Jacobs on WAR beta: "GOA messed up"

Mythic Entertainment boss Mark Jacobs has weighed into the row over the European open beta test of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, as problems persist with key authentication and account registration.

Jacobs had stern words for players who had posted abusive and threatening comments about the situation on his blog, but was frank about his own displeasure with the European publisher and operator GOA.

"This is not an excuse for GOA," Jacobs said. "We had a number of conversations with them today about everything that happened.

"GOA messed up and their CEO has apologised and promised to do better going forward... None of the actors in this little play came out of this unscathed... Neither their CEO nor I am defending what happened yesterday. It was an ugly day."

Jacobs noted that the US and Oceanic launches of the open beta had gone well, with few hiccups and close to 50,000 concurrent players.

As of late last night, GOA's account creation system is unavailable, and key authentication is "unstable" according to the European WAR site and the official update thread on Warhammer Alliance.

There's plenty of advice for frustrated players there, but basically it boils down to "if you don't have an account yet, be patient and we'll update you". More news is expected this morning.

We would gloat about having done another couple of levels on the Engineer last night, but frankly, on an underpopulated server where it's hard to get a Public Quest or Scenario going, WAR is less fun than it should be.

Here's hoping GOA can sort these problems out by the official launch on Thursday 18th, next week.