SWTOR: Early access

TheDoc

27h of july, nothing here

Omphin

Blowfish wrote: »

22nd and got in on 2nd wave.

As a side note, It seems I'm the first from EGB in, it let me create the guild which is interesting, I thought the GM would need to do that. In any case that's at least one part of us up and running, no idea if ATT is started off yet.

Cool man, whats ur in game name? can you ask the rest of the guildies (when they get in game )to post here if its not too much trouble and give feedback on when they put their codes in. thanks:)

degrassinoel

thats it til tomorrow then

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

http://twitter.com/#!/swtor

TheDoc

Well I'lll be up at 2am, no problem.

MikeyJoyce

You sure its not 2pm tomorrow for us?

degrassinoel

it is 2pm tomorrow yeah

TheDoc

8AM CST is GMT -6 no ?

Thought thats 2am

I've a feeling that booking these two days of work was a complete waste and I'm not happy about it, bit of a fail early access launch.

Doesnt take alot of work to put out some clear information a week in advance, instead of being all over the place about it

Kiith

Yeah, but it's 8am CST. CST is 6 hours behind, so 2pm here.

TheDoc

According to their latest post, I'll be in tomorrow, hopefully first wave.

Sigh...should booked tomorrow and thursday off

I'll be be streaming anyway minute its up

Kiith

Latest update. Makes a lot of sense. From the sounds of things, they maybe want to have most people in by Thursday? That'd be fine with me.

Stephen Reid wrote:

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 role 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.

Venom

TheDoc wrote: »

8AM CST is GMT -6 no ?

Thought thats 2am

I've a feeling that booking these two days of work was a complete waste and I'm not happy about it, bit of a fail early access launch.

Doesnt take alot of work to put out some clear information a week in advance, instead of being all over the place about it

The golden rule of any MMO launch is never, ever, book time off work

Gummy Panda

I'm confused though. If someone walks into GAME on 15th, they can purchase the game but can't play till the 20th?

How is that a good first impression?

EDIT: well that was a quick response on twitter:

@GummyP That's why we put a big sticker on it explaining that fact, and encouraged GAME to give them a pre-order box too.

Blowfish

Omphin wrote: »

Cool man, whats ur in game name? can you ask the rest of the guildies (when they get in game )to post here if its not too much trouble and give feedback on when they put their codes in. thanks:)

Will do, though no sign of anyone else yet.

Venom wrote: »

The golden rule of any MMO launch is never, ever, book time off work

Or do what I did and book the time off next week so you skip any issues you might have in the first few days.

In saying that though, it's been incredibly smooth so far. The start zones are busy enough as you'd expect, but not overcrowded to the point where you have to wait around for mob spawns. Spot on so far from Bioware.

red_ice

Blowfish wrote: »

Or do what I did and book the time off next week so you skip any issues you might have in the first few days.

Or better yet, do what I did and work in design/programming/consultancy from home so most of the time you dont have to go anywhere unless you want to :pac:

Mr. K

Nuts, I didn't enter my code until the 30th because GAME accidentally gave me a Standard Edition code when I pre-ordered the CE...I don't mind waiting a bit longer though!

I pre ordered from Play.com. Was waiting an age for the code so canceled two weeks ago and re ordered on amazon.co.uk - got the code instantly.

If they are saying everyone will be in by Thursday then great - have my doubts I'll be in before the weekend but I'm long passed the time in my life when I stress about a couple of days missed gaming.

String

I got my code on 27th july and when entered it said it was already taken so after weeks fighting with origin cs I finally got it attached to my account 20 september. Sucks will miss out on a few days because of it

Gummy Panda

A lot of unhappy folks on swtor forums last night. Bioware started deleting threads especially people posted up pics of the servers status showing light.

Stephen Reid didn't come across too well in his message saying early access isn't a stress test then a paragraph later saying they're monitoring server stress.

Columc

I wouldn't mind if they told us previous on what their intentions was with the early access, but denying people early access and saying its a "wave system" is quite annoying and pathetic. They could of handled this a lot better/easier, if they just sent everyone an email stating something like

If you pre-ordered between July to August you get in on Tuesday,
If you pre-ordered between September to October you get in on Wednesday,
If you pre-ordered between November to December you get in on Thursday,

Something like that would make sense, instead of all this guild deployment bull**** emails that doesn't tell you ****.

I pre-ordered back in July and still haven't seen any word on when i can get access to it

Eh ...

The early access wasn't meant to start until Friday? Why is anyone complaining at this stage. And Bioware said they were using waves so that each zone was clearing before more came in, stress testing was done in Beta. And server stress is still something they have to monitor, not because it's a stress test, but because it's prudent.

I really am surprised at people actually complaining about this.

