BW's 9-5 job while the world waits.

[kalexkhan]

Sounds TERRIBLE, those conditions are so taxing, I bet that six figure income barely covers your sanity huh?

 

Just for the record, a Live producer isn't making 6 figs. He's just hoping he gets a good (well deserved) bonus from the success of the project but the money made by this game is going to go mostly to EA, and then to Lucas...

 

The developers don't get the kinda money you think they do, unfortunately. 6 figs are like, directors, maybe some highly skilled leads (technical artists and engineers), maybe some highly needed senior engineers as well.

[Fomorii]

I agree that it is crazy that they only let in 5 waves. They invest a ton of money to make this game and then cant pay the extra to add additional waves. Everyone they invited today are not all going to decide to log on at 2:00am. What in the world are they thinking? They are using the whole "We want a smooth launch" as a crutch right now.

 

Lmao *sigh* 5 waves that have equated to more than 100 thousand people at least. They've said they've let in more people today than some MMOs have let in during their entire early access period. I wouldn't be surprised if more than 300k people got in today. I doubt it's that high, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's up there. Regardless of the exact number, it's a hell of a lot of people to let in and they've been using today to figure out how many people they can let in from one wave to the next, they'll see how stable the servers are after 12+ hours of being up and they'll be able to determine whether or not even more people will get in tomorrow.

 

5 isn't a small number if you know how to look at it from the right perspective

[ReiperX]

Allowing waiting customers in per their own 8 hour job time slot is not an agreeable situation to those that do not share the same narrow time slot of EST, or CST, or MST, or PST.

 

Allowing only 5 waves in per day while the devs are 'in the office'?

 

Are there other dev teams covering the other 16 hours of the day to let other waves in?

 

No...? BW spends...what...? 300 mill on a game and they only have 1 team to allow waves in???

 

Seriously?

 

Seriously. It was closer to 135 mil.

 

And yes, they are allowing certain waves in a day. They gave us two bonus days, which I think was awesome of them to do.

 

And have you ever thought that they are collecting data on the first waves to ensure stability for the next waves, which are going to likely stress the hell out of the servers, and without having some data to help them with problems that arise, then they are going to have the same type of release like every other MMO has (too many people in a zone, servers constantly crashing, and huge lag).

[Fomorii]

Dude, they cannot work 24/7... They need to sleep too!!

 

And also, what part of staggered game launch do you not understand? We have known it was going to be like this for AGES. And now you are somehow surprised you did not get in on the first day? Gosh, some people are so impatient...

 

Actually they are working 24/7 for the next month. I think it's a month, one of the devs already posted on this. They have teams working around the clock. Sleep is good, which is why they have a big team to split up their vigil

[ReiperX]

Official launch was today, by BioWares own admonition. Dec 20th is the gold release.

 

Those are 2 very different things. Anyone that pre-ordered should have gotten in today. I have no faith in BioWare to give players an adequate time to play the game fairly.

 

They don't realize the problems they have caused with this launch. This is an MMO, not a single player online RPG. This fiasco should not be tolerated by anyone, but what I see are a lot of fanboys standing beside BW while the screw over a huge huge majority of the pre-order populace.

 

They said from the begining its a staggered launch.

 

There are very valid reasons for this, and so far its stopping a ton of the problems every other MMO has on launch.

 

Yes, I got in day one, but you know what, if I got in Sunday night I would be fine with it.

 

I am curious on what you mean by "to give players and adequate time to play the game fairly"

 

You have a month prepaid with your purchase, you are likely getting 1-7 days of early access, so thats 31 - 37 days of play time to play fairly?

[Fomorii]

They said from the begining its a staggered launch.

 

There are very valid reasons for this, and so far its stopping a ton of the problems every other MMO has on launch.

 

Yes, I got in day one, but you know what, if I got in Sunday night I would be fine with it.

 

I am curious on what you mean by "to give players and adequate time to play the game fairly"

 

You have a month prepaid with your purchase, you are likely getting 1-7 days of early access, so thats 31 - 37 days of play time to play fairly?

 

I get the feeling the people complaining about this are just taking advantage of the launch conditions to unleash a biblical wave of trolling upon these forums. They can't all be this short sighted and obstinate, can they?

[Stirbend]

Didn't reid say something about having 3 1/2 hours of sleep before things got rolling today?

[ThiborF]

It is completely sad to see BW's total indifference to the rest of us that are still forced to wait.

 

They show up at regular working times, do their jobs...let a few people in to play the game, and then they go home after 8 hours....a 9-5 job.

 

Dear Bioware,

 

Are you currently aware that you have waiting customers in Asia, Europe, Russia, Australia, and more? And only allowing 5 waves in per day at the time that you're in the office is a complete slap in the face to your customers (who supported you and paid your paychecks).

 

Are you too cheap to get multiple teams going to allow waves of eager paying customers to enter the game at all hours???

 

I'm sure people in Europe and Asia would certainly enjoy this idea.

 

Check Stephen Reids Twitter account ... he put in 16 hours today. How many did you put in hotshot?

