There are a multitude of flaws in SWTOR... Let's start with a few. BioWare Austin's original management and core technical design team originated from the ashes of failed MMO's, which had failed directly due to decisions made by those team members, who essentially doubled-down on those failures during the creation of SWTOR. Their pure arrogance was heavily evidenced during closed Alpha/Beta testing, and during a couple of exquisite press interviews, where they revealed what we already knew; all external tester feedback was deliberately ignored during all phases of SWTOR's original development. BioWare Austin essentially lied during SWTOR development, leading players to believe that a more immersive world experience was being created that would balance between "theme park" and "sandbox" game designs. In simplest terms, "theme park" games present a player with a set area or path with a limited set of items you can interact with, "sandbox" game designs offer massive amounts of player freedom, often including full player-driven economies that allow trading, construction, contracts, and mission creation. World of Warcraft is an example of an excellent theme park MMO, and Second Life is probably the largest and most well-envisioned "virtual world" example of a true sandbox game... though MineCraft and EVE arguably run a close second and third. Star Wars: Galaxies was one sandbox game that BioWare Austin's transplanted team was directly responsible for destroying. It is not known if any true sandbox elements actually made it past design tease phases of SWTOR's development, though the hype did. SWTOR, today, has very limited sandbox game elements in it, though nothing to qualify it as a hybrid. Replay value has never truly been a strong-suit of BioWare. BioWare is a company founded upon story telling. The design of SWTOR was to tell 8 CHARACTER CLASS stories within a single overarching GALACTIC story. They absolutely succeeded. Unfortunately, they failed to learn from other MMO designs, and failed to learn from their alpha and beta tester feedback. Players expected an MMO, and instead found 8 nearly cloned versions of KOTOR, with the ability to partially play with occasional help. The rigid-requirements for leveling through specific story-driven set paths of a very constraining "theme park" essentially suffocates and bores many players. This was feedback they repeatedly ignored during alpha/beta, and is likely the current impetus for the "accelerated leveling" change in KOTFE. BioWare did not develop SWTOR from scratch, they bought the development and client-server ("cloud") game engine environment from HeroEngine. This included specific limitations of HeroEngine, that while allegedly accelerating SWTOR's design and launch, also pigeon-holed it. With rare exception, nearly every quest is fully-voiced and animated. While phenomenal for providing an immersive experience within a particular story, such development requires rigid adherence to pre-developed storylines and massive technical details related to quest "cut scene" animations. ANY changes requires a rather involved set of resources that must be coordinated. Normal conversations and interactions with NPC's that are not quest-related, don't occur. While the story feels immersive... it's exclusivity also breaks the immersive feel of the rest of the MMO. We are constantly reminded we are in a game, and not a world. STAR WARS is the story of the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and his redemption, through his son. That's it. It's that simple. Nothing more. That's all there ever was. Every single sub-atomic particle that existed throughout the rest of the entire STAR WARS on-screen and Expanded Universe, was filler, fluff, and exposition. Within a grand MILLION STAR SYSTEM universe, not a million square-inch one. Now, the jury is still in deliberations about TFA, though your point about the Skywalker (NOT Solo) family line story being rehashed is kind of the point... STAR WARS movies will remain solely about the SKYWALKER family... STAR WARS Anthology movies, will branch out to other stories. The first is Rogue One, about the theft of the original DEATH STAR plans, and there are reliable rumors plans are in the works for a Boba Fett movie, a Han Solo movie, and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda movies. As to KOTFE not breaking new ground... it completely rewrites, redirects, and unifies the entire SWTOR game... quite effectively in my not-so-humble professional opinion. I look forward to seeing where they're going to take it, and I'm happy to see a reasonably well accomplished STAR WARS author getting reengaged with SWTOR. Paramount, Lucasfilm, and Disney disagree with you; a new Star Trek television series is officially in the works, a Star Trek movie is nearing completion, and on top of the stunning amount of Star Wars related merchandizing ads we are being bombarded with constantly, MULTIPLE Star Wars movies have been announced (five official, possibly as many as 8 are on the current drawing board), plus a few minor theme park additions are on their way...

Honestly, it may point more towards a shortcoming with HeroEngine, than SWTOR itself. It is very likely some of the technical aspects of what occurred relate more to memory and caching technologies than improper database handling procedures. Of course, the only way for us to really know, is for BioWare Austin to come clean and provide a technical explanation of what exactly occurred. I have yet to encounter a company being so forthright and honest, however. Normally, reasons for that include proprietary architecture details that they wish to remain secret in order to prevent exploitation. Details about SWTOR, however, are generally in the public light, due to their well publicized purchase of the HeroEngine as the foundation for SWTOR, during early development. So...

