EA 'Couldn't Be More Happy' With Star Wars LaunchStar Wars: The Old Republic has gotten off to a good start with more than a million users already in the game as of Christmas week. The first ever MMO launch from BioWare hasn't gone as smoothly as some would like, however, with some players experiencing trouble connecting to servers and others suffering from bugs and performance issues. That said, EA COO Peter Moore is thrilled with the response to the game so far.
Speaking to IndustryGamers during a phone call mostly focused on the brand-new customer service headquarters in Austin (where BioWare operates The Old Republic), we asked Moore about the hiccups experienced in launching the Star Wars MMO.
“I was watching every hour of every day because a lot of the work we needed to do in Customer Experience reports directly to me – even though BioWare handles its own customer service as you probably know. But look, there's a reason it's an MMO; it's a massive game and when I think of all the MMOs I have seen launched I can't think of one that has been launched flawlessly. There's so much you don't know and when you've got a million people coming in and playing, I'd like to be able to guarantee a completely flawless experience from a technology perspective, from an interaction perspective, but again I look at it every hour and when we look at the queue times to get on the servers, the amount of downtime that is scheduled, it's green lights all the way. I couldn't be more happy," Moore remarked.
He continued, "We're only three weeks in since the launch and we're stable, we're robust and adding people. It was a ramped phase-up, and we made sure for the people as they came in that they had a great experience. Was it perfect? No. Did anybody really expect something of this magnitude and complexity to be perfect? No, but the key is how you resolve those problems and move on quickly and I think our teams have done that well."
In related news, Eurogamer heard from BioWare's game director James Ohlen, who said that the "performance concerns" in The Old Republic are only affecting about 5% of the subscriber base.
