Hey all, Recently, we have had more maintenances than normal. This was compounded by our update issues last Thursday which led to over 10 hours of maintenance. Thursday’s issue along with the extra downtime have impacted all of our playtime, and they especially are bothersome when you consider how much XP and CXP you lost from the Double XP/CXP event was running along with the over the top CXP for Daily Areas. So, to make sure your characters can take advantage from both, here’s what we going to do: Since the Double XP/CXP event ended on Tuesday, we’ve decided to bring it back earlier than planned. That is, we had scheduled to make it available in December around the holidays, but it’ll return with the launch of Game Update 5.5. That will give you another full week to benefit from the event. The Daily Area bug is also going to stick around for a few weeks. As Eric mentioned in another post, our plan was to fix it next week in another patch, but we’ve decided to hold off any changes until Game Update 5.5. I’m personally leveraging this as a means of playing my other toons and raising their Command Rank to 300. Honestly, it’s been a lot of fun seeing so many other players taking advantage, too. It is very clear everyone is really enjoying higher rewards on the older Daily Missions. As a result, we are exploring some options such as increasing CXP values above their base rewards, making rotating daily objectives worth high bonuses, and more. We will let you know where we land on these discussions, but one thing is for certain, higher CXP values are very motivational. Again, I want to thank you all for your patience the past couple of weeks. Keith---

Thanks for this post. We messed up, we admitted it, we fixed it, and we tried to put this behind us. I totally agree with your statement about our internal processes and doing what we can to prevent this from happening again. ---Keith

It's being reviewed by our QA team and they'll work with the Dev Team to get the issues addressed. No ETA at the moment. Keith---

Hey everyone, I want to start by apologizing for the unexpected and prolonged downtime today. This isn’t something we ever want to happen, but when it does, we take it seriously and do everything we can to resolve the issue or issues. We are adding additional processes to try and prevent this particular situation from happening again. Here’s essentially what took place today and what’s behind the long downtime: What happened? Wasn’t this tested? The issues we encountered were fairly complex, and having more than one just made things complicated. The first problem was the patch for our BitRaider and SSN launchers were inconsistent and ended up causing different issues after we took the servers out of maintenance. As a result, some of you actually received a game patch, while others didn’t get anything. You’d think we would catch that in our normal tests, but it was an oversight in our process which we have since corrected. The big issue was part of the patch that should have been included was missing data, so it was pulling information from 5.4 instead of 5.4a. The net result was a variety of issues – including some of the patch changes didn’t seem like they were deployed. Although we extensively test all of our updates at all stages of the process, the missing parts just caused enough oddball problems, we had to take the game down again to figure out what was going on. In reality, had I been a little more patient, we would have caught the issues beforehand, yet the long downtime would not have been avoided. In addition, not everything we had planned to fix is actually included. For example, we have resolved the exploit with the Umbara Stronghold, but it didn’t make it in the 5.4a patch. Therefore, we have our normal infrastructure maintenance planned for next Wednesday, so our current plan is to deploy the change at that time. We implore you to not participate in this exploit as we don’t want any further disruptions in your game play. Players lost time today, especially in the EU, is anything being done? Losing playtime is always painful, especially when there is a “double” event running and Dailies awarding crazy high CXP. I’m kicking around a variety of options with the team, as we want to apologize and reward your patience. Some of you have asked to have our Double XP/CXP event extended and others have asked us to keep the current CXP amounts for the Daily Areas. Others have asked for different compensation, and we’re looking at all options as the last couple weeks have been tough on all of us. We’ll lock down what exactly we’re doing and let you know in the coming days. Again, thank you all for your patience today. --Keith-

hahahaha! Thanks for that! -Keith--

I just did Section X on my Dark V and my Light V toons and no impact. When you submit the bug, please try to identify everything you were doing/did - like I logged out when I finished the Aurora Cannon quest, or what you did immediately after leaving Section X. Don't give the details in this thread as it'll just get lost and our QA team won't pick it up. Thanks, Keith---

Hey all, When I found out about the substantially increased CXP in the daily areas I had to go check if it was real. So, I tested it on my main characters, and validated it across a variety of other characters, and sure enough, it was true. I even used the CXP Perk, and the CXP 100% boost, just to see how much I could get on each quest. Then, realizing we needed to stay indoors for the weekend, I decided to see how many Command Ranks I could gain on just one toon, by doing all the Daily Areas each day, along with daily FPs, and other normal activities. I managed to gain 200 levels and to echo a lot of your comments here, it was fun to see so many others on Yavin, in Black Hole, over on Iokath and Section X. I also did Oricon and had forgotten how fun those quests were to do, too. There's a legitimate reason to lower the CXP values as they are out of whack with the rest of the game, but there's an even more compelling reason to not lower it all the way back to 75 and to review the values across the board. I like a lot of your suggestions about rotating it, finding a good compromised amount, giving you a reason to visit these areas, and substantially reducing the time it takes to level up your alts (catch-up mechanic). So, thanks for all the ideas. We'll decide what to do next week, but in the meantime, take advantage of this massive CXP change. I'm confident that'll help guide us in our discussions and decision about what to do next. ---Keith

Ooops, you are correct, it is on Odessen! Thanks, Keith---

That's the cost of buying the Stronghold, so it's not actually a discount since you need to run the Flashpoint enough times to acquire the Key. Once you have the Key, you can go purchase the stronghold on the fleet. Someone else asked if the 5,000 credits was the cost for the additional rooms, too? No, those are similar to the cost of Manaan rooms. --Keith-

