Bioware Pledges to Patch TOR "Almost Every Week"

[Greg Tito]

Bioware Pledges to Patch TOR "Almost Every Week"

Bug-fixes and exploit corrections are the number one priority.

The launch of a major MMO is a serious undertaking. There are so many moving parts in the code - from server issues to client-side bugs - there are bound to be some problems. No amount of testing, and The Old Republic had a lot of testing, would have been able to squash them all. Now that the game is officially live and is a constant topic of discussion in The Escapist, a few nagging glitches have come to the surface. BioWare's Game Director on The Old Republic James Ohlen is committed to patching the big problems ASAP while keeping a steady stream of patches to fix more minor bugs and balance issues.

"Any game as big and as complex as The Old Republic will have bugs," Ohlen said in a post on BioWare's official forums. "We're working as hard as we can to find, fix, test and patch the game to eliminate as many of them as possible.

"Almost every week we will be releasing a new patch. These weekly patches are almost entirely focused on bug fixes, minor balance changes and fixing any exploits in the game. These issues are the highest priority items at the studio," Ohlen said. "These issues are the highest priority items at the studio."

Unfortunately, patches have to go through their own testing process to make sure they don't break the game even further. "[Patches] are reviewed by senior leadership on a daily basis. Bug fixes usually take longer than a week to get into the game because we need to fix the issue and then test the fix. Some bugs take longer than that because of the complexity of the issue."

Ohlen reserves his red button to patch a bug immediately only for issues that cause a huge problem for the entire player base. "There are issues that we will fix immediately. These are rare and not every issue can be fixed in this manner. We usually reserve these 'emergency fixes' for bugs that are stopping players from playing the game or to exploits that could unbalance the entire game if not corrected."

Taken as a whole, there have been a relatively few problems with the launch of The Old Republic as compared to other MMOs. Even WoW dealt with horrible server queues and fun-sucking lag for the first six months of life or more. A few crowded server queues [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115034-UPDATE-Players-Banned-for-Breakdancing-in-Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic] are like a Bantha fart compared to WoW's launch.

Source: SWTOR [http://www.swtor.com/blog/word-bugs-james-ohlen]




Permalink

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Iat least with MMOs they usually don't sack most of the staff once it goes on sale, and bugs actually get fixed. Imagine if a game like New Vegas or Sword of the Stars II was released, but not patched.

Also on an unrelated note there seems to be a problem with the game Info box on the right of the article. Unless Bioware are working hard on patching the Star Wars NES game. Which they should BTW.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

AND BAN PEOPLE EVERY OTHER WEEK!

Sir, that's not meant to be said out loud

Dammit. Can we do a re-run on this live announcement?

 

[tehweave]

WoW does that... Kinda. Every tuesday is maintenance, and typically there's a new patch to go with it.

 

[gigastar]

While its not something i bring up readily, Rune Scape still pulls at least 3 major updates a month with bug patches coming alongside them or as soon as half an hour afterwards if a real game breaker somehow got out of testing.

 

[Micalas]

Let's turn this thread into a Skyrim style glitch-swapping party!

The best one for me was that for 9 days the master bedroom inside my star ship was missing. The bed was stil there but the walls, ceiling, and floor were gone. I logged out one night with my character sitting on his bed and when I logged in the next day I was on a bed floating in space. The bed was still where it should be relative to my ship, so the doorway was right there. Unfortunately it's not that the textures of the walls and floor disappeared. They actually disappeared. I walked off my bed and fell into the void of space. You fall for about 20 seconds and then die when that happens. What really sucked was that when I respawned, I respawned on my fucking bed so all I could do was die a bunch of times trying to jump back into my ship. I had to use my emergency fleet pass to escape.

For 9 days I quested and whenever I came back to my ship I stared longingly into the doorway of my now spacebound bedroom; my floating bed, calling to me. Never forget!

 

[Fappy]

I have 12 hours played so far and have experienced a bunch of bugs. Most of which were fixed with a simple re-log though. I managed to work around quest glitches, but I have heard there are some bad ones out there.

 

[Something Amyss]

What they meant: "we are dedicated to this title and plan to continue to make your experience better."

What the public hears: "We launched a buggy game that needs a lot of work."

AND BAN PEOPLE EVERY OTHER WEEK!

Sir, that's not meant to be said out loud

Dammit. Can we do a re-run on this live announcement?

And that, my friend is why there's a five second delay on most live programming.

This is great news! I'm so happy I could....
DANCE!
*gets banned*
Awwwwwww =(

I'm sorry, but your foot was outside the designated dance zone.

