GOA manage to screw up Warhammer release.

Well, like a lot of people I received my Warhammer box in the post today. The beta version didn’t have any intro movies, to save on bandwidth, so I thought I’d uninstall it and install from my shiny new disks.

This was a mistake. A schoolboy error that I promise to flagellate myself for, just as soon as I finish posting. Sigmar, forgive me, for forgetting who it was that had sent me those disks, and who it is that is running the European servers.

Having checked the internet, and with friends, it appears this is happening to everybody that installs from disk. It’s been going on for a few days, but I hadn’t noticed. From the lack of any mention of this issue on their website, including in the help section, I guess GOA hasn’t noticed either.

Needless to say this only affects European players. If you have the US client, carry on as normal, and rejoice that you will never have to deal with the foulness that is GOA. I am praying this gets fixed by tomorrow, or Warhammer populations are going to be seriously damaged on this side of the pond.

Afterthought: It might appear to the passing visitor, not all of whom come here to read about MMO, that I’m a little unkind and unforgiving towards GOA. You’re right. Their management of the early days of the European servers for Dark Ages of Camelot scoured all pity towards them from my soul.

“As I lie in fitful sleep, my dreams are troubled by visions of the GOA. How they dance and jibber!! Even the horrors of Tzeentch are as naught to what I have seen, for in the darkest corners of their server rooms GOA feast upon the hopes of their playerbase, and yet their hunger diminishes not.” – Mathias Brandt

Update. This has materialised on the GOA Warhammer news page. I took a picture for posterity.:

For “some of us”, read all of us. Silly us! Our disks aren’t faulty! They’re blocking us on purpose! Well, that’s alright then.

Do you suppose you might have mentioned this before we received the disks, and uninstalled our beta versions? And why don’t US players have to put up with this nonsense? If you planned this, why not give us an error message that actually tells us what the problem is, rather than one telling us to keep reinstalling from the same disks that you are blocking?

Update II

Our patchers have started patching. Perhaps somebody at Mythic noticed the online outrage, and called GOA up to ask them why they deliberately planned to shut part of their playerbase out of the head-start that they had paid for. Still, I’m making no assumptions until it actually lets us into the game.

Update III

Aye, it looks like GOA backed down from their scheme. People in the pre-order headstart who installed from disk can now patch, and play.

Seriously GOA, that was such an unnecessary mess. Start asking yourselves “Is this best for our customers?” before you make any further decisions.

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