As some of you know, the fine folks at Sony Santa Monica Studio recently opened their doors to members of the gaming press — the first such “open house” event in the studio’s history. In addition to experiencing hands-on time with the upcoming multiplayer beta for God of War: Ascension and two new characters coming to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, journalists experienced a rare inside look at one of the most accomplished and diverse game production facilities in the world. This is a place where developers of indie titles such as The Unfinished Swan and Journey and big-budget blockbusters such as God of War and Starhawk proudly work shoulder-to-shoulder.
With God of War: Ascension’s multiplayer beta en route, the team at Santa Monica Studio wanted to take this opportunity to address PlayStation.Blog readers with the latest details. Read on to learn more about what’s in store for the beta!
The God of War: Ascension Multiplayer Beta Is Coming January 8th!
It’s almost here! PlayStation Plus members’ chance to ascend online to start destroying each other in God of War: Ascension’s Multiplayer Beta. Today we’re proud to announce that the Beta is officially coming to PlayStation Plus on January 8th. To get you pumped up, you must watch our brand new “Evil Ways” Multiplayer Trailer. It is beautiful brutality.
If you were one of the wise mortals participating in our Rise of the Warrior experience, and belonged to the winning Spartan team for our first team challenge, your early Beta access begins today! If you are a Trojan, though you were defeated in the first team challenge, the Gods have shown mercy and are granting you early access starting December 16th. All your codes can still be redeemed at www.godofwar.com.
As announced, everyone with PlayStation Plus memberships will be able to download the Multiplayer Beta beginning January 8th. If you have not entered our The Rise of the Warrior experience, you are missing a truly epic encounter. There are more team challenge rewards coming, exclusive DLC items to earn right now, and an epic story connected to the single-player and multiplayer of God of War: Ascension. Join now!
So the burning-in-Hades question is, what will you play in our Multiplayer Beta? A visceral, larger than life, online combat experience for starters. We are kicking off the Beta with our signature Team Favor of the Gods mode and the yet-to-be-seen Favor of the Gods mode, which plays like Team Favor of the Gods, but without the teams. In both modes, you’ll fight to reach the requisite number of favor points from the Gods, earning points via kills, bonus brutal kills, opening chests, capturing domination points, and, if you’re skillful enough, performing executions using the Spear of Olympus. Check out our Beta page for tips, scoring details and more.
The Maps
You’ve seen the Desert of Lost Souls, featuring our massive Titan, Polyphemus. If you were not fortunate enough to experience this map at one of our various events earlier this year, you will get your chance to go head-to-head in this epic map in the Beta.
Only a fool would believe we are stopping there — this is God of War! God of War: Ascension multiplayer levels are broken out into two categories: larger maps, which feature big open environments (like the Desert of Lost Souls), and more compact arenas, which bring the action in tight to test your reflexes as you fight for survival in close-quarters combat. Fans of God of War III will remember the Hercules Arena, one of the Top 5 most epic moments in the God of War franchise, and we’re really excited to introduce our “Forum of Hercules” Multiplayer Arena level!
The Beta will also provide you with the chance to play through our tutorial level, which is an epic experience in and of itself. You’ll be able to test your might with both Zeus and Ares allegiances, and experience a taste of the player customization options and upgrades that will be in the final game.
Keep in mind, this is the Beta stage of our development, and our team here at Santa Monica Studio will be working daily, up until the very last second, to provide you with a truly incredible experience. We value your feedback, and this is where you can help to make this game ascend to even greater heights for our March 12th launch! See you in the Beta!
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Or Today!. Thank you Rise of the Warrior. Can’t wait for more SP news though.
what about voucher for beta access on GOW Saga ? It expired ?
On my birthday! Now I really need to sign back up again with PlayStation Plus. I have too many instant game collection games on my PS3 I need to catch up on! Thanks, Sony!
one of my fav game series of ALLLL TIMEEE. cant wait.
I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW. I’VE BEAT EVERY GOD OF WAR EVER RELEASED. EXPECT NOTHING LESS ON THIS ONE!
YESSSSSS
I love God of war. but I hate that insted of a free game or a discount I will get… a beta.
Also, if you really want to get in on a beta test for a game you like it’s really not that hard, so again plus disappoints me.
For the tutorial you mentioned the Zeus and Ares allegiances, are those the only ones in the Beta?
