Hi Everyone....

Thread Topic: Early Access "Queue"

Based on what I've heard and read, the main complaints are:

1. EA/BW did not provide specific details to customers who purchased "Early Access," e.g. Jane Doe pre-purchased "Early Access" in Aug and has been waiting around for days without any useful communication from EA/BW as to when she'll be granted access.
   
2. Some customers who purchased "Early Access" were granted access "out of queue," e.g. Joe Blow pre-purchased in Oct and got in on Day-1 while Jane Doe who pre-purchased in Aug is still waiting for access to the game.
   

Q: Did EA/BW provide details to everyone?

A: Yes.

Q: Could EA/BW have provided more details to each customer regarding Early Access?

A: Probably.

Q: Would additional details benefit customers?

A: Yes.

Q: Would customers have waited around anyway even if EA/BW had provided more details?

A: Depends on the individual customer. What a customer does is outside of EA/BW's control; but customers' decisions and choices that are related to EA/BW games are definitely influenced by EA/BW's actions.

Q: Should customers file complaints if they're unhappy about a product or service?

A: Absolutely yes. Feedback often leads to improvements in quality of product and service., e.g. iPhone 4 had issues with reception when held in a specific way and customers complained. Overall the phone worked, but Apple used this information to improve its product. Whether or not all of the complaints about "Early Access" is legitimate needs to be discerned by EA/BW.

Q: Should customers who got "Early Access" on Day-1 care about these complaints?

A: Customers not effected would probably think not because it didn't effect them now, but issues like these may effect them next time.

Happy gaming!

It is really unfortunate that this turned out the way it did. Forums are apparently worthless when it comes to discussion. I've been trying to read through all of these posts and looking at both sides of the arguments, but more and more people join in. Points are repeated endlessly, flame wars are fought back and forth, coherent and intelligent responses to the issues at hand pop up here and there but then become lost in e-peen wars. This is successfully going nowhere.

However, some of it was fun to read.

Too bad that at launch they are forcing what you think they are trying to avoid:

 

1) All servers down for 1-2 minutes to "officially launch" the game

1a) Login servers get slammed at 12:01AM Eastern time Dec 20

1b) game servers get slammed at 12:01AM Eastern time Dec 20

 

2) Trying too hard to work up their customers into a frenzy because they are denying those customers their paid for services - albeit very cleverly crafted and worded so as to prevent any possibility of lawsuits.

 

 

Let me ask you - how many MMO launches have given their pre-order customers early access/headstart?

 

And how many have staggered said access?

 

And on both of those, how many have had issues during head start?

 

Finally, how many of those MMO launches have been great during head start but horrible during launch?

 

 

Let me answer for you, in question order:

 

Every single one

Exactly one, SWTOR

Exactly ZERO

Exactly EVERY SINGLE ONE

Exaggeration much? working too hard to work their customers into a frenzy. Well from what I see, Bioware has nothing to do with that part, the customers...not all of them are doing a fine job all on their own ..frothing at the mouth. And you seem to be right in there along with them with your statements.

Those servers will be going down just before OFFICIAL Launch for maintenance, from what I read.

All the doomsayers and predictions of disaster...are any one of you actually IT techs? I bet not.

Having a hissy fit because things are not being done YOUR way, is still not going to change how things work out in the end. Being nasty to folks on forums...yay, how to win friends, and make yourself look absolutely silly, when NONE of your teeth gnashing works or dire predictions fail to materialize.

It is really unfortunate that this turned out the way it did. Forums are apparently worthless when it comes to discussion. I've been trying to read through all of these posts and looking at both sides of the arguments, but more and more people join in. Points are repeated endlessly, flame wars are fought back and forth, coherent and intelligent responses to the issues at hand pop up here and there but then become lost in e-peen wars. This is successfully going nowhere.

 

However, some of it was fun to read.

Yeah well having to put up with poison pal critters like the one I just responded to..isnt fun. But they will all go away eventually when the SWTOR pacifier is applied to their overly large mouths.

Best joke ever, and the thing is... you play it on yourself. Acting like a kid on Christmas Eve does not make it come any quicker. Today begins the period in which it was planned for you to "Possibly" start.

