They stated in a recent interview that they just now realized how big of a population focused on pvp is present in this game (after losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers) and said they needed to play "catch up" for the pvp community. Now here we are with the upcoming PVE update....very contradictory and ignorant. Who would have thought that a "civil-war based" MMO would have people interested in pvp? The endless screw ups of BW and EA continually amaze me.

ROFL, if any marauder dies to a powertech one vs one currently they are terrible at their profession.

It is difficult to socialize in this game when most servers have no more than 20 on at a time.

The game cannot be any more horrible at this point.

If he thinks powertech is king of the hill, than he clearly has no insight into the current state of pvp.

I will never buy a bioware MMO again. When I first heard they were given the Star Wars label I was very excited, thinking that finally a Blizzard-type company was given a star wars theme MMO. However, Bioware is light years away from Blizzard management and an utter disappointment similiar to the great Sony and SWG failure.

Yeah his last statement was about how cell phone and MMOs are the same. I could tell all sense of logic was lacking after that post.

I was in a match yesterday with 11 warriors (mars/juggs), 4 assassins, and myself (bh). This is not uncommon and the current imbalance of melee vs ranged is currently just ridiculous, making pvp boring and unenjoyable.

I'm gone when my free time runs outs: 1) Failure to create an active and meaningful pvp experience; this includes lack of open world pvp, the disaster of illum, and bugged warzones. 2) Failure to balance pvp classes. 3) Failure of BW/EA to deliver content and patches effectively; each patch continues to make the game worse and more broken. TOR is currently being treated like BETA. You cannot do this to paying subscribers. 4) Failure of BW/EA to admit and address significant mistakes they have made with this game. BW/EA still doesn't admit the severe population decreases are due to the decisions they have made but claim they are "typical and "expected" population declines. 5) The fact that BW/EA has the arrogance to ask remaining customers to pay for transfers after the barren servers are a direct result of game mismanagement. 6) The fact BW/EA is clearly not playing or testing their own game, blatantly observable in my points above.

Oh good old SWG and we have definantely been here before with the transfers as former SWG players. It is unfortunate to see SOE-like decisions being made in this game currently. The only real and significant difference is the pace of needed transfer in SWG to stay with a solid population. I started on Corbantis then to Bria then to Starsider and did move entire guilds AND paid for it. However, these moves were over an 8-10 year time period due to progressive population declines. Never were transfers needed so quickly in SWG and you could get two to three years of solid play per move. ToR has been out a matter of months and due to such a sharp and quick decline across nearly all servers it is already a must just to keep the game fun. SWG took around 10 years to have the "last good server" everyone has to transfer to and TOR is almost there in 6 months.

Yeah what am I thinking...cell phones and MMO's are exactly the same.

So do you think that when SW:TOR was being developed, the team would measure success by being able to eventually take the game F2P? Do you think AoC currently feels they are successful because their game is now free to play after being the biggest release of its year? Yeah sounds "wrong" to me. No MMO (unless developed to be so) would say they haven't somewhat failed if they are forced to go free to play in order to "adapt" as you put it. (adapt in your odd definition book = fail in mine I suppose)

Yes, well said all around. The mere fact they are chalking up current subscriber loss due to typical and expected loss after the opening of any MMO is about as delusional as it gets. They haven't even publicly admitted that they themselves are in the wrong for any of these subscriber losses.

Well of course I made that definition up...you asked me to genius. Any game designed to be subscription based that ends up being "free to play" is a clear sign of a failed game. That doesn't take a genius to understand either.

Yeah at this point I'll be surprised if I pay for another month of subscription, let alone even consider a paid transfer just to have a few people to actually play with.

[quote name= SWTOR is in the same boat, EA/BW made a profit and the problems we see now are due to the fact the least amount of money put in with the most money made, If BWswtor wanted to merge these shards together they would, it would benefit the customer and community greatly, instead they are choosing option B $$ due to the fact some people will pay for it. I would even go as far to say that this was in the game plan from the start, I mean look at the amount of shards we have is ridiculous. Take the SW skin off this game and start looking at it the way it really is and the future it has. It feels like paid server transfers are a last ditch effort to bring in more revenue from the game before it fades into obscurity. Ironically, I'm guessing there are enough customers with the common sense to see this move for what it really is (not an opportunity for the customer but an opportunity for Bioware/EA), which may simply speed up the "fading into obscurity" process.

It isn't hatred. It is common sense. TOR will never be in a position to require more servers to accomodate population, even if they merge servers and shut some down. Transfering from low populations to even standard populations will require some servers to be shut down in the end; it is simple math. Server transfers never successfully even out server poplulations without the need to close some servers down.

Well said and basically the same thing I have seen on Iron Citadel with my guild and the overall population.

I guess that is my perspective somewhat; paying for transfers feels like it sends the wrong message to Bioware. The fact Bioware has even stated they would be charging for transfers feels like an insult to the community.

I think it is quite factual that transfers are on the way.

Failed = free to play after starting pay to play with overall low pop, which covers many of those. Also failed = consistently losing your player base. AoC is a prime example. After many years of significant changes, AoC finally has a lot of things right but they lost so much of their population that will never come back, they are free to play just to stay alive (AoC was never meant for that upon release). If you remember, AoC was a huge release and "the next big thing" when it came out. Now it is free to play with low level pop because of pure and simple mis-management (sound familiar *cough* Tor). Success is not a measure of a company sucking a positive profit margin any way they can, which is pretty much where all of those game are currently. DaoC excluded of course...amazing game just dated and typical pop loss over time.

I think people are simply looking for the next solid MMO, which has not been any for many years with all of the failed MMOs on the market today. SW:ToR appears to quickly be falling in line with the rest of the "here today and gone tomorrow" titles unfortunantly. With server transfers and merges already needed in swtor, its will certainly motivate people to try the next big title, whether it ends up being good or not. I'm not sure swtor has at this point established itself as an MMO with solid potential and certainly not enough to be asking for paid transfers.

Yeah those are just a few examples. When does Elder Scrolls come out?

I guess ultimately I have difficulty being expected to pay any type of fee to transfer only 6 months after the release of an MMO since it seems the low pop servers are likely a direct result of developer decisions and lack of follow through on content. I could care less about the actual nominal value but the principle seems to only negatively reinforce bioware's/EA's poor management of the game to this point. "Good job running off most of your subscribers! Here's 20 bucks." Something just seems wrong that bioware would charge people any money at this point for a transfer. I was just curious if this struck any other paying customer in the same way, and if it did, was hoping Bioware might actually listen up. I don't want to see this game fail; I had high hopes for it. But unless some significant change occurs at the management level, I can't imagine the game ever being the hit it could have been (aka WoW killer).

BW has repeatedly stated that free transers will come first, then paid transfers will come later. Also, it is general practice of MMO's when allowing free transfers to be to servers that are low to med population (aka it is highly unlikely that fatman will be one of the free transfer servers because it is the highest populated server). This is all common knowledge; I'm not sure why people need something "cited" at this point. This isn't a thesis, simply an opinion vote thread. A little basic reading and you can find this info for yourself.