September 7, 2008 - Open Beta / Unknown - NDA? | The Greenskin - Warhammer Online Blog, Videos, Guides, Webcomic & Podcast

September 7, 2008 - Open Beta / Unknown - NDA?

August 18, 2008 – 9:30 am

Massively just reported that open beta for Mythic Entertainment’s highly anticipated Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will begin on September 7, 2008. That date puts open beta three weeks from now and 11 days before release, which pretty much confirms what Mythic has said all along: Beta is for testing, not for a free preview of the game.

That 11 days may actually end up being much shorter when you factor in the head start for release, which most people have been estimating will start on Monday, September 15 for collector’s edition preorder customers and September 16/17 for standard edition preorder customers. September 18, 2008 is still their set (in hardening mud?) launch date. I don’t think the open beta and head start program will overlap, but I could be wrong. If I’m right, I’ll put the open beta period at 5-7 days total.

Given that the content will be limited to Tier 1-Tier 2 (rank 20), and each of the 20 classes will be available to choose from, I don’t honestly think people will need more than a week of open beta to figure out what they want to play. Even though Mythic may only be interested in stress testing their servers, a one week open beta is still more than enough time to get a feel for this game and decide 1) whether or not you want to play it at all, and 2) what you will play at launch once you realize how awesome it is.

All this talk of open beta is fine and dandy, but I’m more interested in the NDA drop. Seriously… I don’t see any justification for keeping it up beyond the middle of this week. At this point, I think they’re annoying more fans by keeping it up than they would if Feature Z wasn’t 100% implemented and tested properly. I’m pretty sure I know what feature is keeping them from dropping the NDA and I just have to laugh at how minor it is if I’m correct. Given that everything else is working pretty darn well, I don’t see where their lack of confidence is coming from…

Mark Jacobs has been quoted as saying:

“As to NDAs, the rule I’ve always gone by is my “time before release rule” in order to judge the confidence the publishers have in their new game (doesn’t apply to ports or games that are already out in other places). I add a +1 for every week prior to release that the game’s NDA has been lifted and come up with a score. If <4, there’s a lack of confidence in the product, if you are >8, they really believe in the game. WoW had a great score (the highest I believe) and some of the MMOs that failed, had, as expected, low scores. A score of 4 is just about the minimum you should expect from a MMO publisher.”

Well Mark, by my calendar, you have one more weekbefore you’re at the “minimum of what we should expect” from a publisher. Lifting your NDA would put your confidence score at 5, which is still slightly above the minimum but nowhere near the people who “really believe in their game.”

Hehe. I think this is one of those quotes that comes back to haunt you. It is very critically worded and it can now be used against the person who spoke it… Come on Mark! We know you believe in your game, but it’s time to prove it! Actions speak a lot louder than words, imho.

UPDATE - Mark responds…

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Post tags: beta, Mark Jacobs, opinions, Warhammer Online

14 Responses to “September 7, 2008 - Open Beta / Unknown - NDA?”
Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

By Syp on Aug 18, 2008
@ Mark Jacobs

Doh!

By Blackwings on Aug 18, 2008
I think Mark was making an observation of the market and when NDAs were dropped in regards to the perceived confidence of the underlying product. Mark could come out and say that the NDA was dropped late because they weren’t confident in their product up until that point. The Internet would die in a self-inflicted flame fest.

By heartless_ on Aug 18, 2008
Not confident until only several weeks before launch? That wouldn’t be received very well, imho!

By Snafzg on Aug 18, 2008
While Mark’s comment about rating is common, this comment is the one which will hurt them more.

“Everyone should also please keep in mind what I’ve been saying for years, look at when a developer lifts the NDA before launch to see how much faith they have in the game’s success. If we don’t lift ours before well before launch, hell, I wouldn’t buy our game either or at least I’d wait till the reviews came out. This policy has never failed me.”

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showpost.php?p=970829&postcount=7

I have high hopes though that the NDA will come down today. People have been itching to talk about the game, and holding back the NDA for one item which they are working hard at is, IMO, a bad decision. You are always going to have bugs in an MMO and owning up to them and continuing to work them out is what the process is all about. But I don’t know the whole story so I just have to keep on hoping.

By DextarDouglas on Aug 18, 2008
Meh… I expected an earlier start date for Open Beta. Now I just hope NDA would lift sooner so that the wait time until Open Beta would seem shorter.

By Akle on Aug 18, 2008
Although, I am disappointed that the open beta is only going to be, at most a week, the NDA needs to be lifted soon. I’m an info junkie when it comes to MMO’s, and I just recently got interested in Warhammer, having devoured most of what has been released about the game. But the canned releases, screenshots, podcasts etc from Mythic only takes you so far; I’m really more interested in what the community that has been playing the game has to say.

It’s going to be a long few weeks for us not in beta, anyway; if we are starving for information during that time, it will be nearly unbearable.

By Shoe on Aug 18, 2008
BIG SPECULATION…

I wonder if they are keeping the NDA to hide anything that could be stolen and implemented in to another big MMO that is famous for doing so. hint hint.

By Vort on Aug 18, 2008
Hehe, I have no doubt that there are already several WoW employees with anonymous WAR beta accounts to do exactly what you’re talking about.

By Snafzg on Aug 18, 2008
Makes me wonder if that means all the pre-order folks are going to be stuck waiting for this open beta that starts on September 7th or if there will be a pre-order beta or something that kicks off sometime this week.

By Centuri on Aug 18, 2008
Yeah, open beta will be a stress test for the servers and that’s it. Have it last a week so you can get the full spectrum of primetimes, weekends, etc. It’ll be too close to launch to do anything but get the major bug fixes in a patch as a result of testing from it.

By Sithlet on Aug 18, 2008
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1127108&postcount=1

Looks like tomorrow the NDA is lifted.

By DextarDouglas on Aug 18, 2008
Well that is going to kill THIS conversation, isn’t it!

By Snafzg on Aug 18, 2008
You can always keep the conversation going on and debate whether (there needs to be only one way to spell this word, they need to fight it out like The Highlander. That goes for To, Too, and Two aswell.) using Fileplant was a good plan of action was a good choice and if there were better organizations available for the service.

By DextarDouglas on Aug 18, 2008