There's a valid reason why people are upset...

[Seagrave]

Any mmo company is essentially a service company, by extension they are expected to perform a certain level of customer service, failing to do so is morally inappropriate, especially when they easily have the resources to keep their player-base more informed, which is what the op was intended to be about.

 

What is appalling to me is that every mmo company seems to adopt the strategy of "ignore until they are sufficiently tired of yelling." In any other industry, a competitor would have stepped in and scooped up the leftovers, but you cant do that with games, and its sad the extent they take advantage of that fact.

 

sign in on the 20th and enjoy the service you are paying for, then cry from there.

 

if you get in one day early they fulfilled any pre launch agreement they may have made.

 

you are still arguing that you deserve something that has never been promised to you.

[Xalisa]

No I'm sitting in amazement at these forums and watching TV. Amazed at the rage coming from people when this was all laid out ahead of time as to how its going to be. It's a real glimpse into what is wrong with the world and people in general when you see how ugly people get over nothing. The worst threads get closed ultra fast and a lot of those people need a serious reality check as to what is important in life.

 

What you fail to get is not the masses of expectant people who just want to play early, which your argument is completely valid against. The questioning of their deployment strategy is where the white knight arguments fail.

 

Questioning is healthy, without questioning what others do, and believing someone could do it better, we would not have healthy business practices. Essentially your arguing that questioning business practice is irrelevant, which just makes you extremely ignorant.

[macheteman]

It has nothing to do with white knighting around. It's just that some of us peeps out here have some technical know how, and despite what is said, people continue to rage and be mad while simultaneously making themselves look dumb about how a process like this should be carried out.

 

The above post not only plays into that but has a attitude of thinking they should communicate all of their info to us. As if that affects anything whatsoever, or that we need to know. Get off your entitlement horse. People made plans with no knowledge of the details and now you're mad. And it quite frankly is that simple. You need to chill. And also learn to plan better. And no, it isn't BW or EA failure to let you in on plans, it was yours for assuming in the first place.

 

More common sense than everyone in this thread combined.

 

You are entitled to nothing other than a guaranteed copy of the game on December 20th.

 

Chill the hell out.

[Thaalia]

The above post not only plays into that but has a attitude of thinking they should communicate all of their info to us. As if that affects anything whatsoever, or that we need to know. Get off your entitlement horse. People made plans with no knowledge of the details and now you're mad. And it quite frankly is that simple. You need to chill. And also learn to plan better. And no, it isn't BW or EA failure to let you in on plans, it was yours for assuming in the first place.

 

Youre lumping everyone who is dissatisfied together, not good. And yes they dont NEED to, but being straight up honest would be nice. And by honest i mean stop using evasive words like maybe, possibly.

[Liberate]

hmmmmm

[Xalisa]

sign in on the 20th and enjoy the service you are paying for, then cry from there.

 

if you get in one day early they fulfilled any pre launch agreement they may have made.

 

you are still arguing that you deserve something that has never been promised to you.

 

I have never once argued about time being given to me, you would know that if you read posts. I am arguing that a service company is expected to deliver a certain level of service.

 

Would you stand for it if ATT just told you to wait and locked any correspondence you had with them? or Microsoft? no you wouldn't stand for it, way to compare apples to a glass window.

[Esaru]

Correct this is not a rage thread, its a cry thread. I didn't chastise the discussion, just the crying for no reason. Sorry but its just not valid.

 

Okay so why are you still here if you feel that way?

[Redredred]

Youre lumping everyone who is dissatisfied together, not good. And yes they dont NEED to, but being straight up honest would be nice. And by honest i mean stop using evasive words like maybe, possibly.

 

Maybe you should look up maybe and possibly in the dictionary then things may be come clear to you. You may look up honest as well.

[Thaalia]

I would be even satisfied if they said 'We're doing the waves and we're going to keep improving numbers so chill the frak out, we got this' at 11am and i wouldve been fine. Actually im fine now.

[vsalcedo]

It's not because of staggered access. We all knew it was going to be like this. We just didn't know how. And now that we're seeing how it's playing out, it's not surprising people are angry.

