Paul Barnett, creative director of MMORPG Warhammer Online, has promised European players that developer Mythic is "trying really hard" to ensure sign-up problems experienced in the open beta are not repeated when the game is officially released this Thursday.
In an interview with VideoGamer.com Barnett moved to reassure fans that Mythic is doing everything it can to prevent a repeat performance later this week.
He said: "That was one of those things where you go 'it's definitely going to work, everything on paper says it's going to work, oh my God it's melted!'. It's better that it happened in the sign up beta period than it happened live. What it did do was make a lot of humble pie, and a lot of knuckles got wrapped and a lot of people were told to make sure it never ever happens again. So thank the lords, the Lords of Chaos, that it didn't happen on live live, it only happened on pretend live."
He added: "Everyone's working really hard, and if it happens again we're going to feed people to sharks. Probably German sharks because they would be very efficient. We're very unhappy that it was bumpy. We're happy that we've punished people and tried really hard to do it better."