With this humorous "screenshot" above (at least we hope it's supposed to be a joke) Stardock has now announced that the first beta test of their upcoming fantasy RPG Elemental: War of Magic has now begun. If you still want to get in on the first phase of the beta, simply pre-order the full game from Stardock sometime before the end of September. After that, you can still pre-order the game but you will have to wait until Stardock begins the second phase of beta testing.

As Stardock CEO Brad Wardell mentions in another post about Elemental on the Impulse web site. " . . . beta 1 will NOT be fun in any way. We are not kidding about this. Our objective with this first build is to get the parameters on which the game runs, how well it runs." The beta will also use the game's cloth map as its basis rather than the more detailed 3D graphical engine.