Story is baseline. Story is necessary, but not sufficient. Story is NOT REPEATABLE CONTENT for most people. The story itself is well done and a good intro to the expansion. However it is virtually the only thing of substance when it comes to new content for this expansion. Star Fortresses are the KDY of this expansion: samey, repetitive and with minimal useful rewards. The companion influence system is excessively grindy, especially since it is on a per-character basis. The alliance influence system isn't too bad to do once, but it is not good, repeatable content; mainly because it is gated behind the story which is lacklustre to do more than once or possibly twice. Virtually everything else that has been altered with this expansion is old content buffed up to try and make it relevant again. The heroics to grind alliance heads of department influence are recycled. All of the flashpoints are recycled. All of the operations are recycled. None of the PvP maps have been altered or added to in any way and so are stale. After little new content and lots of recycled (and thus boring to a lot of the playerbase) content we then come to the bugs and other screwups. We have had a major, major exploit. We have had an event with an event-breaking bug. We have had companions being too powerful and thus making the game a snoozefest for a good proportion of the playerbase. We have had companion power riding a nerf rollercoaster. We have had server rollbacks on three servers. We have had the "correction" to the operations on KotFE blog 151 DAYS after it was released. We have had the announcement of the announcement of a PvP warzone to try and ameliorate the backlash from that little 151 day beauty, with that try failing almost completely. We have had threars where feedback has been asked for and then gone on for 70 pages with nothing being posted by Bioware after the first post starting the thread. So what exactly is it that Bioware has done right since KotFE and indeed during the KotFE buildup period? Very, very, very, very little. Some senior Bioware people need to pay for this debacle with their jobs. The fallout will also likely cost the rest of Bioware Austin their jobs as well because this will be a financial disaster for the studio. Their business model was flawed from the very start of this expansion#s development, but they have leavened that with a myriad of screwups and made their situation vastly, vastly worse. There is pretty much no section of the player base of this game that they have not managed to piss off at some point during the last two months.

The announcement of the announcement of the warzone was it I think. That's what they think is an adequate response. Just shows how out of touch they are.

I saw that and I should have linked to your post after that paragraph. Didn't quote all of my sources and that was wrong. However moving on from that there is another aspect to the Starparse data that is very, very interesting as well. I said that the dramatic decline in HM ops participation was statistically significant and not the sort of decline of people getting bored with participating in something. What IS that kind of decline of people stopping doing something due to boredom is the SM ops figures. SM ops participation figures peaked during the period 26/10/2015–01/11/2015 at 131,812. The following weeks saw these figures: 125,550 104,948 86,442 71,767 65,159 52,506 Now if someone were to jump on these figures and claim that fewer people are doing HM ops than SM ops they would be smoking something pretty serious. The fact that people doing SM ops are far, far less likely to be running a parser program than people doing HM ops must be borne in mind when looking at the absolute numbers. However the trend is irrefutable. The first week after peak sees a 4% decline. This is then followed by 16%, 17%, 16%, 9% and 22% declines from week to week. Last week's activity of 52,506 is 38% of peak activity. Just before the expansion dropped the SM ops participation figures hovered between 35,000 and 40,000 or so for four weeks. So if 37,500 is taken as a rough average and compared is to 52,500 we get last week with about 40% extra SM ops activity compared to before the expansion dropped. Again that is not flattering to Bioware at all. Looking at the trend it can be seen that things were reasonably stable for the first two weeks of the expansion, followed by significant losses for the next 3 weeks, then a slowing of the decline. Finally last week showed another, even more dramatic decline. That can't be easily attributed to the same cause as the HM ops plummet last week, but I suspect that when taken in context even the SM ops participation numbers were affected by the snapping of the patience of the higher-tier ops community.

