1. I canceled my EQ2 account and was waiting for the WAR open beta to begin for me. (Thanks again to Landuran who bought all the EQjunkies the game).

2. School started again.  For the fellow graduate students out there – you know what a complete time sink this is.

3. UPS & USPS can be annoying (details below)…

I did get a chance to play WAR beta for a few nights, maybe a total of 10 hours or so.  I had mixed feeling about it.  When you first start the game you have to wait through a couple of developer splash screens to come up and also click through two agreements every time you log in.  The annoyance of clicking these agreements has been well documented.

For me, the license thing is annoying, but it isn’t a game breaker.

Once you get into the game the graphics are refreshing.  They are kind of a cross between EQ2 (who goes for realism) and WoW (which is admittedly cartoonie).  The result is scenery that flows in the background and characters that look like a split between Conan (the movie, not the game) and Dragonball Z.  I really enjoy how my Blight Wizard looks like a bad ass. (I went for the spiked hair and a couple tattoos).

The game play in the noob zones (I only played for a few hours) is similar to other MMOs.  You are given some basic quests and are asked to perform some basic functions to get used to the game.  The main difference is the existence of open groups and open raids.  Basically, if you are in the same area as an open group/raid you can join without being invited and everyone works together.  What is really impressive is how seamlessly this works.

Now to why UPS/USPS is annoying – I still haven’t received my game in the mail.  Landuran, Greldor, and Myclawz all already got it.  Mine was shipped UPS, but they handed it off to USPS.  They are holding it hostage somewhere in PA and hasn’t moved in a couple days.  Consquently, I haven’t been able to log on and play (I am busy enough with school that it hasn’t bothered me all to much yet).

One last thing – my weekday posts won’t be back to normal for a couple more weeks.  I have a lot of homework to do & it is more or less consuming my life.

If you have some free time, I would recommend buying WAR and giving it a shot.

The bigger issue at hand, however, is not if the game succeeds – but rather, what if it fails?  WAR represents the last game “in the queue” for quite some time that could possibly stand a chance at competing with WoW.  If WAR follows in the footsteps of Age of Conan, it stands a chance to quickly fizzle as the critics tear any small problems to bits.  Indeed, if some of the comments coming out of the NDA release from closed beta hold true, it looks like WAR might actually provide some fairly large targets for the critics to hit.

Here’s hoping that Mythic has done their research and realzies what Warhammer Online can do for the MMO industry… and the consequences of an epic failure come launch time.

By preordering you get the following:

• Invite to the beta.  You are guaranteed a spot.
• Live game head start.  No you don’t keep to keep going with your beta character, but you do get to start playing a few days before everyone else.  If you are a casual gamer this is great because there won’t be 10 million people running around taking your kills, etc.  If you a hardcore gamer these few extra days can give you the edge over the other insane people.
• In game item.  Which item you get is determined by which store you pre-order from.  You can visit this site for more details on what store gives you what items.  Personally, all of the EQJunkies pre-ordered from Amazon:

Does this mean we are giving up EQ2?

• No, not yet.  Landuran brought up a good point: we were going to give Warhammer a shot at some point, so why not give it a shot in the beginning?