already. The BitTorrent download is slow (i.e. on the order of days for most people, from reading various forums).

    I don’t know what Mythic is planning for Open Beta, but IMO Mythic should have a file download.

    BitTorrent isn’t user-friendly for folks who aren’t technical (and I say this as a software developer), and it can be extremely slow due to factors outside of the control of the user (e.g. your ISP throttles BitTorrent / P2P traffic).

  • Taugrim.

    If you know someone who has it you can get a P2P file transfer program like SoulSeek or something and get it from them directly. Shouldn’t take more than one night I would imagine.

  • I’d like to see videos of running through some of the zones. Up ’till now nothing has come out to really illustrates the size of the zones and how they flow – I.e. open world like WoW, or a maze with invisible walls (Guild Wars).

    And yes, the EU folks seem to have it rough with GOA, you guys have my sympathy…

    As for the timing of the NDA lift, whatever. If I was in their position I’d be doing the exact some thing they are, based on what I’ve heard whispered (from little birdies of course) about the recent patches that have come online.

  • The Account Center is common knowledge and publicly spoke about by Mythic on a regular basis. They even have FAQS up about it and news today saying that you can enter your keys.

    I don’t see what would be covered by the NDA in the account center. Perhaps the BETA center might have NDA covered things such as download links, server status, and other info but certainly not the Account center.

  • Since Massively is spouting tons of info about the elf starting areas I think I can safely answer Sisyphean’s question without violating any NDA stuff (if not, feel free to delete this post).

    The zones are pretty huge and fairly open, though there are certainly maze-like bits in certain parts of some zones. I’d say overall they’re much like WoW, but more interesting. No dull, empty, boring Barrens, Desolace, or Tanaris here.

  • Well I’d have to say then that my experience so far with the account setup has to be one of the worst I’ve ever encountered in all my years gaming online. The multiple accounts you have to create, the lack of information in the emails as to what to do, and the poor usability design of the account setup site left me very frustrated and confused.

    I mean I was told to do one thing in the emails, yet what they were talking about wasn’t even visible in the beta center. Even more hilarious, one day there would be no sign up link, then the next day there would be. Then the following day it would be gone again. I mean I have yet to be able to sign up for the beta forums because the link only showed for one day and during that day it continually gave errors when trying to create an account. I mean from my perspective it just seemed like one fiasco after another, almost as though they were hacking things together trying to get them to work from day to day.

    With regards to adding keys, I tried to add the Open Beta key today and got one error message after another (after trying 2 or 3 times). Finally I glanced at the start page and it now shows the Open Beta key added (even after all of their error message). Thinking maybe they don’t like Firefox, I switched to IE and added my Live Game Head Start and Bonus In-Game Items keys without any issues whatsoever.

    Again to clarify, I’m not talking about the game itself whatsoever, as per the NDA. I’m talking about what I consider basic no brainer stuff that most companies should know how to do by now (i.e. integrated account setup) BEFORE a person even gets into the game. As a web developer who has worked on game publisher sites in the past (i.e. Sierra, Activision, Konami), I guess I just consider all of the peripheral experiences of a game (i.e. game product site, account setup, forums, etc) just as important as the game itself in a creating an overall enjoyable “experience” instead of it being treated like an afterthought (i.e. “Oh ya! I guess we need a website?”). 🙂

  • Keen and Greav I entered my beta key from my pre-order from Game-Stop. Can you give me a link to where I can start downloading or once you download the file offer a link that I can download off of you? I am not too computer savvy and have never used torrent.

  • That’s totally weird Nollind. My experience with the account center was really effortless. I logged in to my account (had one from DAOC), clicked “activate a key”, entered my key, chose to associate it with my current account, clicked confirm, and I was done.

    I repeated that process with the Closed Beta Key, Open Beta Key, and Head Start key and had zero problems.

    As for the multiple accounts, it’s easiest to think of your account center is a MASTER account and you have to create subsidiary accounts for the games you’re playing under it. this way you can have multiple accounts under one master account and have different info if you choose.

    I’m not sure about the errors or problems you’re getting. I have FireFox and it worked fine. That totally sucks that you had problems though. I don’t think you’re alone in it either – I’ve seen a few people saying they got errors.

  • @Andrew: The open beta download link is not available yet – it should be next week. I believe they’ll offer a normal download link as well as the bittorrent. You’ll most likely find these download links in your account center page (if not there, then the beta center). Again, sometime next week according to today’s news announcement on the Herald.

  • Also, for those of you getting errors… did you Pre-order from Target? If so, this may interest you:

    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 contains “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! –Source

  • The multiple accounts thing doesn’t seem any different than NCSoft and some other companies to me. You have a master account for the company (NCSoft, Mythic, Turbine) and then a game account for each specific game from that company that you buy. It gives you a single destination for managing subscriptions while allowing you to have different account names and passwords for each game.

    If they didn’t do that, you’d be going “gawd, why don’t they just have one site so I can manage all this crap” :p

    As to the beta forums thing, nobody getting invitations from August onwards will be getting beta forum access. Its pretty annoying, but such is life. The invitation e-mails were incorrect and should not have had info about forum account creation. I’m sure the responsible party has been flogged.

  • I will be very depressed if the NDA doesn’t come up by Monday… mostly because I’m desperate for info and my only sources are forced to keep things shut.

