/r/swtor is filled with too many white knights and people with their fingers stuck in their ears. While we do not need doomsayers, naysayers and so forth, we do a voice to things that are actual issues that are outside of the moderator control on the SWTOR forums and one moderated to promote constructive, but honest (re: no bootlicking) criticism of this game. Gather around, brethren, for let us create a place of honest and open dialogue that calls Bioware out on their massaged, corporate responses and inability to admit that there are fundamental issues with the game and "working on it" is all well and good, but the simple fact that it was allowed to proceed as is was a mistake.

So my previous thread was closed for not being constructive enough. So after today's rather large announcements... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=164481 And today's interesting hypotheses... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162079 I feel the need to reiterate these parts of my original post: I would suggest you invest way more money in getting the engine up and running. If this means going a little deeper in the red, I'm sure it will pay off in the long run. If you have to contract Simutronics to help you, that might be good as well. I would also recommend being more responsive and open with your community. Sure, every marketing guy in the business, with the exception of Paul Christoforo, will tell you that admitting your mistakes is like a kiss of death. You will probably lose more customers. But you might also get a reputation for integrity and when you actually do have good news to report, people will be more apt to believe you. This guy could probably help you get back on your feet: http://imgur.com/RccuX Good night, happy life day.

So after today's rather large announcements... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=164481 And today's interesting hypotheses... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162079 I feel the need to reiterate these parts of my original post You know who this makes happy? This guy: http://imgur.com/RccuX Good night, happy life day.

I'll also mirror my response here. I was a year out of college when WoW launched. The F2P model was unheard of and not even considered good business sense when WoW launched. Blizzard had nothing else after WoW. No SCII, no D3 and SC:Ghost was getting scrapped or had been. They had to make it work. EA is under no such compulsions. If this game proves more trouble to maintain than its worth, they'll cut it in a heartbeat and Bioware will make Battlefield Adventures for them or something.

Group Finder. Not Dungeon Finder. Was it bad? Marginally. But it was better than what we got here. Step in the right direction. And like I said in the last thread, I am also Mazinger-Z. I made my account circa 2008. I had to reroll because I could not change my e-mail address because I also had an Origin account under the new e-mail address. Attempts to change the e-mail address on SWTOR would try to change the linked Origin account and "collide" with the already existing account for the new e-mail address. I asked Bioware/EA to help me out here, but they would have to have nuked my ME2 goodies to get the job done.

(The original thread was nuked for violating forum TOS for referencing religion, so here is your religion-free version) So after playing beta, EGA and the first few days of launch, I predict that SWTOR will go F2P in about six months. Lazy This is perhaps the biggest misstep. Biowhore and Evil Arts cut corners by licensing the HeroEngine instead of developing their own. Now, as a developer professionally, I would normally say "Good for them," but it is painfully clear not much money went into developing this engine into something for a AAA MMO. As of 9/2011, the engine still does not support multiple cores nor a 64-bit client. Even WoW supports multiple cores and a 64-bit client. This is sloth, and the fact that BW/EA did not bother to invest in the backbone of this game. Players will burn through your content and dialog. And when they get into the routine of playing the repetitive parts of the game, they will really start to notice how little was put into this engine. Ignoring your users The community management sucks. The interaction is canned corporate responses. There is no detail, the only admitted problem is Taris and that's only because quite literally hundreds of players have fallen into a figurative black hole on that world. This is a poor way to treat your community. To treat them like children. As if giving them information is something they could not handle. Your customers are not asking you to cater to their every whim (well, most of them), but they do enjoy having information that allows them to make informed decisions... like... do they actually need to upgrade, or do you have a really crappy, inefficient engine that you'll eventually patch and do we just suffer or spend our money to get new hardware. Stuff like that. This smacks of pride. Being greedy Another major misstep here was the revocation of a grace period and only reinstating a small span of time after the community set you on fire for it. Given the insanity of the postal services during this time of year, the seven day grace period would have shown forethought and consideration. Can't let those players play an extra week! They could be giving us money instead! Given the fact that this is EA, if the cost of maintaining a viable player base, due to initial craptacular implementation or lack of project planning, costs more money, they are going to court the players until they at least make ends meet so they can save some face in front of the investors. Then they will begin hiking back resources to adding or supporting this game and ultimately F2P with microtransactions. One of the reasons WoW did so well was that Blizzard had all its eggs in that basket. SCII and D3 were not coming out for a long, long time and SC:Ghost was scrapped. They had to stick it out and make it profitable and look at it now. Be sure, if EA can figure out the numbers to make their enterprise more profitable that does not involve SWTOR (in the short term), they'll cut this project quick. Fostering anger in their community This one is on the community management again. They foster this environment. Poor details, poor handling of users, poor customer service. Closing duplicate threads with the snarky "Go here" as if to hide the sheer number of pissed off people. It all contributes to the community's anger at how this is being mishandled. Eventually, that anger is going to translate into people not staying past the free 30 days. WoW Clone, Family Guy Style This game is WoW without all the bells in whistles. It starts out sleeker than WoW, but is missing things that are pretty integral to WoW's success during the end of Vanilla and Burning Crusade. A solid end-game, both PvE and PvP. Better community tools like a group finder (I mean a group finder, not a cross-faction hullabaloo) and so forth. Three years and 100 million dollars for a watered down WoW clone with an exhaustible story and thoroughly abused IP. Engorging your servers I chalk this up to servers. Yes, everyone has launch issues, but given the fact that they put us through that painful EGA, you would think they would have put in the infrastructure to migrate your character to a different one, put in some server caps to prevent qs and everything else. Nope, not happening. So instead they have engorged themselves on players and we are all suffering for it. And with these missteps, I call it here and now. F2P in 6 mos. It will not go away, but I seriously doubt you will see much more polish.

