BioWare Head Of Live Service Talks About ‘Rocky’ Anthem VIP Demo Weekend

Most gamers (and developers) will probably attest to the fact that game launches rarely go according to plan. The Anthem VIP Weekend Demo launch, however, was rougher than most with “unexpected issues” popping up from the start and continuing to appear over the course of the demo. BioWare Head of Live Service Chad Robertson talks about what he admits was a “rocky” launch in a recent dev blog.

“Yesterday was rocky. The first day of our VIP demo weekend did not go exactly as we planned, and I want to share what happened.

We’ve been testing the entire game and platform for several months, but there were a few things we missed; real-world play frequently leads to unexpected issues. Before I share details on this and what we’re still facing, I want to dispel one comment we’ve seen: that we under-planned for server capacity. To ensure stability, we intended to manage our servers to match the player population as it grew. Overall, we had excess capacity prepared for population increases, and continue to do so. That said, what’s important is that all parts of the game work as designed to meet players’ needs, and that did not happen in the opening hours.”

Robertson continues to identify the problems that prevented players from accessing the game such as connection issues caused by the sudden influx of players, a bug where a specific combination of account entitlements blocked players from the demo, and the infinite load bug. He assures players that these issues are on top of the devs’ to-do-list and that they’re doing everything they can to ensure that the entire community can enjoy the game.

All VIP Demo players will also receive compensation which they'll receive on official launch day. “We appreciate everyone’s patience and sincerely apologize for those who have had issues getting into the game,” says Robertson. “As a token of appreciation for your enthusiasm and any issues you encountered, we’re giving everyone who participated in the VIP demo weekend an additional new vinyl at launch.”

Robertson also proudly reports that they were able to achieve “Fortnite-type numbers” on Twitch during the demo weekend with over 300,000 concurrent viewers and over 100 million minutes watched. “It’s been incredibly humbling to see so many people watching along with us on Twitch. Thank you for your support! Our goal is to get everyone into the demo having fun together.”

In a follow-up blog post, Robertson reports that they've addressed some of the issues and will be addressing others before the Open Demo this weekend. He also gives "a long list of things that are already fixed that won’t make the public demo weekend."

• Weapons with 0% infusions
• Weapons with bonus that applies to different Javelins
• Plot integrity / party gather issues
• Changes to Javelin unlock behavior
• Fixes for losing XP at end of some expeditions
• Performance Improvements
• Additional stability fixes
• A Social Hub: The Launch Bay
• And a few thousand more (literally)…

He also reveals a number of good-to-know stats that players achieved over the weekend. “Thank you. It’s incredible to think we had nearly 9M hours of play across the 2.5 days the demo was open. In that same time, over 1M strongholds were completed (go Freelancers!) and nearly 2M grabbits were slaughtered (seriously! – what is wrong with people? – they’re innocent grabbits!)”

You can find Robertson’s full blog post on the BioWare official site.You can also watch the official demo trailer right after the jump.