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EA Choose BitTorrent for Warhammer Online Distribution

Electronic Arts, the publisher of the upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, has chosen BitTorrent for the distribution of the closed Beta client. Included in the documentation is a recommendation to use a TorrentFreak ‘speed up’ guide.

warhammerDeveloped by Mythic Entertainment, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a long-awaited WoW competitor, due for general release on September 18th this year. As with many games of this type, the developer is beta testing the software, helped by players in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

To become a tester in the beta, many people were selected via applications, contests and prize draws. The first stage of testing was over in the final quarter of 2007 and during February 2008, invites to test were sent out to lucky recipients. July this year saw the activation of so-called ‘Guild beta’ keys which signaled the start of the next stage of testing and on August 10th, keys were sent out for Beta 3.

The Warhammer Online beta gaming client is quite a size, weighing in at over 9.3GB. Providing a download of this size for testers could turn into a needlessly expensive exercise for the publisher, Electronic Arts, and the developer, Mythic, so they have made the decision to utilize BitTorrent instead, dramatically reducing distribution costs.

There is no other way to download the client, indicating that EA/Mythic are completely confident that their target market will have no trouble using torrents but just in case, they provide a comprehensive BitTorrent guide which covers basics like client selection, up to more advanced techniques such as port forwarding. An eagle-eyed reader who is involved in the beta testing pointed out that the guide also includes advice to follow a TorrentFreak guide to speed up transfers.

The Mythic tracker is located at http://torrent2.eamythic.com and currently reports around 1300 seeds and over 7000 leechers. A search on the hash value of the torrent, reveals the beta is (unsurprisingly) being tracked by other torrent sites too.

The Warhammer Beta team was contacted for a response, but hasn’t responded before publication.

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  • NastyBedazzler

    Hey look at that, somebody understands the benefits of Torrents.

    I hope EA never bitches about Torrents in the future because this is probably cutting down on an assload of server costs for them.

  • TonInter

    They’ll bitch either way, NastyBedazzler. Let’s just hope that they don’t bitch a lot.

    Peace.

  • saiyanprince

    when dragonball online arrives,wow and warhammer, both will bite the dust

  • Jam

    Just thought I’d note that World of Warcraft, another popular MMORPG uses Bittorrent for its patches to the game. They even use there own Bittorrent client for it. Some of the patches they deliver are over 1GB in size and the latest Wrath Beta for the upcoming expansion is over 2GB in size, again delivered via Bittorrent ;)

  • http://www.eZee.se www.eZee.se

    Lies! Lies! This cant be…!

    The good people at the RIAA and MPAA have told everyone how evil bit torrent is and you come up with this stuff?

    How dare you?

    Someone has got to be lying about this… and you cant seriously be pointing your fingers at the honest scumba…. oops, people at the MAFIAA can you?

    Joe
    http://www.ezee.se

  • #YLS#

    Im still waiting for the day someone deciedes to come up with a GPS program that can get it’s maps via a bitorrent link with other users.

  • Anonymous

    Waits for the WH beta testers find p2p access blocked reports

  • HelloWorld;

    Blizzards uses Torrent for long time now…
    I smell free Warhammer Online advertisement here on Torrentfreak…
    Shame on you

  • waffles54

    around 1300 seeds and over 7000 leechers
    So it’s speed sucks like any other public tracker..

  • Mr.Ice

    @7

    Blizzard also uses there own custom BT client but EA does not, instead they point people to get there own BT client

  • …

    @ 8

    1300 of those seeds could be high speed 1Gbit servers.. Dont “assume” their all 256k seeders atleast ;)

  • Crynsos

    Hah, a TorrentFreak guide recommendation? Now that’s nice… but really, a closed beta and BitTorrent?

    That can’t work that great… why even close it, the more players, the more FREE publicity, the more initial players and the more bugs found before release… it shouldn’t end up like AoC…

  • dave

    what about people like me, who get Bittorrent throttled to 13KBPS it will take ages to download 9.3 gig :’(

  • Icetoad

    There is a way to download the game without using the very very slow torrent connection that is being used. If you downloading the patching program and 2 other small files from the torrent, then open the patcher, it will download everything you need directly from EA/Mythic. This is the way I did it since I didn’t want to wait multiple weeks on the 5-10kb/s torrent.

    Something tells me all the people downloading using the torrent haven’t actually been invited to the beta. I assume they think they will just download the game now instead of when the open beta is launched.

  • Izkata

    @8 & 11: Forget how Bittorrent works? You don’t download solely from the seeds. That actually looks like a -very- healthy torrent, even if most of the seeds have bad upload speeds.

    Anyway, Blizzard uses their own torrent client to distribute just the preview videos for Starcraft II, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they used it for more for the game later on.

  • Alofto

    Awesome..
    One more company jumping in on torrent…

    http://www.alphaboard.co.cc/blog

    What next?

  • Hitnarun.1

    EA should release thier demo games on torrent from here after…

    http://www.hack5.blogspot.com

    Will save money on servers atleast!

  • Ji

    Shame Warhammer is not living up to the hype, really wanted an alternative to WOW, just now all i see is a Age of Connan, lets just hope that it will get better

  • NA

    It wasn’t a fucking boon, it was a waste of time. 90% of the people downloading it were new to torrents, so they would hit and run, or they couldn’t figure out how to get it running. There was a huge shit-storm on the forums about it.

  • Anonymous

    @11

    Dont forget to mention its an Extended Closed beta, never a good sign,

  • Anonymous

    The more legitimate corps that use BT the more protected the protocol and its users will be I think.

