Stephen Reid has posted a FAQ for the beta weekends:

StephenReid General Discussion -> Beta/Game Testing Weekends FAQ

Early Game Access: Available to everyone who pre-orders any edition of Star Wars: The Old Republic and redeems their Pre-Order Code. Essentially a head-start, it will begin before the formal release date/launch day of the game. The final release client will be used to play. Exact duration will be revealed closer to our release date.

(Edited to reflect that Early Game Access is not another phase of testing; apologies for any confusion. )

StephenReid General Discussion -> Beta Testing Weekend #1 Update

Hello everyone. Now that the first-ever Beta Testing Weekend is over we wanted to give you a bit of insight into how it went and what our next steps are. If you haven't read our FAQ about Beta Testing Weekends, you might want to take a look at that in conjunction with this.

For our first Beta Testing Weekend, we invited a large number of testers to play Star Wars: The Old Republic during Labor Day Weekend (a US holiday). While the number of testers invited was larger than any previous invite - many thousands - the number was still a fraction of what we're planning for later weekends.

What were the objectives of the weekend?

Primarily this was a small scale simulation of a launch scenario. That means, bringing on a large number of players, starting with the invite process, then proceeding through download, install, patching and logging on to a fresh new server.

We were looking to have large numbers of players on the game's Origin Worlds, like a launch day; we were looking to test our limits on PCU (peak concurrent users); and obviously we were testing to see how all this 'felt' to new players and whether they enjoyed the experience.

On top of that, as always, we were seeking feedback on the game itself - how it feels, how it plays, what people like and dislike.

How did it go?

On balance, extremely well. Every goal we had was met or exceeded, and we had no major downtime. This is good news for us, as now we can move forward in future Testing Weekends and increase the overall number of invites.

There were hitches, as you may know. We had an issue introduced into our invite process that caused a number of people to become 'stuck' in a specific database state. That was fixed by our web team as fast as possible, and while that delayed the initial download for some, we got as many as we could into the game. We are thoroughly testing that process to ensure it doesn't happen again - it was in fact the very first time we've had invite issues since Game Testing began.

Here are a few random quotes from four different testers within their Forums:

“I absolutely had fun. I found myself still finding enemies and attacking long after I had fulfilled the requirements of the mission simply because it was fun to just blast my enemies. You guys honestly put my jaw on the floor with the amazing world you built... and the look of everything. Video's had me skeptical but being in game washed away any doubts I had. I think you guys have nailed Star Wars for what it is..a galaxy far far away and a long time ago..enough said.”

"I really can't wait to see how the story unfolds. In most MMOs I play, I pick up the quest without even reading it but with these quests I am listening to the amazing voice acting and building my own story."

"Words alone can’t express how epic the voiceover is. Normally I end up making fun of the voiceovers in other games but this one caught me off guard. In addition, the in-game music and ambient sounds was also amazing. I didn’t feel overwhelmed with the background/ambient sound and the in-game music matched the current situation very well. Like I said before, overall this is and will be an amazing game. I just purchased the Collector’s Edition."

"Overall, I would say I had a lot of fun. In addition to the quests and PvP, I would sometimes stop and just look around at the planet or station I’m on. The amount of detail that was put into the environment was incredible. Well done."

What's next?

We're rolling out a major new build for The Old Republic very soon, and we're waiting until that build is fully tested and ready to go before we invite people to another Beta Testing Weekend. We're still hopeful that will happen in September, but we have no guarantees.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this gave you some insight into this weekend's events!

 

stephen also had a couple posts responding to various posters:

 

StephenReid General Discussion -> Beta/Game Testing Weekends FAQ

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDCowboy SR said this would include how the beta weekend went and it's not in there...

No, I said we'd have an update on the Beta Weekend as well, and that's right here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UseThaForce Thanks for the info, but I have to say that I think this is missing probably the biggest FAQ, "Does the recent news about the beta testing weekends effect the release date?"

This weekend's testing went well for us, so had no effect on our release date target - which remains Holiday 2011.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caveat_Emptor When does Game Testing for EU-based players start? Game Testing for EU-based players is imminent, and will include localized French and German versions of the game. Future phases of Game Testing for EU players will happen on EU-based servers. Beta Testing Weekends will also begin specifically for EU players in the same timeframe. Now when you say imminent you mean.....

