BioWare on Anthem VIP Demo: “We Had Excess Capacity Prepared for Population Increases…”

Yesterday marked the start of the VIP demo for BioWare’s upcoming multiplayer game, Anthem. While fans of the game were very excited to jump in and start playing, players have been experiencing connection issues and some are not even able to login to the demo at all.

Chad Robertson, Head of Live Service over at BioWare, went to the official BioWare blog to write up a statement on the current state of the VIP demo and talked on the issues that players have been facing:

“Yesterday was rocky. The first day of our VIP demo weekend did not go exactly as we planned, and I want to share what happened…

To ensure stability, we intended to manage our servers to match the player population as it grew. Overall, we had excess capacity prepared for population increases, and continue to do so. That said, what’s important is that all parts of the game work as designed to meet players’ needs, and that did not happen in the opening hours.

While there are a number of issues we dealt with yesterday, the three primary areas were:

1. Platform connections – this was caused by the spike in players entering the game when we opened up. Unfortunately, these issues did not present themselves during our internal testing. Investigations are ongoing, and we will continue to apply fixes throughout the weekend.
2. Entitlements – these are account flags that grant players things like their pre-order incentives and demo access. During the demo weekend, we identified a bug where VIP players with a specific combination of entitlements were being blocked from accessing the demo. We believe we’ve resolved most of these, but have additional cases we are addressing.
3. “Infinite loads” – this is occurring for some players, particularly when they transition from Fort Tarsis to an expedition. We saw this only in isolated cases during internal testing and believed it was resolved. Unfortunately, the problem is exacerbated in the real-world where differences with player’s ISPs and home networks introduce new behavior.”

Robertson also talks about what BioWare’s next moves are concerning these issues:

“Today, our top priorities are:

1. Continue to resolve any reports of issues with login and entitlement problems.
2. Implement fixes to address “infinite loads”. I want to be upfront that this is a difficult one, and something we may not resolve during this weekend — many players are not seeing this issue and the last thing we want to do is destabilize the experience for everyone.
3. Improve server performance. We’ve heard reports of rubber-banding and other signs of server latency. We believe we can address this and will be conducting some small-scale experiments to confirm that. We may roll some fixes out this weekend or may wait for the open demo next weekend, depending on the level of risk to the overall service.”

BioWare appreciates everyone’s patience with these issues and as a token of appreciation, BioWare will be giving everyone who participated in the demo, a free additional vinyl at launch.

Have any of you been having issues getting into the Anthem VIP demo? If so, shoot us a comment down below – we would love to hear from you guys!

For more on Anthem, BioWare announced the other day that the multiplayer-focused action role-playing game has gone gold one month before launch.

You can also watch the newest trailer for the game right here, which shows off some gameplay, story, character progression, and customization.

If you’re wondering on how you can get yourself into the VIP demo, feel free to read up on our guide that should help you out.

Anthem launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on Feb 22.