Hey all, I've been heads down on whole variety of things the last few weeks, so I haven't been as active on the forums nor have I been able to keep up with PMs. I've also been drafting the next Roadmap update and making changes based on feedback I've been given and read here in the thread. It'll be few weeks before the Roadmap is ready to release, as we're making final refinements to the content and delivery schedules. Sorry about having to delay Game Update 5.4, but as Musco pointed out, it was too impactful to release. For those who earn the ability to open the Umbara Stronghold, I'm sure you'll find the 5,000 credit price versus the normal 2M credits a nice change. Lastly, we've had a few queuing hiccups on our East Coast servers over the past couple weeks, but we're making some adjustments in tomorrow's maintenance that should resolve those going forward. -Keith--

We did identify what is causing the issue. We expect to roll it out in conjunction with Game Update 5.4 on Tuesday. It may take a couple more updates to ensure we nailed it. I know it's irritating and we're doing our best to minimize the impact. For example, the game is set up to queue to prevent more players from logging in while the DB writes out all your data. Better to hold everyone out and not lose anything (e.g., rollback). Yes, it would be best if that didn't happen at all, and that's the change we've scheduled for Tuesday. Thanks for your patience. Keith---

We resolved the bottleneck and the queue instantly cleared. Keith---

Looking at it right now. Will let you know when we get it resolved. ---Keith

We did experience a queue for about 25 minutes, but were able to locate the issue and resolve without any downtime. Apologize for the inconvenience. --Keith-

The Jedi Covenant server is now be ready for logins. We're still looking at the root issue, but apparently related to a stuck process which caused everything to backup. The queuing you experienced is an automatic/failsafe mechanism to prevent further logins and thus allow the Database to catch up. We do not know if there will be any rollbacks for the players who were online at the time. My apologies for the inconvenience this caused you. Regards, Keith---

We are still working on the Server. Took it offline to prevent anyone else from attempting to login. Keith---

We're looking into what caused the Queuing issue and have taken the Server offline to keep anyone else from attempting to login while we investigate. ---Keith

We are looking into the queue on Jedi Covenant. Soon as I get details about what's up, will post them here. ---Keith

For the specific Guild issues you’ve raised, we would need to ensure the entire Guild, their Flagship/decorations, Bank/Tabs/items, and Stronghold/decorations remain 100% intact. The goal would be for the Guild members to notice absolutely nothing different and this means any returning players would still be in your guild unless you specifically removed them. Bottom line for your Guild would be making sure we protect all your hard work. The losing of character names is one of the key points we are still discussing. We know there’s a variety of issues to resolve including, but not limited to, name collisions, establishing a priority system, purging of old names beforehand, and players attempting to reserve names. We all have character names we want to preserve, so this is a key factor in the overall decision. -Keith--

Will see what we can do about it! Keith---

Thanks for the /slap! Yep, we haven't been communicating anything about our server plans, but I have dropped a number of hints. Even in the interview I did, I said we are considering virtually everything in this thread, plus a ton of other technical details. I know you all know this, but I'll remind you anyway, if a server merge was the direction, then we need to make sure we understand the reasons why players don't want to move. We have hardware/software, connectivity, and database considerations. We also have a ton of in-game 'things' to consider like Legacy Cargo Hold slots across multiple-servers, decorations and Strongholds, currency caps, merging of Legacies, number of characters on a server, keeping guilds and guild assets intact, and more. You also have Conquests and the domination of large guilds over everyone else, area respawn rates, and so on. Lastly, as we've done with our East Coast servers, we need to upgrade the environment to ensure it's a great experience for everyone. I am very hopeful I can layout the game plan for you in the upcoming Roadmap. I'm not committing to that, yet, as there are a number of questions I need answered before I can give you any further insight. Have a great weekend, Keith---

You nailed it. Even though it may not be apparent, I send so many of your suggestions to the Dev Team. We discuss them, debate them, then if we like something, we determine the effort, and decide when to do it. Keep in mind, we have to work to a schedule to ensure we deliver all agreed upon parts at the right time. What may seem a simple change could very well add weeks of not just Development time, but Engineering, QA, reschedule of VO recordings, localization, and more. Although I'm notorious about asking for changes mid-stream, we desperately try not to, as it can impact everyone and cause schedule delays. --Keith- ps...sorry for all the posts seemingly all at once. We've been heads down this past week on various planning activities (including the Roadmap update) and realized we hadn't kept you apprised.

We did read the whole thread and remember we didn't offer that as an option as progression is still part of PvP. Moving Bolster to 250 virtually eliminates the need to get gear and reduces the value for those who have earned Tier 4 pieces. The right answer is we need to resolve the PvP gearing issues, so Bolster gets removed as a central issue. Keith---

Actually, we do care about all of our players. That's why we will address currencies and content access for all players this year, too. ---Keith

Great questions. As I outlined in the Roadmap, we are returning to our MMO roots, but as everyone knows, we were focused on story development and left most MMO content alone for the past couple years. To change our direction, we had to retool, reorganize, hire new talent, and get everyone on board with the changed direction. That takes time, so we made a choice and decided to release the Operation Boss encounters one at a time. This gave us more time to design, polish, test, and get insight directly from players, versus making everyone wait all year before we released 5 new bosses. It wasn't an easy decision, as we knew we were going to be criticized while impacting progression efforts. But, honestly, it was the right call. We're discussing future content, how to release it, what's going to be included, and when, but we won't be ready to disclose our next year's plans for a while. I know that's vague, yet it gives you an idea of where we're headed. ---Keith