To paraphrase what you just said, and please correct me if I've misunderstood anything: "But... SWTOR is getting features added faster than WoW did, even though those features weren't in SWTOR at its launch." That's not a valid excuse. They designed and released a game today, to compete with its closest competitor, at the stage of development that its competitor was at 7 years ago. Maybe they'll be able to salvage it, I certainly hope they can, but in anyone's book, that's a monumental failure in management of epic proportions at the budget levels this game was at.

A true hit job would have been vastly more appropriately scathing, without providing any information as shocking as revealing the reviewer only went to level 20, and was commenting about game difficulty, rather than mechanics and design. The article was accurate, but the reviewer clearly did not have the proper foundation to make some of their claims. That does not, however, make them any less true. It's like the reviewer came up with the correct answer to a math problem, but did not document the steps which they took to obtain it.

Never make the assumption that those who criticize SWTOR, hate it. Some of us wish to see the game improve, and have seen it's *lack* of improvement over the course of over a year of closed beta testing, until the point where we're at now; a cycle of fix, break, fix, break, etc., without really addressing necessary issues. Hopefully that will change, but the damage has already been done. As to your made up facts, the vast majority of the employees at BioWare *Austin* did *NOT* work on any previous BioWare title, in any capacity. Those employees were, and are still, primarily up in Canada. I know of a sum total of two at BWA that definitely worked on previous AAA BioWare titles. That's not to say that incidental work may not have been performed very recently during release crunch time, but all design, engineering, and programming, was handled through BWA, and a network of resource artists elsewhere in the world.

BioWare Austin is comprised of a *core* staff brought over from SOE that were responsible for Star Wars Galaxies (the two BWA studio heads, for example, were responsible for SWG and NGE), staff culled from EA Mythic, and staff from other Austin-area gaming companies. VERY FEW staff at BWA during most of the development phases of SWTOR had ANY previous experience as BioWare employees. In the last 3/4 of a year, BioWare's Muzyka took more of a role in the public light with BWA (panic!), but the previous 5 years was very behind-the-scenes. If you want to know why the game has issues, and why they put out what they did, look to Gamasutra's September 23, 2011 interview with James Ohlen. Pure arrogance.

Amature game design 101; carbon copy = balance. This is what comes from catering to a PVP crowd, first and foremost.

They were getting industry rewards before the game ever went into closed beta. Most of those awards mean absolutely nothing, and were given in order for the website/reviewer to obtain recognition for themselves or by EA/BioWare with free plublicity. The game received various "game of the year!" awards prior to it actually launching, and prior to anyone actually voting in a large scale poll. It received glowing, gushing reviews from press that were scared of EA's marketing staff (oh no, they'll never let us review their products again! must bribe them with gushing reviews, as always!). The simple fact is that the numbers that have been released are very carefully massaged. The 3 and 6 month numbers are what will actually matter. Personally, I hope that they DO reach a 2.5 and 6 million subscriber mark. Unfortunately, they released a mediocre product and were encouraged to do so by paying attention to the gushing opinions and ignoring those that actually pointed out the problems that they had. The same problems that they're now having to go back and fix, that they never should have code released with. BioWare Austin was given a major benefit of the doubt by a lot of people because of the name BioWare being associated with them (it is NOT comprised of the same people that brought us Mass Effect and Dragon's Age). They hurt themselves by releasing the game with all of the problems that it currently has. Deny it all you want, that doesn't make it any less true. Seriously. What do fanboys that attack anyone with any minute shred of criticism actually think they're accomplishing or hope to achieve? A job at BioWare? Some special achievement award for rudest post? The only thing that is accomplished is that the long-term prospects of the game are hurt when opinion that can be used to help improve the game is shouted down or ignored. Then, everyone loses.

Well, according to EA's SEC filings, SWTOR is an MMORPG. So whether we agree it meets that designation or not is beside the point; EA legal tells us it is. It must be true. Other than that, it's a single player role playing game, with 8 distinct story lines, offering online multiplayer cooperative play. When they add some more sandbox elements, and let players actually sit down in every single chair that's present, then we'll see about reclassifying it, appropriately.

To be fair, they did hire the two guys responsible for a major SWG release as the heads of the new BioWare Austin studio... so that dream that some people had of another pure sandbox was fueled by that. Those of us that listened to what was being said by LFL, LA, EA, BW, and BWA, were at least expecting a middle-of-the-road game, akin to an open-ended story driven single player MMO, where we could still go "off the rails" and "just live in the space". Nope, pure story-driven theme park is what they pared it back to.

