Originally Posted by Jeff Neese

It certainly does matter. The main cause of spokes breaking is uneven tension. A wheel needs to be both true and have even spoke tension. Small variances in tension are OK, but if they're all over the place the wheel will not be as strong and that's when spokes start breaking. That's why they make a special tool to measure it, and that should be included when any bike shop trues a wheel. If they don't have a tensionometer (or don't use it), that's not where you want to have your wheels serviced.

Originally Posted by urbanknight

It's not as simple as adding or removing tension. In order to keep tension fairly even while also truing the wheel, you can often choose to loosen one while tightening the next one over (from the same side) to achieve similar trueness. Whether that is the case for the OP in this situation is up for debate.