[Read-Only Forums - Stop It]

I don't know who you're trying to kid with this read-only forum garbage. There is absolutely no reason why you should need to turn off all posting on the forums every time you take the servers down for an unnecessarily-long maintenance, which is starting to happen with alarming frequency and decreasing lead-time.

 

I know fanboys are going to come in here and post their made-up reasons why its somehow necessary. Don't bother.

 

Every other MMO continues to allow forum posts while servers are under maintenance, unless the forums themselves are under maintenance. You always shut down forum posts shortly before the server announcements that the servers will be coming down in 15 minutes.

 

The only logical explanation for this is that they want to stifle speech and complaints on their forums. This is certainly within their rights. Its certainly within my rights to complain about it, talk about why it sucks and get them to change this absurd policy.

 

BioWare's excessive downtime is made worse by the fact that a good chunk of the time, they don't even tell us why the servers are being taken down or why the maintenance is extended. They don't even tell us after the fact. This shows that the community staff is either kept completely in the dark about the reasons, or they have a blatant disrespect for the players who pay to keep the lights on in their corporate megaplex.

 

BioWare Community Staff:

 

Stop spewing out processed corporate triple like "we're working on a response to these issues." We don't need a mess of corporate bureaucrats sitting in meetings deciding what to tell us. Act like human beings.

 

Stop shutting down the forums every time you foresee a problem. If you can't handle criticism, you're in the wrong damn business. All you're doing is giving us more things to be critical of. Not only the horrid maintenance "schedule" but also the way you try to keep us from talking about it.

 

Give real interactions. With as many community managers as you have swarming these forums, surely someone could give us the slightest glimpse of humanity without some talking head bureaucrat that no one has ever heard of coming out of his isolated corporate sanctum once a month to tell us how much he gives a crap.

 

I don't give a crap that the Vice Director of Corporate Toilet Paper gives a crap. So he really really feels bad about Ilum. I'd much rather know that someone with a voice inside the company is communicating on our behalf to people in the company who can actually enact change.

 

The stupid thing sucks. We'll do it live.

 

 

My favorite part about the forum being locked this morning was the post about the former co-studio director being on the first page for all to see.

[Hero Engine: why?]

Well we can be sure that the release of ToR will stop anyone else from using the Hero Engine, ever again. I feel sorry for any games in development that have decided to use this terribad engine.

[Guild Bank and Shiny UI Features Should NOT be on Your Priority List]

did you just tell them to fist their hero engine

 

Oh so it's that kind of engine.

[Please make forums subscription only]

I'm about to stop this arguing.

 

ANYBODY CAN POST.

 

I don't currently have a subscription. When I launch the game, the button is greyed out and says I need an active subscription. Yet I can still post.

 

I'm going to be getting a subscription when I can find a gamecard, last time I checked every store in my area was sold out.

 

Once you buy the game you can post. I couldn't post until I bought the game.

[Where will you go if SWTOR fails?]

Imagine for a moment that all the server's were taken offline today. You get none of your money back. The game fail's. Hypothetically what would you do, and where would you go?

 

Fallen Earth. Its a low budget mmo but has good features, life to their cities, an amusing atmosphere, and isn't a ride in a kiddie themepark. Has its list of bugs and issues but, you know, they didn't have somewhere around 200 million to blow on it when it was made.

[Really good RP server?]

I'm looking for a server to roleplay on. I've played many different games and I've always enjoyed rping, Been doing it for 7 years (Foreveralone.jpg). Some that I've heard of are rubat crystal or vrook lamar, But does anyone have a real confirmation and which server has the biggest RP community?

 

I'll tell you a little story:

 

The super server(Lord Adraas) idea was torn apart for drama reasons which is where I started. I ended up rerolling on Sanctum of the Exalted which was advertised by the players who were negative about the super server. These people had "numbers" showing there was more rp potential on SotE than LA. Two of my roleplaying friends followed me and we've done every quest IC, emoted our way across the planets, and were immersed in the game.

