The E3 Interview with Mythic's Adam Gershowitz talks with the Associate Art Director on Warhammer Online about the upcoming fantasy-themed MMORPG. Topics include the name change from Mythic to EA Mythic and back again, the content that was cut from the game, and details on what players should expect from the project when it launches. The conversation was recorded, so you can choose to read it or listen to it, or both, if that floats your boat. Meanwhile, there's an open letter from Mark Jacobs on the Vault Network Forums where the Mythic GM discusses today's announcement of a September 18 release date for the project. He discusses the date, subscription pricing, and when the NDA for beta testers will lift, as well as the portions reproduced below, which covers the various editions of the game, open beta testing, and how they interrelate. He also mentions a Preview Weekend, which could possibly end up including some folks who haven't already pre-purchased the game:

3) Regarding the pre-order, Collector’s Edition and the Standard Edition, I’m pleased to announce that we will be holding a special “Preview Weekend” in addition to the normal Open Beta. Those people who pre-ordered the CE will be given priority entrance into the PW. You will need to download the client (of course) from one of several download options, none of which will require any additional payment of any kind. Once the CE buyers have had their chance to register and download the client, we will allow our Closed Beta testers into the PW as well. We would like to have around 100K people load testing and playing the game so depending on how many CE purchasers sign up for this, we will invite other people into the PW as well.

4) Regarding the pre-order, Collector’s Edition and the Standard Edition, we are extending the Head Start for the pre-order CE (not the SE) buyers by at least an additional day as an added thank you for buying our CE. Just as with the PW, no additional fee will be required to play in our Head Start.

5) Regarding the pre-order, Collector’s Edition and the Standard Edition, we are pleased to announce that we will also be inviting our pre-order CE buyers into our Closed Beta test starting next week. There will still be some hardware spec requirements (but they are much lower than our current requirements) since we are still in Closed Beta but we expect that the vast majority of our PO CE buyers will meet the lowered requirements. We gotten a lot of feedback from the community on this point over the last few weeks asking for this and we are now going to make it happen.

6) Regarding the start of OB, we are still working out all the details and when we are 100% locked into a date, we will be happy to confirm it unequivocally. As the history of MMOs has shown, a bad OB can hurt both the long-term and the short-term the success of a game just as surely as a great OB can help the game succeed and we need to make sure that we are ready for OB on the day it begins.