We lost access to the WAR closed beta on Wednesday, although we didn’t know because we didn’t try to log in that night to play. Yesterday evening, I was discussing ranged classes with Becky and she was convinced to try the Shadow Warrior (despite what we felt was a poor starting area) and I was going to try the Sorcerer.
WAR Closed Beta was down. A note stated that they were preparing for the preview weekend, which I’ve been dreading all week as I figured I’d end up stuck in a newbie zone, waiting for named mobs to respawn, and tripping over other players. I figured, however, that Mythic would have to have plenty of servers up, and maybe I could leave a quick note with Becky that she could come play WAR today while I’m at work.

Becky has felt that the last phases of this beta could have been handled better. Although Mythic has emphasized communicating through the Herald, she still felt cut-off as the standard has been set that patch notes, downtime, and important updates are displayed by the patcher–which rarely showed anything up-to-date. I ended up getting my best information from the Warhammer Alliance boards and a couple guild sites I’d check now and again.
It looks like the authentication server is acting as a significant point of failure in the process of selecting a server on which to play, and that the servers themselves are capped at 1600 players, about half of the server cap for DAOC. I can assure you that, at least until players spread out from gaining levels, 1000 players on the server make most of the low-level zones feel crowded.
Becky has had such poor customer experiences from the beta, with (to her) randomly downed servers during the middle of the day, the crowded newbie zones, and the RvR-based elder game that she’s looking to take a pass on WAR altogether–and can’t understand what I like about the game. (Is it enough that WoW is old?) We both realize this is a beta, but she was expecting it to be more like LOTRO’s beta and less like Shadowbane’s.
Edit:

It looks like Mythic raised the server caps. I can log in now–of course, now I have to leave for work.