 

We witnessed two instances of people roleplaying out in the open. I figured they must all be cantina rats trying to get lucky or something so I scouted the cantinas. Saw a few people dancing, otherwise nothing. So take what you want from my story but I've actually witnessed regular non-scheduled random roleplay going on in Lord Adraas since jumping back on there and poking around.

[SWToR as Told by Episode III and /v/]

Have to say I agree with a lot of criticisms.

 

"We know it’s the internet. We know that by it’s very nature, the internet is both a source of information and entertainment. However, it’s not very often we encounter original content that derives fits of giggles from us while at the same time making very valid criticisms. Case in point, this comic. Made by the denizens of /v/, this comic uses screenshots from the climax of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith to tell the story of the current SWToR/Bioware/EA public relations fiasco that’s happened."

 

http://www.lo-ping.org/2012/01/20/the-swtor-story-as-told-by-episode-iii-and-v/

 

Oh. My. God.

 

So true.. so very true.

 

inb4draconianmoderation

[Have you seen a major drop-off in players on your server?]

Now that we're in to the first suscribed month, I was wondering if people are seeing a huge drop-off on their servers.

 

I haven't seen that big a drop-off, but then again I'm on a heavily populated server.

 

 

You'll be one of the lucky ones. Since your server is heavy everyone else on the low population servers will roll or alt on yours. This is what happens when games start to lose subscribers, a handful of servers inflate while the others deflate.

[How 1.1 Killed Small Servers and How to Fix It]

Key point here. They don't listen to "whining" but do listen to people who give logical arguments that are backed up by facts rather than just QQ.

 

No no, they didn't listen to logical arguments in beta either. We had a wonderful beta community about a year ago that pointed out all the huge flaws. Flaws that needed fixing if they wanted to keep players occupied for longer than two months at the most. Guess what happened? Nothing. In fact the game we had in beta was better than the game we're playing now. They subtracted rather than fixed or changed.

 

The writing was on the wall six months ago and that is when beta players started dropping like flies, at one point my beta account went through six different people none of which wanted to stick around for longer than two weeks or so. Then people started to cancel their pre-orders and collectors edition pre-orders.

[How 1.1 Killed Small Servers and How to Fix It]

Do your dailys and roll alts. Bioware WANTS you to roll alts.

 

After rolling a character on each side, what are you supposed to do after that? 90% of quests are planet quests that don't involve storyline which you've already played through if you have a level 50. Going through the same kill 10 empire/republic widgets flip 5 empire/republic widget switches from 1 to 50 isn't my idea of fun.

[How is this game doing now numbers wise?]

A huge proportion of those sales were pre-orders. Again, many MMOs these days can post big numbers in the first few weeks. Hardly an interesting figure.

 

Exactly. Others have had huge numbers of sales.. and then they flop and go F2P.

[Why I bought a 60 day Time card.]

So I find myself keep coming back here, to the forums, after telling myself that I'm not coming back to the game. I told myself, even after buying collector's edition, that the game was gonna fail. I played it, and found reasons to not like it. Clearly overlooking or under valuing the reasons to like it. After deciding to stop playing and canceling, I kept returning here, maybe to troll maybe to try to find reasons to keep playing I don't know.

 

After a fairly lengthy argument, argument yes...discussion sadly no, I went forth to other venues to find people with like mind. I found myself brought to 4chan, to /v/ the video game page. There was a very long thread about The Old Republic on there. I sat and read every single response. What I found was people that were worse then me. People that ignored every plus and over shinned the flaws to levels of absurdity. It then dawned on me.

 

I'm becoming one of them, without even knowing it.

 

So I went out and bought a time card, I bought it to prove to myself that I'm not like them. I bought it to reaffirm that I can be better then cliche forum going hate breeder. I can find things to like, and glorify them. I know I can be tolerant of the wrong things. I'll try to play with a more non-biased outlook.

 

I know that Bioware has done some questionable things with the game. We don't know what alternatives they had, so with that reason who am I to judge them?