    As for videos I think you should do? I’m pretty sure you’ve already done a Squig herder review, but if posible, can you do a Shadow Warrior review and then go on to compare the two classes in terms of solo/kiting viability?

  • Heh. I want me some sweet info on WAR, but, the NDA still hasn’t dropped…at least I’ve made an account and registered by Open Beta and Head Start keys. See you guys in open beta, right?

  • Heh. Sweet. I want to get in game soon with you guys. Been waiting for this game for awhile now, and now it’s almost here! WOOOHOO!

  • Questions:

    Will you please review the classes? I am interested in the BW but am afraid I may get bored so may go WP. Tell us which on you feel is the most complex of classes?

    Thanks

  • Hey Keen, if I only had to utilize the Account Manager, I probably wouldn’t have been as frustrated, although I still experienced errors when adding keys to it.

    I mean here’s a basic rundown of my initial experience.

    1) Got beta email Saturday. Horay!
    2) Created account. No problem.
    3) Asking to create another account. Like huh, didn’t I just create an account? Ok, no worries. I’ll create another. Done.
    4)Started downloading game via BitTorrent. Minor frustrations but figured out how to optimize download settings. Thought I’d checked beta forums in the meantime to read up on what’s happening.
    5)Email talked about need to create a Beta “Forum Account”. No link in my beta account area relating to creating this Forum Account though. Tried logging into Realm War page on WAR site using my Account login to see if anything there. Repeated “Invalid Login” messages returned. (Note “Realm War” page has login completely removed now.)
    6) Waited till next day (Sun). Installed game. Servers seem down.
    7) Waited till next day (Mon). Servers still down but the create forum account link appears in beta account area. Tried three or four times unsuccessfully to create an forum account account but unsuccessful. Even worse, no feedback error message given when trying to create account. It just looped back to the same start page to create a forum account. Very frustrating.
    8) That evening finally get into game but immediately got kicked out. Tried immediately again but can no longer seem to access server.
    9) Waited till next day (Tues). Viewed beta account area and Create Forum Account link is now completely gone (and hasn’t came back since then).
    10) That evening (or was it the next day, Wed?) finally get into game without issues. Again, however, have no clue how to create Beta Forum account or even where this forum is located.

    Again while this experience was frustrating, I want to reiterate it’s completely separate from the in-game (NDA’d) experience. I’ll comment on the in-game experience later when the NDA drops (probably on your site here).

  • No issues with account setup either. You create one account then just keep applying the keys. It would have been better if the confirmation emails to you something useful like, click this link to begin downloading the client or visit the beta center here. But I know you can google and find all of it on your own but it being in the confirmation email would have been nice.

    For example, I don’t really know if now that I’ve entered my CE BETA key if I can just join the beta? But I’ll surf the web until I figure it out. 🙂

  • The above should be a question, not a statement. Will I need another client for Open Beta? If so, I’m going to be annoyed. 😛

  • @Nollind Whachell: New invites cannot access beta forums anymore – they just simply could not handle anymore people and with too many people forum would simply either not work or rot with useless posts. If you want to report a bug or feedback there are in-game tools for that.

    As for GOA I don’t know company but EU website is piece of **** and as EU CE preorder I already feel as 2nd grade customer :/

  • @Snafzg: They do not know yet. I think we will know that on Monday when US be able to download OB. Also it won’t be torrent anymore – Mark just said we will be happy with it.

  • Hey keen and Graev, this question aint got anything to do with the war account center but i was wondering if the warhammer world is all instanced off the way age of conan was, as in is each zone instanced and you have to go through a gate to get into each zone or are the zones like warcraft where you can walk free from one zone to another?

  • @Snafzg: I would be EXTREMELY shocked if another client was needed. They’ve already proven they can have the same client for multiple things (I have a closed beta account from guild beta and a CE Closed beta account and they both are testing different content).

    @Kyle1690: I can answer that without breaking the NDA because I found this out at E3. NO the world is not like Age of Conan’s where the world is all instanced off (nor is it redundantly instanced like Conan’s City 1 City 2 City 3 zones, etc). The Tiers for each race are separated by a single zone line … and that’s all you’re going to get until the NDA comes down. 🙂

  • Legendary Thread Podcast (8/15/2008)link: http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3156457

    The 1UP folks go into alot of info and details that havent been mentioned before. Lots of good insider info for those craving more. I’d say a solid half of the podcast is all about their experiences in the WAR beta.

  • Good news for the American community /cheer

    But sadly GOA is killing again the game for the EU community.
    The choosing of GOA once again prove as a big Mythic mistake (we all remember DAoC at start).
    In Europe we pay more for the game (the CE cost 50% more than in American) but we get much less.
    The amazing part in this story is how Mythic doesn’t take responsibility about GOA acts before it becomes too late 🙁

  • Well, you lucky, %$&# GOA still haven’t say anything about the beta, not even set up there site…
    Thats sux… and i’m afraid EU ppl will face the problem of DAOC.

    And all that Mythic have to say, EU things are all up to GOA and they can’t do anything about it :S

  • Is it possible to play on the American servers from the EU if you buy an American copy? I have absolutely now confidence or trust in GOA 🙁

  • It looks as half of Europe will play on Americans servers because of GOA.
    Why can’t Mythic run the game at Europe as well ??