The Glade 4.0

So is it this weekend?

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Yeah sorry go to the tester page. Supposedly they are targeting Nov 25th through the 28th. This will be the final testing weekend.

There also MIGHT be high level servers available that give you a random level 40 character to mess with. Yes random. It was supposed to happen for Nov 17th but never went down apparently.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Hai. Friday, 6 EST.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I guess I'll get to see how well TOR runs on my laptop.

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Wow. Just got my email. Confirms that they're doing a dry run for the staggered Early Access system. Earlier beta RSVPs = earlier weekend access. And then they also note they're doing site maintenance tonight, starting at 6 CST. Really? Talk about wacky ideas of timing.

Speaking of which, given the frequency and duration of *web site* maintenance, I'm really rather interested (in that morbid fascination way) to see how server patches are handled.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Got my email at approx 5:15 CST, responded, then tried to view the tester schedule but got a "Login Failed" message. Tried to reset my password so I could login but the site kept timing out repeatedly until finally I just got the "down for maintenance" message which, incidentally, appeared at roughly 5:50 CST - 10 minutes before their announced downtime.
Similarly, I ceased to be able to log into the game client at about 10 minutes before midnight (CST) on Sunday of the recent beta weekend. Someone there needs to fix their clocks.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Oddly enough, I'm still able to load the tester page. Granted, I'm still logged in from before the downtime should have started, but maybe somebody *wasn't* completely asleep at the wheel when they were coordinating invite and maintenance timing...

Edit: Hmm. forums still work, too. Aha. It's been delayed until tomorrow, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Feh. Inspired by your success, I tried to get back to the site ... still getting the maintenance message.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

I'm in the standard, regular, play-all-the-time, except during maintenance, or when servers are overloaded, or crash, or during stress tests, or when I am patching, or re-installing, or downloading, or when I am at work, or sleeping, beta.

I get to play on average 37.3 minutes a day. So far. YMMV.

Hheheheheheh

In all seriousness, things have gone really well in this beta for the past several months. I fully expect a smooth launch for some reason. Perhaps because I believe in Bioware. Whether their decision to stagger launch will help or not remains to be seen but each new build, un-install, download, re-install, patch process keeps getting better and and better.

Quick reference. 4 builds ago.... took me about 10 to 11 hours to download, install assets, and patch to play. The last build took me less than 2 hours for the same process (I uninstall each build so I start from scratch each time). This last build was approximately 20 gigs I believe (18.5 installed in SW folder it seems).

Now I know the download and install process really doesn't have much to do with Server stress so I think my point/feeling/impression is that I have seen great strides over the past months and I am cautiously optimistic, even with, what could turn out to be (one of) the biggest launch(es) in MMO history.

Odom Leah

Yeah, Odom, I noticed today that the launcher was only telling me I had to download 20 gigs of data, instead of the 30 or so I had to for the 367 weekend 6 weeks ago.

As far as what could turn out to be one of the the biggest launches in MMO history, I think it's already broken pre-order records for the genre.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I got my email at 12:45a CST.

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Wow. I'm waiting in a queue to access pages on the *website*...

While that's kind of slick, I think Bioware should figure out they need to snipe some infrastructure guys from Amazon the way they've picked off talent from other MMO dev teams...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I wonder how one can acquire a Bioware token other than by getting the CE

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Looks like I was quick enough off the bat in finding my Tester page active to RSVP -- I get access starting on Friday at 10AM.

I'm intentionally not making elaborate plans for the weekend, as who knows how smoothly things'll run in the first place, but if I can get in quickly, I'll post my location in case anybody wants to try to hook up, server pops and queues permitting.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Friday here, as well.

Like I said (or did I? I may have forgotten), I have four characters on Bondar Crystal, I believe it is, and I have a couple folks from meatspace meeting me there, I bet.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Oh, right. I forgot some of you guys allegedly have characters left over from the last weekend they ran. We'll see how the populations are there.

These meatspace folks -- are they folks that should be invited to ORE? Or, if they're already part of a guild, is this worth looking into the ally/adversary feature?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Unknown, As Yet.

I know one is somewhat bouncing off the walls over the notion of setting up a guild for our O-Chem class.

However, it may be worth looking into ally/adversary. I'll bother them soonish and ask.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

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I should have some testing characters left over, they were on one of the servers, I don't recall the name now but it started with an N, two words and one could be road???

Where do you see when your testing starts?

I can't seem to find it on the test forum or under My Account.

Not that it matters...I can't get the patcher to install the game fully. It keeps erroring in the same place. I'm rather frustrated...

I got an email titled "Testing Details for Star Wars: The Old Republic"

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Yeah, 'twas an additional round of emails that went out to let you know when your staggered batch gets access.

I wish I knew what to suggest on the error, Ulfynn, at least, more specifically than "inquire on the support forums" or something.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Thanks guys, I have the email. I overlooked it.


As for the install error, it seems like lots of people are encountering the same or similar problems. There are a couple suggested work-arounds, but none have worked for me. I have given up for now.

I'll look at it again tomorrow morning. If I can't find a fix by tomorrow I doubt I'll be able to test this weekend, as I would expect there are a lot of the Bioware crew out for the holidays, and the chances for a fix from their side may be low.

edit: the somewhat good news is that I got Skyrim running again, but only be disabling AA. It's rather frustrating since my computer is more than capable of running with all the bells and whistles on, and was in fact doing so, prior to whatever evil they injected in their patch.

Friday, 10 am CST.
Now to see how much playtime I actually get this weekend.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Keep in mind that this weekend test has been extended to Monday 23:59 CST.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick