Wizardry Online enters beta October 7

For the six and a half English speakers waiting on an MMORPG based on the Japanese misinterpretation of a joke, your time has nearly come.

Wizardry Online, Gamepot's MMO interpretation of the long-running fantasy RPG series, will open doors to beta testers on October 7, after a closed beta of several months.

The beta will only be accessible to registered forum members, so you'll need some Japanese language skills in order to navigate the official website and sign up.

Famitsu reports five playable races will feature - human, elf, pokaru, dwarf, and norm. The latter two are gender restricted - blokes only for dwarves, sheilas to the norm queue.

The auto-translation is a little unclear, but it looks like the full, free-to-play game will release in May next year. The Japanese retail release will go for ¥3,990 and include 30 days premium subscription including expanded inventory, increased experience gain and unique equipment and items.

Wizardry Online is based on the venerable Wizardry series, which began life in the early 1980's as one of the first graphical Dungeons and Dragons style role playing games. The tongue-in-cheek humour went over well with Westerners but was largely lost on the Japanese, who took the franchise and spun it out to around 40 quite serious titles.

In June, Pangya and Cabal Online publisher Gamepot announced that Wizardry Online would see global launch.