If for some reason you thought the Anthem VIP demo was going to go smoothly this weekend, first I have to welcome you to video game fandom because you must be new here, and second I have to let you down. BioWare’s Head of Live Service Chad Robertson wrote an explainer over the weekend telling players exactly what’s going on with what he characterized as a “rocky” launch.
For example, when EA tweeted that it was “adding more server capacity” to the demo when it opened on Friday, a lot of gamers took that to mean BioWare was unprepared, but in fact, Robertson says, the studio had “excess capacity prepared for population increases,” so presumably it was just a matter of bringing those servers online as the demand swelled, which naturally lagged behind.
Over the weekend, BioWare worked on the platform connection issues, preorder and demo account entitlements, and the infinite load bug, the last of which Robertson says became a factor “in the real-world where differences with player’s ISPs and home networks introduce new behavior.” He promises the studio will continue battle with the infinite load issues and will be continuing to address server performance.
“We’ve heard reports of rubber-banding and other signs of server latency. We believe we can address this and will be conducting some small-scale experiments to confirm that. We may roll some fixes out this weekend or may wait for the open demo next weekend, depending on the level of risk to the overall service.”
Demo players will be granted a new vinyl at launch in compensation for the struggles.
Worth noting is that BioWare is claiming “Fortnite-type numbers” on Twitch this weekend, which at the very least gives a good gauge for the hype on this game.
Anthem VIP Demo: an update from BioWare’s Head of Live Servicehttps://t.co/7J5kDBikPY
— BioWare (@bioware) January 26, 2019
