Star Wars: The Old Republic has gotten off to a good start with more than a million users already in the game as of Christmas week. The first ever MMO launch from BioWare hasn't gone as smoothly as some would like, however, with some players experiencing trouble connecting to servers and others suffering from bugs and performance issues. That said, EA COO Peter Moore is thrilled with the response to the game so far.

 

Speaking to IndustryGamers during a phone call mostly focused on the brand-new customer service headquarters in Austin (where BioWare operates The Old Republic), we asked Moore about the hiccups experienced in launching the Star Wars MMO.

 

“I was watching every hour of every day because a lot of the work we needed to do in Customer Experience reports directly to me – even though BioWare handles its own customer service as you probably know. But look, there's a reason it's an MMO; it's a massive game and when I think of all the MMOs I have seen launched I can't think of one that has been launched flawlessly. There's so much you don't know and when you've got a million people coming in and playing, I'd like to be able to guarantee a completely flawless experience from a technology perspective, from an interaction perspective, but again I look at it every hour and when we look at the queue times to get on the servers, the amount of downtime that is scheduled, it's green lights all the way. I couldn't be more happy," Moore remarked.

 

He continued, "We're only three weeks in since the launch and we're stable, we're robust and adding people. It was a ramped phase-up, and we made sure for the people as they came in that they had a great experience. Was it perfect? No. Did anybody really expect something of this magnitude and complexity to be perfect? No, but the key is how you resolve those problems and move on quickly and I think our teams have done that well."

 

In related news, Eurogamer heard from BioWare's game director James Ohlen, who said that the "performance concerns" in The Old Republic are only affecting about 5% of the subscriber base.

 

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ea-couldnt-be-more-happy-with-star-wars-launch/

I'm not sure on the 5% part on the 2nd to last paragraph but most of which I agree.

"Was it perfect? No. Did anybody really expect something of this magnitude and complexity to be perfect? No, but the key is how you resolve those problems and move on quickly and I think our teams have done that well."

I don't agree with this part- it wasn't handled well at all- you ignored your customers for ages and still do.

that's what really put me off the game and resulted in my cancellation.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ea-couldnt-be-more-happy-with-star-wars-launch/

 

I'm not sure on the 5% part on the 2nd to last paragraph but most of which I agree.

The 5% part has been debunked many times. Anyone who has ever worked with Hero cloud (open source version of hero engine) could tell the engine is not designed for high player loads, as a result you will get a massive FPS drop even on high end machines under certain conditions.

When they say 5% there refering to what they think active forum population is. They have no real way of estimating such a issue so any claimed statistic for such is a fabracated.

As for him saying "even though BioWare handles its own customer service as you probably know"

This is also complete BS, the majority of there customer service is outsourced, vary little is handled in house. Unless you count the community managers (also known as a "used car salesman") Twitter feed as "customer service".

The 5% part has been debunked many times. Anyone who has ever worked with Hero cloud (open source version of hero engine) could tell the engine is not designed for high player loads, as a result you will get a massive FPS drop even on high end machines under certain conditions.

 

When they say 5% there refering to what they think active forum population is. They have no real way of estimating such a issue so any claimed statistic for such is a fabracated.

 

As for him saying "even though BioWare handles its own customer service as you probably know"

 

This is also complete BS, the majority of there customer service is outsourced, vary little is handled in house. Unless you count the community managers (also known as a "used car salesman") Twitter feed as "customer service".

Ya I mean I believe some tinfoil hat forum conspiracy more than the people who actually run the company. Noone can "debunk" this 5% except people at Bioware. Personally I dont get why people are so impatient. Personally Ive had a wonderful experience. I bet the majority of people are realistic and not self centered. They know this kind of huge deal will have some setbacks. Its the spoiled and self-entitled who think they should get everything now. Personally I think if you post a "I quit" post or cancel post you should be immediately and permanently banned from the game and forums.

The 5% part has been debunked many times.

And yet I don't think you can provide a single credible source backing this claim up.

When they say 5% there refering to what they think active forum population is. They have no real way of estimating such a issue so any claimed statistic for such is a fabracated.

Please provide proof. I haven't worked on games, but I have done extensive software development, and much of that has made use of metrics collected from client machines for analysis.

We can all see or FPS, I'd be pretty sure that it is either always calculated or there is a flag that can be turned on (such as when a patch goes out) to cause it to be calculated all the time (regardless of if the user requests it or not). I could imagine a system (this is off the top of my head) that calculated the average FPS for a client, and when that FPS deviates by x% the location is sent to the server. The server then logs what is going on in that area (in case the issue is with other players being in the area).

They could easily have 100% accurate numbers of people who are having issues, where they have the issues, where the issues are occurring, what circumstances they are occurring under, and what the settings are (they clearly are tracking what changes people are making to their ini files, so that part of the logging is obviously in place).

Please provide reasonable evidence that they are basing the numbers off of inaccurate guesses.