 

Bioware finished their fifth wave of invites at 2pm today. Not only is this obscenely early, but none of the servers are even close to being near any sort of 'stress test' point. 95% of them are light and standard.

 

THIS is why people are mad. Again, not because it's staggered access - um hello, we knew that already. It's because Bioware simply did not do enough to bring in as many people as they could. Instead they've pussyfooted around and are playing it WAY too safe in my opinion. The servers right now are practically DEAD because there's not enough people there. This potentially bodes that the whole head-start process is going to be extremely slow-going, with the possibility of not even having everyone in by release. I'm honestly not surprised this doesn't rub people the right way. There's no reason it should

 

Think they did it this way because NOT all guilds were going to have all the players in during early access, would be pretty mad if I didn't get a chance at going into the server they sent me the email for which is where all my actual friends will be playing in. Playing it safe would be the right way to go.

[Icza]

Here's something Stephen Reid posted that may shed light on the Early access issue:

 

StephenReid's Avatar

StephenReid

Joined: Oct 2010

 

Today , 04:44 PM

 

Hey everyone...

Thanks for sharing that. I missed the original. That's really all the needs to be said on the matter.

[ThiborF]

 

Have some common sense to realize with who the fault lies, and contribute to and assist, rather than put down a now rampaging community.

 

The EXTREME lack of communication right now, smoke and mirror and under-promise tactics are not how you communicate to a community that is near litteraly enraged with your company.

 

Stephen Reid said he did a database "pull" earlier on the invite list - well - COMMUNICATE it to the community so people will know when they can expect to play, rather than keep it a guessing game. At this stage in the launch process - you deliver. Hype period ended at 7am EST this morning.

 

Just because you and a bunch of people fail at reading comprehension is NO reason for them to change the course of the plan they've set down.

 

Common sense would say that: When BW (Stephen Reid) stated they would NOT be giving and specifics as to what pre-order code entry dates would get early access on which days BECAUSE they did not want to pain themselves into a corner where the backlash would be FAR WORSE if they couldn't deliver that due to unforeseen circumstances ... it's a good reason.

 

Especially if you've been a part of any other MMO forums where even the hint of a developer saying something is "possible" gets taken as a promise and then when the developer changes their minds there's a huge uproar on the forums.

 

They ARE delivering EXACTLY what they told you as to how this was going to work ...

 

Your pre-odering and entering your code grants you early access up to 5 (now 7) days

That they would be inviting people based on when they entered their code

That there was a large spike in pre-orders when they were first announced and so the initial waves of invites would be very narrow in scope with regards to the date range that people entered their codes.

That there would be NO published list, even tentative, of when you could expect to get in and that you would simply be receiving you email informing you that you now have access.

 

I read all that, which is what BW has stated, and I look at my code entry date (Nov. 18th) and common sense tells me that I will definitely be in by the 19th ... possibly they 18th and maybe, just maybe, I can hope that I'll have access by this weekend but not to get my hopes up or expect that.

 

THAT is common sense talking.

 

Whether or not I'll continue to support BW's decisions on how this process is handled is based on

a) they keep up their end of the bargain (which so far they have) and

b) if their reasons for doing it this way (to help ensure server stability while minimizing starter area over crowding) works all the way through the 20th

 

But go ahead, keep on complaining. You only continue to make yourselves look the fool.

[Redredred]

Thanks for sharing that. I missed the original. That's really all the needs to be said on the matter.

 

Not sure what that means.

[Icza]

Not sure what that means.

I meant what Reid posted was all that needed to be said about the EGA issues. Edited December 14, 2011 by Icza

[TalonCarrade]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=66561#edit66561

 

 

From SR:

 

"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. "

[Thaalia]

Maybe you should look up maybe and possibly in the dictionary then things may be come clear to you. You may look up honest as well.

 

What im SAYING is that they knew when they tacked on extra days it was to deal with high number of subs. Theres a difference between using maybe and possibly in a way to purposefully leave something vague so some cant say 'but you said that THIS would happen EXACTLY a certain way' (to avoid a clear cut accountability issue) as opposed to admitting your limitations. ( and yes with the NEW posts that theyve made they have steered in the direction of the latter) Im pointing out that this course of action shouldve been taken in the beginning

[Redredred]

I meant what Reid posred was all that needed to be said about the EGA issues.