What was said and what was released is a matter of recorded truth, not opinion. BWA being in a panic IS opinion, and it's my professional one based upon my experience, industry knowledge, and analysis of BWA's behavior. The stock holders briefing/cheerleading press conference was very telling, in so much as they claimed such a wonderful quarter, they refused to address a single question; when will the game break even and begin making a profit. That information was specifically NOT discussed. The very next day, they announce two major outreach initiatives; fly "popular" guild leaders to Austin to ask them what they thought of the game (to bribe them?) and a weekly Q&A, where they tackle the realllllly tough questions (that they ignored the first week out...). Considering they're patching things left and right for problems that have existed more or less since early beta, when they were warned about the issues that they chose to ignore until after release, yeah, they're in a bit of a panic and in damage control mode.

Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Electronic Arts, BioWare, and BioWare AUSTIN, spent 6 years developing the game. All of the companies and their affiliates had executives, designers, programmers, lawyers, marketing staff, and others, out heavily promoting Star Wars: The Old Republic. Interviews, press junkets, blogs, public and private game industry event panel appearances, you name it, this game was pushed, and pushed hard. They revealed plans, claimed to know what the public wanted, revealed overarching and sweeping grand vision statements, voiced an in-depth knowledge of what they KNEW that they could and should NOT do... ...and then changed a great deal of what they said they were going to release, shredded the vision, and gave us a shadow of what they said they were going to give us. The reviewers opinions based upon expectations are the fault of LFL, LA, EA, BW, and BWA. Don't like the truth? Tough. Subscription numbers and trends in a few months will be telling on which way things are going, but right now, BWA is acting like they're in a panic, and the stock holders know it.

There are two primary reasons that there are multiple servers; technical, and practical. From the technical perspective we have to consider the architecture of the server component of the game engine, which was simply not designed to allow everyone to be in one place and interact with each other, though that can be overcome with massive server clustering technologies, and consider the hardware requirements on the client side, which must obtain and process information across a network connection related to everyone in their immediate vicinity that they *might* choose to interact with. From a practical perspective, the respawn rates would have to accomodate the additional amounts of players, all conducting the same quests, in the same areas.

BWA is very non-committal to producing or supporting features that for SIX YEARS of development time they IGNORED or outright REFUSED to build into their product. They pushed a product out the door 3 months early with features that by even SEVEN year old standards is mediocre. And now they're doing exactly what I said they were going to do; giving us IOU's with no committed set-in-stone features or release date. They're telling us "Give us all of your money, we might eventually get around to giving you what you want. Some day. Trust us! Just pay for us to keep things in operation until we get around to it." Pure arrogance.

Support of end-user client modifications is something that must be built in to the game from the ground-up. HeroEngine is NOT designed for end-user modifications, something that BioWare AUSTIN obviously failed to account for with their initial design, or arrogantly decreed that they wouldn't allow it... either way, this is why we're having the issues we're having, because the devs decided that they wanted it their way, and no other way. Now, there is talk that they may be looking into what's reqiured to support end-user client mods... but I'm betting that's something that's going to take serious work and a major redesign.

I'm pretty much treating my Jedi Knight Sentinel as a World of Warcraft Paladin and facerolling. Additionally, there are so many freaking abilities, they won't all fit on the bottom bar, and because I play widescreen on 3 monitors and I can't adjust the !#@$%@!#$% UI because of the ARROGANCE of the devs, it's impossible to get to items in the side bars during combat. Unreachable or always greyed out/flashing/glowing, it doesn't matter. Punch everything and see what fires off, because the global cool down means you don't lose anything by hitting things in quick succession if they're not ready, though they *might* be ready, and just not showing it. To say nothing of the server delays I've noticed that are STILL present, especially in low health situations. When a mob has me down to 9% health and doesn't do anything special, why do I go from 9 to 0, when I've been slowly whittled down the entire fight? Perhaps a combat log can shed some light on the situation on what's really going on, because my medpac sometimes won't fire off.

Coincidence? I think not. Warhammer was made by Mythic... which became EA Mythic... When EA bought BioWare, and formed BioWare Austin... a large amount of Mythic employees were absorbed by BioWare Austin.

Ever notice that most screenshots of most HeroEngine games look pretty much identical... UI elements... UI animations... most buildings and their textures... Those claiming most of the code has changed from what HE gave to BioWare AUSTIN to what it is now... are smoking something. When HE released new features, thoes features made it into the beta and now release. That pretty much sums up the fact that a lot of the CLIENT code that we interact with is mostly pure HE.

Failure.