I like it. It makes claims with no defined goals or parameters making it impossible to actually test the sincerity / veracity of said claims. A masterful attempt at a mollifying anyone without a sense of corporate double-talk.

/tip jar

Reid's scared of the forum community. All our rage has hurt his wittle feelings. So much so that he felt the need to yell at the twitter folks. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=16931 Your EGA tears are not real issues. - Paraphrased from Stephen Reid

I can only laugh at this thread as I went to work immediately after posting it and kind of watched it snowball all day. First and foremost, let me say that while I did send him a few tweets, if you look at his history he's been actually fielding issues all day. I had just followed him that morning and that scrolled across the screen, so I posted it. Second, let me say to the other support veterans, when I did support, it was supporting the financial systems of clients that pumped, individually, thousands of dollars into the company a month (auto industry). While this pales in comparison to your MMO subscriber, a public gaffe on something as pan-spanning as Twitter may as well cost more than just a single subscriber's dollars. (Cue the crowd that says 'good' but EA loves its monies) For clarification, this has very little to do with the actual EGA. Quite frankly, had it been posted beforehand with a definitive plan, I would be all for it. I could know I could let the issue die until say... Friday. But without knowing the exact process, all you can do is bang away at your inbox and monitor the forums and get frustrated with each button push. And quite frankly, they seem to be "all or nothing" on pleasing the users and have determined "why bother" if they are going to get *****ed at anyway. I would settle for mollifying as many people as I could with well-thought out explanations and details on how things will progress so users had an idea on how this was going to impact them. And even if it all did not go to plan, then you can still tell them what went wrong. Posing as the all-mysterious developers whose details are not for us mere mortals further enflame things. It does not show any solidarity between community and the developers. So while this has little to do with the EGA, it has everything to do with tone and respect for the base. I bought this on Best Buy and all they said was early access. Anyway, the launch of an MMO is the courtship period for your subscriber base and name a successful MMO that's been more tightlipped about how things are going. At the very least with your normal MMO launch, everyone is having the same experience and are a lot more forgiving (since said experience is par for the course). Again, the EGA staggering would not have been an issue if more PR care was taken and that's the crux of the point. The CM has been poor for those stuck on the outside. Anyway, continue on with your calls of entitlement (Good lord, how dare you expect above-Comcast quality service) and "first-world-problems" (because God forbid that after you've eliminated the third-world, there's no room for improvement).

https://twitter.com/#!/Rockjaw/status/146967418332397568 Okay, whether you believe he's in the right or not, this is poor community relations. As someone who has worked support, this would have gotten me fired. Even if you ignore a customer's issues, you never verbally marginalize it. Never.

And just because I get a free pen from a company interested in doing business with me at a trade show doesn't mean I'll go "I'm lucky its free" when it leaks in my breast pocket. Nor will I ignore the fact that other people at the show are walking around with similar ink stains around their shirt pockets. I could honestly not care about EGA as a specific feature. And this is what people do not get. I was offered something and I am getting short-changed on it. Yes, it came with the disclaimer of "up to" but that's the same language a cable company, specifically Comcast, when selling you on its service. It does not bode well when your MMO developer's sales tactics and policies mimic those of a company known for its customer satisfaction like Comcast. It is a love-hate relationship. I would love to see SWTOR be successful, but I do not see this as a formula for success, or at least long-term success. If you are going to start out with an adversarial relationship on the people who took a leap of faith with your silly product, you are setting yourself up for SWG all over again.

I pre-ordered the first week of November via Best Buy. The code I got was already in use. I called BB and they said it was a known issue and that the publisher / developer system had begun issuing duplicate codes. They said they would have a fix by 30 days prior to release. I never got an e-mail back resolving my issue, Thanksgiving holiday, etc, etc. So it was the first week of December before I finally got BB to cough up a proper code.

You miss the point. There is a certain amount of unapologeticness about how this is being handled. Subscriber goodwill is something to be cultivated, not squandered. EA/Bioware are setting the tone of customer-relationship going forward and right now it is adversarial and lacking faith. Considering the last time a major corporation handled SW as an MMO, you would think that a force march lock step policy without apology would be a bad way to go. Tho, to be frank, DA2 was already a symptom of Bioware's soul being excised.

Ah, you can smell the elitism. I love the "see I wear big boy pants"-ness off the people who complain about entitlements. SWTOR is not WoW by any stretch. Unless EA's aready planned its obselesence, they will need a healthy developer-community relationship to retain subscribers through its gaffes and other game releases. What I realky enjoy is that everyone going along with the EGA seems to be showing some faux courage, almost like they are kicking the other players and hissing, "Are you trying to ruin ths for me?" A lot of this is mostly due to poor handling on Bioware and EA's part. There is nothing to off balance whats being lost to those who are getting into the game late. I have friends who are not waiting for me and we wanted to level our characters together (rp hooer here). EA also cut the grace period, so if your game has not arrived on the 20th, you are SOL without your launch code. None of this inspires faith or trust or a willingness to put up with mistakes. Bioware talks a good game, but if it expects people to go along with it, they need to follow through on their future promises. EA/Bioware has done little to build customer loyalty at launch.