Early Access Details: Now Quit Yer Bitchin'

[Surlyboi]

I got mine 2 days after preorders came up.

Got mine day of.

[Mazakiel]

I expect I'll get in pretty early, I pre-ordered and put the code in pretty much as soon as they went up.  

Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be done with this current out of town project before the early access happens.  Little free time and crappy hotel internet, hooray.  I'll at least be able to reserve names for my characters, though.  

[01101010]

I expect I'll get in pretty early, I pre-ordered and put the code in pretty much as soon as they went up.  

Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be done with this current out of town project before the early access happens.  Little free time and crappy hotel internet, hooray.  I'll at least be able to reserve names for my characters, though.  

I put mine in November 30th... what up now bitches! 

[Shatter]

Put mine in July 21(first day) so Im going to gamble im in on the 13th and booked Dec 13, 14 off. 

[Surlyboi]

I'm off from the 13th to the 26th, fuck, I love my job most of the time... 

[trias_e]

Downloaded last night.  Now we play the waiting game.  I per-ordered quite late (around thanksgiving) so who knows when I'll actually get to play.  Kind of a dumb system but whatever, I have nothing to do over the holidays anyways so it doesn't really effect me.

[Evildrider]

I put my code in like 2 hours after the whole thing started.  I'm hoping I'm in the first wave and will be up at 6am refreshing my mailbox.   

[luckton]

*fires the Anti-Bitchin' ray*

http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php

Originally Posted by Gimlichael 
Could you give a matrix or similar and say:

People redeeming there code bewteen:
July-August: 7 days
August-Septemper: 6 days
September-October: 5 days
October-November: 4 days
November-December: 3 days
December 1-5: 2 days
December 5-10: 1 day

Or similar - that would be clean talk and assures, that no one get screwed over!

Thanks in advance

Effectively that's telling individuals when they'll get in, which we can't do. If we did that, the likelihood of someone, somewhere getting 'screwed over' is high - because they'll think they're on (say) Day Three, and end up in on Day Four because of some reason we can't predict.

We're guarding against the uncertain, here. We may allow a load of people into the game on Day One, and find an unknown bug that causes severe problems. A server could blow up. A hurricane could hit a data center. We don't think we will have these sorts of issues - and large scale testing has not given us major problems - but we are being cautious.

Originally Posted by JediMasterRyanW 
So can we take this as a confirmation that if you redeemed your pre-order code on July 21st, you will be getting in as part of the first wave (7AM EST, Dec. 13th)?

I'm afraid you cannot, for the reasons I gave above.

Originally Posted by JediMasterRyanW 
Would definitely like an answer to that as well. As a guild leader who's probably going to be in on the 13th I would really like to know whether my server will even be available.

Here's some good news - assuming all things being equal, and without any disasters occurring, we're planning on bringing up all the servers on which pre-imported guilds are being placed on Day One of Early Game Access.

Again - that's assuming no disasters - but this ensures whenever you get Early Game Access, if you have had your guild deployed the server you're deployed to should be ready.

Originally Posted by reirae 
Hey Stephen, are we going to know what server our guilds are going to be on before we know what day we're starting or is that info going to be included in our early access e-mails on the day we start?

We'll be emailing people about that before Early Game Access begins.

Originally Posted by Gimlichael 
Can you at least honor the word, that people who first purchased/redeemed the game will be the one granted access first? This has been stated over and over again; chronological redeem pre-access.

That's exactly how we're going to do it. We will be selecting based on when the pre-order code was redeemed on SWTOR.com.

[Nevermore]

Edit: And why do they always send out these fucking emails and then take their site down for maintenance?  Whoever is in charge of their communications should be shot, they have done nothing but cause confusion and fuck things up.

Are you sure it's not they send out these fucking emails, then a million people suddenly hit the site all at once forcing it down for maintenance?

[Evildrider]

That was a scheduled maint, and there's another one coming tomorrow I think.  The website and forums are being scrubbed on the 10th. 

[Nevermore]

I think it's less inability to play it sooner as much as inability to manage expectations. People can easily deal with "you wait until Wednesday, then show up", less easily with "sometime in this week your package will arrive", it's why so many F5 buttons have died due to package tracking software ;)

Bioware: the cable guy of MMO devs. 

[Ingmar]

A surreal moment:

It's from EA and devs from failed MMOs we mocked 3 years ago. 

At this point I was expecting tears and gnashing of teeth about the game.  That all is happening, just not as envisioned.  It's about the inability to play it sooner rather than the game itself.

The pressure on my 'I told you so' Bioware fanboy valve is really near bursting, yeah.

[luckton]

Stephen Reid continues putting people in their places.

Originally Posted by lightspeed 
Whats going to happen, the servers come up at 6 am and you send emails out. Some people will be able to get on because they're on xmas break or work a later shift. Then come 4pm servers will start straining as people who had to work start coming on. By 8pm the servers will be down from all those people trying to get on because you guys couldn't plan it properly.

That's not what happened during our Testing Weekends, and we were at considerably higher numbers in the final weekends than we're projecting for Day One of Early Game Access. In fact we specifically tested for scenarios where hundreds of thousands of people hit the servers at exactly the same time, and saw smooth ramps to maximum population servers.

We've never had servers down from over-capacity, although yes, we have had queues - and yes, we're expecting queues during Early Game Access and launch, although we are going to be extremely vigilant to keep those queues to a reasonable size/wait-time.

Originally Posted by lightspeed 
The second you spoke of not having all the guild servers up. So I waste the first day cause I had to go to work because I didn't know I was getting invited. The next day I log in and my guild server isn't up. Are you going to do character transfers? Because you've got me spinning my wheels until you guys finally bring up my guild server and that leads me to another possibly bigger problem.