I mean as soon as we can put EU players into testing, we're going to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eliandal Only one question (and it really doesn't even concern me) For the people who got caught in the RSVP loop - and got into their beta weekend late (or not at all - because of the problems) are there still plans to try and get them into a further test - possibly?

It's definitely possible!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Areka Ah... Maybe already mentioned but I'm not sure if putting "Early Game Access" as a type of "test" is something wise. Mostly as it is a "head-start". I know there can be a patch between head-start and public/official release if some kind of last minute trouble is dicovered during that time but in theory the game should be finished enough to be considered Gold.

Fixed! Apologies for any unintended confusion; we have had people confused Early Game Access with other types of testing in the past.

 

StephenReid General Discussion -> Beta Testing Weekend #1 Update

Quote:

Originally Posted by secretsquirel Appreciate the response although no guarantees is not reassuring at all.

Unfortunately, there are never any guarantees in MMO development - and even less of them in testing. We try as hard as we can, and that's about all we can do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tor-ren Well thank you bioware for the info. I am very anxious to know what the new build entails, and if it was a planned or a suprise to you guys.

New build was always planned. In fact one of the reasons we did the Testing Weekend on the 'old' build was so we could get feedback on server stability with a flood of new players on a build that was already tried and tested.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viserys Does the weekend beta being pushed back affect the Holiday 2011 launch window. This is the question a lot of people would like an answer to.

Answered elsewhere - no, it does not. We're still aiming for a target window of Holiday 2011.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viserys Open your eyes and stop swallowing the company line. If they knew they had a new build about to drop the second week of September, why start beta weekends on the first week?

Because we had specific aims for the this first Testing Weekend, and one of them was to use the 'old' build (which is the one with the most 'Testing mileage' on it) to stress test the Origin Worlds on a brand new server.

Quote:

Originally Posted by YakManDoo It sounds to me like there may be some scalability issues with bringing in larger numbers of players. Even if the game is great, if no one can play it on account of database snafus then the launch will suffer short to midterm harm.

You're right, but we're actually doing fine there. The simple truth is, we changed something, it broke, we fixed it. Last week was actually the first time (to my knowledge) we had specific issues that prevented people who were invited from actually completing their invite.

While the invite process is obviously very important to us during Testing, what's more important is seeing a lot of players get into the game at once. In that regard, this weekend's test was fantastic for us.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evel 1. Was this the "full" game or were just the Origin Worlds available? 2. While I know you won't give any accomplishments or goals in terms of real numbers for concurrent users, are you still planning on including "phasing" in the starting areas?

The complete game was available this weekend.

What you call 'phasing' we call 'instancing'. What that means to us is, we create copies of planets when they become too full. Part of this weekend's test was to look at just that - to figure out when a planet does become 'too full' (it varies by planet, as they vary a bit in size), to see how players felt about instancing generally, and so on.

We expect instancing to happen, especially during launch when a lot of people are crammed onto the early planets. However we also expect over time as people begin to spread out over the galaxy, instancing will happen less.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDCowboy No it won't. The last new build they had, the main change was an updated interface. A new build isn't a new game.

An updated interface might be the only thing you were aware of that recently changed, but trust me, plenty more is getting changed. We're tweaking the game, adding small 'quality of life' features and plenty more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liberate People forget, it was Beta TESTING weekends, not Beta FREE DEMO weekends. The fact it went off well - Good sign The fact they already rolled out a new build WHICH WAS PLANNED and not a response to problems - Good sign The fact they don't have to continue beta testing weekends of the old build is awesome, it shows us things are coming together smoothly.

Pretty much ^.^ this.

HOLY YELLOW WALL OF TEXT, BATMAN!

ja ja. Just kidding. I'm on my way out, but I will def read it when I come back tonight.

Thanks for the update Gaou.

    Good read, thanks gaou.  It's just too bad they had to go back and REPOST so much of the info that was already out there for the sake of calming down the "Doom Cryers".

give pre-orders beta access unless your hiding something!

  Whee - he actually answered my question ;P!

