BioWare Looking Into Old Republic's Server Problems

[vansau]

BioWare Looking Into Old Republic's Server Problems

BioWare knows that you want to play The Old Republic without waiting for hours in a server queue and is working to fix this problem.

The launch for Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic could be going better. On one hand, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114831-Analyst-1-5-Million-People-Already-Playing-The-Old-Republic>millions of people are reportedly playing it right now. On the other hand, customers are complaining that <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114841-The-Old-Republic-Ships-Without-Registration-Codes>they received copies of the game without the registration code - or, in some instances, are missing the game disc itself - and that some server queues are lasting multiple hours. Yesterday, BioWare promised to address the first issue, now it's promising to work on the server problem, too.

According to Jeff Hickman, BioWare's Executive Producer - Live Services:

"We know there have been questions about the queues on the servers, so we wanted to take a moment to give you some insight.

In order to ensure that the service would be smooth and stable, we staged how we brought people into the Early Game Access program, adding people in waves. As you know, there are a lot of folks who want to play the game right now and we want to make sure they have lots of people to play with. Balancing this with figuring out when to bring new servers online to help alleviate the size of the queues is part art and part science. On one hand, you do not want people to wait too long - on the other hand, you want to make sure that people have a dynamic, engaging community to play with for long after launch. Either way, we have one clear objective - to make sure folks have fun.

While we can't promise that there won't ever be queues, we can promise you that we are taking this matter seriously and constantly reviewing them to make sure that they are manageable and reasonable."

While BioWare has acknowledged the problem and promised a solution, the developer hasn't revealed how many new servers it'll bring online or when it will do so. Hopefully the server queue problem doesn't dampen too many winter vacations in the meantime.

Source: Joystiq



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[Jandau]

The way I figure it, it doesn't matter if a major highly anticipated MMO has technical troubles at launch, that's almost guaranteed to happen one way or another. What does matter is how the developer responds and manages the situation. Saying that Bioware sucks because there's server trouble is silly. Their suckage or lack of it remains to be determined in the coming week or two, as well as in the first few months after launch. If they show that they are working on fixing the problems expediently and efficiently, then it's all good. If they end up dragging their feet and providing non-functional fixes, then feel free to condemn them.

EDIT: I know the article isn't coming down on Bioware, I was adressing the people who I know will soon show up and claim this is proof that "Bioware sucks!!!!!".

 

[SurfKansas]

I'm actually going to be a defender on Bioware with this one - even though my queue was over an hour for most of the weekend.

For the most hotly anticipated MMO launch ever (yes, this blew away Warcraft's launch), the go-live has been surprisingly smooth. Yes we have queues, but those will (hopefully) be resolved by new servers and increased population caps on the most popular servers.

Remember, this is a company known for making single player games that has jumped into the MMO space in a big way. They will have some mis-steps. But, the "Bioware Quality" is still showing on this title.

 

[Sucal]

Server problems at launch? Yep, this game just killed itself even more then refusing to sell boxed copies to places like Australia and several european servers. You do not force your players to wait several hours to play your game, and then expect them to pay for the privilege of playing it again every month.

 

[MrTub]

Server problems at launch? Yep, this game just killed itself even more then refusing to sell boxed copies to places like Australia and several european servers. You do not force your players to wait several hours to play your game, and then expect them to pay for the privilege of playing it again every month.

Can you name one high profile mmo without server problems at start?

Even WoW has long queues when a new expansion is released.

 

[Baresark]

I'm a little surprised to be honest with you. I didn't plan on playing this anytime soon, if at all, but it's not part art, part science when it comes to when to put new servers on line. It's pretty much common sense. If you have an abundance of people who are waiting in line again and again, then you need to put a new server or two up.

That being said, it's an MMO that is handling a lot of people. The game just released today and I think we all need to give them some time to iron out the kinks. All bullshit aside and my relative hatred towards EA to the side at this point, we can't just say the game is fail. All MMO's have had problems.

 

[Sucal]

Server problems at launch? Yep, this game just killed itself even more then refusing to sell boxed copies to places like Australia and several european servers. You do not force your players to wait several hours to play your game, and then expect them to pay for the privilege of playing it again every month.

Can you name one high profile mmo without server problems at start?

Even WoW has long queues when a new expansion is released.

That's a new expansion, when they already have a large player base, not when they are trying to establish one. Fairly sure that World of Warcraft didn't have any of those server problems when it first launched, or at least I couldn't find any articles about them.

