9:18AM, August 7, 2008
Delsyn: The first thing that happened when I got in this morning was I checked on the status of Warhammer Online. Checking the beta forums it seems that the beta servers were down yesterday for a massive patch. The company also migrated its account system over to the full-featured one that'll be used when the game goes live so everyone had to go through the process of moving our beta accounts. The process was mostly painless (good job, Mythic!) although when I try to get into the beta, it keeps disconnecting me. Boo!
9:35AM, August 7, 2008
Delsyn: Finally resolved! It seems that the game was trying to log us in to the Tyrion server, one of two beta servers the GameSpy crew had been playing on and the Tyrion server went bye bye -- this time on purpose. I had to delete a specific file within the user directory to unlock the auto-login and get into Warpstone. Mythic has asked all the beta testers to move there in order to test some of the higher level PvP zones. Ilyana, my level 14 Magus is gone and players are only able to create Rank 31 characters with a standardized template. Bummer. I'm amazed at how attached I've become to Ilyana in just a few days. I'm sending an e-mail to the rest of our group to make sure they know how to get in.
10:00AM, August 7, 2008
Delsyn: Damn you, Gabe! His immediate response to the realization that we were going to have to reroll was to suggest that we start playing as Order... and the rest of the group agreed. What's wrong with these people?
I fooled around with a couple of Order classes for a while including a White Lion and a Bright Wizard before I settled on a Rank 31 Dwarf Engineer named Doohan. The reason is that as best I can tell, the Dwarf Engineer is pretty much the mirror image of the Magus. A lot of the Engineer's skills are direct analogues and while I haven't yet figured out what they all do or what they're all good for, once I realized that the three basic turrets were ranged, AOE and a balanced gun one, I started to feel more at home. Still, I'm a Dwarf. Again. Somewhere my level 70 Dwarf Hunter in Shattrath is laughing his short gun-wielding butt off.
10:30AM, August 7, 2008
Delsyn: Remember all that stuff I wrote yesterday about the user interface being too complicated? Forget most of it. This patch's clean-up has done an absolutely amazing job of fixing up a lot of the major problems I had with it, including a major revamp on the Abilities window that makes it incredibly usable. I've seen the game's UI get re-done twice now since I got into the beta and each one has been a massive improvement. There are still issues with it (I'd still like to be able to get conditional UI set-ups that automatically kick in) but seeing how much the game improves with each patch, I'm more confident about it being ready for launch day.
12:21PM, August 7, 2008
Gerald: So last night's server outage was the preparation for today's huge beta patch. The UI has been cleaned up and snazzed up with new icons and a slicker design. Our little characters have been killed off, but now we could create rank 31 characters using templates. I tried for a High Elf Archmage to see what playing a healer would be like.
