I pre-ordered the CE from Amazon back in April (first day it was available) and all the keys were available in my "digital locker" the moment I ordered.  I suspect that Amazon was not provided enough SE keys by Mythic to keep up with the demand.  They have been pretty good about this in the past (3 other pre-orders with keys, all available at time of order).  So I think that it's possible either Mythic underestimated the demand, or people have been pre-ordering from Amazon to get the keys, and then canceling their orders.  This behavior may be causing Amazon to withhold the keys to prevent this abuse, since unlike other retailers, they don't make you pay in advance for pre-orders and there is no cancelation fee. 

I think you are not looking at the whole picture.  I'm not saying that the WoW expansion isn't part of the picture, but you have to realize that WAR is not releasing early, the orginal "soft" release date was spring 2008.  They decided it would be released later to avoid collision with AoC and to provide some more time for polish and class balancing.  Part of that polish and class balancing ended up being the reduction of capturable cities to 2 and removing 4 classes that were having problems drawing players in beta.  This gave them the ability to focus on providing an optimal experience for launch.  Since the "Fall" release was also a soft date, and the removal of the problematic content expedited the remaining polish work, the were able to announce a September 18 date. 

I applaud the fact that rather than putting 4 unpopular/broken classes into the game just to make an artificially even amount of classes per race, they did the right thing and opted for fun and balance.  All of this contributes to them saying to themselves that they are happy with the current state of the game and are ready to begin the final "stress testing" phase of the game development.  Due to Mythic being the first company (and still one of the few) to have a stable MMORPG launch, I have confidence that it is very likely to go smoothly.  The question remaining for players to decide for themselves is whether this is the type of MMORPG they enjoy playing.  It is certainly not a "WoW Killer", but that doesn't mean it won't be great fun for the people who enjoy this play style.  If people are wanting a "WoW Killer" game, they had better wait for WoW 2 (aka more of the same with an upgraded engine).

I hope this helps.

Which ever way the sever trends I will be on the opposite side.  I like classes from both sides, so I will not have a problem playing for the side that is the underdog on my server.

I have a sneaky suspicion that there will be a lot of disproportionate servers when the game starts.  I plan to play the side that is less populated so I can actually do quests without triping over 5 people trying to do the same thing as me.  I actually like playing on the underdog side, it adds to the challenge to not be playing with the overwhelming numbers on my side.

Originally posted by Snipple

 I have a question. What happens to our beta characters after the official release? Do they get deleted or can we just keep going?

I don't have an official Mythic answer for you, but I can very easily speculate.  Since Pre-order players are getting a "head start" post Open Beta but before the official launch, I would guess that all beta characters will be wiped prior to start.  This makes sense because Mythic has been trying out various levels and tiers of play in the beta, and has been handing out higher level characters in some tests to validate the higher level play mechanics.  It would be considered unfair to allow someone who was handed a higher level character to keep that character into game start.  So if you want a jump on getting ahead of the wave of noobs comming into the game, get the pre-order.

I hope this helps.

Have to reply in a couple of different ways to this one.  As far as races to play, the Chaos race holds little appeal to me at the moment, so I guess you could say I hate them in that context.  However, in game I am going to be Hating on mostly Greenskins or Dwarves depending on which side I'm playing.  It's just so natural that those two races give no quarter to each other. 

On the other hand I find it funny when elves fight, because high or dark, they really are the same race essentially facing each other across a political divide.  Shades of politics in the USA, hehe.  The Dark elves are obviously hawkish conservatives manipulating war for personal gain, and the High Elves are simpering liberals too clueless to stand up for themselves.  Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, hehe.

As far as the Human, Chaos Human divide, well that's obviously a comparison of the fascists vs. the anarchists.  It's funny that one of them is considered the "good" side.

As far as the race I'm missing from the start of the game, well I really would like to play  a Scaven.  They've always stuck me as being the most pragmatic of the Warhammer races.

I just wanted people to know that I seeded the file for 2 whole days after I downloaded it, my total upload was nearly twice as great as my total download for the files before I decided to give my somewhat warm computer a rest.  Yes, I did find it disapointing that a flie of that size was required to be sipped at a 70kB/sec rate (the average I acheived), but it certainly has not diminished my enthusiasm for the game or Mythic Entertainment.  I also understand why they chose to spend more capital investment in game polish instead of bandwidth fees for beta player client downloads.  Fiscally for Mythic and EA it is a better decision for the final product.  Now when the retail sales start rolling in, and the people are paying monthly fees to support the bandwidth and server upkeep costs, then I can see making a complaint about any kind of slow patch download method. 

I hope this adds some perspective.

As I mentioned in the order thread, I'm not sure what side I'll start on, but as a main I usually end up with a healing class.  The Shaman will likely be my first choice for the destruction side.  I am certain to play some kind of female dark elf as an alt because they are just so darkly sexy, hehe.

About time guys, Norla Frostblade here (DAoC Fenris) aka Shandra Frostblade (WoW Fenris).  Lets coordinate as to when and where,  I have the CE and am in the CB when they bring the servers back up.

I'm a bit torn about what side I will play when the game is released.  I plan to play as many alts as feasible in Open Beta so that I can get a better feel for what class will best fit my play style.  The question for me will usually be how viable any class can be when not grouped.  For years I've played a healing class variant as my Prime in MMORPGs.  As far as which order classes have drawn my attention, well the Warrior Priest is an attractive option for my normal MMORPG play style, but I would likely actually be drawn to play the Dwarven Engineer.  There's something about that Team Fortress 2 engineer play mechanic that is attractive in a game with real RvR.  As with TF2, I hope the engineer is going to require a more patient player who is willing to be a tactical asset in defense as opposed to an offensive asset.  I'm alreading envisioning the enginer as potentially a nice Kite support character for PvE as well.  So for the order classes the ranking will likely be the following:

1. Dwarven Engineer

2. Warrior Priest

3. Archmage

4. Rune Priest

If i end up on the destruction side I will probably play a Goblin Shaman.  I like the concept of balancing the attack and healing capabilities with that class.  I will also likely play some kind of a female dark elf as an alt because they just look so darkly sexy, hehe.