There are multiple reasons why posts are hidden/deleted or rewritten by Forum Moderators. Nearly all of the reasons for the moderator action seem to NOT include "because the gushing Fanboy was attempting to shout down criticism of the game." The lack of forum moderation going after those attempting to cheerlead the developers into thinking that everything is perfect, while attacking those of us who honestly point out real problems with the game, is quite telling. While I doubt its deliberate... it certainly might be. Gotta prop up the corporate stock by showing everything is jusssst fine, right? There is absolutely no disconnect. James Ohlen's September 23, 2011 Gamasutra interview pretty much solidified that yes, they WERE ignoring their testers, because they, as devs, knew what was best for us and the game. Its only now, well after the fact, that they're coming to terms with the fact that NO, they did NOT know what was best for us, and that if they had listened to their testers in the FIRST place, they wouldn't have to go back and fix things; right out the gate they've created a situation of fix, test, fix again, test again, etc., that they claimed to be avoiding. Oops. Then again, many of us told them they were releasing the game at least 3 months too early. Unlike other professional entertainment software companies, the release date was obviously at least partially driven by sales and marketing concerns, not by quality concerns. There's a lot of people at EA and BioWare Austin that need to be fired for kicking it out the door too early. James Ohlen...

As a Jedi Sentinel, I concur. The new UI changes make things much worse. Now, if they'd get rid of the stupid GCD and just stick with ability cooldowns, then that would also solve the problem. GCD's have no place in an MMO that also enforces additional ability cooldowns. But that's just my professional opinion on the subject.

Keep thinking that. Apathy will kill a sandbox, just about every time. Now, throw in some supported story for players to experience that's designed by professionals, and it might survive. Let the general public at it... and people will either find nothing to do, or find too much garbage that they have to wade through to find good content, which requires too much effort.

You know, I will absolutely give credit where it's due, when its deserved. For the specific situation that you and your son are in, *good* VO work is a very welcome feature. The rest of us do tend to take things for granted, and some of us may not fully like what BioWare Austin chose to do, but none of us wishes to detract from the experiences you and your son are having with SWTOR. It is very nice to see an absolute, unquestionably positive impact made by the computer software gaming industry. As a fellow gamer, thanks for taking the time to post that!

The most basic flaw of the entire "Guild Summit", is the underlying belief that Guild Masters 1) WILL represent viewpoints other than their own, and, 2) CAN represent viewpoints other than their own. The logic of GM = Capable and Objective Representative is seriously flawed. The fact that subscriber money is going to be spent to fly an individual out to Texas and put them up in a hotel, when the only viewpoint they are humanly capable of actually representing is one they themselves believe in, i.e. "personal viewpoints", is rather insulting to every single individual not invited to participate in "event".

Blizzard made a game that's accessible to casual players, yet still retains modes of play challenging enough for most other players. THAT is why is grew in popularity. Over the course of seven years, it's grown and shrunk with the ebb and flow of various market forces, yet overall, it's maintained a massive edge over its competition, due to the simple fact that Blizzard listens to their testsrs and customers. BioWare AUSTIN released a game to the market that *IGNORED* major forms of input from the majority of their pre-release testers, and fell victim to 1) developer arrogance, and 2) developer comfort, due directly to 3) gushing fanboy's that fawned and praised every aspect of the game, and vehemently shouted down even the most minor forms of written or vocalized criticism. Accessibility, feature sets, mid game content, end game content, and storylines, were all shredded, repeatedly. Now, after the fact, BWA may finally be doing something about it. I certainly hope they do. Too bad they've lost 1.25 years of development time and have to play catch up. And for the record, "WoW Pandas" is probably the most widely requested "missing" feature from original Warcraft lore. Pandarens aren't new. There were legal reasons why they were missing.

The problem isn't necessarily that the bosses are "too difficult", it's that the Jedi Knight class is a piece of paper. It's as if armor does not exist on us at all, especially compared to our companions (such as Kira, in LIGHT armor, who typically comes out with 1/5 the damage *I* do). At some point, BWA nerfed us (possibly during later stages of Beta), beefed up mobs, and, it sometimes feels, turned off armor.

Voice acting is a gimmick, that apparently works on the OP. First time players of the quests may be impressed that everything is voiced... until they realize that they skip the VO work because it takes too long to listen to a trash NPC drone on and on and on, spewing mindless drivel that has absolutely no relationship to any main story element whatsoever. To make matters worse, there's long pauses as cut-scenes are setup, animations are kicked in, and the action comes to a grinding halt as things are loaded. For. Nearly. Every. Quest. Sorry. For me, that's a massive waste of resources on a flashy element that should NOT have been present for a good 90%+ of the quests. Immediate VO work, without the cut-scene animations, might also have worked better. The whole production, though, kills immersion. It's not fun. It becomes tedious, very quickly. They should have concentrated VO and cut-scene work on class-quests only, perhaps some VO work for major quests, and no extensive VO work for everything else. They wasted resources and development time. But then... BWA would know this, if they actually listened to their testers that provided them honest and objective opinions.