After the rocky start to Anthem’s VIP demo this week, BioWare has stated that it is working to address the issues that were reported by the players. BioWare is also offering a free Javelin Skin to those who participated in the demo.
Since the launch of the demo last Friday, players had been complaining connectivity issues and no access at all to the game. EA’s servers crashed taking down not only Anthem but games like FIFA 19 as well.
We appreciate everyone’s patience and sincerely apologize for those who have had issues getting into the game. As a token of appreciation for your enthusiasm and any issues you encountered, we’re giving everyone who participated in the VIP demo weekend an additional new vinyl at launch.
Addressing the issues, EA’s head of live service, Chad Robertson released a statement in a blog post for the community:
Yesterday was rocky. The first day of our VIP demo weekend did not go exactly as we planned, and I want to share what happened.
We’ve been testing the entire game and platform for several months, but there were a few things we missed; real-world play frequently leads to unexpected issues. 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. 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.
Among many other issues, he also pointed out the three primary areas that they had to work with:
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Platform connections– this was caused by the spike in players entering the game when we opened up. Unfortunately, these issues did not present themselves during our internal testing. Investigations are ongoing, and we will continue to apply fixes throughout the weekend.
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Entitlements– these are account flags that grant players things like their pre-order incentives and demo access. During the demo weekend, we identified a bug where VIP players with a specific combination of entitlements were being blocked from accessing the demo. We believe we’ve resolved most of these, but have additional cases we are addressing.
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“Infinite loads”– this is occurring for some players, particularly when they transition from Fort Tarsis to an expedition. We saw this only in isolated cases during internal testing and believed it was resolved. Unfortunately, the problem is exacerbated in the real-world where differences with player’s ISPs and home networks introduce new behavior.
With just a little under a month for the officially release of Anthem, BioWare and EA seem to have a very short time to fix the issues. Hopefully, players can expect the game to come without any major issues, and a smooth gaming experience.
Anthem releases for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Pc on 22 February, 2019. Let us know what you think of the free Javelin Skin. Post your comments below.