    It will become more acceptable to businesses who currently only see BT as a means of piracy, and all its users as pirates.

  • SG

    actually Blizzard just uses a standard BT protocol and client and trackers too. in fact their client is simply a ‘Blizzard’ branded client that is easy to use and is automated with patch installs. but you actual torrent file is included inside each downloader/patch and is usable in any torrent.

    funny how Warhammer is getting ‘props’ over Blizzard when Blizzard goes out of their way to include an easy to use client while still giving the option to use your own client.

  • Paul

    I’m very very surprised they did this. EA is one of those idiotic companies when it comes to piracy.

    They’re they ones that wanted spore to have to activate every 10 days.

  • Anonymous

    People are complaining about how big the file is. the games these days for PC take up at least 6 GBs. Due to the fact that this game Warhammer isn’t on a disc, explains why it’s so big.

  • Welshie

    Regardless of the quality of the game…

    Regardless of EA’s reasons for doing this…

    This is great news for anyone who has to prove (in a court of law) that Torrents actually have a positive impact on business practices.

    Kinda hard for the prosecution to talk about the ‘evils’ of filesharing, whan big companies are using it.

    ;-D

  • Anonymous

    @24
    “This is great news for anyone who has to prove (in a court of law) that Torrents actually have a positive impact on business practices.

    Kinda hard for the prosecution to talk about the ‘evils’ of filesharing, whan big companies are using it.”

    Absolutely.

  • pirated

    To be honest, I thought you guys heard of this weeks ago when it happened.

    It was only one time; before that and after you can use the normal patcher program. The torrent was only really open for a week; for that week it was the only way to get it, but it was a test and so they put it in the normal patcher after that. The torrent itself, so far as I know, is now an old version because there’s been updates since then.

    Besides that, the way they do patching at all seems stupid to me, because if there’s a new version of a 2 gig file (and most of the space is in files 1-3 gigs in size) you have to download an entirely new copy of that file. There should instead be a piecewise way to patch instead, because more than likely its only a few hundred megs that are actually different. There are several ways to do this, that are available now. Even bittorrent can do it (the torrent that they used had an installer you had to run) but if you instead put it directly on top of an installation, tell it to force re-check, it will say which are the only pieces that are broken (old) and get them. Then just run the patcher and tell it to check your files entirely, and it’ll detect that you’ve got all the latest stuff.

  • BlanK

    @11

    Closed Betas are for finding bugs, open betas, while still there for shaping the game and bug searching, is mostly there to grab attention. Most new or casual gamers who play an open beta that’s in shitty condition will never touch the game again.

  • ZENNCAR

    ANother reason why having a 60-90gig cap on the highest tier you can get from your isps(cable/telco) is retarded. Heck if you had already passed your cap and and download this beta where i live it could cost one 1.5 bucks per gig in overage charges.

  • Jim McDish

    Dude, WarHammer is the total bomb. this is a must have for sure.

    JT
    http://www.FireMe.to/udi

  • mt

    New technologies are always promoting world development, now emotionally also have a new form!!
    yeah!!We all know this!!Can you accpet a new kind of love !if a man who is much older than you ! will you love him!! I have a BF we meet on agelessmatch.C O M !! I always go to agelessmatch.C O M ! I meet many handsome and rich man here! They like young girl!!I think it is a good place to make friend!!

  • Anon

    around 1300 seeds and over 7000 leechers

    LOL people still don’t seed!

  • Anonymous

    There is little doubt that them having a direct download for 9GB file would be hard on their servers. All they have to do is upload it a few times over this way.

  • Anonymous

    I love WOW’s torrent client. It sets the speeds so everyone is putting a nice share in.

  • Anonymous

    Dirty hypocrites.

  • cnas

    Blizzard has been using torrents for WoW since its launch in 2004. This news isn’t really that surprising…

    But check this out, when i got a buddy code to try Age of Conan, i went in to download the game, but then i was stopped, because they CHARGE you to download the game!!! I didn’t really know wether to laugh or cry? Why aren’t they using bit torrent technology? Utterly retarded

  • David D.

    Well, that should kill that game. With all due respect to bit torrent it is the WORST part of WoW. The single biggest complaint about WoW is that the patch process sucks! The BT system does not seem to handle a million people trying to download at once without anyone sharing it back. People download and then log off. BT is great, but it doesn’t work well for this use.

  • Pogo

    Soooo… I’m a complete noob with regard to BT but I do have an invite to the Beta.

    Some people above say you should just download the patcher program and potentially a couple of other small files. Anyone willing to spell that out specifically so I can avoid a one week download?

    Thanks very much.

  • pirated

    As far as I was aware (I ran the torrent for someone else that’s in the beta, cause I know about those things), the torrent was the “only way to go” for about a week and after that put the patcher as normal. Try to just use that to begin with, past that I don’t know what you would have to get.

  • Nathila

    The FAQ is offline now. Has someone saved it and can send it to me per ICQ or Email ?

    Nathilia

  • Laz

    FIRST OF ALL there are 10 MILLION who play WoW, which means a patch totaling a few hundred megs with over a million seeders works fine.

    When you have only a few thousand people downloading (and only a few hundred seeding) a 9 GIG file it is horrible, and whoever decided that a super corporation like EA needed to save a few bucks this way needs to be shot.

    30 KILOBITS per second for a 9 gig file? Yah, DAYS my friend DAYS. As much as I would like bittorrent to remain a supported protocol this is NOT the way to support it.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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