Closed Beta For Total War: Arena Starts Sept. 1, Founder's Packs On Sale Now
Creative Assembly is getting ready to open up Total War: Arena to the masses again, 18 months after closing it off from the masses.
The 10th alpha for the free-to-play RTS has ended, and the closed beta is set to begin on Sept. 1. It will reset all progress and go on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the next eight weeks. If you have access, you can show the game off at will, as the non-disclosure agreement has been lifted.
And how does one get access? There's the usual "Join the Test" link on the Arena site. That takes you to the Wargaming login page for EU players -- you'll recall that WG is publishing the game for CA -- and we haven't been able to suss out yet whether NA players can get into the test.
(UPDATE: The link above directs you to the EU site, which has a .net suffix. For the NA version of the site, and the ability to sign up for the beta, you have to visit the NA site, which has a .com suffix.)
If you don't like your chances, you can -- wait for it -- buy a Founder's Pack! These do seem to be available for players in both North America and Europe. Packs range in price from $9.99/9.99 euros to $99.99/99.99 euros. All packs grant you access to the upcoming beta, 30 days of premium status (counted both during closed and open beta), and some measure of gold, the game's real-money currency. More expensive packs grant you more cosmetics and some premium units, which we're sure are totally balanced and won't lead to anyone screaming "pay to win"!
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Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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"Closed Beta test ends soon
Greetings, commanders.
The Total War: ARENA beta is taking a break so we can take the game offline to continue development at a faster pace. While the closed beta period is coming to an end, we are looking forward to bringing the game back for open beta after this period of focused production. We’re thankful for the incredible contribution you’ve made to the game’s development, and we’ve written a longer thank-you over at our blog, which you can find here.
Understandably, you will have many questions brought about by this announcement, and we have put together an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for you which should help go into detail about the aspects of the closed beta period you are curious about.
Again, we thank you for your time and effort, and we are pretty excited about the next stage of ARENA’s development, and hope you will join us for it. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, the forums and Steam to keep track of how ARENA is doing.
See you on the battlefield.
ARENA Team."
I'm from EU (Poland) so maybe those invitations were for US players as I can assure you I had "good number of battles" (was addicted to this game).
I just hate spending money on games which may change beyond recognition any moment (but hey what can I do ?).
This game just vanish from my Steam account
I love the game, I have sent over 30 valid bug reports over last 2 years and now I have to pay for early access ? ...
Nice....