BioWare Shares 'Anthem' Demo Update, Says "Yesterday Was Rocky"

Anthem’s VIP demo didn’t start as planned with servers issues preventing many from joining, [...]

Anthem's VIP demo didn't start as planned with servers issues preventing many from joining, but BioWare said it's got of issues it identified and is focusing on for the remainder of the Anthem tests.

Summing up the issues that players experienced during the first day of the demo, BioWare's head of live service Chad Robertson said "Yesterday was rocky." Robertson added that the weekend didn't go as planned and said there were a few things BioWare missed, but the idea that BioWare was ill-prepared for server loads was something Robertson wanted to address.

"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," Robertson said. "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."

Laying out the three primary problems BioWare encountered in the demo, Robertson said platform connections were affected by spikes in players trying to get into the demo and that those problems are being looked into. Some players who were supposed to have access to the demo were also unable to join due to incorrect entitlements, but that issue is being examined as well.

"Infinite Loads" was a problem BioWare said occurred in isolated cases during initial tests but cropped up again in the real demo. That issue is one of the three priorities for Saturday that BioWare is continuing to work on, but Robertson said it's not a simple one and may not be resolved during the weekend.

Another area being worked on is the login and entitlement issues that prevent players from accessing the demo, but once they're in, players should also experience more stable servers with BioWare focusing on server performance, too.

"We've heard reports of rubber-banding and other signs of server latency," Robertson said. "We believe we can address this and will be conducting some small-scale experiments to confirm that. We may roll some fixes out this weekend or may wait for the open demo next weekend, depending on the level of risk to the overall service."

Anthem's VIP demo is ongoing with the full game scheduled to be released on February 22nd.

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