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BioWare taking SWTOR queues 'seriously'

by Jef Reahard on Dec 19th 2011 11:00AM

Sci-Fi, Launches, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Tython air taxi

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Hugely anticipated MMO struggles to balance lengthy launch queues with long-term server and community stability. Yes, BioWare is slogging down the same slippery supply and demand slope that many AAA MMOs have trod before, and a report at Eurogamer suggests that the lines have only just begun.

There were 140 servers open for business this past weekend (a pre-launch period in which BioWare staggered waves of invites to legions of early release customers), and more are being added due to queue times approaching two hours. With Star Wars: The Old Republic's actual launch day looming tomorrow, BioWare's Jeff Hickman did his best to deflect criticism and soothe the impatient rumblings of disgruntled players.

"While we can't promise that there won't ever be queues, we can promise you that we are taking this matter seriously and constantly reviewing them to make sure that they are manageable and reasonable," he said.

Source: Eurogamer
More coverage: Official site

Tags: bioware, ea-bioware, early-access, early-release, Electronic-Arts, jeff-hickman, launch, launch-queues, queue-queue, queues, sci-fi, server-queues, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor, the-old-republic, tor

Reader Comments (71)

1 week of queues or 6 months of a dead server...I'll take alt-tab for $14.99 Alex.

@jimr9999us Damn you! XD

@kalipou134

Stupidest reply ever.

Just because you are a minority elitist means that all other paying customers should not be able to play?

You seem to forget that this is a business, people PAY MONEY to play a game and if the company is not providing that then that is wrong - regardless of your "view" on things.

If you want to create an MMO full of elitists go make your own - SWTOR is an MMO for the masses.

$0.02

P.S. Calling 95% of the player base scumbags makes you sound even stupider.

@kalipou134

That's a rather dim-witted response. I haven't been 12 for many a decade, but I have a job and a family (apparently your definition of a retard ).

Spending two hours in a queue is almost all of my play-time, but I guess it's alright if my subscription helps keep the game running for people who aren't encumbered by employment.

@jimr9999us I'd take the week of queues any day, look at RIFT when it gave a 'beta' to everyone and early on after release they sometimes had queues of half an hour or more, now fast forward to a month or 2 later, now look at the game now.

Having long queues for the opening week or so are a part of a new MMO release, trying to ease queues during that week or 2 is always a good thing but people need to remember that those queues will only last for about 2 weeks or so.

@jimr9999us

I tend to agree, with one caveat:

There needs to be a grace period of 10 minutes or so for anyone who might crash or get disconnected. There's nothing worse than logging in an hour early to wait in queue, coming back just after you get your kids to bed and playing for 30 minutes only to have some random bug crash your game, have to log back in and find yourself in another hour long queue.

@jimr9999us Who says there will just be one week of queues? I would guess that queues could last at least a month, being that everyone has a free month to play and many schools don't start back until a few weeks into January.

@Malagarr

I absolutly agree with this, it's happened to me and dammit it's frustraiting, i dont mind waiting my turn, thats a normal part of new MMO's and we all know that, but when you wait your turn and then the client crashes and your thrown back in the que again thats intollerable.

My answer however was to reroll on a quiet server and have done with the queing altogether. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out after release day though.

@(Unverified)

stupider. :)

@Malagarr

That kinda happened to me already this weekend. Sat in queue on Saturday for about 90 minutes (The Fatman, uggh) and got to play for about an hour when one of my Steam friends messages me . . . Guess what applications can cause SWTOR to crash when they try to interrupt?

Logged back in, took maybe 5 minutes to hard-boot and restart the client, then another 2 hours in queue.

Needless to say, I was more productive around the house than I meant to be on Saturday. :)

@(Unverified)
Dear unverified, i'm happy you have a wife and a kid, how about you go spend 2 hours with those during your queue time and stop bitching for the next 3 weeks like some immature punk then?

@jimr9999us

alt tab for 3 hours?

Oh i remember those days of unemployment.

140 servers?? Sheesh, I sure hope these servers stay unlike a ton of other MMo's that open way too many servers at launch. Then to only to shrink them all later after the community whines about no ones on their server. Then you are forced to changed your name or add some prefix/suffix to your name, etc etc....Happens way too often, lets hope not here!

@syklonis The servers won't all stay. That is not realistic. MMOs, I believe I read somewhere, keep like 33% of their population after a few months in. If SWTOR has 2 million, my guess, players right now, they could end up with about 600 thousand. Either way, they'll probably need to close, if they have 140 servers right now, and probably will add another 10 around launch, I'd say 50-60 servers when the Free Month population dies down in a few months.

It's not a bad thing, but it's unfortunate it has to happen like this.

@syklonis I'm pretty sure that is 140 servers total, US and EU. I don't think that was 140 US servers.

@MtthwRddl actually its lose 33% of their customers on the first month. Not the other way around.

Welcome to the jungle Bioware.

During early access - which is really no more than an extension of beta and for which we're not paying - a queue of a few minutes is reasonable.

Once the game has launched and we're paying (including during the first month which is included within the box price) no queue is reasonable.

It's a difficult dilemma to resolve, but Bioware need to realise that once people are paying to play they will not pay to queue, and it will cost the company dear if the queues continue, not least if they are for more than a few minutes.

I'm sure I'm not the only player considering delaying the registration of the game (and thereby the commencement of the "free" month) until I can be certain I'm going to be able to gain proper access to the game.

@Seffrid

It's a double edged sword though.

Do you lock the server for no new characters? You could, but then you have a slew of pissed off people who can't play with their friends.

Do you try to increase the servers capacity? You could, but then the lower population servers suffer.

Though I agree that server queues for new AAA MMOs are nothing new, the size of the queues and the amount of full servers on the EU side are concerning. My realm, affectionally called "LoL" (Legions of Lettow), currently has queues of over 1000 at 11 AM. The effective wait time to get into a server is currently around 4-5 hours (logner isn't unusual). For someone who has a day job and can only play at night, this is a very troubling situation.

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BioWare taking SWTOR queues 'seriously'

Reader Comments (71)

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:17AM jimr9999us said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:19AM Jetflame3 said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 12:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 12:52PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 1:31PM Vgk said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 2:19PM Malagarr said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 3:54PM MtthwRddl said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 4:10PM Bezza said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 4:18PM Khai mann said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 6:05PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 8:11PM kalipou134 said

Posted: Dec 20th 2011 9:06AM toothball said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:22AM syklonis said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:54AM MtthwRddl said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 12:08PM Skraps said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 12:23PM silver001 said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:28AM dudes said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:31AM Seffrid said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:55AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 19th 2011 11:34AM (Unverified) said

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