 

[Vrach]

WoW does that... Kinda. Every tuesday is maintenance, and typically there's a new patch to go with it.

Which is pretty much what BioWare is going for, it's just that this announcement is basically them saying "we know the game still has a lot of bugs, it's an MMO after all, so we'll be working our arses off until we can weed out as many as we can until we get to a point of the game being as polished as one would expect of a triple A MMO". It's nice, though not at all surprising.

 

[mad825]

During gaming school, weren't they taught that updating a game too much too often can be a bad thing?

 

[tehweave]

WoW does that... Kinda. Every tuesday is maintenance, and typically there's a new patch to go with it.

Which is pretty much what BioWare is going for, it's just that this announcement is basically them saying "we know the game still has a lot of bugs, it's an MMO after all, so we'll be working our arses off until we can weed out as many as we can until we get to a point of the game being as polished as one would expect of a triple A MMO". It's nice, though not at all surprising.

It is a smart move. Make a specific day of the week to do maintenance, most likely the least heaviest server time, close all servers, tweak bugs, release new patch, people go on with their lives/game. Good plan.

 

[Vrach]

WoW does that... Kinda. Every tuesday is maintenance, and typically there's a new patch to go with it.

Which is pretty much what BioWare is going for, it's just that this announcement is basically them saying "we know the game still has a lot of bugs, it's an MMO after all, so we'll be working our arses off until we can weed out as many as we can until we get to a point of the game being as polished as one would expect of a triple A MMO". It's nice, though not at all surprising.

It is a smart move. Make a specific day of the week to do maintenance, most likely the least heaviest server time, close all servers, tweak bugs, release new patch, people go on with their lives/game. Good plan.

Well actually, that part I take issue with. Now, the time they picked might be the least busy their servers are, but I believe their decision was based on US alone. Europe gets a maintenance in the middle of the bloody day, servers being off sometime in the afternoon, which frankly I think is a bit stupid.

Now, don't get me wrong, personally it hasn't bothered me yet, but I think Blizzard did it much better by taking the servers off overnight and having the servers back up at 9 am or 11 am at the latest. Now, in itself, it's not a big deal yet, but when they start deploying bigger patches, taking longer for them to get the servers back up, I'm betting Europe is gonna see a fair bit of "servers not available" throughout the day on Tuesdays.

 

[tehweave]

snip

I'm betting Europe is gonna see a fair bit of "servers not available" throughout the day on Tuesdays.

At least its tuesday and not friday or saturday.

 

[Vatra86]

If only they would fix the Error Code 9000 bug that thousands of people are having. I can't play for more than 30 mins before i get disconnected.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Cruising through the old articles, I came across this one from back in 07:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_101/560-Blowing-Up-Galaxies.3

About Star Wars Galaxies and it's mistakes as an MMO. I read through it and saw at the end a list of lessons to be learned. Nearly all of them talk about bugs and rushed releases...and changes after launch. I hope Bioware took them to heart...or knows about them.

Ironically it even mentions TOR as a 'persistent rumor'...so long ago they started making this.

 

[jurnag12]

Taken as a whole, there have been a relatively few problems with the launch of The Old Republic as compared to other MMOs. Even WoW dealt with horrible server queues and fun-sucking lag for the first six months of life or more. A few dancing glitches and a some crowded server queues are like a Bantha fart compared to WoW's launch.

To be fair, when WoW was launched, no one expected a massive influx of players and they had to shift all their resources forward about a year before schedule.
This, on the other hand, is a Star Wars game.

 

[Antari]

Actually Greg they didn't do any testing. 2 million kids taking advantage of a free game is NOT product testing. Its stress testing. People these days in alphas and betas very rarely report problems until its a complete game breaker. So I don't know why they call it testing, because not so many years ago product testing meant you've tested every possible thing the product is capable of and confirmed it works. Beta testing used to be a job, and even when done poorly would give you a better result than just hoping the public will tell you where the bugs are.

 

[Vrach]

snip

I'm betting Europe is gonna see a fair bit of "servers not available" throughout the day on Tuesdays.

At least its tuesday and not friday or saturday.

That isn't really better as far as I'm concerned, Friday/Saturday I usually have something better to do, Tuesdays are rarely so lucky.

 

[xxcloud417xx]

If only they would fix the Error Code 9000 bug that thousands of people are having. I can't play for more than 30 mins before i get disconnected.

WHAT!!???!? 9000?!?!

Okay on a more serious note, this is a basic and required service for an MMO now. I mean what do we pay $15 a month for? It would kind of be like your local Fast Food burger joint saying they promise to give you fries with every combo. We kind of already expected them to...