Sep 7, 2011

Posted by in News | 4 Comments

EA CFO Eric Brown On Quality And Post-Launch Plans

Gamasutra has a piece covering Wednesday’s Citi 2011 Tech Conference, where Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown had some thoughts to share on The Old Republic.

On the topic of quality of service, Brown notes that they’ve been studying World of Warcraft’s first 12 months closely:

We’ve actually studied WoW pretty carefully. We spent a lot of time studying the first twelve months or so of WoW, and just to be clear here, when they initially launched, they did not launch in dual geographies. They went North America only.

He goes on to spell out the importance of the launch of the game and the early players’ experiences:

We really want to make sure that the first group of users into Star Wars has the best experience. For example, when they log on, they have instant access. Even when they’re playing in a densely-populated world, the bandwidth and response time is excellent. So quality of service is really important to us.

This is great news for many of us who have suffered through some terrible MMO launches. Of further interest to fans, Brown comments on their post-launch expansion plans for The Old Republic:

BioWare has built in a very extensive development plan to make sure there is enough content coming out in intervals,” said Brown. “We haven’t specified it, but industry norm is 18-24 months. And the idea there is to keep the game fresh and interesting for all of the players.

Of course, we all know how quickly players can consume content including Brown who said “a lot of people are going to burn through the content as quickly as possible, they’ll be left… waiting for the next expansion pack installment.”

Head on over to Gamasutra for the full read!

  1. 18-24 month… he better meant xpacs and not content patches.. otherwise THEY’ll be left.. alone.

    • Im sure thats what he meant they’d practically be throwing there game out the window if they did content patches every 18-24 months, not to mention if they studied WoW then they would know how to implement content patches to a good extent. No worries hes the CFO for a reason im sure it’ll all be good :P

      • I agree – this does read as expansions to me.

        However, I do like what I read. They’re not bleeding edge, they’re looking to learn from the mistakes of Blizzard and improve. And their emphasis on quality of service on launch is a commendable vision. Having poor access is one of those ‘helpless’ elements of game experience that is really killer. I can take poor class balance because I know it’ll get balanced. Game design will be addressed in time. However, I can still play. However, if I can’t even get into play the game that’s another matter entirely and a guaranteed putoff.

  2. WoW did launch in dual geographies, just a week later in EU I believe, same as SWTOR. Unless with “Launch” he means beta. Which is also the same as SWTOR.

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