Star Wars: The Old Republic had a bit of a rough start and saw its share of problems. Murphy’s Law was probably mentioned around the Electronic Arts and BioWare offices more than once. From registration issues to long servers lines, many players became frustrated with the game from the outset, sending trolls into a frenzy around the internet.
To add to those headaches, BioWare had the typical launch bugs to stomp out and several exploits that needed to be fixed — even the hilarious ones. While these snags have definitely kept BioWare on their toes, they still managed to find success as the fastest growing MMO in history, making it all worth while.
Despite the resulting good news, BioWare Co-Founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk wonders what they could have done differently to improve the Star Wars: The Old Republic launch. In an interview with TORWars he states, ” …we would definitely do it over again given the opportunity, or a time machine.”
“It would more have been a process of refinement and fine tuning to our plans. Certainly testing even more than we did, and doing so earlier would have been a good goal. I also think in retrospect we would have been able to weight some of our technical decisions differently given that we ultimately knew what worked after the fact and what needed a lot of work; there was no way of knowing that in advance, but in retrospect that would have helped quite a bit.”
Regardless of the preparation, games will still have their hiccups (especially MMOs). Even without a time machine, BioWare’s first foray into online gaming wasn’t so bad. At least they’ve done well with picking up the pieces — and they’ve kept the sunniest of dispositions, which is hard to do with so much money on the line.
Those still on the fence about the game should note that this hindsight just indicates that BioWare loves what they created and are dedicated to improving it. Dr. Zeschuk even got a tattoo of The Old Republic on his arm. If that isn’t someone to put your trust in, I don’t know who is.
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This is exactly why I will never sit through a launch again.
I still have a vivid memory of Shadowbane’s launch. I took my system to a friends house so 3 of us could all start out together. Turned into nothing but a HUGE waiting game as the servers kept going down for hours at a time (more like 6-8+ at a time), it was horribly laggy and we never managed to get everyone on line at the same time to “group up”. It was an epic fail and one of the more boring weekends I have ever spent doing nothing but refreshing and hoping.
I figure I will wait until the initial 1 month trial group has cleared out before giving it a try.
how about they man up and speak out against SOPA
Nice touch with the DeLorean