Please take responsibility Bioware/EA

[Fonds]

As of this morning the game has been officially launched worldwide, after a pre-release period of a week.

During the pre-release period numerous issues arose that barred people from playing the game. As this game is something that players have paid for, it's only logical to assume we can receive the services promised.

 

The most prominent issue is the long server queues. Problems started around halfway through early acces, when people started to need queueing for over an hour and going up to about almost 6 hours at peak hours.

This makes the game effectively unplayable for many people. If you've got a dayjob and come back from a days work, there is no way you can sit through a six hour long queue and play the game.

 

Bioware/EA have stated that we've got the option to reroll on lighter load servers. This argument however, becomes invalid by their own doing. Many of us have been assigned to servers by Bioware/EA themselves. We've put time into the characters that we created at a time when server load was a lot lighter.

As Jeff Dobson has stated in Bioware's "Your Saga Begins" launch documentary: "I miss the characters that I've created during beta, that have been wiped". He goes on to talk about a sense of attachment you get with a character and that that's the goal they're aiming for.

It's therefor an invalid argument from Bioware's/EA side to force us to other servers and roll new characters, if this is the way they feel about the connection you have with a character.

Besides the connection we've made with our own characters, we've also made a connection with known friends, relatives, guilds and new friends. The sense of community is important to Bioware, so yet again they're shooting themselves in the foot by saying that we should just move to another place.

We all know the feeling of moving as a small kid, you've made friends and you don't want to leave that place for anything else in the world.

 

I may have been straying from the subject at hand though, and that's the accountability that Bioware needs to take in these problems. The arguments made earlier on were taken up in my post to illustrate that Bioware/EA are in fact accountable for these issues.

This is NOT a thread that demands a new server now, demands a population cap raise, or anything else of the sort.

This is thread that demands an official answer from Bioware saying that they take responsibilty for the mistakes made during launch. This is a thread that demands a concrete answer about what Bioware is working on to improve the situation at hand.

Transparancy is one of the most important virtues a company can have in a situation like this. Paying customers do not like to be left in the dark. Problems have been keeping on for a while now and it's only reasonable to expect a suiting answer.

 

For those that say we are whining about queues; I've been in a 1 hour queue for 2 hours now, and I'm only halfway. It's 12:00 o' clock. At nights the queues go up to 6 hours.

Keep your arguments and posts constructive.

[DanUK]

I am one of those people who have experienced six hour waiting in the queues. In fact I have consistantly experienced two hour waits except for the very first day of the early access, when I only had to wait ten minutes.

 

From the quotes of Bioware regarding this, I find myself feel intesively frustrated. At my age (mid 30s) and with my hours of work (commonly a 12 hour day) time for me is a major commodity. I think the older you get, its natural to want to use time more constructively.

 

I have been intensively annoyed at the quotes of some behind the scenes about how to react to such queues. In it's inception, TOR has brought guidmates, friends together in the Guild Launch phase. Some people only want to play to play with their friends. Also some prize the time used to build up their characters. To suggest that they should just roll a character, and lose out of playing with a guild or basically waste the hours of time taken to level their character is unsuitable at best, borderline insulting at most - especially if the term "man up" was used.

 

The Old Republic is the best MMo I have played in a long time. It's fantastic - as soon as you can get into it. Right now my time is too important to me to wait hours to get into the game.

 

I respectfully suggest that the powers that be introduce a mass transfer scheme to move guilds off servers - because right now Bioware in danger of alienating a whole community - people they need the support to allow the game to survive - and you only have to look at Star Wars Galaxies to see what that can do to a MMO.

[ThePikey]

Hang in there.

 

Right now you guys shouldn't worry. Its launch and these things tend to go sideways when a million people try to play all at once.

 

A lot of talk about server caps to spread the people/groups across all their servers. If its true, its for the better.

 

If this continues after the first free month then you might have more room to complain.

 

Right now...

