Video Game news site CVG has spoken with EA bigwig Frank Gibeau who states that the Star Wars: The Old Republic release date “is definitely tied to the beta test feedback.” Gibeau adds that things are going well so far, but unexpected problems could show up in September and October – forcing fixes.
Interesting…does that sound like a game that is coming out in October? Reading between the lines, that seems to imply a post-October release date is planned – keeping in step with our predictions of a late November target.
Here are a few choice quotes from the story:
“It is definitely tied to the beta test feedback that’s ongoing and so far, so good. We feel good about the date that we’re heading towards but you’re right, you could have a Crazy Ivan show up in the September/October beta test and be like, ‘wow, I’ve got to fix that’…
…The other thing is, the technology of standing these things up and then getting all the server farms to work together, talk to one another, store character records… it’s extraordinarily complex and so we want a very stable experience.
We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed – we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.”
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Give me ….November 22! (Whaaat?… Then I could take the whole week of for ‘thanksgiving holidays’ *cough* *cough*)
was that a little jab at blizzard? LOL very true though
They might be making the noose for themselves here though. The more they say they are going to have a GREAT launch, the more people are going to expect a great launch.
They are right, first impressions are everything, so if the game is buggy or queue times are outrageous or both, then not only are people going to be upset about that, they are going to be upset that the first thing the developer did when they bought their game was lie to them. Not a good start.
Here’s to hoping they know what they are doing, seriously.
First of all what is a Crazy Ivan…i’m missing the reference there and secondly: to stress test the servers to make sure they don’t crash with launch numbers you need an Open Beta, which TOR won’t have.
Thirdly “We feel good about the date that we’re heading towards…” sounds like they already have a date in mind that they aren’t talking about more specifically yet. “Holiday 2011″ isn’t a “date” its a “window”
Crazy Ivan is a reference to the movie/book “The Hunt for Red October”. It’s meant to suggest that the beta weekends may produce something unexpected/erratic that BW has not anticipated.
If structured correctly, you can stress/load test using the beta weekends – no open beta necessary. Keep in mind there won’t be a single “open launch” either.
Actually, they don’t say they will for sure have a totally stable opening with no que times to get into the servers. He’s saying they are going to do whatever they can to try to make that happen. I don’t take that as any kind of promise at all, other than they promise to try to not have that happen.
US Date Format 11/12/11
I just like the way it looks.
Thats my guess Anyway. Plus it would be awesome if they released it on a Saturday, so people don’t cause more economic problems, by having a quarter of the working populace taking the day off work, to get in and reserve their names. Lets face it, that could cause a lot worse issues than having a server crash. It could be more like a stock-market crash. So I think for everyone’s sake, they better release it on a weekend. There is no need to do it on a weekday as it will be pre-orders only, and then on the Friday after the 12th, they can let others in who didn’t pre-order. The beta tests will be fine, with no major redo’s, so no problems there. Just the usual network issues he mentioned, but they’ll sort them out.
See you in there when I can get in.
Pathos.
Do you know how many people take off from Madden? Also, if you’re taking off of work one-day (presumably paid-vacation), how would that crash the economy?
With that said, I am totally taking off of work because it will now doubt be a Tuesday. This is generally when games are released in America. I say generally because there are exceptions.
Also, with early access given to those that pre-ordered (such as myself), you can go in and reserve your names then. This makes it an even better experience at launch because all of the early access-ers will be out of the starting area. Good move on Bioware’s end.
If they want to stress the servers to make sure they don’t crash, HAVE OPEN BETA. Good God Bioware. If you have open beta, and the servers crash, go fix it, and nobody is upset. Instead, you are choosing NOT to have an open beta, so the servers will crash on day one after everyone has paid for the game. Good thinking. No, GREAT thinking Bioware.
P.S.- I cannot wait for this game, and want to best for Bioware. But, that being said, I believe testing procedures could be done much differently, and take a lot of stress of day one of the release!
Stress testing is what is happening in September. You don’t need to stress test your entire environment hence no Open Beta. You stress test a small version of the environment to its limits then plan accordingly. You would do the same in a regular terminal server environment in a company, why would it be different for a game? Push a few servers to what you think the max is, get a baseline, extrapolate the numbers. These beta weekends were a great idea and open beta is useless since all of your info is wiped. Early Access is the next best thing, so pre-order is a must if you want to play the game before launch.
Grrrr, Gibeau is nothing but a TORTEASE!
I’ll be in London Nov 1-4, so I’m kinda hoping for an.. uh.. Nov 5 release?
[...] to EA’s Frank Gibeau, the release date will depend largely on how well the beta weekends turn out and on player feedback received. Problems are [...]
what they will probably wind up doing is beta weekend for x amount of people one week then x times 2 the next and so forth to try and narrow down a range of how many people their servers can hold so they can buy more servers accordingly