BioWare reassures Anthem fans after "rocky" demo weekend
"Stick around for Sunday afternoon..."
BioWare has updated fans on its progress fixing the Anthem issues which arose during last weekend's VIP demo.
Anthem's trial version will return this weekend, this time open to anyone who wants to give it a go. All eyes will be on BioWare to see if things work a little smoother.
And if you need a little more incentive, BioWare has teased you should tune in towards the end of this weekend to get a "glimpse" at its future plans.
"As I shared on Saturday, [last weekend] started rocky, but we stabilised that afternoon and maintained it until we turned servers off Sunday evening," head of live service Chad Robertson wrote in a new blog post.
"We learned a ton about our game, our service, and you, our community. We're working hard to ensure everyone can enjoy the game exactly as we've designed it."
Issues being worked on ahead of this weekend include entitlement bugs, server performance updates to address rubber-banding, fixes for infinite loads, platform bugs to validate Javelin unlocks, plus client and platform login bugs.
I played a good deal of the demo over the weekend. The performance was extremely patchy, and the "infinite load" issue - which required you restart the game every time you tried to load a mission - meant I missed out on whole chunks of story having to randomly join someone else's server partway through.
But, of course, this is just a demo. And, as BioWare states, further fixes and improvements have already been built into the version of the game ready for launch next month.
Those fixes include further performance improvements and stability fixes, as well as the recently-detailed Launch Bay social hub for up to 16 players - added in response to fan feedback.
Last weekend saw nearly 9m hours of playtime across two-and-a-half days - it'll be interesting to see how that scales when the demo is opened up publicly.
During that time, 1m stronghold missions (think: Destiny's strikes) were completed. And, upsettingly, 2m innocent grabbit creatures were gunned down. Please stop, you monsters.
It'll be interesting to see how those numbers stack up this weekend, particularly towards the end, when BioWare has something new planned:
"Make sure stick around for Sunday afternoon," Robertson concluded. "You'll see a glimpse of some of the cool things we'll be doing in the future!"
BioWare has talked in the past about keeping Anthem's world somewhere worth returning to through live changes - it may be we'll see the first of these.