More new content. More new content. More new content. THAT is what is needed and quickly. This NiM drops debacle has merely been the last straw and trigger for a lot of people. The fact that they felt the need to respond with that announcement about the announcement of a warzone shows you just how bad this has been. They didn't respond as quickly as with the companion nerf, so it can't have been quite as bad as that, but they did attempt to put the fire out. Unfortunately for them the attempt to put the fire out has at best done nothing and at worst actually exacerbated the situation. It has confirmed that new PvP content is still at least five months off (given the 16 week patch cadence they seem to be adopting with KotFE). It has also confirmed that they haven't even started working on new multiplayer PvE content. Whoops. The fundamental problem that Bioware is now facing is that things have gone beyond their control. Again Keyboardninja summed it up very eloquently: "The sad thing is, at this point, we're all just venting. Nothing we say can really change anything. Even if the leadership at Bioware reads through this thread and has a complete change of heart. Even if they decided right now that they need to get an op out as soon as possible, and put a heavier priority on end game group content, it wouldn't make a difference. The die was cast six months ago. Maybe eight months ago. They made the decision to abandon their multiplayer endgame and focus almost exclusively on solo content. They could reverse that decision, but the lead time is immense. It takes a long, long time to create and balance an operation. Operation bosses are far more demanding in terms of mechanics and uniqueness than anything else in the game, meaning that it often isn't just a matter of scripting things on top of the existing engine. …" "The sad reality is that the community cannot wait this long. Bioware may even realize that now, but it's too late. They're committed. 4.0 is the NGE of SWTOR, and even if they wanted to go back, it would take them long enough to do so that no one who remained to see it would care one way or another." http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=8694364&postcount=893 I said that we need more new content and quickly. As Keyboardninja's post I have quoted above shows the lead-times that they have for proper multiplayer PvE content simply don't allow this to happen. THAT is what has caused this to go beyond Bioware's control. They literally CANNOT REACT FAST ENOUGH to sort this out. The die is cast. The bet is made. They've gone all-in for the sabaac pot and suddenly realised their cards add up to more than 23. Their fancy "metrics" were interpreted to say that raiders are a very small proportion of the player community. They are now finding out that raiders are NOT such a small proportion of the player community. Raiders have certainly never been a majority of the community, but Bioware has completely misjudged the size of the raider community. More importantly they have completely ignored the importance of the raider and high-end PvP communities to the fan sites and promotion of this game. Another very, very, very telling statistic can be found here: =HM&metric=Toons"]http://ixparse.com/stats/?boss=&mode[]=HM&metric=Toons Characters recorded in HM operations using Starparse during the period 30/11/2015–06/12/2015 131, 255 Characters recorded in HM operations using Starparse during the period 07/12/2015–13/12/2015 56,971 The 131,000 number was significantly higher than previous weeks as it had been around 100,000 for about the 4 weeks prior to that. However even compared to 100,000 or so going down to 55,000 or so is a huge, huge drop and is statistically significant. That is a reduction of 57% in activity compared to the previous week and a reduction of 43% compared to average activity over the four weeks prior to that. You don't get those kinds of drops from random fluctuations in activity. You don't get those kinds of drops from attritional decline as people gradually become bored with an expansion. That is lots and lots and lots of people stopping playing the game during a one week period. Remember that this is statistics from the Starparse website and that Starparse does not produce a census of people doing HM raiding as more people HM raid then do HM raiding with Starparse running. That means the absolute drop in numbers will be worse than the Starparse website shows. It does have to be said that this is characters and not accounts, but still it is bad. TLDR we've reached the tipping point for this game's PvE endgame community and it is too late for Bioware to do anything about it. Bioware have fundamentally misjudged the situation with this game and they are going to pay a heavy price for it. Heck they've even managed to make the situation even worse for themselves by pissing off their crafters and cartel market users with rollbacks on three servers! That's quite the feat.

With all of the stuff going on atm I'm afraid to say that this should be a low priority. Augmenting below maximum level is silly, and even at maximum level the only people who actually need to do it are PvP players and HM ops players (there are no NiM raiders left now). Bolster means that gearing is virtually irrelevant below HM ops. There are plenty of other bugs that have a higher priority to fix than this, even if it should only be a simple matter of changing one parameter for each item in the item database.

