Star Wars: The Old Republic

[keg in kc]

Don't believe there's a dedicated thread, and since they're starting to release information now, I figure it's time for one.

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Pants

It's probably for the best, man. These games are so ridiculously good, they completely swallow you up and take over your life. I'm almost apprehensive about TOR because I know what it's capable of doing to me.

I'm already wondering where half the day has gone.

[Huffmeister]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

I'm already wondering where half the day has gone.

Why are you posting here instead of playing?!?!

Just kidding... So is the launch build pretty much the same as the Thanksgiving beta?

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Huffmeister

Why are you posting here instead of playing?!?!

Just kidding... So is the launch build pretty much the same as the Thanksgiving beta?

I'm trying to get some christmas cards out before the mail's picked up. If I don't remember now, I may not remember the rest of the week.

Looks basically the same to me. Couple of bizarre graphical glitches but nothing major. No problems of any kind so far. My knight's level 7, loving Tython so far. I enjoyed playing Empire throughout the beta weekends, but Republic feels so much more in-character for me.

[Huffmeister]

Looks like four waves of early access emails have gone out today.

Wave 1: approx 6:30am
Wave 2: approx 8:30am
Wave 3: approx 10:30am
Wave 4: approx 12:00pm

I had heard people on the forums mention that there were only going to be 4 waves today. The SWTOR Twitter feed posted that the fourth wave was a "bonus" and there will still be one more wave today. I'm hoping they keep coming with the waves, but I have a feeling that they want to see how things go this evening when people start getting off of work and school.

[Saulbadguy]

****

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by Huffmeister

Looks like four waves of early access emails have gone out today.

Wave 1: approx 6:30am
Wave 2: approx 8:30am
Wave 3: approx 10:30am
Wave 4: approx 12:00pm

I had heard people on the forums mention that there were only going to be 4 waves today. The SWTOR Twitter feed posted that the fourth wave was a "bonus" and there will still be one more wave today. I'm hoping they keep coming with the waves, but I have a feeling that they want to see how things go this evening when people start getting off of work and school.

If they are truly serious about stress-testing the servers, they should let a lot more people in because on launch day the servers will be slammed. By letting in just 100k-200k people at a time you aren't recreating what will happen on launch day.

[keg in kc]

The numbers have been good so far. Tython on my server hasn't even been instanced as far as I can tell.

As far as stress testing goes, that's what they did at Thanksgiving. This is live game now, not stress testing.

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

The numbers have been good so far. Tython on my server hasn't even been instanced as far as I can tell.

As far as stress testing goes, that's what they did at Thanksgiving. This is live game now, not stress testing.

They said on the website a major reason for the slow rollout of the game to early entrants was to make sure the servers were doing ok.

[Huffmeister]

From @SWTOR The Old Republic:

The final wave of emails have been sent. We will be sending another wave tomorrow starting at 8am CST.

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by Huffmeister

From @SWTOR The Old Republic:

I am monitoring the thread on their forum. The natives are definitely restless, as can be expected when you develop a game for 78 years. People do get antsy when time comes close.

[Barret]

Yea I got in after a bit and was playing till about 10. I am at work now and have it loaded up, just have to wait for the bosses to leave. Currently I am the only "the Right Fifty Three" person that has got access I think. Haven't seen anyone else yet.

Just hit level 10 and almost out of Tython. The good thing about doing this class multiple times in beta is...I don't have to have the sound up to know what is going on. Neither do my bosses. Although 1 came in and was wondering why my computer was super loud. I told him I was doing a virus scan. I think the 400 watt power supply is getting all choked up on the video card requirements. :P

See you all in game.

[Huffmeister]

Originally Posted by Swanman

I am monitoring the thread on their forum. The natives are definitely restless, as can be expected when you develop a game for 78 years. People do get antsy when time comes close.

Yeah, I've been checking the customer service forums throughout the day, and it has been pretty amusing. Kinda hard to distinguish the trolls from the from the true nerd rage. One guy this morning posted about starting a class action lawsuit against BioWare because he didn't get in and was concerned about his ability to get "server first" achievements (not even sure they exist) because there were other people already playing on his server.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by Huffmeister

Yeah, I've been checking the customer service forums throughout the day, and it has been pretty amusing. Kinda hard to distinguish the trolls from the from the true nerd rage. One guy this morning posted about starting a class action lawsuit against BioWare because he didn't get in and was concerned about his ability to get "server first" achievements (not even sure they exist) because there were other people already playing on his server.

Jesus.

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by Huffmeister

Yeah, I've been checking the customer service forums throughout the day, and it has been pretty amusing. Kinda hard to distinguish the trolls from the from the true nerd rage. One guy this morning posted about starting a class action lawsuit against BioWare because he didn't get in and was concerned about his ability to get "server first" achievements (not even sure they exist) because there were other people already playing on his server.

Quite a few posters took an arrow in the knee, too.

[Huffmeister]

From StephenReid (his bolding):

Hey everyone.

We absolutely understand you want to get in and play the game early. It's one of the reasons we expanded our Early Game Access from a maximum of five days to a maximum of seven days. However, there are a couple of important points to realize about today's opening salvo of invites, and the procedure in general for Early Game Access and launch.

First, Early Game Access and launch is not supposed to be a stress test. In our previous Beta Testing Weekends we got up to very large concurrent number of players and brought invites into the game at a very high rate. That was done to stress test every aspect of our systems and servers, and essentially to see if they broke. In some cases, they did, but that helped us improve for launch.

For us, launch isn't just about stuffing our servers with as many people as possible. As anyone who's been through a large MMO launch can tell you, that experience can be painful. Our aim with this launch was to ramp things up gradually, to spread our player population out amongst a variety of servers, to maintain all server types, and to keep queuing to a minimum (although we expect that to happen as we head towards December 20th). So far, all that has been successful for us on Day One.

The second thing to realize is scale. We invited more people to play Star Wars: The Old Republic today than many other MMO launches manage in their entire head-start process. As I mentioned earlier today, when we opened pre-orders we had a huge spike in numbers - far more than most MMOs capture at launch. That was the initial rush. After that, our pre-orders settled down.

What this means is that tomorrow, you'll effectively start to see the pre-order timeline expand. You'll see people who have pre-ordered later than July getting invites. The day after that, more people will be invited. We're actually planning to invite more tomorrow than today, and invite the same number again on Thursday - at which point we'll be into the original 'five days of Early Game Access'.

Last thing. Why aren't we continuing to send waves over time? Two main reasons - one, because we need to see that the servers are maintaining stability over time; adding a lot of players in a short period (in other words, stress testing) can cause stability issues.

Two, our plan is to continue to add servers - but carefully, and in response to demand. We need to monitor that demand and roll out servers accordingly. A long-term recipe for MMO failure is to add a lot of servers early on, and then when population decreases, have to close those servers and merge them together.

Our aim is for Star Wars: The Old Republic to be around for a long time to come. Today's just the first step in that - an early step, too - and we'll be running smoothly, with a stable population, before too long.