Sorry, but that's not what I said. I said:

"... assuming all things being equal, and without any disasters occurring, we're planning on bringing up all the servers on which pre-imported guilds are being placed on Day One of Early Game Access."

Whether you get invited to Day One or Day Seven, our plans are that your guild server will be up and your guild will be waiting for you. Barring, as always, some unknown problems.

I cannot deny that you may go to work and get an email invite - that is possible, I'm afraid. Whenever you get invited though, your guild server will be up, and you won't need to move anywhere. (Unless you choose to, of course.)

[Jherad]

Entered my code on September 5th - I'm counting on the majority of preorders being weighted towards October/November as the beta opened up.

[Furiously]

I'm amazed there is no grace period...

So if you don't have the retail version on the 20th..... No more playing until you get your copy. 

[Velorath]

I'm amazed there is no grace period...

So if you don't have the retail version on the 20th..... No more playing until you get your copy. 

In the U.S. and U.K. at least, it doesn't sound like there would be any reason you couldn't get the game on the 20th, unless maybe you ordered it online and didn't get release date delivery (which isn't really EA or Bioware's fault to the point where they owe you more free time).

[Falconeer]

I don't know if you can see this. But

http://www.amazon.it/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-Standard/dp/B005DS06YE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323428942&sr=8-1

9.67 €? Seriously? (that's 13$ and 8.2£)

That makes no sense.

Nevermind. It was certainly a mistake on their part. They pulled it off. Good for whoever got it before they did so.

[Shatter]

I'm amazed there is no grace period...

So if you don't have the retail version on the 20th..... No more playing until you get your copy. 

I ordered from Amazon so Im a bit worried but Reid said yesterday they are working with retailers to basically get them to ship early and not wait until the 20th or after for delivery.  The retailers are getting their copies early so they can do this apparently

[Merusk]

Retailers always get their copies early.  That's just standard practice for shipping a million+ units of something to have them show up in stores on release day.  What they're doing is telling Amazon et. al they can ship them to consumers earlier than they would to hit a street date of the 20th.

Details!

[Mrbloodworth]

Good lord, people just really want to be the first to log in don't they?

[Mnemon]

Are you a guild member through the Pre-Launch Guild Program?

Just prior to Early Game Access, you will be able to log in to swtor.com and visit the Guilds Headquarters to see if your guild was assigned a server and to play with them. You'll also see a flag next to a server name in-game if your guild is on that server. Visit the Guild FAQ for more details.

Grassy ass.

I thought this was pretty cool. So the server of guild you selected will be highlighted with a star. after creating a character on that server you're going to get an auto-guild invite that you can accept or decline, and this will continue for every character you create on that server.

[01101010]

Good lord, people just really want to be the first to log in don't they?

Stand aside! I must go, my people need me!

[Nebu]

I'm guessing that CE will get the early days followed by the bonus digital copy.  I pre-ordered and registered the standard version of the game on the first day it was available.  I'll let you all know when I actually get to play.  

[Shatter]

Good lord, people just really want to be the first to log in don't they?

I booked the day off, dam right I do

[Evildrider]

I'm guessing that CE will get the early days followed by the bonus digital copy.  I pre-ordered and registered the standard version of the game on the first day it was available.  I'll let you all know when I actually get to play.  

What copy of the game you bought has no bearing.  It's simply when you put your pre-order code in. 

[Montague]

Good lord, people just really want to be the first to log in don't they?

A lot of people are getting worked up over a "substandard WoW clone from 2006 with cutscenes."

/sarchasm in case that wasn't obvious.

[Nebu]

What copy of the game you bought has no bearing.  It's simply when you put your pre-order code in. 

I'll believe it when I get the email.  Until then, I remain skeptical.   

[Shatter]

SR twittered that he has been told Amazon orders will ship in time for launch.  Hope hes right

[Ingmar]

We are now able to offer Release-Date Delivery for this video game.  This special delivery option is available to you free of charge and has been automatically applied to your order.  Your copy of 'Star Wars: The Old Republic' will arrive on 20-Dec-11.

I got this way back on September 30th, so I would think it shouldn't be an issue.

[Shatter]

We are now able to offer Release-Date Delivery for this video game.  This special delivery option is available to you free of charge and has been automatically applied to your order.  Your copy of 'Star Wars: The Old Republic' will arrive on 20-Dec-11.

I got this way back on September 30th, so I would think it shouldn't be an issue.

If thats Amazon, Ive done their same day delivery and it was bull shit lol, came next day anyhow

[Ingmar]

Yeah, Amazon. I deliver to my office so there should be no shenanigans with the delivery guy at least.

[Amaron]

I'm guessing that CE will get the early days followed by the bonus digital copy.  I pre-ordered and registered the standard version of the game on the first day it was available.  I'll let you all know when I actually get to play.  

I have a friend who registered a CE and a Normal addition at the exact same time so I'm interested to see how this goes too.

[Ghambit]

True story:  last night I had a nightmare that my early access only lasted like 2 days.   
Hmmm, I guess the 1st step is recognizing that I have a problem.

[Shatter]

True story:  last night I had a nightmare that my early access only lasted like 2 days.   
Hmmm, I guess the 1st step is recognizing that I have a problem.

Did I get access on the 13th in your dream?

[Ghambit]

True story:  last night I had a nightmare that my early access only lasted like 2 days.   
Hmmm, I guess the 1st step is recognizing that I have a problem.

Did I get access on the 13th in your dream?

Pretty much everyone else did but me, so yah.