  Here's hoping they do manage to do something for those people who couldn't get into the first weekend test because of the 'problems' (like I said, it didn't really affect me, but it did a slew of others)

  And thanks again big G for all the 'reporting' your doing here!

Excellent post, it should be required reading for everyone who posts in this forum.

Whats the deal with airplane food?

I mean, did I miss something or did they promise beta invites this weekend.. coulda sworn they did then I read this and so I come to watch all the complaining (and gloat a bit in knowledge that I already got to beta) and I'm not seeing the chairs thrown just good behaved children..

maybe they promised, maybe they didn't, maybe they didn't select a good beta tester

I even threw a peek at the general swtor forums and even they're like "Now we didn't pay for something so we shouldn't expect anything."  Now tha[glottal stop] theres dedicated bunch.

Let me consult the donkey.. 

He says "people are as people need to be"; 

Originally posted by gamer1982o39

Whats the deal with airplane food?

 

I mean, did I miss something or did they promise beta invites this weekend.. coulda sworn they did then I read this and so I come to watch all the complaining (and gloat a bit in knowledge that I already got to beta) and I'm not seeing the chairs thrown just good behaved children..

 

maybe they promised, maybe they didn't, maybe they didn't select a good beta tester

 

I even threw a peek at the general swtor forums and even they're like "Now we didn't pay for something so we shouldn't expect anything."  Now tha[glottal stop] theres dedicated bunch.

 

 

Let me consult the donkey.. 

 

He says "people are as people need to be"; 

 Heh, you REALLY missed the ****storm that happened yesterday then :D  The official forums were ablaze with 'righteous' fury because many felt they were 'owed' a weekend beta, that BW lied to them, that SR was doing a crappy job....it was rather hilarious.

  Especially when it got down to the people who insisted that the first weekend beta was a huge failure - obviously (It really wasn't - it rocked) and that the game was obviously being pushed out to 2012 since they had to come up with a new build because of the failuer of the weekend beta (the new build has been in the works for a while, and was actually delivered to them early - that's one of the wrenches thrown into the testing weekend)

  All in all - it was a hilarious read!

The complete game was available this weekend.

What you call 'phasing' we call 'instancing'. What that means to us is, we create copies of planets when they become too full. Part of this weekend's test was to look at just that - to figure out when a planet does become 'too full' (it varies by planet, as they vary a bit in size), to see how players felt about instancing generally, and so on.

We expect instancing to happen, especially during launch when a lot of people are crammed onto the early planets. However we also expect over time as people begin to spread out over the galaxy, instancing will happen less.

I have  mixed feeling about this instancing. It is always difficult when you want to group but they are on another instance. So you have to switch to meet up with them. But at the same time, it beats the hell out of lag. So I guess I am ok with the fact that they will have to have instances with the vast number of players that will play this game in the first month.

I definitely like this though:

How did it go?

On balance, extremely well. Every goal we had was met or exceeded, and we had no major downtime. This is good news for us, as now we can move forward in future Testing Weekends and increase the overall number of invites.


 

Beta weekends with NDA still in effect, thats all you need to know.

Originally posted by artemisentr4

The complete game was available this weekend.

What you call 'phasing' we call 'instancing'. What that means to us is, we create copies of planets when they become too full. Part of this weekend's test was to look at just that - to figure out when a planet does become 'too full' (it varies by planet, as they vary a bit in size), to see how players felt about instancing generally, and so on.

We expect instancing to happen, especially during launch when a lot of people are crammed onto the early planets. However we also expect over time as people begin to spread out over the galaxy, instancing will happen less.

 

I have  mixed feeling about this instancing. It is always difficult when you want to group but they are on another instance. So you have to switch to meet up with them. But at the same time, it beats the hell out of lag. So I guess I am ok with the fact that they will have to have instances with the vast number of players that will play this game in the first month.

 

I definitely like this though:

How did it go?

On balance, extremely well. Every goal we had was met or exceeded, and we had no major downtime. This is good news for us, as now we can move forward in future Testing Weekends and increase the overall number of invites.


 

I completely agree with you. I was annoyed at first when I heard about istancing several weeks ago, but now its growing on me because I realize just how much the game will fail by word of mouth if performance issues cripple it in the first month. I think this outweighs any minor annoyances and now I'm a full supporter of it...especially since they will lesson it over time and I don't expect to see it on the larger higher level planets.