"Was it perfect? No. Did anybody really expect something of this magnitude and complexity to be perfect? No, but the key is how you resolve those problems and move on quickly and I think our teams have done that well."

 

I don't agree with this part- it wasn't handled well at all- you ignored your customers for ages and still do.

that's what really put me off the game and resulted in my cancellation.

Ignore, are you insane? They've replied to every pressing issue and communicate what they're doing all the time on top of the forums.

The 5% part has been debunked many times.

[Citation Needed]

Yeah, every issue brought forward is ignored and the only response is "We need to bring down the servers for 8 hours tonight lol" and still nothing gets fixed.

From the Dev Tracker posted by ChrisCollins with the title of "Ok, this is too much":

"To be clear, the downtimes over the last few days have not been 8-10 hours per day, as you mention. While we announce downtime and give a time range, sometimes things do finish early (and of course, sometimes they run over). Over the last few days, we've totalled just over 7 hours of downtime. Again, we may have said the game may be offline for longer, but we actually achieved very short maintenance times each day."

Try getting your facts straight, it makes the arguments you present actually believable. Why would anyone take anything you say as truth now?

Best MMO release i have ever played....Some people had issues...hey, sorry 4 u, ive been there its annoying.

Warhammer, the disks they sent people didnt even install the game properly, you had to find some post a techo guy did on how to fix the install before it actually loaded. Then it crashed the server with more than 40 people in a warzone. It was an absolute mess.

The 5% part has been debunked many times. Anyone who has ever worked with Hero cloud (open source version of hero engine) could tell the engine is not designed for high player loads, as a result you will get a massive FPS drop even on high end machines under certain conditions.

 

When they say 5% there refering to what they think active forum population is. They have no real way of estimating such a issue so any claimed statistic for such is a fabracated.

 

As for him saying "even though BioWare handles its own customer service as you probably know"

 

This is also complete BS, the majority of there customer service is outsourced, vary little is handled in house. Unless you count the community managers (also known as a "used car salesman") Twitter feed as "customer service".

And you are a random dude on the internet right, and let me guess. You are a game developer, programmer, right?

Yeah right, 5%

Excuse me while I go roll on the floor laughing.

...

No seriously, its ********

At least have the balls to admit it's ten times that amount

The 5% part has been debunked many times. Anyone who has ever worked with Hero cloud (open source version of hero engine) could tell the engine is not designed for high player loads, as a result you will get a massive FPS drop even on high end machines under certain conditions.

 

When they say 5% there refering to what they think active forum population is. They have no real way of estimating such a issue so any claimed statistic for such is a fabracated.

 

As for him saying "even though BioWare handles its own customer service as you probably know"

 

This is also complete BS, the majority of there customer service is outsourced, vary little is handled in house. Unless you count the community managers (also known as a "used car salesman") Twitter feed as "customer service".

Show me some proof you have then if Bioware is lying...

So funny seeing all these conspiracy theory posts all the time it's like Bioware is out to get ya...

Better go grab your tin-foil hat...

Yeah right, 5%

 

Excuse me while I go roll on the floor laughing.

 

 

...

 

 

No seriously, its Bullsh*t

 

At least have the balls to admit it's ten times that amount

Guess my other post goes for you as well....

Better lock your doors Bioware is coming for ya there out to getcha.....

Best MMO release i have ever played....Some people had issues...hey, sorry 4 u, ive been there its annoying.

 

Warhammer, the disks they sent people didnt even install the game properly, you had to find some post a techo guy did on how to fix the install before it actually loaded. Then it crashed the server with more than 40 people in a warzone. It was an absolute mess.

The disc thing happend, major screw up, but the 40 people crashing? Hardly.

Launch day there were a sea of people in the Nordland pvp area, and other than lag, which was substantial at times, the server I was on didn't go down once.

They had issues when hundreds of people were trying to get into Fortresses in Tier 4, and rather than trying to fix the problems, they removed them completely, which began their biggest downward spiral.

they were clearly paid off.

EA paid off their own COO to say good things? Isn't that just called a salary?

Of course they're happy. The 60 bucks a head they got for the 1.5 million initial players puts them between 60 million and 75 million closer to digging out of the quarter billion dollar hole the production dug, once you subtract the license fees and overhead. Of course, if half the player base doesn't pay for the second month via subscription, they will be less happy.

Wrong. Lucas doesn't see a dime until they make their money back.

Of course they're happy. The 60 bucks a head they got for the 1.5 million initial players puts them between 60 million and 75 million closer to digging out of the quarter billion dollar hole the production dug, once you subtract the license fees and overhead. Of course, if half the player base doesn't pay for the second month via subscription, they will be less happy.

i was really snubbed when they made me subscribe to play the first 30 days. made me really work hard to level one toon out then unsub before wasting more money

This is a case where you can't believe everything you read.

Even if the 5% stat is true, think about it - that means they've had atleast 50,000 bug reports. That doesn't mean only those people experienced bugs, most people who experience bugs either ignore them or leave the game. In effect the 5% is a meaningless stat.