 

Oh. The whole quote was clipped and I only saw the top. Got it.

[Tahana]

Well they ended up having to merge the servers later. I think this is partially the reason they've done this, however I can't see how it's going to change anything in the grand scheme of things. All it's accomplishing right now is upsetting customers.

 

You know I did this on their forums when people were incorrectly stating information about the 'mmo that shall not be named'.. But they NEVER merged servers.. Turned them into Trial status and offered people to freely transfer to others.. Yes.. But they never merged servers.

[Febibi]

How dare you make perfect sense OP!

 

Agreed but we can all hope that tomorrow is easier on the dev's as their confidence raises so do the number of waves.

 

beta weekend was 2 million.....preorder is 940,000 approx.... just setup 120 servers to spread out on and your gold...a month after release combine them and use the remaining servers as preinstalled backups for when a server has a hickup and then you only have 30-60 min downtime while you configure the backup and plug it in, for the old one to go off for maintence testing.

[Arklon]

While I'm dissapointed that I didn't get in on the first day, I do understand. I registered my pre-order on Aug 7 which means I might get in tomorrow or the day after ... or the day after ... or the day after. That's my issue ... I would at least like to get an email saying "Dear pre-order customer you have been slotted for wave blah. Please check the forums for updates on what wave we are currently sending invite too. Thank you Bioware."

 

They can easily determine what size each wave will be based on their customer base ... and pull that number based on pre-order dates. Then assign each customer a wave .. which they've most likely already done. Just tell us what wave we're in. Then we can watch which waves are up and get a better guage on when we'll get in.

 

That way if server problems occur, they pause the wave invites. The biggest complaint I believe is lack of information for people to guage when they'll get access.

[Esaru]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=66561#edit66561

 

 

From SR:

 

"Hey everyone.

 

-snip-

 

edit: err nevermind

Edited December 14, 2011 by Esaru

[Redredred]

What im SAYING is that they knew when they tacked on extra days it was to deal with high number of subs. Theres a difference between using maybe and possibly in a way to purposefully leave something vague so some cant say 'but you said that THIS would happen EXACTLY a certain way' (to avoid a clear cut accountability issue) as opposed to admitting your limitations. ( and yes with the NEW posts that theyve made they have steered in the direction of the latter) Im pointing out that this course of action shouldve been taken in the beginning

 

Ya no. They used maybe and possibly because they were not sure EXACTLY how things would play out. Thats why they left things purposefully vague. They assumed you were not brain dead when they used those words. They were wrong. Im not sure how they could have been more clear about it. I guess you cant explain things to brain dead people in english. You need pictures or somehting.

[Icza]

While I'm dissapointed that I didn't get in on the first day, I do understand. I registered my pre-order on Aug 7 which means I might get in tomorrow or the day after ... or the day after ... or the day after. That's my issue ... I would at least like to get an email saying "Dear pre-order customer you have been slotted for wave blah. Please check the forums for updates on what wave we are currently sending invite too. Thank you Bioware."

 

They can easily determine what size each wave will be based on their customer base ... and pull that number based on pre-order dates. Then assign each customer a wave .. which they've most likely already done. Just tell us what wave we're in. Then we can watch which waves are up and get a better guage on when we'll get in.

 

That way if server problems occur, they pause the wave invites. The biggest complaint I believe is lack of information for people to guage when they'll get access.

You're getting in tomorrow almost certainly.

[Monotoli]

An honest response to the OP would be flagged as Rude/Uninviting....

 

Because the OP deserves to have Rude and Uninviting things said to them.

 

 

 

is a troll, yes?

[Solar]

I hope you understand that this is just PR.

 

"adding a lot of players in a short period (in other words, stress testing) can cause stability issues."

 

they're not adding it in short periods, they're doing waves. still doesn't tell us why they stopped so early

 

It is amazing that you've actually answered your own question but don't understand how.