The Daily Grind: Did BioWare make the right call?

This was handled poorly from the get go. There was a thread on the official forums asking devs asking if the game would have a delayed launch in Australia after a reporter leaked it on June 10 & there was no reply. They instead decided it would be much better to let everyone work it out after getting a email that they could pre-order & then going to the origin site to find out they are region blocked.

I'm a die hard MMO fan & Star Wars fan so I bought a copy from Amazon on day 1 & will play regardless. Thing is the delayed release won't affect the hardcore fans but will have a negative impact for those sitting on the fence. If the game is delayed in Australia until GW2 launches I know many will just play that instead.

Also you have to feel for all the South Americans. For them to buy the game from Amazon it will cost around $180US dues to import fees & for them digital download really is the only option.

Tis pretty odd i suppose. They could have just sold as many pre orders as they wanted to and then limit how many people they let get an early start. at least at first to test server capabilities. Shoulda did what rift did and invite everyone and their grandma to an open beta event to stress test.. guess starwars is too good of a game to do that with lol. unless they have confidence issues with their game.. thats a whole different can o worms!

I'm Brazilian.
i do believe that the E.A. decision is because pricing and//or distribution rights.
I know it because many E.A. games are not sold digitaly in our region, just in box produced localy.
Probably they have some current contract that bind their launchs in these regions to some local distribution seller.

I highly doubt that the digital preorder is limited quantity. I just ordered one last night and there was a big red message saying something like

"Due to extreme demand, please allow 48 hours for us to determine if there were enough Digital copies to provide you with one."

Than about 3 minutes later I had an e-mail with all the details of my successful preorder.

talk with you preorders, it's the only thing they'll hear.

I didn't have any issues, pre ordered digital deluxe, recieved code, registered pre order at TOR website all within 5 minutes on the second day of pre order announcement.

I can understand limiting box copy pre orders since they are physical, but I don't understand that thinking for digital since those numbers can be collected ahead of launch to indicate the number of extra players that will be playing. So it can't be a surprise unless the digital vendors are refusing to release that data to Bioware.

If Bioware wishes to do a staggered release, then let them. It doesn't matter to me. I've learnt my MMO lesson long ago not to rush in with the launch-day crowd. I'll just wait for a month or two for things to settle down first.

The early start to tempt you into pre-ordering won't work on me anymore. Just look at FF14. Big hoohah, big disappointment.

In short: Bioware did what they thought best with what they could do. Theres always a reason for everything, but getting mad without knowing the real truth wont help the situation and just start arguments of TLDR reponses.

It pretty much made my decision a lot easier: I will not touch this game even if its the last MMO on Earth. I was already heavily leaning on not buying it, since I didnt quite enjoy the huge emphasis they placed on story, dialogue and quests. Discriminating my country for absolutely no decent reason was just the last nudge needed.

I don't buy the overcrowding argument. Consider it: they already plan to stagger acceptance into headstart based upon when you submitted your pre-order code. In other words, they will already be controlling the rate at which new players enter the game. All they need to do is start the pre-order headstart two or three weeks before the Live launch.

Doesn't matter that much to me. I just pre-ordered standard editions for the wife and I from Gamestop since Origin was out of digital deluxe editions in our region. End result was EA lost $40 and I lost out on a couple of easily replaced digital goodies. imho, this is hurting EA/Bioware more then it's bothering me.

Excuse me. Day Late Dollar Short Guy here. Are there no more preorders available?

I completely understand people being upset about this game not being released in all areas at once, but this is actually a really common thing, especially with games produced outside of the US. We have gotten into the habit of US games releasing everywhere at once (in fact they often release overseas before US has a chance to buy them due to time differences). However, when one looks at how other gaming companies publish games, specifically the Asian gaming companies, most of them do not even allow their games to be published outside of their countries for quite a long time. For example, games like Dragonball Online. Also, the European community has had access to the game Black Prophecy for over a year before the game was even brought in beta form to the US. While I understand that these games have had no where near the amount of hype and excitement that SW:TOR has had over the years, this is still not an unprecedented occurrence.
And on a personal note, I would prefer not to have server issues for the first week than to hardly be able to play due to overpopulation of servers. I would not quit the game because of this, but it would be frustrating that a game I had been waiting for almost eight years to play (been following the game since Bioware Austin was opened) was unplayable because of the amount of people attempting to log-on. But that said, I hope that the game releases over a very quick period of time in other regions and increase the amount of copies available quickly in order to allow all the potential players to have access to this game.

Can I vote that I don't care? because I don't care ... when the game finally comes out, is confirmed stable and non-suck ... I will play it. Anything before that is really pretty poinless.

I live in Argentina, one of the countries where the game is not available. Not only is not available in digital form, but Amazon doesn't ship here. Even if it did, the shipping and tax costs would make the standar edition (60 dollars), cost 190 dollars.

One of the reason people use to explain EA/Bioware's decision is that localization costs are too great. That's true, awesome. What those people don't understand is that neither I nor everyone that wants to buy it now wants the game in our language. I wouldn't even buy the game if it was released in spanish without the option for english. I listen to podcasts in english, I watch movies in english, I play games in english. I don't even care about subtitles. I know I'm in the minority but I'm not the only gamer in south america that feels this way. So, being a minority, I don't know how we can destabilize servers this way.

Let us buy the game in Origin or some other kind of digital distribution. We don't want a retail release. We don't want localization. The latency we get to the NA servers is negligible and, contrary to the belief of some people, we wouldn't affect the latency of others (because that's not how latency works). We just want to play at the same time as everyone else. If they wanted to limit copies, fine, but they should have let everyone in the world buy them.

But that's ok, I'm sure Guild Wars 2 will gladly take my money without this kind of regional segregation.

Am i the only person who decided they would wait a little while for the jedi mindtricks to wear off before subbing. I personally couldn't take advantage of the head start having dreadful bandwidth so the preorder has lost its shine for me

did bioware make the right call? i think their population density on month three... yep month two is assured but month three will be when people start to wonder if they are coming back (providing you can complete a storyline or two by then)

until then the only thing to do is disect every bit of news on it and scan manically at the forums. hope it goes well for everyone, hopefully everyone will have a good start and no downtime on launch day or lag etc ... any negative news on that side WITH this hidden limit is going to hurt them come renewl time.

@Triskelion

I played a Star Wars game with pvp too. Only instead of pressing buttons on a hotbar, with switched stances with button pressed, and key combinations activated our techniques. It was like a fighter, but in 3D. I think they used to call them thar games shooters. Only you had to aim yer gun at the guy instead of tab targetting them and pressing a button.

I'm sorry, but this game is terrible when compared to old greats like the Jedi Knight series. Are people really too lazy to learn key combinations and actually duel instead of tab targetting everything?

Good decision.

RIFT is now sitting, literally SITTING.. on almost 40 servers that are doing absolutely nothing at all. You cannot start a new toon on them, nor can you transfer to them. The only reason they are still open is because of the embarrassment they will suffer from announcing they are closing 40 servers. Period.

There is no reason for SWTOR to repeat this same dumb action that gaming companies always do at launch. People whine because it takes two hours or more to log in, then whine later when their server that was added dies a slow cancerous death and they have no one to play with.

It probably should be spread out geographically to include all countries, but I think it's the right move.

Also, priority should go to players who order the CE first, then the other ones down the line. Someone spending more money should be allowed to get on before someone paying for the stripped down version as they are really supporting the game.