Warhammer Online beta struggles in Europe

GOA, the European publisher and operator of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, has issued a public apology for the false start to its open beta test yesterday.

Although servers have opened, and closed beta testers have been able to enter the new phase without any problems, account registration and authentication for new players is not working.

"I rarely address players directly, but I wanted to write you as too few of you have been able to access the open beta today," said GOA's chief executive, Ghislaine Le Rhun, on the European WAR site.

"We have not yet solved the issue of saturated Open Beta key activations that we're currently experiencing," Le Rhun said. "I am sincerely sorry for this, and I understand all the frustration the situation has spawned.

"Today was a dark day," Le Rhun continued. "We expected a massive influx of players, but reality was even harsher. I personally commit that we will communicate to you as clearly as possible on the resolution of these current issues."

In a previous post, it was explained that "serious problems" with the authentication system, "combined with an exceptional amount of traffic and a fault which was not identified during the extensive tests," had limited access to only a handful of new open beta testers. However, the performances of the servers, patcher and downloader for WAR's open beta were all "satisfactory".

The authentication system is expected to be fixed "late Monday morning", with an update promised mid-morning.