The Early Access/I'm in and you're not, neener-neener! Thread

[trias_e]

11/28 preorder here.   

I just hope I get in by Sunday.  I work Friday night and all day Saturday.  Sunday is my chance to catass.

[Viin]

My pre-order was 9-7-2011, so hopefully tomorrow? 

[Nonentity]

Mine was on July 26th, because of stupid Origin account BS, I had to pre-order a second copy to apply it to my main account.

[Minvaren]

I can't remember this level of froth for a MMO release, ever.

Your observations mirror my own, good sir.   

[Merusk]

I can't remember this level of froth for a MMO release, ever.

Your observations mirror my own, good sir.   

Maybe we're just old and forgetful.


The official forums are fantastic.  Thanks for pointing that out, all.   "Hey.. let's not let everyone in at the same time but we'll go ahead and let them on the forums.  What's the worst that could happen?"   

[Numtini]

Wow had a lot of haters on launch day because the servers kept crashing, which is exactly why they're doing this.

[ajax34i]

If it helps, there are a few people (possibly just one, actually) who aren't interested in the whole rush to play this game on day one.  I'm looking at probably getting it in January (I still have to open Skyrim and play it - waiting for a UI patch - should keep me entertained for a while). 

But, reading the official boards is fun, heh.

[Ghambit]

Only soloers dont care about gettin in on launch day.  Everyone else typically does, as this means you'll likely be leveling with someone outside of your guild since people are spread out over a 7 day launch window.

It's kind of the genius grief of all time.  Take the most successful IP ever, make a big aaa mmo with it, taunt people with vague launch/early access details, then come release time let em know that they're not letting everyone in...  and furthermore, you get to watch everyone else play while they wait for an unforeseen email to arrive.

Classy.     Yet brilliant.   

[Threash]

Wow running animations are horrible.

[Merusk]

They get worse if you make your character fatter.

The max-slider Human Female Smuggler I made was HORRIBLE.

[01101010]

Only soloers dont care about gettin in on launch day.  Everyone else typically does, as this means you'll likely be leveling with someone outside of your guild since people are spread out over a 7 day launch window.

It's kind of the genius grief of all time.  Take the most successful IP ever, make a big aaa mmo with it, taunt people with vague launch/early access details, then come release time let em know that they're not letting everyone in...  and furthermore, you get to watch everyone else play while they wait for an unforeseen email to arrive.

Classy.     Yet brilliant.   

Oh the PvP servers will be absolutely fantastic! 

[sam, an eggplant]

I can't remember this level of froth for a MMO release, ever.  Even WoW had haters and cynics .. and Geldon doomcasting.

Wasn't he banned? That's why, then.

Also I got in, but I preordered on 7/21 so I kinda expected that.

[jakonovski]

EU Origin authentication servers are down and you can't log in. Great job EA!

[Numtini]

I find the pre-assignment implications really interesting.

Half the servers full before the end of work and that's just a few waves from people who preordered six months ago? It'll be interesting how the whole thing shakes out. Adding servers won't alleviate crowding quite as much because guilds are already assigned. Though I've seen migrations from The Fatman because of the name and from some server because it's the "unofficial Latino" one and they don't want to be the only English speakers.

I assume they will add more servers come retail release and provided there aren't mass guild migrations, those servers won't have any established guilds. I wonder what the social/achievement differences will be from that.

BTW it's not the running animations that are terrible, it's the animations in general that are terrible. At least imho.

[ajax34i]

Only soloers dont care about gettin in on launch day. 

I'm not a soloer.

Not everyone levels up at the same time, even if they try to.  There are always discrepancies between class / AC builds, schedules, whatever.  It's arguably possible to make up 7 "lost" days by having a populated auction house, access to mods that improve effectiveness, access to fleshed-out guides / item databases, etc.

As for the guild, I'll happily level behind them and then accept their gracious invitations to purple me up with the leftovers that no one needs anymore cause they've all got them.  Though, typically, they don't powerlevel in order to raid, either, and have never, ever, been first in anything.

I'm a casual player, if that's what you meant.

[Paelos]

I don't care about the early late thing since almost nobody starts doing anything for the first month in my guilds anyway. Then, when everyone gets their shit together, you're max level until the next expansion.

[Cadaverine]

I only care about getting into early access because there's not enough stress in my life, and fighting over spawns in the starter area with a bunch of barely literate mouthbreathers sounds like just the thing to get my blood pressure up.