This is awesome business methodology in work here. See, during pre-order of pretty much most MMOs that have come out recently, half or more were cancelled when players over extended their expectations of how things should be. Welllll you cannot really cancel if you redeemed your code either so, cheers. Bioware gets you to at least honestly try the game and keeps to its promise while doing so.

The anticipation is getting to me too but I thought it wonderful that they started this 2 days EARLY and with realistic expectations, not just let everyone come in and trample the servers and cause them to go down or be patched to fix things that only break when a server is overloaded and it tries to compensate.

I do regret that I cannot rush in and get my name which is no doubt common enough to be taken by those who ordered first, buuuut I did wait until last month to actually get the game. I can understand the logic of "Hey lets get those in who showed up first", after all in pretty much any other place in business society, first come first served tends to be a commonly accepted way to equalize things.

Sigh being IT is nothing special. It's a job like everything else.... You are right people don't have jobs.... I would assume there are a literal ton of people in IT perusing the forums atm.

Exaggeration much? working too hard to work their customers into a frenzy. Well from what I see, Bioware has nothing to do with that part, the customers...not all of them are doing a fine job all on their own ..frothing at the mouth. And you seem to be right in there along with them with your statements.

 

Those servers will be going down just before OFFICIAL Launch for maintenance, from what I read.

 

All the doomsayers and predictions of disaster...are any one of you actually IT techs? I bet not.

 

Having a hissy fit because things are not being done YOUR way, is still not going to change how things work out in the end. Being nasty to folks on forums...yay, how to win friends, and make yourself look absolutely silly, when NONE of your teeth gnashing works or dire predictions fail to materialize.

Would you people arguing about bad metaphors for what's going on please shut up? You're giving the rest of us that are waiting in line with you a massive headache. Yes... you're those people. The screaming children in the concessions stand line. The people who get to the very front of the line at the box office THEN argue about what movie to see, and what time.

 

We're all in line. We'll all get in. Chill the hell out already, you'll enjoy the show more when it starts.

Freedom, love it.

Deal or leave, whiner.

Exaggeration much? working too hard to work their customers into a frenzy. Well from what I see, Bioware has nothing to do with that part, the customers...not all of them are doing a fine job all on their own ..frothing at the mouth. And you seem to be right in there along with them with your statements.

 

Those servers will be going down just before OFFICIAL Launch for maintenance, from what I read.

 

All the doomsayers and predictions of disaster...are any one of you actually IT techs? I bet not.

 

Having a hissy fit because things are not being done YOUR way, is still not going to change how things work out in the end. Being nasty to folks on forums...yay, how to win friends, and make yourself look absolutely silly, when NONE of your teeth gnashing works or dire predictions fail to materialize.

Systems Administrator for over 15 years

They have said themselves there will be queues and wait times on launch day.

Having a fit? No. Speaking out because of things that are done wrong (in my opinion of course) yes. Such is the right of paying customers. By the way, protesting and making your voice heard DOES change how things are done, or do you live on some other planet?

This is my third launch of a MMO and I must say it is by far the worst that I have experienced. I do not like the mushroom treatment I feel we are being given. They should have given us some clue of when to expect to get invited rather then have us sit in limbo for seven days possibly. This is a terrible way to treat customers.

 

 

Thank you for the bump but unless you have some thing relevant to add to this discussion please refrain from posting in this thread.

Wow, apparently you haven't played any other game at launch in the last ten years. Every single game has been like this. Get over it.

People people...

Everybody is excited and eager to start.

Yes, things weren't handled perfectly.

No, people shouldn't put up with it.

But to fall into a allmost social chaos like state?

We preordered and people who are eligible to early acces got their early acces(this is a presumption, not a fact)

People freaking out about the socalled 'loss' of 1-3 days gameplay is understandable.

But really, what 'big' mmorpg hasn't had his issues upon release?

If you can come up with 1 major release without any problems feel free to say.

Really, I challenge you guys who expected that SWTOR would be smoothless from day 1.

I wonder what you will do once they will start with nerfs on classes.

/endrant