It was too early, so I brought them health food instead - Donuts!

Again, apologize for the inconvenience, but things ran smoothly this morning and we only needed about 75 minutes. Enjoy the 40th anniversary of Star Wars™ and any holidays you may be celebrating. ---Keith

Hey all, I’ve noticed a lot of concern about maintenances and the impact it has on your game time. We probably should have just given you a schedule of activity for the month of May and explained what was going on. Going forward, toward the beginning of each month, Eric will provide a schedule of that month’s maintenance. So, what’s been going on this past month? Essentially, we have been migrating from one Datacenter to another and upgrading the Game Server hardware and supporting software. You won't directly notice improvements in performance, but these changes dramatically help us maintain the game and improve its overall reliability. As you can imagine, it’s an enormous undertaking to move absolutely everything – all servers and related hardware, supporting hardware, network infrastructure, upgrading the operating systems, management systems and tools, and more. For the most part, we’ve been able to do it without a ton of downtime, but there’s been a couple times this month where the migration didn’t go as planned. As a result, we had to extend the maintenance window. Not fun for you nor for us! Typically, we have a maintenance every two weeks and usually on a Tuesday. There’s a lot of coordination required between teams, as it’s not just turning servers off/on, but making sure all services spin up properly, databases are in good shape, all server hardware is checked, supporting software is updated, and more. No excuses, just means to keep the game healthy we need to validate everything and much of the work requires players to be offline. What’s happening on Thursday should be the last of the migration components, but some of these impact our game services. So, this requires us to ensure no in-game activity is happening, and shutdown the Live Game. Our sincerest apologies to everyone as we did not realize it was a holiday (our bad for not looking at the calendar). We still need to have the maintenance, but I’ve asked the team to start an hour earlier and if at all possible shorten the window. We will get SWTOR back online as fast as possible. The next scheduled downtime is June 13th and that maintenance is for Game Update 5.2.2. It’s possible we may need to restart everything on June 6th to flesh out any potential issues, but we’ll let you know. Thanks for understanding and again, we’ll continue to improve our communications with you. ---Keith

So, what I read from your comments is we need to offer a new Character Perk - "Vehicle Collision Prevention". I'll look into it. <grin>

I may be opening a can of worms () by replying, but I wanted to address the question about Tier 5. Essentially, what you are seeing is just old data that needs to be purged. We have no plans to add Tier 5 levels/crates to Galactic Command anytime soon. I'll be sure to kick off a thread after I release the Roadmap to dive deeper into our gearing vision for the coming year. That way, we're all on the same footing and can have a good discussion about what and when. ---Keith

On this point you are correct - The Harbinger issues are not linked directly to the Roadmap, but as you know, we've had to address a number of issues with that server over the past couple months. We even had to extend the downtime this past month to resolve database concerns of which we communicated fairly regularly during the outage. I won't give you platitudes about the issues you've raised, but I also do not want to enter into contentious discussions about upcoming changes, when I haven't told you what we're doing, yet. I fully understand your frustration and hope you'll hang with me long enough to realize how much I do care about our players, our game, and everyone's opinions. The team will deliver some amazing changes this year and it won't all be bling. Respectfully, Keith

Hey everyone, I wanted to let you know I’m still on target to deliver the SWTOR Roadmap this month. I will share with you the direction for each SWTOR gameplay area, our plans for improving a variety of in-game experiences, and insight into how we’ll be communicating with you going forward. In the meantime, I’d like to continue providing you with a weekly update. Last week, I gave you a few of the highlights for the next game update coming in June (5.2.2); here’s another one – You’ll now be able to customize Theron’s outfit! ---Keith

Just for clarification - It's all Tier 1 gear slots.

Hey everyone, Wanted to provide an update on my first Producer Roadmap, but getting it published is taking longer than I anticipated. Partly my own fault, as my Dad came to visit and I took a few days off over the past couple of weeks to spend time with him. This ultimately slowed my progress but I am back in full swing now and pushing to get the roadmap completed. I honestly thought I would have had the roadmap done and communicated already, but, I realistically need more time to finalize it. Translated: That means end of this month, but with full intention of delivering it sooner. <sad face> This is not something I wanted to tell you, but I promised to keep you up-to-date on what’s happening. While you continue to wait, here’s a few highlights of Game Update 5.2.2 scheduled for mid-June (yes, in 2017): The Nar Shaddaa Nightlife event returns with old and some awesome new rewards New Character Perks to increase your speeder piloting speed to 120% and 130% Companions will gain influence through standard crew skill missions Full Tier 1 gear available from existing Fleet vendors using Command Tokens – this means you can obtain a full bonus gear set for under 800 Command Tokens. You will be able to choose the type of gear you want to purchase (DPS, Tank, or Healer). We made a variety of changes to Galactic Starfighter – primarily aimed at reducing the cost, increasing requisition rewards, and offering all players a Gunship and Bomber as standard ships (available in your hangar). I will continue to pass on roadmap updates as I have them. We do have an exciting year ahead of us and I look forward to sharing it you. ---Keith

We do believe we resolved the issues. The team will keep watch! Hope you get plenty of play time this evening. ---Keith

I just checked your server and was able to login successfully. Are you still having issues?