..almost forgot...thanks as always OP for the helpful info. I'm encouraged by the positive feedback I'm also hearing on other sites on an older build that is about to be replaced by a much better one :-)

Glad to see the positive information here.  Really is good news.

Can't wait for this game.

Originally posted by SaintViktor

Beta weekends with NDA still in effect, thats all you need to know.

 Most companies do not lift the NDA until a little before release. It's not unusual.

Ok. Finally read it. It's great to hear how the testing is going.

I have to say that I was among the ones understanding what a beta testing is, so i didn't look for nuclear shelter when a problem came up.

Keep up the great work, Dev Team. Give us the game we deserve to play.

Originally posted by keithian

Originally posted by artemisentr4

The complete game was available this weekend.

What you call 'phasing' we call 'instancing'. What that means to us is, we create copies of planets when they become too full. Part of this weekend's test was to look at just that - to figure out when a planet does become 'too full' (it varies by planet, as they vary a bit in size), to see how players felt about instancing generally, and so on.

We expect instancing to happen, especially during launch when a lot of people are crammed onto the early planets. However we also expect over time as people begin to spread out over the galaxy, instancing will happen less.

 

I have  mixed feeling about this instancing. It is always difficult when you want to group but they are on another instance. So you have to switch to meet up with them. But at the same time, it beats the hell out of lag. So I guess I am ok with the fact that they will have to have instances with the vast number of players that will play this game in the first month.

 

I definitely like this though:

How did it go?

On balance, extremely well. Every goal we had was met or exceeded, and we had no major downtime. This is good news for us, as now we can move forward in future Testing Weekends and increase the overall number of invites.


 

I completely agree with you. I was annoyed at first when I heard about istancing several weeks ago, but now its growing on me because I realize just how much the game will fail by word of mouth if performance issues cripple it in the first month. I think this outweighs any minor annoyances and now I'm a full supporter of it...especially since they will lesson it over time and I don't expect to see it on the larger higher level planets.

They've actually given some more info on this part of the game:

It surely is not. Our planets are sufficiently large to hold hundreds of players at once, without instancing.

Sounds to me that they could have hundreds, not sure how many hundreds but they aren't saying just a hundred so at least 200 people on one planet maybe more? This is before it phases, they also said this regarding why they are doing it this way

This has nothing to do with servers. It has everything to do with not designing the entire game around the idea that an area is 100% full all of the time, which causes the creation of massive areas that are deserted just to handle launch load.

And so we are clear on bioware stance on phasing servers they also stated this:

Also, before people conjure up horror scenarios, we're talking about a very low number of instances. Nothing even close to the double digits people have been suggesting here.

So for it to be phased the following would have to happen

There would need to be at least 200 people logged in, playing on the same planet at the same time.

This is likely only to happen on the origin worlds and i'm going with the least amount of people, they seem to predict very low number of instancing not even the double digits, considering that to get to the double digits and still have hundreds of people you would need around...2,000 people on one planet on that same server.

The way i see this is this is a safe guard to keep the people happy without having to make a whole bunch of servers like rift did then have to close half of them down as people consolidate more.

PS: sorry for the late update, was at work didn't have time to post this earlier.

Originally posted by Nazgol

Originally posted by SaintViktor

Beta weekends with NDA still in effect, thats all you need to know.

 Most companies do not lift the NDA until a little before release. It's not unusual.

I think it's rather unusual for an MMO? I don't remember what developer was, i think he was an AOC dev, said that lifting NDA 1 week before release was an alarm sign, but 4 weeks before was a sign of confidence in the game. If I remember well he was referring to WAR with the 1 week.

Mabye it was the other way around, but anyway, that's the feeling... lifting the NDA too close to release is a bad sign. Of course Bioware can say they don't want to spoil the story. Okay.

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by Nazgol

Originally posted by SaintViktor

Beta weekends with NDA still in effect, thats all you need to know.

 Most companies do not lift the NDA until a little before release. It's not unusual.

I think it's rather unusual for an MMO? I don't remember what developer was, i think he was an AOC dev, said that lifting NDA 1 week before release was an alarm sign, but 4 weeks before was a sign of confidence in the game. If I remember well he was referring to WAR with the 1 week.