 

Hang in there.

[Blackwater]

This happens with every MMO

 

-Game releases

-Hours of queues

-QQ on forums

-Queues diminish

-Everyone forgets about it

[Minmatar]

I have to agree with th OP Bioware/EA have been touting this game as the most anticipated game for months now so there is no excuse for the shocking state of the game on launch.

 

I am not just talking about the servers which at launch are one of the worst I have seen when playing MMO' (My view only from the MMO's I have played) but also other bugs, glitches and graphical issues which have been aparent since the betas. (I will not list them here as they are apparent if you check the forums).

 

This game could be one of the biggest out there but Bio and EA really need to step up there game and get the issues sorted out ASAP if not this game could go down as the biggest faliure in a matter of months if nit weeks.

 

Now I know people will say wait and see and that this will be sorted soon. However they have had a lot of time to sort these issues out and to have them at launch makes me wonder what the devs are doing and if they even have enough to be able to keep on top of these issues as fast as they need to.

[Fonds]

Hang in there.

 

Right now you guys shouldn't worry. Its launch and these things tend to go sideways when a million people try to play all at once.

 

A lot of talk about server caps to spread the people/groups across all their servers. If its true, its for the better.

 

If this continues after the first free month then you might have more room to complain.

 

Right now...

 

Hang in there.

 

Just to clarify my post. I'm not demanding a bigger server capacity right now, nor am I demanding server transfers right now.

Something I would like to hear at this moment though, is what Bioware/EA are actually doing. If they ackknowledge the problem.

Right now I'm suffering the queues because the game is just that good. It's just a lot less horrible to suffer these queues when you know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

[kleners]

When you clicked on Forums.. the first section there are two post about it!!!!!

 

SERVER QUEUES!!! And what we are doing!!!

 

Stop ************. its a nice plan coming from many games that failed due to 2 massive over populated servers and 100 dead servers. they are balancing. yes if you cant wait go roll on a low pop server. I also have little time. and when i get home i hit the queues. see how long they are. go make dinner, eat, come upstairs and im in.

 

its been stated since early access started, when all these whiners were saying "let me in, let me in" well your all in. and you have to wait because we flooded the same servers.

They are releasing new servers almost every 4-6 hours. guess what, those are for you. If you cant wait and want to hit server first.... There is your server. your not being let behind. The brand new server is right there.

[KhealThar]

As this game is something that players have paid for, it's only logical to assume we can receive the services promised.

 

This happens in every MMO because everyone flocks to the higher population servers because they don't want to be in a ghost town which in return brings high server queue times. It's not Bioware's fault, it's the players.

 

They actually already made an entire article about how they're working on it, if you really don't enjoy waiting in queue, roll on a low pop server. It's simple.

 

Something I would like to hear at this moment though, is what Bioware/EA are actually doing. If they ackknowledge the problem.

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/regarding-server-queues

 

BAM

Edited December 20, 2011 by KhealThar

[Nicholai_Pestot]

The solution is to do nothing. The devs are doing exactly that.

 

The queues sort themselves out over time and any actions taken to mitigate the queues now will make the population dispersal worse a few months down the road when 50% of the player base has quit (as always happens once the 'new shiny' has worn off).

 

If more servers are created, they will be closed before March. If transfers are offered, people will not take them for the same reason everyone is charging lemming-like onto already full servers.

 

No amount of technical innovation can ever counter the boundless depths of human stupidity.

[Mazikeen]

The most prominent issue is the long server queues. Problems started around halfway through early acces, when people started to need queueing for over an hour and going up to about almost 6 hours at peak hours

 

I didn't have a queue until this morning when my queue was 5 minutes

 

Umadbro?

 

Also, learn to read the front page: http://www.swtor.com/blog/launch-downtime-reminder-new-servers-incoming

 

New servers are being added. Thank you for playing, come again!