[dherpin]

Didn't reid say something about having 3 1/2 hours of sleep before things got rolling today?

 

he worked 16 hours today or close to according to twitter.

[ReiperX]

Check Stephen Reids Twitter account ... he put in 16 hours today. How many did you put in hotshot?

 

Gotta love those 16 hour days.

 

Hell I work 4 12s (supposed to be 4 10 but my team is responsible for setting up before this shift, and setting up for 1st shift in the morning) and it takes a toll on me pretty quickly.

 

I'd hate to have their jobs right now, tons of stress.

[Rhinoplat]

They said from the begining its a staggered launch.

 

There are very valid reasons for this, and so far its stopping a ton of the problems every other MMO has on launch.

 

Yes, I got in day one, but you know what, if I got in Sunday night I would be fine with it.

 

I am curious on what you mean by "to give players and adequate time to play the game fairly"

 

You have a month prepaid with your purchase, you are likely getting 1-7 days of early access, so thats 31 - 37 days of play time to play fairly?

 

The first day can literally create a crafting mecca for people that got in on day one. They can be set for the rest of their game career. It happens in PvE and PvP. Day one is a huge reason that players want to start on an equal footing with everyone else.

 

Pre-orders should have been limited, or they allow everyone in. They have created inequality by allowing this large of a staggered launch. A fair staggered launch would have taken place over several hours, not several days.

 

BioWare needs to allow all pre-orders into the EA tomorrow.

[harrisonxxi]

There are no good reasons for stagger launching. Period. It gives some players a HUGELY unfair advantage, it pisses off a ton of your customer base, and to boot the biggest reason they are saying about server stability is a crock of crap. If the servers could handle the stress test from the turkey day weekend, which btw had as many players as the entire preorder pool, surely from the millions of hours of data they have they can predict server load. And it doesnt matter, because on the 20th, thats when server load is important, because the amount of people is unpredictable on the open launch vs the preplay.

[Fomorii]

The first day can literally create a crafting mecca for people that got in on day one. They can be set for the rest of their game career. It happens in PvE and PvP. Day one is a huge reason that players want to start on an equal footing with everyone else.

 

Pre-orders should have been limited, or they allow everyone in. They have created inequality by allowing this large of a staggered launch. A fair staggered launch would have taken place over several hours, not several days.

 

BioWare needs to allow all pre-orders into the EA tomorrow.

 

Limited pre-orders wouldn't be anymore fair. All the people that didn't get in would be no different then the people that don't get in now... As it is there's an enormous amount of people that got into and there will, I'd imagine, be an even larger number of people getting in tomorrow. Rather than give 300k preorders a week to get a huge advantage, they only get one day this way.

 

If I wasn't already a misanthrope, reading the immense number of posts like these would have sealed the deal. Get over yourself, they're doing it their way and it'll work out all the same in the end. They've taken an exceptionally responsible attitude towards early access and are doing plenty well enough for the hundreds of thousands playing right now. Tomorrow will be the same and everyone who gets to play this week will have a great deal less bull **** to put up with. Low server ques, less lag, less random *** disconnects and servers buckling under the pressure. All in all this is going very well for them and their forums have been filled with children, masquerading as adults, throwing hissy fits over nothing all day. Even the PvP exploit that's set the forums on fire is grossly exaggerated! People were claiming level 30-40's running around and Bioware shot that rumour down. At that point the highest level characters were considerably lower level. I could see getting to 20+ in one day if you were skipping the voice overs or purely doing PvP, but that's to be expected regardless of this exploit, which they're investigating right now.

 

Instead of screaming about nothing at all, this *hah* community *snicker* should rally together and act with a more positive attitude. There's nothing wrong with how things went today in game, there's only something wrong on these forums. That says a hell of a lot against the .001% of the over all population. As soon as the screamers get in game they'll shut the hell up and forget all about it, like a baby being given it's bottle.

[dherpin]

Gotta love those 16 hour days.

 

Hell I work 4 12s (supposed to be 4 10 but my team is responsible for setting up before this shift, and setting up for 1st shift in the morning) and it takes a toll on me pretty quickly.

 

I'd hate to have their jobs right now, tons of stress.

 

I've pulled 102 one week. I doubt anyone can keep 80+ for more than 3 months, it will catch up with you. I had to cut back to 70 cause even 80 was too much, then again i've been doing 80+ for 12 years.

[Felgor]

It is completely sad to see BW's total indifference to the rest of us that are still forced to wait.

 

They show up at regular working times, do their jobs...let a few people in to play the game, and then they go home after 8 hours....a 9-5 job.

 

 

And you know this how?

 

I saw the tweets from the BioWare team at 5am eastern...

 

I also saw them at 10pm eastern...

 

That seems more then a 9-5 to me...

 

Im waiting to play as well, but im not sitting in the corner pouting like alot of others...

 

Its "free" time that we haven't paid for...

 

People need to stop crying, and start acting like adults...

