Anthem: BioWare confident open demo will go smoothly, but warns some issues may return
BioWare is using what it learned from the fraught first few hours of Anthem's VIP demo to ensure the open demo launch goes smoothly.
In a new development blog, head of live service Chad Robertson said the studio spent all week working to make sure the experience in Anthem's open demo will be significantly improved over last weekend.
Though the team is "confident that these changes will improve this weekend’s experience for players", Robertson added that some of the issues players ran into during the first weekend may return.
As far as scale, the live service lead assured players that BioWare is prepared for the anticipated server load, however hard it may be to accurately predict player interest.
"If more players decide to try the game than we anticipate, we also have systems in place to control entry rates of incoming players. This is to ensure players in the game are having uninterrupted fun and to give us time to increase capacity," said Robertson.
Robertson also reiterated that the launch build already has plenty of fixes players won't get to see in the open demo.
Separately, technical design director Brenon Holmes revealed on Reddit that the team prepared a fix for the infamous, infinite load problem.
That said, Holmes pointed out that not all infinite loads are caused by the same issue, sometimes service errors can also prevent mission loading from being completed. Like Robertson, Holmes is confident in the work done thus far, but isn't ruling out the possibility some returning - or completely new - problems could happen.
BioWare has a real chance to win over fans this weekend after last weekend's terrible showing. VIP demo players will have access to all four Javelins when they log in this week, something that's not available to open demo players.
The Anthem open demo is available to download now. Head over to our demo page for start times, download size, and everything else you need to know.