As a general rule, outside of providing an "everyone invited" open beta period (which WAR is not offering) there usually isn't a free trial offered for an "A list" MMORPG until 6-12 months have passed and the initial buzz is dieing down.  The free trials generally come after core player numbers start dropping off and the complany is looking to infuse new players into their base. 

Theorectically, if you are a dishonest person  you could "cheat" the beta system on WAR by pre-ordering from Amazon to get into the open beta, and canceling your order before shipping.  Unlike most other retailers, Amazon does not charge a downpayment for pre-orders.  I hope that if you are interested in playing this game at all that you will not consider cheating the retailer and the developer just to get some "free" game play.  If you are not certain you will like the product enough to invest your money in it, then patiently wait until after the game's release, and research the reviews and buzz before purchasing it. 

I hope this answers your second question.

Just recently picked up the Sims2 after avoiding it for all this time, otherwise Warhammer 40k Soul Storm (Space Marines Attack!!), Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific, Hit Man Blood Money, Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Witcher, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, and Neverwinter Nights 2 have been taking up my free time in the last few months.  Looking forward to getting back into an MMORPG since the last one I played (and enjoyed) was Lord of the Rings Online. 

Warhammer Age of Reconing has been on my radar for a while now, and I really have a good feeling about Mythic as the developer.  I was in the DAoC beta (and played for a long while) and I remember that Mythic had the most stable launch of any MMORPG at the time.  The only other MMORPGs that I've played with as stable a launch has been City of Heroes and Lord of the RIngs Online.  WoW had a pretty sorry launch I remember (since I was also in that Beta) but it cleaned up pretty good after a couple of weeks. 

The biggest problem DAoC had in its early years was the near constant nerfing and rebalancing of the player classes.  I think that Mythic has probably learned from that mistake, and it is a positive sign in my book that they announced they were dropping 4 of the proposed classes to concentrate on the fun and play balance of the remaining 20 classes.  Like all MMOs I think there will be tweaks and changes post launch, but I get the impression from the official releases that the game is stable, relatively solid, and most importantly Fun!  The remaining question is can they get through the open beta "stress testing" and still meet their somewhat ambitious release date.

Originally posted by Godliest

I've probably missed something here, but what exactly does this have to do with WAR?

For the Collectors Edition people who were selected for entry into the closed beta it has to do with the fact that the game files are being provided via torrent.  This info is helping people to speed up their downloads and have the clients ready when the closed beta servers are back online.  To help the process, people who have completed the torrent download should continue to leave their torrents up as much as feasible to act as seeds for other people to finish their downloads so you have some people to play with in the closed beta.

Thanks

Rumor has it the Closed Beta (CB) servers may be up as soon as Wednesday 8/13.  No confirmed info from Mythic on that so far.

Originally posted by Kollaps

Originally posted by synn

did you make a new account just to troll?

here's a few things that matter when it comes to pvp(in no particular order):

-player skill

Myth

-tactics

Hype

-morale

Myth

-renown achievements

Hype

-gear

True

-group

Myth

-communication

Hype 

 

It's not surprising to see many people stamping me over with their "you're troll, leave" comments, because obviously they are so desperade to play a decent MMORPG after so many recent failures. WAR won't change the trend. It will be just another game with milions of copies sold, because of the hype and then drops to 100k subs.

All these RVR, SKILL, COMMUNITY... blah are just words used for a precisely accurate marketing strategy to lure the people like you that believe all the shit they read.

The reason some people may refer to you as a Troll is not because you are speaking some kind of truth and giving a valid observation of the mechanics and dynamics of the game.  It is because you are comming to this board and naysaying and denigrating any aspect of the game that someone else may view as positive.   If you are pre-disposed to dislike a particular kind of game or product, then it is not the product for you to enjoy.  Letting everyone know your are in disagreement with the majority of posters here about what you like in a game does not prove the game is bad, it only proves you are not the intended audience for the product.  That being the case, please feel free to wisely spend your money on products you do enjoy, and leave those people who plan to enjoy playing WAR to our discussion of the relative merits of the product we do plan to buy and play. 
 

Depending on your system specificaitons I agree that using 2 Raid 0 or Raid 1 drives will deliver faster file read performance than using one large 750GB hard drive.  So unless you are building a media/file server, or do a ton of video editing, the large 750GB drive is actually considered a performance liability for a gaming rig.  I also recommend the Western Digital Raptor drives for their speed (10k rpm vs. standard 7200 rpm) and at least 16mb buffers.  I hope this helps with your system spec.

As far as Vista 64 premium is concerned, I would recommend going for Vista Ultimate which comes with both the 64 bit and 32 bit editions.  You will have to limit your RAM to 4 GB, but you will be able to dual boot to either version if you want, and that should solve any application stability issues that come from Vista 64 vs Vista 32.

I hope this helps.

I will also seed for the rest of the week so that everyone in CE closed beta has a chance to get the files,  Much better Seed ratios now than when I started on Sunday 8/10 hehe.

At: shadowcutter:  You should try utorrent, It's a small download, and worked pretty good for me.

The guild Fenris which has multiple chapters in many MMO's is looking to start up a chapter on WAR!  Let's get coordinated here regarding which server we'll play on and get started making WAR!