This may very well be the first instance in the history of MMO gaming of this occurring with zero warning in such a phenomenally short amount of time, whereby a server "system" "glitch" wiped out seemingly random amounts of activity from seemingly large swaths of the aforementioned server's currently active user base... but not that entire active user base. This is definitely something that deserves an after-action incident report.

SWTOR is a distributed MMO game engine architecture based off the HeroEngine game development system. It's not surprising that a failure in one SWTOR subsystem may not cascade throughout others.

They didn't used to be opposed to it during SWTOR development, and I'm not entirely convinced they are now. Simply put, they bought the HeroEngine core game engine and server architecture and modified it to suit their purposes. Adding in and/or maintaining a macro language into an MMO is not a trivial undertaking. Other MMO's that have allowed a macro language tend to have been built with that macro language as part of their foundation; often, devs of those MMOs actually use a superset of that macro language to program the MMO... and the scripting language used for backend SWTOR, if its modified off of what comes with HE, is a true programming language, not suitable for end-users to learn and play with. I was part of the original crowd that implored BioWare to build in LUA support. Unfortunately, there have been no surprises on the progress and results of that, so far.

This thread has been thoroughly enjoyable to read. Here's my two cents on the subject... 1. Allowing macros in-game would require a macro programming language to be actually be present in the game engine, end-user accessible, and user-friendly to learn. As the HeroEngine is the core of SWTOR, and at least as of the time of SWTOR's design, test, and early release phases did NOT include anything end-user accessible nor user-friendly to learn, it would likely require something custom-written that would translate the end-user macro language into backend SWTOR developer tool language (likely including HeroScript or something akin to it). This is not something likely to be trivial. 2. The ONLY way macros could be entirely undetectable would be to use a mechanical keyboard that was isolated from the operating system. They DO exist, but are insanely impractical. As this scenario is likely to only occur in *EXTREME* ($$$$$$$$!!!) multi-boxing scenarios, software, interacting with the operating system through various function calls, will be running and in memory. Running processes and memory can be monitored, examined, forensically preserved, and logged. Don't think it can occur or is legal? Two words for 'ya: Blizzard. Warden. There is no reason BioWare can not do the same. And may have. Or may be thinking about it. That's how a lot of MMO engines are monitoring for hack's and exploits at the game client. 3. Someone at BioWare needs to have a chat with the Razer folks about their product marketing. It's basically advertised in a very direct manner telling us we can buy their Officially Licensed SWTOR product, play SWTOR, and violate SWTOR ToS. Consumer protection complaints might actually have real traction.