Ah you mean in February? That's the next patch we know about and even if there is a 4.0.4 it won't be until after Christmas now.

Not only that but The Progenitor had exactly the same thing happen a couple of days ago. This cannot be population-related as Progenitor is a very much smaller server than Harbinger or Shadowlands. Something fishy is going on. Again they are shooting themselves in the foot over this. If this happens to the other servers as well then they are going to exacerbate their population loss problems.

It's too late. The nightmare raiders are gone. What they are losing now is the entire rest of the serious ops community. Releasing NiM Ravagers and TOS now would be pointless because it would be re-hashing old content which is a massive part of the problem raiders are having atm. It would also be pointless because by the time they release it the people capable of running the content who are left will be gone. Unlike their response to the companion nerf outrage which assuagued those who were complaining for the most part, this response of an annoucement about an announcement of a warzone has clearly gone down like a lead balloon. People's patience has finally snapped. I do not see a way back from here for Bioware, especially since the lead ops designer has just left SWTOR to work on Mass Effect. The time required to recruit someone to replace him will further set back any response which contains proper PvE content. Bioware has made their bed, and now they will have to lie in it.

Well as others have said licensing is definitely an issue. However even if licensing were not an issue this is Bioware Austin we are talking about. They couldn't promote anything competently in any case.

You CAN get there without even starting the story by using the legacy travel perk, I just did. Frankly removing it from the galaxy map like that is just silly and pointless.

That would be me. As for the gear nonsense, guess what I did when I first logged onto the game after KotFE went live for me? I ran an EC SM GF instance on my Red Eclipse sentinel that was level 55 and had 26,000 health at the time. Came out of the instance as a level 59 sentinel. Don't blame lack of gear for not doing SM ops.

Yes we do have information on numbers and percentages. However since such numbers would come from datamined information we're not allowed to talk about them here. Nice of Bioware to be so informative about the implications of their changes isn't it.

Rose-tinted spectacles there I'm afraid. Why did the death threats happen? Primarily because the person making them is unhinged. Secondarily because Bioware made a decision similar to this in quality of reasoning, but smaller in scope and then proceeded to ignore massive amounts of reasoned and sensible feedback about it (with a leavening of flaming thrown in as well unfortunately). That lead to hot-headedness and triggered the unhinging. Such death threats are unacceptable and should never have happened. However it is also immensely foolish of Bioware to handle community relations so badly and to create such a toxic atmosphere. They're doing it again and I hope for their employees' sake that idiot SWTOR players don't take things too far this time. Far better for the players to unsubscribe and hit Bioware in the pocketbook. Unfortunately for the employees that will scarcely be any better because instead of the stress and worry of harrassment and threats they will then be faced with the stress and worry of losing their jobs. Hobson's choice for the poor ordinary employees I think.

Trolls exist on both sides of the debate, and if you had quoted further down my post you would have acknowledged that I said precisely that. However you then talked about asking for more character-driven story and more companion interactions and being able to do more things solo and that's where the wheels come off. When did you get the most character-driven story in the history of the game? Launch of the game. When did you get more character-driven story in the history of the game? Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Titans of Industry. The Dread War. Forged Alliances. Shadow of Revan. Rise of the Emperor. Knights of the Fallen Empire. All of those patches or expansions had at least some element of story in them. The only one that didn't have any solo story in it at all was Forged Alliances, and said discrepancy was remedied by Shadow of Revan turning all of those flashpoints into having solo instances. It we go back to before 2.0 I could name even more patches that had at least some story element in them. It may not have been much, but it was there and some of those had a great deal of story content in them. Story is the basis of the game. It is the start of things. It is necessary, but not sufficient. Doing things solo all of the time is a choice that can be made in an MMO. However it does beg the question: why are you playing an MMO if all you ever do is solo stuff? There may be a perfectly good answer to that question, but it is still a legitimate question and cause for puzzlement amongst traditional MMO players. But again Bioware listened and altered things. Soloing virtually everything has been possible since 3.0. As for companion interactions, well that hasn't really been fulfilled at all now has it? The traditional companions don't have any story to speak of past the 1.0 content and there are still lots of them who are essentially redundant. The new companions are hardly paragons of interactivity at all. So there I think you have a very valid point.

