Today's book suggestion for GOA

The saga of epic failure with the Warhammer Online Open Beta in Europe continues. Today, full three days after the Open Beta was supposed to start in Europe, GOA's service is still in shambles. While some players have actually managed to get their keys registered and are playing, account creation and password recovery services are still down.

GOA is obviously spinning the news by claiming that "majority" of players have managed to get in the game using their jury-rigged "fill a web form request and wait ten hours for an email" key registration system, but based on quick polling among people actually trying to get in, less than 50% of the people who have a beta key have managed to log into the game yet.

The rest... well...

• Some are playing ping-pong with the key registration, hoping it would accept their key, username and/or password. Apparently some of these keys (in preorder boxes) were printed in a way that makes it easy to mix up B, D and number 8. With turnaround time often measured in hours until you're told that the registration attempt failed, this is somewhat frustrating.

• Some are still waiting for a chance to actually create an account. Only those with too much time on their hands during the initial chaos on Sunday and Monday morning managed to hammer through and create one. After that, the whole account management was taken offline, and it has stayed offline.

• Some, like me, actually have an account - created back when the beta lottery signups were opened. In theory if you already have an old account, you could try to use the temporary key registration page - except there is no way to recover a forgotten password, and there hasn't been one for weeks. That part had already failed long before Open Beta started.

Still, GOA is happily implying that after lots of pain and fixes, everything is now mostly fine. Everything is not fine. With server wipe incoming next weekend, at this rate the whole Beta week will be over before GOA gets their stuff actually fixed and everyone gets to play.

Any bets on what will happen next Sunday when the servers are wiped and everything is supposed to roll out for the "head start"? Initially the servers are supposed to open for Collector's Edition preorder customers on Sunday, and for Standard Edition customers two days later on Tuesday. My bet is on "everything will go boom - again".

Comments

	chr0n1c 2008-09-10 #1 Ah well, Rome wasn't built in a day.
	Hexus_Tech 2008-09-10 #2 I signed up for the closed beta aaaages ago, I think I know my password but cannot login on the site to check. I submitted my beta key on Tuesday MORNING and still not heard a peep back. No idea i I'm getting in or there's been a problem. Mythic need to kick GOA off this MMO ASAP.
	IeatNvidiots 2008-09-10 #3 Only way for people in EU to get a beta key is to buy retail right?
	Jarnis 2008-09-10 #4 Quote: Originally Posted by IeatNvidiots Only way for people in EU to get a beta key is to buy retail right? There were some campaigns in different fansites where they handed out keys - many got them through those promotions. However, they are all "out of keys" by now, and the beta is ending on Sunday anyway. Head start goes up on 14th for Collectors Edition preorders, 16th for Standard Edition preorders and the whole thing goes officially live on 18th anyway. The whole open beta is nothing but a promotion tool and last check for the infrastructure to be ready for launch day onslaught. GOA's isn't. Let us hope they can fix it all in time. So if you don't want to pay for it, wait for free trial promotions - probably in two months or so when Blizzard's new expansion is stealing away people... :)
	harlequin 2008-09-10 #5 Quote: Originally Posted by YG_Bot The saga of epic failure with the Warhammer Online Open Beta in Europe continues. Today, full three days after the Open Beta was supposed to start in Europe, GOA's service is still in shambles. While some players have actually managed to get their keys registered and are playing, account creation and password recovery services are still down. Read entire article: http://www.yougamers.com/news/20593_...hammer_online/ And this is why its called a BETA its not the full final pay your money RETAIL so why all the angst? they are sorting it so when it does go live its seemless.
	Jarnis 2008-09-10 #6 Failing on sunday, being down for a few hours would be "beta". This is just incompetence. Besides, this is a glorified trial/demo/stress test. On the upside, if/when you manage to register your key and get your account ready, the game itself appears to work fine. First impressions: Not a bad WoW-derivative.
	demi 2008-09-10 #7 Just because it's beta doesn't excuse everything. The beta should be in place to verify that everything works - this looked like start of the beta was the time when certain elements were tried for the first time. Still, having finally received my account and being able to register for the beta (four and a half days late), I must say that the game itself does look quite good. I won't be turning in my pre-order just yet after all.
	Hexus_Tech 2008-09-11 #8 Quote: Originally Posted by demi Just because it's beta doesn't excuse everything. The beta should be in place to verify that everything works - this looked like start of the beta was the time when certain elements were tried for the first time. Still, having finally received my account and being able to register for the beta (four and a half days late), I must say that the game itself does look quite good. I won't be turning in my pre-order just yet after all. Lucky you, I didn't recieve an e-mail with my old account details and it keeps saying authorisation failed on the game login. So I registered for a new account, haven't recieved confirmation of the account. Also can't login with my new account info.
	demi 2008-09-11 #9 Quote: Originally Posted by Hexus_Tech Lucky you, I didn't recieve an e-mail with my old account details and it keeps saying authorisation failed on the game login. So I registered for a new account, haven't recieved confirmation of the account. Also can't login with my new account info. I had a similar experience, but all of a sudden it worked last night. I regged (yet another) new account at around 1700 EET, and got a confirm at 1900 EET. The confirm link in the email actually worked, and I entered my beta code into the code page just a few minutes later. I fired up the patcher immediately after and was able to login immediately.
	Unregistered 2008-09-14 #10 i have a collectoers edition pre order , have put the code in it said your request has been registered.. this has been going on for 4 hours now.. no confirmation email recieved .. and cant log in as it says Authentification failure. hmm funny that .. it did that for open beta.. im seriously thinking of saying to them < Censored to you guys> im off back to play Vanguard.
	Jarnis 2008-09-15 #11 Quote: Originally Posted by Unregistered i have a collectoers edition pre order , have put the code in it said your request has been registered.. this has been going on for 4 hours now.. no confirmation email recieved .. and cant log in as it says Authentification failure. hmm funny that .. it did that for open beta.. im seriously thinking of saying to them < Censored to you guys> im off back to play Vanguard. US or EU? If US, check your account on the website and see if it says "CE Head Start" or "Head Start"? If you have only "Head Start" you didn't get the CE preorder key - apparently many retailers have given standard edition preorder keys to people who bought collector's ed. If EU... no idea, all I've heard is that EU CE head start registration has been going on smoothly. I'll see how well it works in ... two hours or so, when Standard Edition head start begins in the EU.
	harlequin 2008-09-15 #12 logged in and running smoothly - the `beta` test was as said a system test to make sure this goe as well as it can