500,000

The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) beta sign-up counter reached the half-million mark today and with the talk lately of "beta invites as an advertisement" I wanted to make sure one of 2008's most anticipated titles doesn't get left out of the mix.

However, unlike the Lord of the Rings Online 1,000,000 beta invites, WAR only tracks actual sign-ups, not "e-mail addresses we have in a database somewhere".

Don't get me wrong, the counter is a pure marketing move on EA Mythic's part, but it is the sort of marketing that is somewhat truthful. WAR has a huge following already and EA Mythic has no need to bolster the hype by "stretching" the numbers.

The question that remains, is how many testers are in the beta currently, and how many more will be let in when the beta restarts in late December? Age of Conan recently dropped the bomb that they had invited 10,000 players, out of 100,000+ sign-ups, but as this article questions: how many are actually online and playing? Those are the numbers many of us would actually care about.