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Anthem’s VIP Demo, which is available to players that have pre-ordered the game or are subscribers to EA or Origin Access, went live Friday morning and apparently was in high demand since it immediately ran into server problems. As soon as players attempted to log into the demo when it went live at noon ET, most were greeted with a message stating, “We’re sorry, but that EA servers have reached max capacity. Please try again later.” The error is visible on multiple platforms at present.
The demo is the first chance that most players will have to get their hands on Anthem, but it isn’t the game’s first ever test. Anthem also had an alpha test, which was only available to a very limited number of players, back in early December.
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It’s unclear if any players were able to get into the demo when it first went live, or if everyone was caught by the server issues. As with any pre-release version of a game, or game launch even, server issues aren’t exactly unexpected. In fact, for a game like Anthem where online play is important, running into issues like this so they can be fixed for the game’s actual launch is part of the point of running tests like the VIP Demo in the first place. However, it remains unclear when these server issues will be resolved and when players will actually be able to get into the demo.
Update: Intermittent issues seem to be continuing, but it appears that some players have been able to get into the demo and are able to complete the first missions. However, there’s also another issue which creates an infinite loading screen that has caused many players problems as well.
In a statement to Polygon, EA said, “the Anthem VIP demo is experiencing extremely high demand. Our team is working to open up more server space and get more players online so all registered players can enjoy the VIP demo.”
EA has also mentioned, via the EA Help Twitter account, that it is looking into the loading screen issues and that players should simply attempt to relaunch the game if they get stuck on a loading screen.
Update 2 (7:12 pm ET): EA has reached out to Polygon with another statement letting players know that connection issues are resolved for the PC and PS4 versions of the game.
The main issue impacting the Anthem VIP demo on PC and PS4 has been resolved. Anyone who has had an issue on those platforms should restart the game and attempt to join again. Our team is still working on fixes for some of the issues we’re seeing on Xbox One.
In our own testing, these versions of the game do seem to have had their connection issues sorted out, however, the Freeplay mode on PC does still seem to have issues with latency.
Update 3 (Jan. 26): Overnight, EA’s support managers said that changes were made to improve connectivity for Xbox One. “Anyone still seeing problems is recommended to restart their console.”