I've been around since very early closed beta. You are correct in-so-much-as the communication has significantly changed over the years of SWTOR's development. During closed beta, the developers were very vocal and posting left and right. However, if you've followed other EA and BioWare forums, there have been major crackdowns on what the companies are allowing their developers to say, primarily as a response to severe beat-downs they've received from arguably justified angry customers who were led to expect one thing, and received something different, or severely (arguably) sub-par. That may have in-turn had a direct effect on EA stock prices. I'm not saying that's happened *here*, but things haven't necessarily gone as well elsewhere, and EA's heavy handidness has a history of being brought down onto forums when there is too much public negative feedback. The fact that these forums are still relatively open is a credit to BioWare AUSTIN. Furthermore, post-launch, it is not unusual for developers to take a few weeks, months, or even years off. Having worked in the industry, I can tell you that it sucks the life from you in unexpected ways. That said, its also not unusual for developers to move on to another project, or for teams to evolve to meet new directives from on-high. I know that some of the latter has quite publicly been announced, and with evolution typically comes communication lock-downs until everyone can get onto the same page, what-IS-coming-wise. Now, let's also not forget, that these forums aren't necessarily the venue that the developers either want to use, or are allowed to use, to communicate with us, the unwashed masses, that are their customers. Simply put, they may be handcuffed by EA/BWA management, as ultimately, (harsh reality time) it is their investors that they are attempting to please. SWTOR is first and foremost a business, which means that it is ultimately profit-driven. When they open their mouths here, without going through some legal review or marketing director, they absolutely have to be careful that they don't say anything to cause investor issues. Silence prevents such problems... As a stark and raw example, consider what was said by LFL, LA, EA, BW, and BWA executives, directors, developers, programmers, artists, legal, and marketing staff, from the very first press release, throughout development, right up until release. The first press release acknowledged that MMO's could take a sandbox or theme park route... and made it crystal clear that SWTOR's development would take a middle-of-the-road approach, akin to an open-ended story driven single player MMO, where we could still go "off the rails" and "just live in the space" from time-to-time. However, the reality was that somewhere along the development track, they pared it back to a pure story-driven theme park... something only a single developer, Georg Zoeller, seemed to acknowledge elements of. If they never hired the two guys responsible for a major expansion for Star Wars Galaxies, a sandbox MMO, to head the BioWare Austin studios, if they never released their first press release, if they never commented at conventions and professional conferences, if they never gave interviews discussing the worlds and environments, and their purchased MMORPG game engine, then the expectations that were set and broken, would never have had such an enormous impact during closed and open beta, and at launch. Simply put, statements by "developers" established defacto expectations that they failed to live up to, primarily because they arrogantly refused to listen to feedback during closed beta, and all of that could have been avoided had they never said anything, to begin with. The F2P model we're going to, is a direct result of a communications, and listening, problem. Now, I do take issue with your "turn this game around" comment... I really think that they have come a long way. Search some of my earlier posts... I've been a harsh, but I feel fair, critic of SWTOR from my very first experience with it. SWTOR launched in a MASSIVELY incomplete state. It was missing major features that other "modern" MMO RPG's have had present for the better part of over 10 years, at least. It launched with major planned components missing entirely or present as semi-functional, but effectively crippled, placeholders, with major class-quests or class-elements non-functional, or partially functional, and with major performance problems. SWTOR launched *months* before it was complete. SWTOR launched to take advantage of someones ego and greed, to take advantage of a holiday buying season. Since then, they've put in the Legacy features they planned for release, they've fixed the class quest issues, and they've primarily taken care of the performance problems. In terms of the game itself, they've turned it around, quite nicely. SWTOR is a standard MMORPG. As such, it is victim of the inherent flaw in ALL MMORPG's... because they built it as a theme park; you simply can not go "off the rails" and "just live in the space" because there is NOTHING to do other than questing and to a very limited extent, crafting. Nothing exists to dynamically generate side-quests, and you can't do anything to grow your character outside of what they've provided as their fully-voiced, fully-animated, fully-scripted, theme park quests. They are simply a victim of their own game design decisions, and they are not alone. If they'd have kept to their original vision... then perhaps things would be different. They were offered many, many options during closed beta to improve the design... and had 1.25 years from launch to work on it. Oh well... Any change requires a massive undertaking to implement, because they fully script, animate, voice record, voice edit, setup camera angles, and test, each and every change. Even simple "kill X amount of Y and bring it to Z" quests typically start, involve, and end some element involving all of what I've just mentioned. That means time, and that means resources, especially if it involves new art or sound effects or environment or building architecture modelling and texturing. It's STAR WARS. Granted, the developers just don't understand what that actually means... I feel that they show the "Million Square Foot" version of the STAR WARS universe, and not the grand sweeping "MILLION STAR SYSTEM" one that George Lucas evoked that was present at nearly all times in the movies. For legal, or employment reasons, their hands may be tied.

I wouldn't consider myself a hater of SWTOR by any means. Personally, I *do* like the game, and have recommended it to many friends. Especially since they opened 1-15 as F2P as a demo mode. However, yes, this was absolutely predicted by a very vocal majority of active forum-posting beta testers that had been testing the game and watching its development for over 1 year that we had access to the game in development. We railed against it launching in such a buggy and unready state, and railed against the direction the game took that was counter to what we were promised, repeatedly. We predicted that there would be absolutely no choice on F2P... though I don't for a moment think any of us seriously thought it would be going F2P in under a year. I thought it'd last 1.5 or 2 years. Now, the game has dramatically improved since launch. It's still no where near the original press release vision, but its still very impressive. I hope the F2P model is wildly successful. Because no one else will touch a Star Wars MMO for a very long time. BioWare *AUSTIN* and EA have made too many mistakes.