I just had a chat with our Tech Team and they are looking into the login issues you are experiencing. We'll figure it out and get back to you. Sorry for all the apparent hardware issues today.

Great, that's what I was going to recommend. We saw the same behavior on a few our systems, but after we restarted the launcher, all seemed fine. We'll keep an eye on this issue, too.

Some people maybe, but many of us on the team were still here making sure things continued to run smoothly.

Hey everyone, Wow, what a day trying to get everyone back in the game! As you already know, maintenance today has not gone as planned. So, I felt it was important to jump in and discuss what's transpired and what's going on. First, during our initial validation steps this morning, anyone using BitRaider to update the SWTOR client quickly discovered nothing was actually downloaded. This delayed the opening by about an hour. Second, as soon as we were ready to verify everything was working properly (around 11:30am CT), we found we couldn't connect to the game and were receiving a Login Server is unavailable message. Unfortunately, this was a Datacenter wide issue, preventing access to more than just SWTOR. It took a while to identify what was causing the issue, so they were unable to provide all of us with an ETA. Third, we now have access to the game, and everyone should be able to patch their clients, but we are still having connection issues with the back-end services. Again, we don't have an ETA on full resolution, yet. I sincerely apologize for all the delays today. I've already had discussions with all the teams involved and it remains my personal goal to have any SWTOR maintenance complete early; not be delayed like what happened today. Thanks for your understanding and patience with us today! ---Keith

Uhhh! Good thing I read your whole post and didn't reset anything!

I've seen many of them! I realize the clock is ticking and information never comes fast enough. In the meantime, I'm ensuring the Roadmap is solid and expect it will address many questions, but not everything. Yet, hopefully, we can have additional dialog to provide clarity for areas of concern.

Hey there, never is way too long of a time! So, how about I include an update about class balance in the Roadmap or sooner if I have it available? We're still working on the details and then it'll go through the normal internal review cycles. Once we are all in agreement, we'll get the Roadmap posted up and then we can discuss the various upcoming changes.

Hey, making me do extra work. It should be 125 CXP and 250 with the 100% boost.

Hey all, Just following up on the issue about the Daily Rewards while on Iokath. In the next patch, likely on May 2nd, we're adding a CXP pack and a Credit Explosion pack to the dailies where you control a Mouse Droid, a Monitor Droid, or a Walker. Note this is just a temporary solution and I'll follow up at a later date if we decide to do something different. ---Keith

I agree. This is definitely something we want to improve. I'll let you know when we can roll out changes.

You do not need to pay to do daily missions. That was for controlling a droid, walker, or turret, where there is a credit cost with some Iokath currency. The daily you were on indicated you needed to interact with the various terminals and when you did that, the quest advanced. This was only a training/tutorial mission to teach you were to go for each of the various toys. It just wasn't very clear since it immediately asked you to spend. I'll see if we can do something about that for the future.

Hey don't be picking on my Commando! We finally got it perfect! Now, if I can just get them to tweak my Operative/Scoundrel healers....hmmmm...

One of the comments I’ve often seen is my reference to a Roadmap. I intend to include what’s specifically coming in the next 90-120 days along with an overview of our plans for the remainder of the year. But, I’ll provide quarterly updates and keep you apprised of any schedule changes.

Hey all, I’m just back from Orlando and have been focused all day ensuring Game Update 5.2 was available for everyone. But, thank you for the congrats and the warm welcome. I’m trying to figure out how to respond to everything so I can have fun with you guys, but also be able to put on my Producer hat and sometimes be serious, too. The foundation between us has to be based on communication and feedback. I won’t promise you something we can’t deliver, nor will I purposely hide things you need to know. As I mentioned in my introduction, I’ll be providing a SWTOR 2017 Roadmap in the next few weeks. In the meantime, look for responses from me on the Forums throughout this week and beyond. I’ll do my very best to be available. ---Keith