Anthem VIP Demo Issues Frustrate Eager Players Who Preordered the Game, Most Now Resolved?

Today’s launch of the Anthem VIP demo gave the wider public the opportunity to finally get their hands on the game—or it least it was supposed to. A number of server issues have prevented players from being able to complete missions or even start up the game. Some players are finding that loading screens will get hitched at 95% and never progress further, requiring a full shut down and restart of the application. BioWare currently reports that the main issues have been resolved, and most players say they’ve been able to start playing this evening, hours after the demo first launched. A few scattered reports of problems still persist, though most have said that simply restarting the application has fixed any issues they had.

The Anthem VIP demo was originally a preorder incentive. Players has the ability to share links with friends for access, and there were multiple places that were giving out hundreds of codes. Although it was called “VIP,” just about anybody could get in if they wanted to try it out and knew where to look for a code. The demo could be preloaded by anyone, with an authorized EA account (via code) granting access. Right now it’s unknown if BioWare plans to extend the demo period beyond the weekend to make up for today’s issues, but the company is focused on making sure things are fully ironed out before addressing that.

Players might normally expect these kinds of issues from a beta, but the Anthem VIP demo has always been billed as a demo to show proof of the concept, rather than a beta test. Regardless, it seems that the issues BioWare is faced with are acting as a kind of beta ahead of launch as the studio scales up capacity and fixes anything that comes up. At least we’re seeing these problems now during the free event, which will hopefully help to mitigate any potential problems during the actual launch of the game next month.

If you aren’t able to get in yourself, make sure to take a look at the latest in our series of exclusive Anthem hands-on reports. We had a chance to go hands on with the demo content and more to tell you a little bit more about BioWare’s multiplayer enigma.

Have you run into any problems attempting to play the Anthem VIP demo today? Are you glad that they’ve held an early trial to get issues figured out before launch? Let us know.