Yes, I did. The feedback at the PR stunt did not entirely match the feedback they've given in the forums. Yet once again, the developers at BioWare AUSTIN have entirely missed the reasonings behind what their customers have stated that they wanted. No great surprise, there. Let me explain things in no uncertain terms. Right now, Star Wars: The Old Republic launched in a MASSIVELY incomplete state. It was missing major features that other "modern" MMO RPG's (because that's what it is, according to EA's SEC filings) have had present for the better part of over 10 years, at least. It launched with major planned components missing entirely. SWTOR launched with major components present as placeholders, but effectively crippled. SWTOR launched with major class-quests or class-elements non-functional, or merely partially functional. SWTOR launched with major performance problems. SWTOR launched *months* before it was complete. SWTOR launched to take advantage of someones ego and greed, to make it in time for a holiday buying season. Those are cold, hard, simple facts. In order to be successful in the long term, which I seriously doubt is a concern of EA executives, the game has to accomplish three things; 1) Players have to have a reason to renew their subscriptions, month-to-month, 2) New players must be attracted at a rate that exceeds those dissatisfied with the state of the game, who leave, and 3) Either the Player-versus-Player game has to be evolved enough attract and maintain serious numbers of PVPers, the end-game raiding system has to be, or sandbox elements need to be put in place to allow those not interested in PVP or end-game to have a reason to come back. The Legacy system that was planned for launch, was crippled in the format that it released in, but that should prove effective at giving players something additonal to strive for with alts/money. However, PVP and Raids are what make or break most MMOs, at least non-sandbox MMOs. Press releases and developer interviews made it seem like SWTOR was going to be a middle-of-the-road Theme Park/Sandbox hybrid. What they released was pure Theme Park. So there's only three things going for SWTOR, other than its story (sorry, voice overs don't even make the cut); Legacy, PVP, and Raids. Legacy will be fully introduced in 1.2. I look forward to it. However, most players are waiting for PVP or Raids to be treated as serious components of the game. This means that the SWTOR devs need to shelve their own egos, and James Ohlen's "we know best" attitude, and give their customers what they want. Thankfully, they're starting to do *SOME* of that. However, while they claim to want to cater to their "community" (they seem to refuse to use the word CUSTOMER), the reality is that they are still stuck in this idea that SWTOR is a purely casual game, while at the same time wanting greater and greater numbers of long-term recurring subscriptions. Casual games attract players for so long, but once you start making things insanely complex, such as more abilities to use than can be easily put on 1, let alone 2 button bars, that have to be clicked on, then you need to start giving players tools to be able to use to let them know that as a developer, you're serious about helping them play the complex game. Meters are one such tool, and go hand-in-hand with detailed combat logs. This parse-it-later solution, using somebody else's tool, IS PATHETIC. It does NOTHING to help a player understand and play their class while they're in game and things are fresh in their mind. Sure, combat dummies are a help, but again, without feedback immediately present as part of the game, they're next to useless as well. The developers just don't get it. Right now, they just don't realize they're still in the "honeymoon" phase of SWTOR. What they just said at their PR stunt is that they aren't *realllllly* serious about SWTOR being considered an "eSport"-level MMO. They have failed to understand. And the fault lies squarely with Ohlen, Schubert, and I'm sorry to also say, Zoeller. The combat log was present throughout most of beta. Give us a log, and give us DPS meters. Show us you're truly serious. That PR stunt was a waste of our purchase and subscription fees, showing you're more marketing than anything else. And drop the ego and marketing speak about 1.2... it's not a major free content update out of the goodness of your hearts, it's chock full of features you chose to hold back from launch and bug fixes, that the game should never have been thrown out the door without.

Yes. They're working on them, and they're not ready yet for automated use by end-users. They said they have a design that they're working on. Why it's something that they didn't have ready for launch, when they were told they'd need it over a year before launch, is what they won't answer.

As expected, it was primarily a thorough waste of money and a PR stunt. They didn't deal very well with "harsh reality" questions, and only once were they actually confronted with a CUSTOMER who told them that an idea of theirs they held on to was "not fun". They took a drink in unison and did not respond to him. Simply put, the HeroEngine IS NOT designed to allow for true addons or end-user connections to the game API. For them to add those features, is likely a very major overhaul of the entire game engine. We'll see a native Mac client, first. Which they pretty much said was NOT coming anytime soon (subtext... because its not out and vetted from the HeroEngine manufacturer yet...). Macros, we may eventually see in some form. But their response was "nothing effecting combat" because of something along the lines of them not wanting it to change the learning curve of combat or become a requirement for combat, which tends to make me think they'll entirely make it useless for most anything that people are actually wanting. Maybe if we didn't have 20 billion possible actions that mostly did the same thing, we wouldn't feel the NEED for macros...

You kidding? Patch 1.2 looks phenomenal! It's primarily comprised of features that should have been present AT LAUNCH. Nice to finally see some of what's been missing for about 1.5 years from the game...

I think they took that as another "Duh" moment of realization that yet ANOTHER feature that should be in their MMO that can be found, in some manner, in other MMO's, was not present. Like a "Ready?" feature...

I've seen the freezing you're talking about, and while I don't know the cause of it, I can certainly say that this isn't the only MMO to experience that particular issue. With Star Trek Online, they at least have a function to turn on graphing of screen frame rates, that will create a red tick mark on the flowing graph at a point of momentary UI pause, which they've termed "jitter". So while it may be something that nothing can be done about, at least someone out there knows how to FIND it and understands that it's something real. EDIT: And nearly everything that has ever been posted about the User Interface, has been repeatedly burned into the forums on a regular basis... since about 1.25 years prior to release, at the start of the closed beta. Why they launched with the game missing so many major features and in such an unpolished state, is what you should be demanding an answer for, from EA's board of directors. Because someone lied to them and told them things were great, when they were not.

Schubert, Ohlen, and Zoeller come across as arrogant, even in a lot of interviews. I won't fault Zoeller, though, because at least of all of the developers that have had regular contact with us on the forums, even througout closed beta, he was a relatively straight shooter. I may not agree with him in particular, but I can at least respect him. Some things that Schubert and Ohlen said today, and a lot in the past, really smacked of some serious big egos that were totally out of touch with what their CUSTOMERS want.