Edited December 20, 2011 by Mazikeen

[Noahthered]

It's essentially like a theme park. You can either wait in line with your friends for the Top Fuel Dragster, or you can go ride the Raptor or Magnum 4 or 5 times in the same span. Maybe if your friends get bored of waiting, they'll join you....but you paid the same price as everyone else to come in and how you spend that time is up to you. They aren't going to build another rollercoaster just because there happens to be a couple really popular ones that have long lines.

 

That said, while the queues are annoying (Anchorhead typically has around 50 minutes to an hour), I just plan around it. When I get home from work, I log in and start my queue. Then I go and finish some grading or grab some dinner or just do something else for a bit. Time flies by usually and especially when it comes to grading, I actually get something done at home.

[ThePikey]

Just to clarify my post. I'm not demanding a bigger server capacity right now, nor am I demanding server transfers right now.

Something I would like to hear at this moment though, is what Bioware/EA are actually doing. If they ackknowledge the problem.

Right now I'm suffering the queues because the game is just that good. It's just a lot less horrible to suffer these queues when you know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

 

I'm sorry.

 

If they are capping the servers and making them bigger slowly then that means they have a plan. For it to work they cant tell everyone because, instead of joining smaller servers they will still stick with larger servers trying to out wait the queue.

 

 

Unfortunately.

[boobaffet]

My server never went higher then heavy. Roll on it , bring some friend.

[Lexhorn]

this game is in queue, it was definitively not launch today ... Edited December 20, 2011 by Lexhorn

[Tiaa]

This happens with every MMO

 

-Game releases

-Hours of queues

-QQ on forums

-Queues diminish

-Everyone forgets about it

 

Wrong.

 

It has never been this bad.

 

I have been in ques before but this is not the same.

 

Bioware not only "Staggered" the launch claiming it would be better (which was a lie, and it only benefited Bioware like usual.), but they placed people on servers with their guilds that are hard to get into.

 

So people can't just REROLL like everyone keeps saying. Especially when you have guilds like the one I am in with 200+ players.

 

Server pops are obviously very low. I barely see players running around and areas look like ghost towns most the day.

 

This is by far the worse launch out of all the MMOs I have experienced.

 

And I have played Lineage 2, Priston Tale, WoW, Warhammer, Rift, Champions Online blah blah list goes on.

 

If anything they should have locked servers. And it's been 7 days now, this issue should have been fixed before the 20th.

 

But I think Bioware is stuck in the 90s.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Tiaa

[tingen]

This happens in every MMO because everyone flocks to the higher population servers because they don't want to be in a ghost town which in return brings high server queue times. It's not Bioware's fault, it's the players.

 

They actually already made an entire article about how they're working on it, if you really don't enjoy waiting in queue, roll on a low pop server. It's simple.

 

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/regarding-server-queues

 

BAM

 

or we can blame those communities that told all theire contrymens to join X server, when it was assisgn to others allready or we can blame BW for not taking any action to fix the issue that has been there from day 1 of early access.

 

Tomb of freedon nadd really need some attention and a solution. When Italian and Spanish, Russian community goes out tell'em that, thats the server we are gonna play on, even thought this server was assign to english(spealing) guilds in the first place. What hell do you think happens then?

 

I'm not trying to blame them, how could they know? Damn sure this wouldnt have happend if they havent used stupid waves to let in people.

Not before day 3-5 we all started to see this problem and you actually think someone want to reroll after spending over ++++20 hours on char?

 

So what have we learned? Release players in early access through waves(due to guild assignment and friends) leds to endless ques on some servers.

 

How long do you think we wanna stay with the game if all your friends are spread all over different servers?

 

I'm not very impressed in BW. Considering what we have done for them.

[Fonds]

If you guys would take a moment to read the entire post you'd read why I can't and wont roll on a new server.

If you were deployed on a server, or had the option to pick a server yourself, where queues are under an hour I understand you don't have a problem.