[Mrbloodworth]

That's kind of a reason I think the waves are a good idea. By tomorrow, those areas will be mostly empty. Took me better part of a day to get off the second planet, I'm sure others will be faster.

[Threash]

I thought there was an actual robot race, cyborgs are just humans with fancy bluetooths.

[Rasix]

Is this like the first you've seen of the game?  Psst, it's a DIKU too.

[Threash]

Yes this is the first i've seen of it, so far i'm very not impressed.

[Paelos]

Yes this is the first i've seen of it, so far i'm very not impressed.

Don't like the animations or graphics?

[Threash]

That, and the combat feels "off".  Story is good though but the gameplay is pretty meh.

[Sky]

Death From Above is the greatest thing ever.

[murdoc]

Death From Above is the greatest thing ever.

FACT

[Paelos]

That, and the combat feels "off".  Story is good though but the gameplay is pretty meh.

That seems to be pretty standard. I think it's one of those games that grabs you by the nuts or doesn't. If you like story and running about killing womprats with dialogue wheels, you'll be fine.

[Sobelius]

Went home for lunch and played (created 6 different toons and got a couple up to level 3).

I liked that the starting area was relatively free of massive numbers of people doing the same starting quests -- let me actually fight through some of the mobs I was supposed to encounter along the way rather than just trip over the dead bodies left by others running ahead.

That said, that early access forum thread is generating 100 pages every half hour.

[Paelos]

We feast on their tears.

[luckton]

All waves for today are out.  Let the gnashing of many teeth begin.   

[Pezzle]

Made it in on the first wave.  First day preorder etc.  Played a tiny bit this morning, now at work and after work I get to go fix family computers.  Oh well, it is just an early start.

[Reg]

I got my email early this morning but couldn't log in til a couple of hours ago. I've reserved all eight of my character names and so far I'm as happy as a pathetic, basement dwelling Bioware fan boy can be!

[murdoc]

I just want to get in early enough so that I can claim my unoriginal names.

[Lucas]

Michael, I summon thee!!!

[luckton]

Steve lets loose his pride, finds a polite way of explaining why things are the way they are with this rollout, along with giving the competition the verbal finger.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=66561&postcount=6438

Hey everyone.

We absolutely understand you want to get in and play the game early. It's one of the reasons we expanded our Early Game Access from a maximum of five days to a maximum of seven days. However, there are a couple of important points to realize about today's opening salvo of invites, and the procedure in general for Early Game Access and launch.

First, Early Game Access and launch is not supposed to be a stress test. In our previous Beta Testing Weekends we got up to very large concurrent number of players and brought invites into the game at a very high rate. That was done to stress test every aspect of our systems and servers, and essentially to see if they broke. In some cases, they did, but that helped us improve for launch.

For us, launch isn't just about stuffing our servers with as many people as possible. As anyone who's been through a large MMO launch can tell you, that experience can be painful. Our aim with this launch was to ramp things up gradually, to spread our player population out amongst a variety of servers, to maintain all server types, and to keep queuing to a minimum (although we expect that to happen as we head towards December 20th). So far, all that has been successful for us on Day One.

The second thing to realize is scale. We invited more people to play Star Wars: The Old Republic today than many other MMO launches manage in their entire head-start process. As I mentioned earlier today, when we opened pre-orders we had a huge spike in numbers - far more than most MMOs capture at launch. That was the initial rush. After that, our pre-orders settled down.

What this means is that tomorrow, you'll effectively start to see the pre-order timeline expand. You'll see people who have pre-ordered later than July getting invites. The day after that, more people will be invited. We're actually planning to invite more tomorrow than today, and invite the same number again on Thursday - at which point we'll be into the original 'five days of Early Game Access'.

Last thing. Why aren't we continuing to send waves over time? Two main reasons - one, because we need to see that the servers are maintaining stability over time; adding a lot of players in a short period (in other words, stress testing) can cause stability issues.

Two, our plan is to continue to add servers - but carefully, and in response to demand. We need to monitor that demand and roll out servers accordingly. A long-term recipe for MMO failure is to add a lot of servers early on, and then when population decreases, have to close those servers and merge them together.

Our aim is for Star Wars: The Old Republic to be around for a long time to come. Today's just the first step in that - an early step, too - and we'll be running smoothly, with a stable population, before too long.

[Lucas]

Heh, a post like this shouldn't even be needed, but unfortunately it is when your forum vocal minority is composed by spoiled brats that just don't get it. Goddamn kids.