Oh dear, you appear to have inserted your foot in your mouth there. So who runs TOR Community and who is or was closely associated with it? Their about page lists the following: Hayward Chemayla Ohnoto Penther Yusi swtor_potato swtor_miner Xam Xam Snave Yuuzhan In addition Maebeebuzz was associated with them until earlier this year. So let's look at each of those people: Hayward-GM of a prominent Jedi Covenant guild which does quite a lot of raiding Chemayla-not sure whether that person raids or does high-end PVP Ohnoto-not sure whether that person raids or does high-end PVP Penther-not sure whether that person raids or does high-end PVP Yusi-not sure whether that person raids or does high-end PVP swtor_potato-high end raider swtor_miner-high end raider Xam Xam-high end raider Snave-prominent PvP player Yuuzhan-prominent PvP player Marbeebuzz-high end raider Is that the bottom being blown out of your theory? Why yes it is. Out of 11 people there I see 4 people I simply don''t know enough about to say, 2 PvP players, 1 GM and raider and 4 high end raiders. A maximum of 4 people in that list do not take part in multiplayer content and a maximum of 5 people in that list don't do multiplayer content at a fairly high level. You did say not all hardcore raiders, so technically you could be said to be right, but the implicaiton was that non-multiplayer content players took time to make the website as well in significant numbers. Out of those players how many are known to be strongly dissatisfied with what Bioware have been doing? Haywards is. SWTOR Miner is. SWTOR Potatio is. Xam Xam is. Snave is. Chemayla is. I don't know about the others, but that's a majority of the site's staff who have publically said either on Twitter or these very forums that they strongly disapprove of what Bioware is doing. Some have even put it in much, much stronger terms than that.

No that's not true I'm afraid. The entitled little story-only, I want the game to be faceroll in all circumstances trolls want those who are not like them gone. I don't know how many of them there are in the game, but there are lots and lots of the nasty, vicious ones who post on these forums. "Can I haz your stuff". "I you don't like the game leave". "One percenters unite! Unsub so Bioware can feel your wrath." The first is a general quote from such trolls. The second is a general quote which is very often used by such trolls. The third is a specific quote from a few posts back in this thread. There is a nastiness and pettiness to these posts and as I have said elsewhere a sociopathic element to these posts which is saddening to behold. They seem unable to comprehend that theirs is not the only way of playing the game. They seem unable to comprehend that if the remaining raiders and PvPers leave the game they will suffer as well because if they get stuck they will have no fan sites to go to for advice and guides and tips. They seem unable to comprehend how vile their actions are. Almost without exception fan sites and blogs and podcasts are run either by raiders or PvP players. Without exception class guides are written by raiders and PvP players as they are the only ones who know enough about the classes to write the guides. Without exception theorycrafting is done by raiders and PvP players as they are the only ones who know enough about the underlying data structures of the game to do it The only major fan site that I am aware of which might not be run by a raider or PvP player is TOR Fashion; I don't know what the player who runs that site does in-game. What I do know is that it was started by Dulfy before she handed it on, and guess what: Dulfy's a high-end raider!! The raiders and PvP players are generally speaking not arguing for an exclusion of story content. On the contrary they are arguing that it is a very good base for the game and that it is necessary, but not sufficient for the long-term health and success of the game. A lot of the story players simply don't know that the forums exist and a further fraction can't be bothered to post here. Yet more know the forums exist and post reasoned items here which are fair and objective. However this forum's atmosphere is made extremely toxic by the trolls that I outline above. There are, unfortunately, also a number of trolls amongst the PvP and PvE population who similarly lower the tone of the forum. However they have not been nearly as much in evidence recently as the story-only trolls. It behooves Bioware to do something about this from a forum moderation perspective. However recent moderation on this forum has been spotty to say the least. At least the moderators have been more active than the community team who seem to make drive-by postings asking for "feedback" and "questions" before leaving the threads alone to reach vast sizes with hundreds or even thousands of posts, but only the single community or dev post starting the whole thing off. Pretty depressing, but consistent with the ethos and behaviour of the rest of Bioware Austin as an entity. That ethos and behaviour can be summed up as get as much cash in as fast as possible, ignore the long-term consequences for the company and its reputation and hang a substantial proportion of the customer base out to dry.