Mabye it was the other way around, but anyway, that's the feeling... lifting the NDA too close to release is a bad sign. Of course Bioware can say they don't want to spoil the story. Okay.

Funcom does not release their NDA's even after launch, so it would be pretty funny if an AoC dev was talking about this when Funcom themselves use the tactic to hide the truth until after they get your money.

What I don't understand, is if Bioware has a strict NDA and noone can say anything, then what is the point of posting stuff about beta weekends to the public instead of just to the beta testers? Makes absolutely no sense.

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by Nazgol

Originally posted by SaintViktor

Beta weekends with NDA still in effect, thats all you need to know.

 Most companies do not lift the NDA until a little before release. It's not unusual.

I think it's rather unusual for an MMO? I don't remember what developer was, i think he was an AOC dev, said that lifting NDA 1 week before release was an alarm sign, but 4 weeks before was a sign of confidence in the game. If I remember well he was referring to WAR with the 1 week.

Mabye it was the other way around, but anyway, that's the feeling... lifting the NDA too close to release is a bad sign. Of course Bioware can say they don't want to spoil the story. Okay.

Funcom does not release their NDA's even after launch, so it would be pretty funny if an AoC dev was talking about this when Funcom themselves use the tactic to hide the truth until after they get your money.

 

What I don't understand, is if Bioware has a strict NDA and noone can say anything, then what is the point of posting stuff about beta weekends to the public instead of just to the beta testers? Makes absolutely no sense.

 There is a big difference between devs talking about what they want out of beta weekends, how it went and some of what they are testing and testers talking about the actual experience.

Once the NDA is gone, you really can't make a lot of changes. Players will believe that the current state is the launch state. And once the game is open for everyone, then that is your one change to make or break your game. So allowing players to talk about the state of the game on a  build that is not a launch build doesn't make a lot of sense. Stress testing and trying to find out the server limits or instance size or mob spawns or anything game releated wouldn't go over well with current or potential customers IMO.

Beta and testing is for, wait for it, testing. It is not launch ready play, it is trying to find and create possible problems so you can correct them before launch, not after. That is the problem with companies like Funcom. They launch with a test build and loose a lot of players because of how bad the game runs and all the bugs and problems. BW is trying to avoid that, so the NDA will be there until the game is ready IMO.

Originally posted by whilan

 

They've actually given some more info on this part of the game:

It surely is not. Our planets are sufficiently large to hold hundreds of players at once, without instancing.

Sounds to me that they could have hundreds, not sure how many hundreds but they aren't saying just a hundred so at least 200 people on one planet maybe more? This is before it phases, they also said this regarding why they are doing it this way

This has nothing to do with servers. It has everything to do with not designing the entire game around the idea that an area is 100% full all of the time, which causes the creation of massive areas that are deserted just to handle launch load.

And so we are clear on bioware stance on phasing servers they also stated this:

Also, before people conjure up horror scenarios, we're talking about a very low number of instances. Nothing even close to the double digits people have been suggesting here.

So for it to be phased the following would have to happen

There would need to be at least 200 people logged in, playing on the same planet at the same time.

This is likely only to happen on the origin worlds and i'm going with the least amount of people, they seem to predict very low number of instancing not even the double digits, considering that to get to the double digits and still have hundreds of people you would need around...2,000 people on one planet on that same server.

The way i see this is this is a safe guard to keep the people happy without having to make a whole bunch of servers like rift did then have to close half of them down as people consolidate more.

PS: sorry for the late update, was at work didn't have time to post this earlier.

 I agree with that. Finding the right balance with the number of players, mobs for questing, players available in the same instance for grouping and so on is going to take a while. How they deal with changing instances for grouping vs exploits, dealing with open world PvP and the objective areas. All this will be important for launch.

Appearences are also important. So not having to close servers as Rift and WAR did is important. Having instances so you don't have to cut down on the number of servers is smart for the long run. Even if some players won't like the instance set up.

I feel from what they say that the game itself is ready. The content and game play from the quotes seems to be where they want it to be. It is just all the extras that go into a MMO launch. Getting that down so there are as few problems as possible. Only one chance to have a good launch. I would like to see TOR have a great launch.