I’m looking forward to trying it out when I get home from work later today!
@TaLaL55
How do you know playstation + isn’t giving away a free game (or discount) during the same week as the GoW beta? This blog post is the ONLY thing that’s been announced respecting PS+ in January to date. (that I’m aware of) What I want to know is what will be the player count for the GoW multiplayer beta?
Who sings the song? All I want to know really, it looks great and I can’t wait to try it out next month.
@Major_Hoare
I don’t really know, but based on other times we got a beta in PS plus that was the situation.
I have no interest in God of War, so i hope the multiplayer beta doesn’t take the place of a free game for us PS Plus members.
Are any of the multiplayer modes co-operative? Also, will matchmaking put you in games with people of similar skill levels? I will give the competitive modes a try, but co-op will likely be the deciding factor for me. Thanks for bringing us the beta in January.
So every couple of days I check the Rise of the Warrior site, I knew you should somehow get the beta if you were on the spartan team but didn’t knew how, I supposed you would get an e-mail or something.
Today I checked the site and saw a header that gave me an enrollment code and a link to the enrollment site, however the deadline was december 11th… If there is a strict deadline it would be nice to at least get a heads-up…
Question: I signed up for and played Rise of the Warrior and was assigned to the Spartan team. I have 1200 points and it says that the Spartans won and that we will get a beta code. Well I don’t have one. I followed the steps listed but I wasn’t given a “winner banner” screen to claim my beta code.
Any thoughts on how I can go about getting that code? Much obliged.
thanks fo the information, i hope multiplayer doesn’t ruined the franchise.
Nevermind. Apparently I was a day late and now have to wait a month. Joy.
I have two complaints of this new trailer. 1.) the CG cinematics don’t look like God of War cinematics; and 2.) the guy being cut in half at 1:59, why didn’t you guys fix the animation for this trailer???
Woot!
Quite honestly, I haven’t played through the series but now (not because of ‘multiplayer mode) I shall enter the realm of continous wonder. Thanks for the update and vision! ;)
i sensed an Infinity Blade vibe to this trailer. Not a fan of MP. But this I may find interesting.
even though the graphics look really awesome, when contrasted with CGI, they look like crap, so I dot think it was a wise decision to make the commercial that way.
Now please show Single player :D
I’m Spartan and I did the download of the BETA and Patch 1.05, but I can’t play it!
The Game Freezes in the health warning right in the beginning, and then it freezes my PS3 making me reset it and have to do the auto fix…
What’s going on? Why it freezes my PS3? Is that your guys problem or my problem?
I don’t know what to do…
HELP!
nice!!!! hate that us trojans lost but im glad i played anyways!! sweet cant wait for the beta
@TaLTaL55 im hoping they do something like giving us the first two for free or maybe FINALLY putting GOWIII on psn..
Well i’ve finished the beta download and the instalation and guess what ? The beta did not start, and i’ve received a code via Rise of The Warrior site. My system just freezes on the warning screen and I had tried 3 times alredly so i don’t know how ou why it is happening but to me, this is a total disrespect.I don’t kwon if i will get this game anymore.
Can’t wait!!!
This sucks, I have to wait all the way until the 8th to play? I pay for PlayStation Plus, I should get top priority!
Well I’m glad I’ve already pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition of this game for the King Leonidas skin and poster!
Please Reply, I won in the “Rise Of The Warrior” and the god of war website gave a code for the Beta, tried to redeem it but it’s not working! Will it work in 17th of December ? and when I pressed on “Enroll Now” it took me to PSN Beta Enrollment page and it says “The enrolment for this Beta has now closed. Invitations to successful participants will be sent shortly.” Does that mean I missed my CHANCE !!!?
Please Answer!
ok so i was part of the spartan team but they never gave me a beta code
OKAY – i will say it – this MUSIC has no place on this video? Really guys …. that’s so tacky it made me sick to me stomach … God of War’s branding calls for something way more epic than that … lame.
I finished your puzzles a while ago, but I did’t get the code and not only me, how can you help (us) cause I see many users had such problems with codes don’t being shown on Rise of the Warrior page.
Wow, doing the social game at godofwar.com was well worth it… almost a full month ahead.
Dang this game looks dope..cant wait for my collectors edition in march
Cool, thanks for this!