 

So now, I'm going to play on a server I want to play and not where I know a few people on. I'm going to play how I want to play, find people who play like me. Try to make friends, and be patient with those the know less then me. I'll spread what knowledge I know, and seek what I don't.

 

This is my story, of how I over came my troll nature.

 

Good for you I guess? Sounds like you have more reasons that you don't like the game than reasons you do. You could of taken the game time money and put it into something you like better. My friends bought the game despite me warning them how bad it was(I played the beta and back then the beta was better than release which is saying something). So I bought the game as well and figured that maybe the co-op aspect of the game would make up for its numerous shortcomings. I even bought a 60 day card to continue to play with my friends. Who have all quit, of course.

 

And no, having 3 people to play this quasi mmo singleplayer co-op game didn't help. At. All. Moral of the story? Go with your gut feeling. Don't try to force yourself into liking something for any reason.

[I know many of you don't want to hear this but....]

Truthfully, to me, it sounds as if the OP is just hyper-sensitive. A lot of people online are unfortunately. The smallest thing can, and will, set them off. I have a friend who ranted to me for 2 days over how a group turned him down because they were full. So I'll tell you the same thing I told him...

 

Suck it up sunshine. Grow some thicker skin.

 

I normally stay out of general chat unless I'm looking for a group. Really though I can see why so many trolls inhabit it. If I see one more person ask if "smugglers need aim or cunning", or any other ridiculous common sense question (FFS every piece of gear you get from quests is loaded with cunning...take the *********** hint), I'm gonna smash my head into my desk.

 

It's as if over the last 10 years people in these games have become so stupid and dependant that they're entirely incapable of doing even the slightest thing for themselves. And they always come up with the laziest excuses. I've heard way too often by people who don't want to take the time themselves regurgitate the old saying, "It's a game not a job!"

 

Well if taking 5 seconds of your life to look up something about the $15 a month game your playing is too taxing on your mental faculties then you have bigger issues to deal with than someone telling you to "look it up in the codex". And if someone telling you, or another person, to "look it up" is so offensive to you then I suggest you never leave your house either. It's not pretty out there...

 

/rant off

 

 

I like you.

[Game difficulty]

So I've heard from several sources that any non-force class gets really hard to play at around level 30. Is it true? Are force users stronger by design? Should the difficulty be lowered?

 

 

If the difficulty gets any lower this game could replace Hello Kitty Online as the way to insult bad gamers.

 

 

"Ugh you're bad. Go play Hello Kitty Online"

 

Would become:

 

"Ugh you're bad. Go play The Old Republic."

[Disabled Gamers Acknowledge Old Republic]

Re-read what I said. Nearly everything they mentioned is done better by another game(pr games). Or has been standard for years. Im glad disabled people enjoy this game. But the fact is it's no more accessible than any of the other games I've listed.

 

Also, AbleGamers cited the "unintentional accessibility" delivered by the games companion features. "These NPC characters which accompany the player through most of the game provide support to those who need it without forcing them to request help from other players,"

 

Content so easy your pet can get you through the game. I can guarantee you this is the reason ToR won the award over any other game.

[Disabled Gamers Acknowledge Old Republic]

So you honestly think that there wasn't a single game that didn't do the mentioned things better than swtor? That's my problem. I don't care who gave the award.

 

Better? Of course. But they're not as easy to play, easy to play being the biggest disabled friendly feature here.

[Disabled Gamers Acknowledge Old Republic]

But while its accessible to disabled people and everyone else they made sure that the "skillcap" is low for able players.

 

Well since this thread has been censored to death I'll quote the above. Hopefully its PC enough. The skill cap was set low for the ultra casual crowd, the side effect is that the disabled players have an easier time.

[A question for those who say, "the game is new... give it time."]

 

- Raid loot not working properly, no refund

- Normal mode raid loot not being assigned to anyone

- Game not updating

- Game closing by itself

- Major class imbalance (see - Operative Concealment spec in pvp with half a brain vs almost any other class, as well as high geared sorcs vs anything not stealth.)

