Today, Bioware has shared some new details regarding the upcoming open demo weekend for Anthem. If you haven’t heard, Anthem had rough VIP demo weekend that was filled with all sorts of issues, from players not being able to get in the game to infinite loading screens, along with some typical game bug issues such as rubber-banding or glitches like enemies disappearing. Chad Robertson, the Head Of Live Service had this to say about the weekend:
It was an eventful VIP Demo weekend for BioWare. As I shared on Saturday, it started rocky, but we stabilized that afternoon and maintained it until we turned servers off Sunday evening. 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.
Some of the things that were addressed and will be addressed during the open demo are Entitlement bugs, updates for server performance that will address rubber-banding, a fix for the infinite loading screen and more, platform bugs that will confirm Javelin unlocks, and client and platform login issues.
The login bug was a big issue as many players were unable to login to Origin on the first day of the VIP demo. Other EA games were affected as well such as Madden and FIFA, as players were unable to play online.
In the post, Robertson says that the team will be working during the week to address these issues and be ready for the Open Demo weekend. ” We’re doing more scale testing this week, particularly to be ready for the opening rush of players on Friday, and to verify we’ve got “infinite load” problems improved, the latter of which was a primary frustration for many players.”
The post also addresses some of the fixes that were made for the full launch of the game, though these fixes will not be in the Open Demo. The fixes include weapons with 0% infusions, weapons that will have Javelin specific bonuses, plot integrity, party gather issues, changes to the way you unlock new javelins, a fix for lost XP at the end of expeditions, improved performance, additional stability fixes, the Launch Bay social hub, and “a few thousand more” things.
Robertson also provided some stats during the VIP demo weekend. The demo was played for nearly 9 million hours across the time the demo was open. Over one million strongholds were completed and nearly 2 million innocent grabbits were slaughtered.
The Open Demo will begin this Friday, February 1 and conclude on February 3. Anthem launches for everyone on February 22 and on February 15 for those who are a part of either EA or Origin Access for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.