Good post by Joe Caiati, writing for dot info:

HBO made it clear that it didn’t care if friends and family were sharing logins, just as long as they were getting hooked on the shows. (I’ll admit, I have a friends login right now that I’m using.) The current problem with it, is that when there is a big season premier or finale – HBO Go dies. It’s unusable. Too many people have given their logins out and millions of unanticipated customers are using the service. When the True Detective season finale premiered on a Sunday evening last year, the HBO Go app was riddled with server errors and the Apple TV app just out-right wouldn’t load. Paying customers who were not home and wanted to watch it were out-of-luck until the following day. And now HBO wants to open up access to millions more.

The price barrier that HBO Now will introduce will help them with traffic, but I think more people than they are anticipating are going to pay and this service has to be rock solid.

Totally agree. If HBO is going to step out on their own, they need to ensure that their delivery vehicle is up to the task. Right now, their customer experience is purely based on the quality of their content. Once someone pays for HBO Now, HBO has to deliver rock solid streaming, regardless of the load on the system.