They've said that they're focussing on story and only on story. People should take them at face value. That means 60 to 90 minutes of new story content every so often when a chapter comes out (and since they are releaseing the first chapter in February, later than it was strongly implied that it would be that doesn't bode well for the cadence of chapter release). They are going to "try" and "aim" to get the chapters out every month. If the 4.0 to 4.1 time gap is manitained that means two non-bugfix patches in the first half of the year with 4.1 in February and 4.2 at the end of May. Those will be the only times that content other than story chapters will come out. 4.1 hardly seems laden with content from what has been said, but the Bowdaar stuff is genuine new content. So in other words the only times that anything beyond chapters will come out are looking to be February and May in the first half of the year. Nothing in January. Nothing in March. Nothing in April. Nothing in June. Add to that nothing in November and nothing in December too for new content. Of that new content it is a pretty good bet that it will all be singleplayer stuff with no multiplayer stuff thrown in at all. Hardly inspiring for any portion of the playerbase.

Erm actually it is factual evidence. Numbers logging on in particular guilds are facts. What I think you mean is that it is just anecdotal evidence and not statistical evidence. The highest activity I have seen in Ice since the expansion dropped was 36 online at once. Last night activity was between 25 and 30 online at once, so a bit lower but still higher in general than it has been for a good while. As of typing this post 18 people are online. It is very difficult to get statistical evidence for the game. The 33% spike quoted by Bioware in the last quarter in subscriber numbers is one data point and comparative rather than absolute. The only regular data points that we get are the ranked PvP participation statistics and the TORStatus graphs. The PvP participation statistics show a steady decline each and every season, but that could be biased towards PvP-only players. The TORStatus graphs don't show absolute numbers but they can be used for comparison and for trend analysis. Looking at The Progenitor, right around the time the expansion launched the server was at a roughly 50:50 split between light status and standard status. As of now it appears to have settled into a steady-state level of roughly 80% light to 20% standard. That is a significant decline in activity and since the server was never approaching full I doubt it had any new hardware added to it during the upgrade. So the thesis that everything is hunky-dorey with the server is immediately proven false. As elsewhere in the game there has been a significant drop-off in activity since the expansion dropped which is pretty much expected: there is always a rush of players coming back after an expansion and then a tail-off in the following weeks. However the levels of activity that the server is settling back into are hardly healthy. Light status 80% of the time is dreadful and this is the third-healthiest server in the EU after T3-M4 and The Red Eclipse!

Ah but the thing is that what I posted about did have something to do with the topic of the thread. The topic of the thread was about what the end of KotFE would be. I stated that I thought it would not reach its end due to the game shutting down. That may not be a fun thing to say, but it is still related to the topic of the thread. Later I considerably expanded my reasoning for what I said, which was less to do with the original topic of the thread, but still linked to it as it is backing up what I said. So whilst your position intially may have some merit you then use the term "asinine drivel" which completely torpedoes what you are saying. Asinine means, "foolish, unintelligent, or silly; stupid" and drivel means, "childish, silly, or meaningless talk or thinking; nonsense; twaddle" at least so far as I see you are trying to use them. I don't see how a reasonable person can consider a properly backed-up, logical argument of the type I posted to be unintelligent or silly or nonsense or twaddle. Arguably perhaps slightly off-topic is not the same as asinine drivel. You do yourself no favours using invective in this manner.

