Video: Building Star Wars: The Old Republic's scalable platform

"Guessing is for rookies; prove everything in a 'production-like' environment."

At GDC Online 2012, BioWare's Dave Moore reviewed how his team set up Star Wars: The Old Republic's platform to allow new players in as seemlessly as possible. Available for free thanks to The Guildhall at SMU, this GDC Vault session captured Moore discussing the intense months prior to launch of the MMO, including the middleware and database scaling and load testing done. He also touched on key business decisions that negatively impacted the service, including not requiring players to enter their credit card information during early access. For more on Star Wars: The Old Republic, check out this free GDC 2012 video with Rich Vogel and Dallas Dickinson, who address the core design concepts and major tenets that power this complex MMO.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent GDC events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers. Those who purchased All Access passes to events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC China already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscriptions via a GDC Vault inquiry form. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via an online demonstration, and interested parties can find out more here. In addition, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault admins. Be sure to keep an eye on GDC Vault for even more new content, as GDC organizers will also archive videos, audio, and slides from other events like GDC China and GDC 2013. To stay abreast of all the latest updates to GDC Vault, be sure to check out the news feed on the official GDC website, or subscribe to updates via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.