Anthem Public Demo – BioWare Prepared For “More Server Capacity” Than Anticipated

BioWare’s first showing of Anthem in the recent VIP access demo wasn’t without its share of problems. Nevertheless, the development team is gearing up for the weekend ahead with a public demo open for all. In a recent update, head of live service Chad Robertson stated there would be “significant improvement in multiple areas” for those who played last week.

“We’re hard at work to be ready for our public demo weekend, starting tomorrow,” said Roberston. “This week has been focused on improving the player experience in the demo – that focus was based on our learnings and your feedback. For those of you that played last weekend, you should see significant improvement in multiple areas over last week.

“While we are confident that these changes will improve this weekend’s experience for players, we’re also cognizant that we may see recurring and new issues. Our team will again be working around the clock to deal with any problems that arise so that all players can enjoy the game. As always, you can use Answers HQ for help.”

Though the development team has prepared more server capacity “than [they] anticipate”, Robertson also noted that predicting the number of players in a public demo like this will be difficult. “Our ongoing scale testing this week has gone well. We’re confident we are ready for the load we will see. Like last weekend, we will be prepared with more server capacity than we anticipate will be needed. However, predicting player numbers – particularly for a new game like Anthem in its first open public weekend – is very difficult.

“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. If you encounter this situation, we hope you’ll be patient with us and try again later. We’ll have messaging on our servers on our server status page.”

Robertson also outlined the various fixes and changes that would be coming to the full game, like the Launch Bay, performance improvements, stability fixes, and much more. Anthem’s public demo starts today and ends on February 3rd for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. VIP access demo players might want to hop back in – not only does progress carry over from the previous demo, but they’ll receive access to all four Javelins. The full game will be out on February 22nd, though Origin Access Premier subscribers will be able to experience it one week early on PC.