Rather big difference, considering World of Warcraft has already made back its operating costs several dozen times over by now. I can think of other games, such as Warhammer Online, APB, Tabula Rasa etc which all had severe troubles with not enough servers at launch. Of them, two were put offline, and two ended up being switched to free to play since they weren't going to make any money otherwise. (APB counts in both categories since they brought it back.

World of Warcraft can afford to have long lines when an expansion is release, their player base is more or less loyal. Launching a major MMO with such troubles when your trying to dethrone World of Warcraft is just about the worst thing you can do, since if your player base can't play your game, they will just say 'fuck it' and go back to WoW. In which case Bioware will be managing two failed WoW killers.

Hell, if anything it would have been smarter to have too many servers activated, then drop them off once you know what the total demand is like.

 

[MrTub]

Server problems at launch? Yep, this game just killed itself even more then refusing to sell boxed copies to places like Australia and several european servers. You do not force your players to wait several hours to play your game, and then expect them to pay for the privilege of playing it again every month.

Can you name one high profile mmo without server problems at start?

Even WoW has long queues when a new expansion is released.

That's a new expansion, when they already have a large player base, not when they are trying to establish one. Fairly sure that World of Warcraft didn't have any of those server problems when it first launched, or at least I couldn't find any articles about them.

Rather big difference, considering World of Warcraft has already made back its operating costs several dozen times over by now. I can think of other games, such as Warhammer Online, APB, Tabula Rasa etc which all had severe troubles with not enough servers at launch. Of them, two were put offline, and two ended up being switched to free to play since they weren't going to make any money otherwise. (APB counts in both categories since they brought it back.

World of Warcraft can afford to have long lines when an expansion is release, their player base is more or less loyal. Launching a major MMO with such troubles when your trying to dethrone World of Warcraft is just about the worst thing you can do, since if your player base can't play your game, they will just say 'fuck it' and go back to WoW. In which case Bioware will be managing two failed WoW killers.

Hell, if anything it would have been smarter to have too many servers activated, then drop them off once you know what the total demand is like.

Again. Can you give an example of a high profiled MMO not having server troubles at launch?

And WoW had several problems with their servers when it was released. And it was only launched in North America at start.

And if they launch with too many servers and then shutdown some people will say that the game failed and it just going to crash and burn

 

[dagens24]

Server problems at launch? Yep, this game just killed itself even more then refusing to sell boxed copies to places like Australia and several european servers. You do not force your players to wait several hours to play your game, and then expect them to pay for the privilege of playing it again every month.

Can you name one high profile mmo without server problems at start?

Even WoW has long queues when a new expansion is released.

That's a new expansion, when they already have a large player base, not when they are trying to establish one. Fairly sure that World of Warcraft didn't have any of those server problems when it first launched, or at least I couldn't find any articles about them.

Rather big difference, considering World of Warcraft has already made back its operating costs several dozen times over by now. I can think of other games, such as Warhammer Online, APB, Tabula Rasa etc which all had severe troubles with not enough servers at launch. Of them, two were put offline, and two ended up being switched to free to play since they weren't going to make any money otherwise. (APB counts in both categories since they brought it back.

World of Warcraft can afford to have long lines when an expansion is release, their player base is more or less loyal. Launching a major MMO with such troubles when your trying to dethrone World of Warcraft is just about the worst thing you can do, since if your player base can't play your game, they will just say 'fuck it' and go back to WoW. In which case Bioware will be managing two failed WoW killers.

Hell, if anything it would have been smarter to have too many servers activated, then drop them off once you know what the total demand is like.

WoW had a SO MANY server issues when it launched. SWTOR's biggest issue is that everyone is trying to play at the same time, all the time. A month or two from now queues are going to be an issue; people won't be rushing home to play or playing for 12 hours in one sitting because they'll be busy with some other new game.

 

[Ravison]

The queues aren't that bad. I've had a forty minute one on my sith server, but it's a heavily populated server and I didn't expect differently. There are plenty of servers with low-to-moderate populations where you'll probably never see a queue.

Also, the game is amazing.

 

[Nimcha]

Apparently I chose to play on the most populated server, and I had a 20 minute wait. The other servers had no queue.

BioWare stated they wanted the players funneling in to spread among the available servers as much as possible. And I think they have succeeded somewhat, most servers now have a 'standard' load, and a few are high or full.