While I usually hate MP Betas, I ‘ve gotta say I’m really looking forward to this one since it’s a GoW game.
I already made my EU Plus account for the better service (but Gosh is their store layout bad, it’s even worse than the new NA store somehow.) and they have a better looking blog too which is nice.
But my US Plus won’t run out for a while (might keep it longer just for game saves on cloud) so I’ll be able to play this Beta :)
January 8th cannot come soon enough!
Love this game cant wait for the beta
@blackiemist88
I’m pretty sure one of the blog staff / Red posters, said that the reason GoW III isn’t on the store is because the game size was too big.
I’m not sure how that can be, since there are plenty of 20GBish games on the PSN. But I did read someone post that was (the? a?) problem.
Not sure if it means it can’t ever go on.
@13
It seems you have a very singular taste in games, and your taste isn’t very good. All you ever do is leave some of the most negative comments on this forum and complain about what’s not being given to you. Learn to stop sucking, or you’re going to be a very miserable individual when you grow up.
You are a child, right? That would explain so much of your behavior. Either way, grown or not, I blame your parents.
Why i can’t see the voucher? I already finished the puzzles and I’m a spartan.
AWESOME i Can’t wait for this!!
I can’t wait to know what the pre-order bonus is.
…….
Not interested in multiplayer, and not interested in betas.
I’m just worried why all we hear about this game is about the multiplayer, really hope that doesn’t mean all efforts were put into the multiplayer portion so that the actual (single player) game turns out to be cr*p…
@39 sorry can’t take someone with a lame cole avatar seriously.
But for future reference, learn to respect other people’s opinions and stop looking down on others just because they don’t blindly enjoy games you do. You just sound like a babbling jerk.
@43 i feel that way about Dead Space 3. So much time and effort put on its multiplayer, that i feel the single player portion might suffer.
I was on winning side and i followed all directions and still cant find my beta code, i talked with playstation customer support , they did not know anything much about this. And was told to contact Santa Monica Studios somehow but cant find a phone number anywhere,if someone can please help me it would be great.
Hey everyone,
Your @SonySantaMonica Community Strategist here, @Just_Tank, apologies for the delayed reply, we’re usually right in here to answer. I’ve looked at the comments and questions, please see the following answers:
1. Rise of Warrior Beta Codes for SCEE Players (Europe/Australia) will be sent out on Dec 18th for all Spartans and Trojans who enrolled correctly. If you missed the enrollment, my sincere apologies, it was specified and we communicated it on Facebook, our website. That said, I will do the following for you:
TWEET/FOLLOW ME @Just_Tank if you did not receive your Beta Code from Rise of the Warrior or missed the enrollment, I will personally handle this with you.
2. God of War Saga PS+ vouchers, save them until January 8th. Start your trial on that day, and you’ll be able to get into the beta like a normal PlayStation Plus user, that was the intent of the voucher.
3. Zeus and Ares are the only gods we are testing in the Beta, can’t give it all away!
4. The song in our new MP trailer is this guy, awesome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tnrhX55mzI
Cheers,
Tank
5. If the Beta was freezing for you, we are deploying a patch ASAP that should address. This should only be happening for folks in Brazil, but may occur for others. This is being addressed if not by the time you read this.
6. Regarding Single-Player, you are not alone. We’re infinitely more anxious than you could ever imagine to blow the lid off parts of Kratos’ prequel journey. This is the God of the War team, do we ever settle for anything less than “EPIC”? As Todd said, we don’t want to spoil every great moment, your discovery and surprise of those is important to your purchase as a hardcore fan. I’ve avoided watching all The Hobbit trailers for this very reason…
Allow me to remind you this – by no stretch of the imagination is our focus on Multiplayer implying any less effort on Single-Player. The Ascension team is bigger than GOW 3, and that’s because we’ve added Multiplayer, not because we ever took anything away from Single-Player. Our team is as passionate as ever to make this the next great God of War game, we’re stoked to start showing that to you….at some point next month.
Cheers,
Tank
I participated on the Rise of the Warrior, I was part of the Spartan team but I can’t find any invite on my email or in the official site. Help? Thanks!
I have to admit that I was skeptical about multiplayer in GOW, but after playing the beta all night you’ve sold me on the idea. I don’t think I’ve ever played such an intense and satisfying multiplayer, great job!