A quick look around most of the MMO blogs these days finds them posting about WAR. Everyone, except me apparently. I wasn't invited into the closed beta, so I didn't get the early exposure a lot of other bloggers and players got. And frankly there is not a great deal of information about the game posted on the Warhammer website. Specifically I'd like to find information related to what the classes capabilties are, as well as any special abilities each race has. I'd like to know what the point of the game is--PVE, PVP? Raiding? You can find some of this information around the net by gleaning it from various postings, but isn't it a shame that one has to perform research on third party websites to find out this information, when it should all be easily located on the official Mythic website in the first place?
I was lured to the game by a fantastic game trailer linked to in my Guild's forum. Mythic did a fantastic job with its production, and it really made me start thinking about the game a little more than I had been. Finding myself deep into the pre-expanion Blahs in WoW, it would have been a great time to explore WAR. But I'm not one to just jump from game to game. I want to read about it, and see if there is indeed any interest before I take time away from a game I already know I like (WoW). With the news of the Open Beta starting up this past weekend, I thought I'd jump on board and check it out.
Except it appears that if you want into the open beta, you have to pre-order the game. Unless I'm just missing something somewhere. Going through the task of ordering a game I don't even know I will stick with is not exactly what I had in mind. So the "preview weekend" passed me by, and WAR has probably lost one player.
Now I know what some of you must be thinking right now. What's the big deal, right? Pre-order it, try it out, and if I decide I don't like it cancel the order? Well, sometimes you find that cancelling and order is not as easy as it should be. And sometimes you still get billed even after cancellation, which requires working with your card issuer and Mythic to get it straitened out. I'd rather just avoid the entire possibility to begin with. Besides, Mythic should have simply enabled a free download for the preview weekend and been done with it.
If Mythic does offer up a free download at some point I may take advantage of that, but for now I just have no plans to pre-order in order to get a glipse at a game I don't even know if I'll like. Sorry Mythic, but it looks like you lost at least one "sale".