- Lack of modification system

- Lack of Damage meter

- Lack of UI that is even movable

- Non-existant "world" pvp (I seriously don't see the point in rolling in a pve vs pvp server, you'd have to get lost to find world pvp 99.99% of the time.)

 

All those issues have been known for over a year now as they were all reported and discussed heavily in beta on the forums. So "it just released" isn't a valid excuse. And before one of the biodrones pop in and say "but it was beta they had tons of stuff to work on!" the beta patches were lackluster and tiny, we were essentially playing the finished game a year ago in beta.

[Lol fail Bioware]

We're not all children, and you forget the people who paid with game time cards, so in reality we won't be gone. Sorry to burst that bubble of yours.

 

This. I got stuck with game time I can't get my money back for. At least I'll be a founder I guess. Not that my year in beta with the same lack of features and bugs means anything, at least back then we had high quality textures and armor matching.

[I am begging on my knees]

Actually it's only bound for Republic players.

For Empire players it's the | key!

True story, yet another major faction imbalance clearly favoring the empire!

 

btw...

 

Empire does the bug report on \ and while it can be rebound in options it still opens the bug report. I guess republic has the same can-rebind but it will still make the bug report pop up issue.

[Please BW calm down]

They could try taking PTR feedback into account from now on.

 

Welcome to what we put up with as beta testers. I hope that this failed launch and them needing to bribe players to subscribe will teach them to listen to their testers and playerbase a bit more. I really hope, really really really hope that the state of the game and the community shows Bioware not everything it squeezes out is gold. That maybe play tester feedback might be worth something.

[Become a Founding Member!]

Every "Unsubbed, Ill come back later if..." = FAIR WEATHER FAN

 

Plain pure and simple.

 

Ever hear the term? true friends stay with you through the ups and downs?

 

Or. Ride or Die?

 

Thats not you

 

You, are a Biodrone and you're hurting the game by letting Bioware think everything is just fine. But don't worry, those of us who want to see the game succeed will drag the Biodrones and fanboi's along kicking and screaming while we rally for Bioware to fix their game. You'll thank us in the end.

[Become a Founding Member!]

No im saying crying and complaining doesnt help, criticism is one thing, constructive criticism is best. PPLs expectations are so high its not realistic. 1 MONTH! its been 1 MONTH! Tired threats of unsubbing is just trolling at this point. When i read those kinds of post i literally feel like im reading a divorce file of some1 who hooked up with some1 while wearing beer goggles one nite, married them, then woke up one day and said "hey i thought the married life was easy and fun without any work or effort put in to it!?!?"

 

I agree with you on some points about what needs to be improved in the game, but the difference is i know thats how games work and i know it takes time, maybe 7 years if it has to. Im a jr game developer myself and know in reality, even tho games are suppose to be "finished" once released, in reality, the devs will always want to keep improving their work. And this is a new MMO so its a given!

 

Instant gratification in todays society is its downfall.

 

See, we had your kind in beta telling us for a year before release that Bioware would fix or add in basic features. Then it was 6 months before release and still your kind said they have plenty of time to add in these features. Then 3 months rolled around and still your kind said have faith. A month before release and all our posts begging for things to be fixed or added in like AA would be flooded by your kind telling us to stop making an issue out of it.

 

Now the game has been released, how long do we need to wait before we can post a critical thread without your kind showing up and telling us to give Bioware a break?

[Become a Founding Member!]

We would like to thank each and every one of you for helping to make Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ one of the most successful MMO launches of all time. To show our appreciation, from now through March 19th, 2012, 12:01AM EST, we are rewarding early members of The Old Republic community with a unique Founder’s medal* and title.

 

Read More

 

Needing to reward players that pay for another month. I think we can safely say the launch has failed.

[HORRIBLE AA implamentation.]

So now that everyone realizes that AA was not implemented correctly,

 

Exactly this. A lot of people are being exposed to the in-game AA for the first time and wondering why its so bad compared to <insert other mmo> and why it impacts performance so much compared to <insert other mmo>. Bioware should of left AA as it was, having to force it or fiddle with a .ini was like a disclaimer that its not ready yet(as pathetic as that is).