I have no idea how the server(s) load is configured but maybe it helps that people from day 1 is on another worlds when they let in day 3 people and so on…
Maybe they just realized there was no reason not to make it a bit longer. Maybe they looked at the staggering system as it applied to 5 days and thought, eh, not quite what we were going for. It was a vague 3-14 days window until a month or two ago, and we don’t know what the internal conversation was.
After the stress tests (2m people?) I’m not worried about the launch being too much of a fiasco, so I’m glad to have it a few days earlier. It’s funny watching people manage to be irate about this on some forums. I think if they had Mark Hammill hand-deliver the game to people tomorrow someone’d manage to feel aggrieved.
Ahh, I never heard of this. Apart from some lag spikes and queues on the worst day of the stress test beta, both of my weekends had excellent performance. This was on Nigut Road.
It may also have to do with how shit their email customer support is right now, so they want to stagger tickets.
What gets me is that it sounds like they’re sending people “ok, you can log in now” emails in real time, when as a general rule their emails have always been late as heck. Everyone in the know was checking swtor.com/tester for invites because the actual invite messages tended to come late. In this instance I’m wondering if people will just be hammering away at the login on the expectation that their email invitation will be hours later than their actual access.
I was on the same server Jason was. The game crashed once or twice but I never had lag problems. It was pretty great.
The email says they won’t send you notice until the early access starts.
If it’s a “log-in right after we email you” arrangement I imagine early pre-orderers are going to start hammering the login servers at 00:01 CST on the 13th.
I don’t think I’ve gotten that email yet (who could’ve guessed?) but saw that on their website FAQ just now.
I don’t think that’s going to work as they intend; since I won’t know when my access is, I’m not about to schedule days off to play that could be wasted. So even though my email may come on the 13th at 4am, I’m not going to log in until 6pm, and I doubt I’m alone. There’s probably still going to be a massive surge of players in the evenings no matter how they stagger out those emails.
interesting tidbit from the Pathfinder MMO development blog:
The ultimate expression of the theme park process is coming very soon in the form of Star Wars: The Old Republic, from EA/Bioware. I have been told by people I trust within the industry that this project’s budget has exceeded $300 million. It is the Avatar of this generation of MMOs.
Thats from Ryan Dancey, former CMO of CCP. I think the odds that he would have contacts with access to that info are pretty good. The previous budget estimates I’ve heard floated around are quite a bit less, ~$150 mil. I’m going to reiterate my opinion that SWTOR is going to be an expensive mistake for EA and will go f2p within 12 months of release.
Whether SWTOR ‘succeeds’ or not, however anyone defines that, I’m sure they’ll have good sub numbers for at least the first 6 months, and even if subs dropped off a cliff then, I really don’t see any way it would go f2p after a year. If you’re relating that prediction to the reported cost to create SWTOR, I don’t see the connection.
Karnisov - Take anything from Dancey with a LARGE pinch of salt.
(My respect for pathfinder has absolutely plummeted with his involvement, and that business model is moronic.)
Hmm…
I was still up from the day before. That was about 23 minutes after the pre-order email hit my inbox (I was slow).
Aki
3871
I’m having a problem with getting the setup to execute. It gets about 98% of the way through "Extracting files to C:…\AppData\Local\Temp\InstallSWOTR folder and then everything just vanishes. I had a similar problem with getting the installer to actually finish installing during beta. That one just finally worked one day after I’d nearly given up hope on the ever installing the game.
Might this be related (in a frustrating and completely undocumented way) to whether or not the patch servers are up? Help me Qt3, you’re my only hope because the SWOTR forums are worthless and SWOTR customer service is even worse!
jpinard
3872
Not sure if you can use an option outside of what you’re doing (I couldn’t imagine playing the game without the fantastic voice and music) - but you could get your wife a wearable call buttom. When she hits it that would ring your cellphone or a pager. Then you could turn the sound down as soon as you felt/heard the call.
Hmm, 25 of July. turns out I bought CE. I thought I got it in SEptember or something.
I wonder how many days of early access that will grant me.
Hetzer
3874
Didnt they say that its also important where you live? Hopefully my place in germany, ruhrarea helps…
Maybe they are giving people access based on where they live, alphabetically.
I’d move to Aach ;)
I was quite let down by the beta, but since I pre-ordered - I’ll be giving it a chance for the first free month.
I can only hope there’s more to it than what I saw, and that open world PvP is meaningful somehow.
Not to rain on your parade, but in what MMO has open-world PVP been meaningful, aside from Dark Age of Camelot? Or maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by the term meaningful.
Wolff
3878
Better yet in what game was open world pvp not a gank fest preying on undergeared underleveled players
Oh, not many - and certainly not many in recent times.
EVE Online has it, and I think Darkfall has it to an extent. Even Mortal Online has it, but that game is just broken beyond repair.
As for what it means, I think that varies from person to person. WoW had the potential to have very meaningful open world PvP - but went in a completely different direction. Same is the case with Age of Conan.
It seems investors are not keen to do anything but WoW clones - and as such we end up with the smallest teams doing these “bold” things - and they just don’t have the resources to make the game sufficiently appealing otherwise.
Not that I expected miracles from SWtoR in this way, but it seems open world PvP is mostly an afterthought. I hope to be wrong.
I didn’t participate in any PVP while playing SWTOR (other than by being ganked once on the lower promenade in Nar Shaddaa) , but I would be willing to bet you’re not going to find the meaningful open-world PVP you want in that game - especially considering BioWare’s focus on the single-player story experience.
