A New Anthem Demo Approaches
Less than a day stands between us and the launch of the next Anthem demo. This time the floodgates spread open, the spigots of access turned to full.
It will be the best of times. It may also be the worst of times. BioWare’s Head of Live Service, Chad Robertson has posted some information setting expectations.
There are a few key takeaways, but perhaps the main one is that the dreaded infinite / 95% loading bug should be fixed. We’ll see. I’m personally a little sceptical. Not I hasten to add due to a belief in any lack of effort on their part, but because this shit is hard.
From the last go-around, there were reports that simply changing your Window’s clock settings to ‘Auto’ was making a measurable difference for some people. There was also mention that there was interplay between various local (in-home) and ISP specific routing methods contributing to the problems.
There has been more testing over the course of the week, and I hope for everyone’s sake that they’ve nailed this one. I’m just saying don’t be surprised if some people still strike it.
Any other differences to this build?
Not really – we’re still not going to be playing the ‘live’ version of the game, so there is still — as with last time — a myriad of fixes that have been made that we won’t see the benefit of.
Examples?
- Live version will allow you to run in Fort Tarsis,
- A squad indicator, showing you direction of your teammates even if they pass the range of your main HUD display
- Loot won’t come with 0% inscriptions
- Loot won’t come with inscriptions that are literally impossible to use (e.g., Interceptor mod with Ranger gear buffs)
- Fixes to other bugs/issues ranging from audio issues, XP gain problems, flight control feeling off for M+KB players, etc.
So all that and more (Dantics has a great video on the topic here, actually) we will have to wait for the live version of the game.
Any reason to play again this weekend?
What… What sort of question is this? I don’t even…
No no- I got you. Progress is carrying over from last weekend, so if you feel maxed out already this is a legitimate question. There are a couple of potential draws though which you possibly might not know about.
- On the last day of the VIP demo — BioWare opened up all four Javelins to all VIP demo players. So if you didn’t get a chance to max out (or at least test out, to your satisfaction) the other two Javelins, you now can.
- A live event has been teased for Sunday afternoon (or Monday for Aus/NZ folk — there was a dev tweet suggesting they would look after us timewise so that we could play too, even allowing for work, etc — but no details yet on what this looks like.)
The common belief is that the live event will be a Shaper Storm — one of the big storms we see at the end of the E3 2017 Gameplay Video, right before the cut without seeing where it goes or what it does. Shaper Storms are expected to be another type of endgame content, but at this stage very little is known.
The embargo on endgame content is also due to end tomorrow in line with the opening of the demo, so from a timeline perspective it’s certainly possible.
Personally I’m expecting something a little lower key; perhaps some sort of mob invasion, or freeplay world boss event — a general playing with the live service ‘dungeon master’ type tools.
I guess we’ll soon see! I’ll be sure to update my impressions afterward!
