Yesterday marked the start of Anthem's VIP Demo. Open only to those who have pre-ordered BioWare's highly anticipated online, RPG-shooter, the VIP Demo was meant to give players a glimpse into the intriguing world of Anthem, while also giving BioWare a chance to truly test the servers and other game systems.
As EA put it, day one of the demo "was rocky." And that's sugar-coating it. BioWare posted a lengthy message to fans who pre-ordered the game and were disappointed with the results from the first day. In it, Chad Robertson, BioWare's Head of Live Service, not only apologized for the issues experienced but attempted to explain what exactly went wrong and how BioWare intends to fix it.
Before he got into the real issues that affect the demo, he immediately dismissed the notion that the problems were caused by "under-planning for server capacity."
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.
As for what really went wrong, there were three main primary issues: platform connections, entitlements, and "Infinite loads."
Of those three, entitlements, which involved problems with pre-order incentives affecting demo access, have mostly been resolved. BioWare is working to address additional cases.
Meanwhile, BioWare is still investigating "platform connections," which the developer says "was caused by the spike in players entering the game when we opened up." These issues apparently didn't pop up during internal testing, which is why demos like the one this weekend are important to sort out the kinks before launch.
Finally, the "infinite loads" issue - which occurred for some players when in transition from Fort Tarsis to an expedition - was apparently experienced during internal testing, but only in isolated cases. BioWare had thought the issue was resolved but "the problem is exacerbated in the real-world where differences with player’s ISPs and home networks introduce new behavior."
With these issues acknowledged, Robertson said the developer's top priorities are continuing to fix the entitle problems, implementing fixes to address infinite loads, and improving server performance. But as a way to make it up to those who have been affected by these issues, BioWare is giving everyone who participated in the VIP demo weekend an additional new vinyl at launch.
's VIP Demo ends on January 27, but an Open Demo for the game is slated to take place from February 1 through February 3.
Anthem officially launches on February 22, 2019, for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.