Thursday's launch of Warhammer Online seems to be going smoothly by all accounts. 1UP's first-week impressions went up earlier today, and while it's still too early to definitively come to a conclusion one way or the other, the game seems off to a solid start. Except maybe things aren't quite going as smooth as we'd hoped. It turns out that Mythic is cutting the grace period short for gamers who preordered the collector's edition of Warhammer Online.
Excited gamers who doled out the cash for the CE were treated to the live game %26quot;Head Start%26quot; which, as you might imagine, allowed early access to the final game. For the past several days the game has been populated with preorderers who were under the impression that they would be given a grace period to receive their boxed copy of the game and enter the retail key that ships with it. In fact, thanks to the wonderful world of technology and Google, a cached version of the collector's edition page shows the following note:
%26quot;Please note that the 30-day billing period for Head Start accounts will begin on Thursday, Sept. 18th, but players will have until 9am EDT on Monday, Sept. 22nd to input their retail product key. If a retail product key has not been entered by that date, the account will be closed until it is added.%26quot;
Some members of the Warhammer Alliance forums are claiming the grace period was promised to be two weeks. Even if it isn't that long, any extension on the Monday deadline would be welcome given that there's no mail on Sundays. While the quote above has been removed from the current version of the CE preorder page, there is a news post on the site explaining you have until 7 a.m. Friday (which, yes, has already passed) to get your key in before your account is temporarily deactivated.
%26quot;This announcement is to let everyone know that if you haven't yet entered your CD key into the account center, you must do so by tomorrow (Friday) morning at 7:00 AM. If you do not enter your information into the Account Center by the deadline your characters will not be affected, you will just be unable to login until your product key is entered.%26quot;If you preordered online and have not yet received confirmation that your order has shipped we encourage you to contact your retailer's customer support to ensure you receive your game on-time.%26quot;
They posted this news Thursday, which didn't give much of a window to make a phone call, let alone for retailers to actually do something about it.
What's bound to perhaps even further infuriate WAR players is that those who purchased the CE from the EA Store will receive an email with instructions on how to continue playing while they wait for their boxed copy of the game. There's no indication that they'll be catering to anyone who purchase the game through Amazon or any other retailer. Suppose that's not a bad way to incentivize buying games from the EA Store in the future.
Whomever updates the Warhammer site apparently wasn't completely thorough. The FAQ section still answers a question by saying, %26quot;[W]e will provide a reasonable grace period for players to get a hold of their copies and have uninterrupted service following the Live Game Head Start.%26quot; -- a claim which you could reasonably argue isn't exactly true.
Suffice it to say that gamers responding to the forum thread on Warhammer Alliance (where this story first sprung up) are none too happy. And who could blame them? A story on Allakhazam reports that a call to EA support resulted in two individuals saying this isn't true, including a supervisor who laughed at how ridiculous it was. But given how reliable support people can be at times, I can't help but wonder if he merely laughing at the onslaught of calls EA support is going to be receiving tomorrow.