 

The hollow statements made in the official statements that Bioware/EA made don't touch upon possible solutions. They're just stating that they are monitoring servers that are full. This doesn't tell me anything about how much longer I'm going to have to queue like this.

 

Furthermore the opening of new servers doesn't solve any problem with existing servers. Sure it's nice for the new players but I'm still stuck on the server that I was deployed on (Once again, read the full post if you want arguments as to why I'm practically stuck there)

[British]

I've had to set up so I can WOL my pc just before I leave work, Get in the queue, train home, eat tea...... only 100 positions to go! Edited December 20, 2011 by British

[Kavu]

not even peak hours and i'm in Q right now..... 9am est

[Tlou]

When WoW launched its most populated servers were SHUT DOWN for several days because they could not handle the demand.

 

I can speak for Archimonde directly because we had a group of people who had been gaming together for years that planned on playing together in WoW, but when Archimonde went down we all ended up messing around on other servers until it came back up and only half came back.

 

So yeah, launches are sticky situations.

 

OH and if you were on a server that had queues the first or second day of pre-release, what exactly did you expect to happen as more people gained access?

[Fonds]

When WoW launched its most populated servers were SHUT DOWN for several days because they could not handle the demand.

 

I can speak for Archimonde directly because we had a group of people who had been gaming together for years that planned on playing together in WoW, but when Archimonde went down we all ended up messing around on other servers until it came back up and only half came back.

 

So yeah, launches are sticky situations.

 

OH and if you were on a server that had queues the first or second day of pre-release, what exactly did you expect to happen as more people gained access?

 

The massive queueing didn't start until we were a few days into early acces.

 

And again, to clarify my post. This is not about wanting the queues to be gone now.

This post is just about getting Bioware/EA to say something about what's actually being done about it.

As it stands now we're going to get at least a full month of queueing like this (as long as the game is subscription free). That wouldn't be acceptable to anyone.

When Blizzard had their launch problems (I remember them fondly, not able to create an account for 4 days) they were at least very clear with their customers. They constantly updated about the status of servers and gave players free play time because of the problems.

 

To those that have 50minute to two hour queues. I completely understand that that's still doable. But the game becomes unplayable if you have to queue for 6 hours. I can't come home, make dinner, take a shower and then play. If I were to do that I'd still be in a queue for 4 more hours.

[Dasffion]

If you guys would take a moment to read the entire post you'd read why I can't and wont roll on a new server.

If you were deployed on a server, or had the option to pick a server yourself, where queues are under an hour I understand you don't have a problem.

 

The hollow statements made in the official statements that Bioware/EA made don't touch upon possible solutions. They're just stating that they are monitoring servers that are full. This doesn't tell me anything about how much longer I'm going to have to queue like this.

 

Furthermore the opening of new servers doesn't solve any problem with existing servers. Sure it's nice for the new players but I'm still stuck on the server that I was deployed on (Once again, read the full post if you want arguments as to why I'm practically stuck there)

 

I keep seeing this argument but it's not really an argument at all. You weren't FORCED on to that server. Things wouldn't have been any different if you'd gotten together with your guild and picked a server. Bioware made it easier on you and now everyone uses them as a whipping boy for it.

 

No one is keeping you on that server. If you don't like the queue times contact the guild leadership and talk about moving.

[Woodspoon]

Suck it up big boy, it'll get sorted out

[Scelerant]

In my case, I picked a server while it was still medium, I made my toon, I got it to almost level 40 and I'm not rerolling now. MMORPG companies need to seriously start locking character creation either for entire servers or for factions based on existing populations on the server.

[Arketh]

Take responsibility for what? A fairly smooth launch?

 

Servers are up.

Lag is minimal.

No major game breaking bugs.

 

I've seen a lot worse over the years, and I've also seen companies not learn from launch to the release of their expansions.

 

Queues suck, but they are a functional way to mitigate some common problems.