The Anthem public demo was in better than than the VIP session, we said after playing it, but it was still "buggy as hell" for a lot of players. I managed to avoid the infinite loading screen that many others encountered, but I did get clobbered with the audio bug that left me playing in dead silence until I restarted the game. Overall though, I thought it went reasonably well (although I still think it would have been better labeled a beta), and behind the scenes it was apparently an even bigger success.
"I’m thrilled to share that our public demo weekend exceeded our expectations," head of live service Chad Robertson said in a post-demo update. "Operationally, things were super smooth – our war rooms were tranquil this weekend, which is exactly how we like them."
The development team is now focused on finalizing the release build of Anthem and "beginning our countdown preparations," which I imagine will be nerve-wracking for all involved, given how often they end in overwhelmed servers and blank screens. Robertson also mentioned the "long list of updates and improvements" BioWare talked about last week that weren't present in the demo (including improved PC controls) and teased post-launch content in the works, saying players "saw a small glimpse of it in the game Sunday." I didn't play on Sunday but I assume he's referring to the surprise live event that spawned tough Ancient Ash Titans into the game.
Robertson said that players logged more than 40 million hours of play in Anthem over the two demo weekends, which sounds very impressive, and also shared some cool Javelin customizations that caught his eye that you can check out below. Anthem launches on February 22.