Columc

Early accesses was spose to occur on the 13th of decemeber

MikeyJoyce

No. Originally the early access was scheduled for the 15th of December the extra two days they added on where not originally planned and i still think everyone will be in by tomorrow night or Friday so don't worry you will get in on time.

Gummy Panda

MikeyJoyce wrote: »

No. Originally the early access was scheduled for the 15th of December the extra two days they added on where not originally planned and i still think everyone will be in by tomorrow night or Friday so don't worry you will get in on time.

It's mainly the 4 waves and we are done for today. People expected several more waves. Also the amount they let in seemed very low as lad in my guild said server was dead.

degrassinoel

I may just have to get butters to help me freeze myself until i get EGA

Dcully

Columc wrote: »

I wouldn't mind if they told us previous on what their intentions was with the early access, but denying people early access and saying its a "wave system" is quite annoying and pathetic. They could of handled this a lot better/easier, if they just sent everyone an email stating something like

If you pre-ordered between July to August you get in on Tuesday,
If you pre-ordered between September to October you get in on Wednesday,
If you pre-ordered between November to December you get in on Thursday,

Something like that would make sense, instead of all this guild deployment bull**** emails that doesn't tell you ****.

I pre-ordered back in July and still haven't seen any word on when i can get access to it

I preorderd on 30th July, im not in yet either,im as sick as anyone but i think they are doing this in a clever manner.
Its easy for you to say let in people who preordered on a per month basis on a specific day, that simply wouldnt work, they have explained there was a massive spike in pre orders thereforse the numbers per day would vary greatly.
Ive witnessed many an MMO launch and every single one of them had massive downtime [days in some cases] due to large scale influx of players all at once.
Then you had to deal with queues of 4-5 hours, it was just ridiculous.

Atleast bioware have tried to alleviate this pain with their method, while not everone will agree with it i think its a wise move.
Im champing at the bit to get in, watching my emails,forums etc for news on the next wave of access emails but at the end of the day folks we are talking days here, take a step back and chillax.
Id dearly love to get in today but if i dont ill get in in a day or two.
Looking at the whining on the swtor forums makes me shake my head and wonder what sort of life these people have to vent such anger over a few days, FFS its only a few days.

Kiith

Dcully wrote: »

Looking at the whining on the swtor forums makes me shake my head and wonder what sort of life these people have to vent such anger over a few days, FFS its only a few days.

Official forums...you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy :pac:

TheDoc

MikeyJoyce wrote: »

No. Originally the early access was scheduled for the 15th of December the extra two days they added on where not originally planned and i still think everyone will be in by tomorrow night or Friday so don't worry you will get in on time.

That plan was changed and was informed through forums and by email, two weeks ago at this stage.....

The annoyance is that the waves were so low in numbers allowed on.

MMO are all about time investment, of course people will freak out. The people in first, have more time, have the advantage : /

And why would I freak out by over two days?

Because maybe if they had of planned better and used the data they had effectively, they could have provided accurate information before yesterday at 3pm....

There is no disguising the extremely poor planning, forsight and communication

Kiith

From the sounds of things, there was barely anyone on the servers yesterday. I'm guessing they were expecting a surge when people got home, but apparently not. And they've not even got the July pre-orders done yet? Guessing today and tomorrow for July/August, and then the rest hopefully quickly after that.

Ah well, i'm still ok waiting a few more days.

MikeyJoyce

What advantage are you talking about? They are higher level are playing content that you are not? Are farming Materials? In no way this impacts you directly and when you get in the game your just going to get on with it and have fun playing.

I still consider the way they are rolling out invites to be smart and the best way to go about a difficult situation.

Imagine letting every single person in and then the servers breaking and having downtime or other problems that may occur with mass amounts of players. No i believe Bioware have done the correct thing here and have made it as fair as possible.

Its only a few days left then everyone will be in.
As i have read before we are talking only a few days maximum in the difference for everyone. Im sure everyone is excited its just there is no need for people to be upset over the whole ordeal.

jeawan

TheDoc wrote: »

That plan was changed and was informed through forums and by email, two weeks ago at this stage.....

The annoyance is that the waves were so low in numbers allowed on.

MMO are all about time investment, of course people will freak out. The people in first, have more time, have the advantage : /

And why would I freak out by over two days?

Because maybe if they had of planned better and used the data they had effectively, they could have provided accurate information before yesterday at 3pm....

There is no disguising the extremely poor planning, forsight and communication

Playing Last night there was very few online on my server about 120 in my area .

I do think they are letting people in too slow but they have reasons for it i think they don't want massive queues and they want a solid and easy launch.

Do i care about people not getting in no not really if i was one i wouldn't be too bothered id played BF3 instead .

Planning it better i think possible yes but at the same time no matter what most of the people with will still get 1/2 days early access .I do think they will start letting more and more people in as the time rolls on in the waves also i was quite surprised by the amount of servers they have online