Edited December 14, 2011 by Felgor

[Tracilords]

It's great that so many are so eager to play

 

It's sad that so many have so little to do that not being granted 7 days of early access is cause to rage and vent to anyone that will lend an ear

 

It's completely disrespectful to insult those that spent countless hours for 5 years to bring you what you now wait impatiently for

 

Perhaps the world would be a better place if for every breath of anger and insult, you actually have gratitude and respect ... and an understanding that what you've paid $150 of your life's money to enjoy is something that someone else invested $200 million dollars to bring you

Edited December 14, 2011 by Tracilords

[bobberson]

I can tell you with great confidence Bioware will have someone on staff 24/7 pretty much for the entire game. You probably won't ever be able to or need to contact them, but if the occasion comes up you might see them move/do things at night. There are more people working graveyard than you think and for companies much, much, much smaller than bioware. Just because they won't interact with you, doesn't mean they don't exist. I doubt the kind of manager/PR person you're looking for works that kind of shift, those are the 9-5 let's put in my 8 hours and go home to my family/right hand. Though like most game companies on launch week I'm sure there are plenty of people sleeping in this office this week. I think it's rather sad they don't add night time players, if they really wanna test the servers let them be stressed all night. I'm sure enough people called into work sick or something but, I get the frustration. I paid my 5 bucks just like them and I have to wait like 72 hours to get in and by then someones going to have a speeder. Hopefully that person won't be a rude face and will help me get one too. *shrug*

[Gilgamec]

Whoever started this thread.....has no idea how a software programmer works around crunch (release) time....just cause invites ended does not mean the work ended...at all. Plus your talking about the holiday season here man, and the week that they are supposed to "launch" is the week most of you are thinking about going home to your families, traveling etc. Think about those guys busting their butt cause your about to piss a rock if you dont get in a few days early. I am pretty sure they got their hands full with a billion different things right now and will get around to invites when they can. Give em a break, know they are gonna make the best they can and let you enjoy it as much as you can, and wish them a freaking Merry Christmas why dont you! Comeon holiday cheer! Edited December 14, 2011 by Gilgamec

[Lord_Itharius]

It is completely sad to see BW's total indifference to the rest of us that are still forced to wait.

 

They show up at regular working times, do their jobs...let a few people in to play the game, and then they go home after 8 hours....a 9-5 job.

 

You have no idea how hard this development team slaved to make SWTOR a reality by 12/20/11.

 

I'm not even white knighting Bioware at this point. Game development is glorified code monkey slave labor. Many coders and artists are forced to work 60 or more hour weeks with huge amounts of overtime at comparatively little pay. I'm sure the lowest position Bioware employee works more hours than you do, unless you're an assistant law partner or a resident physician.

 

Source: many personal contacts. I was going to do game development until a guy who used to work for Gearbox Studio talked me out of it. Now I'm majoring in English ;-)

Edited December 14, 2011 by Lord_Itharius

[Lucidlongevity]

What the hell, they aren't robots. What are you proposing? Bob the Janitor take over after they go home.

[Xygoz]

Everything they have done in my books is alright, except allowing a batch of individuals early access per day is pretty unreasonable, thus doing this will give the starting individuals a lead on the race to 50/gear/market control etc; think of it as a race, and you just got one leg crippled.

[Gilgamec]

You have no idea how hard this development team slaved to make SWTOR a reality by 12/20/11.

 

I'm not even white knighting Bioware at this point. Game development is glorified code monkey slave labor. Many coders and artists are forced to work 60 or more hour weeks with huge amounts of overtime at comparatively little pay. I'm sure the lowest position Bioware employee works more hours than you do, unless you're an assistant law partner or a resident physician.

 

Source: many personal contacts. I was going to do game development until a guy who used to work for Gearbox Studio talked me out of it. Now I'm majoring in English ;-)

 

You sir deserve a fantastic jedi high five...however the result of such action may result in several casualties...so I refrain.

[Lionhearth]

Allowing waiting customers in per their own 8 hour job time slot is not an agreeable situation to those that do not share the same narrow time slot of EST, or CST, or MST, or PST.

 

Allowing only 5 waves in per day while the devs are 'in the office'?

 

Are there other dev teams covering the other 16 hours of the day to let other waves in?

 

No...? BW spends...what...? 300 mill on a game and they only have 1 team to allow waves in???

 

Seriously?

 

Think it was more like 20 million on development then 280 million on paid actors and actresses to do the voice acting

[Gilgamec]

Think it was more like 20 million on development then 280 million on paid actors and actresses to do the voice acting

 

Nah nameless voice actors are cheap, video and rights to use "star wars" were they expensive parts prolly.

[Lord_Itharius]

Nah nameless voice actors are cheap, video and rights to use "star wars" were they expensive parts prolly.

 

Yeah, the licensing fees were huge. $150 million doesn't mean the game will be 150 times better than a $1 million game. Psycho was produced on just $800,000 and it's one of the most classic suspense thrillers of all time. But the Star Wars name means something. People just need to realize that a crapton of money doesn't mean SWTOR is the second coming of Christ.