World War II Online free trial period extended

Strategy First and Playnet.com announced today that they have stopped the clocks on the free 30-day trial period for their recently launched massively multiplayer game, World War II Online: Blitzkrieg. The companies will make another announcement when the 30-day trial period begins again, and until that time, players will not lose any free-play time.

"We're working to catch up with the overwhelming response to the game's release, and [we're] having to scale our infrastructure to address it," said Al Corey, marketing manager for Playnet.com. "Until we are able solve some of these challenges, we want people to be able to experience the game without losing days from their free trial period."

World War II Online launched on June 6, the anniversary of D-Day. Although the game sales were a clear success, the game experience has been hampered by problems with the game's servers and an unusually large patch that was released immediately after the launch. Strategy First noted that the developer would have liked a larger open beta test but was unable to do so due to scheduling reasons. When asked if the game's development was cut short to launch on the D-Day anniversary, Playnet responded, "No, although initially the day might have been chosen for that reason, we stuck to it for financial reasons."

World War II Online is an ambitious game in which players can take part in one of the most influential wars of the 20th century. In the game, players can control a variety of vehicles, or they can fight as infantry soldiers. The game is designed to handle thousands of players at a time, but at the game's launch only one of the game's many servers was functional, which limited the number of players to 600.

For more information, take a look at our previous coverage of the game, and visit the official World War II Online Web site.