Oh dear you're one of those are you? Assume that people want things to go badly. There is a substantial section of this playerbase that simply does not get it. Those who are being vocal in their complaints about where Bioware is going with this game at the moment with perhaps one or two exceptions have no desire to see the game come to an end. It is a desperate attempt to stop the game from ending. It is a desperate attempt to get Bioware to take one of its final chances to see sense and save the game. That is an opinion of course, not fact, but it is an opinion which is backed up by substantive and logical reasoning, and not emotional appeals and hyperbole. It is a sad indictment of sections of what passes for a community in this game that the troll posts about "haz your stuff" and similar sentiments come up. That is extremely sociopathic behaviour, but unfortunately not surprising on the internet. Keyboard warriors are always more ready to cause trouble when they can hide behind pseudonyms. I was being entirely serious when I said that I believe there is a substantial chance that the game will close before the KotFE story ends. The subscriber "promotions" smack of desperation on Bioware's part to try and bulk up the subscriber numbers. The most logical reason for them doing that is because they are under serious threat of having the game closed if its financial performance does not improve. What they have done with KotFE will indeed boost subscriber numbers in the short term, as the Nico Okarr stuff did over the summer. You can see the bump in activity at TORStatus which the Nico Okarr promotion caused. You can also see the larger bump in activity that the expansion itself caused. There is still a bit more server activity than there was before the expansion, but it is pretty marginal. We are just over a month after the launch of the expansion pack and the bump from it has pretty much disappeared. Shows how much lasting appeal KotFE has I think. It will be interesting to see what, if any, uptick there is in server activity when The Force Awakens releases. Personally I don't think the film itself will cause much if any difference to the game. Still time will tell who is right and is wrong. I just hope that the trollish and sociopathic behaviour exhibited by some on these forums is tempered by Bioware forum moderators. If the game does continue at least let us have a forum where courtesy and reason rule rather than trolling and complete lack of empathy.

Of course not! That would involve them actually posting somehting in the forums more than once a week!

Yes it is an exploit. It was "fixed" in a previous patch and there has clearly been a regression. Yes it can be punished and all people doing it should be reported so that they can be punished, hopefully by a short ban.

Wrong answer. I am not trying to refute that point because I agree a certain section of the playerbase has always been doom-laden. However considering what happened to the game shortly after its release and its near-fatal nosedive, those doomsayers actually do have a substantive point. This game failed spectacularly and nearly completely after its launch. It was only rescued when F2P was released. Now Bioware are repeating many of the same mistakes from the launch period with the two crucial differences I pointed out in my previous post of a much smaller player base to cushion things and the fact that they cannot go F2P a second time to save the game.

Can you refute any of the substantive points that I have made with logical, reasoned arguments? If not go away.

No hatred at all. Resignation to the stupidity of the business decisions that appear to have been taken by Bioware executives. Resignation to the stupidity of the communication decisions that appear to have been taken by Bioware executives. Resignation to the stupidity of the data interpretation decisions that appear to have been made by Bioware staff. It is inevitable that this game will one day shut down; all MMOs eventually suffer that fate. What is not inevitable is the section of this community that is interested in multiplayer content atrophying so much that it essentially ceases to exist. That is what will happen if Bioware goes down their current path. That is not in and of itself fatal to an MMO. Look at LOTRO which has gone without proper multiplayer content for a significant length of time. The massive difference between the model that LOTRO has adopted and the model that Bioware seem to have adopted for SWTOR is subscriptions. LOTRO is a game like SWTOR was before KotFE, with a subscription which removes restrictions placed on players. KotFE requires a subscription for access to its new content and Bioware are desperately trying to keep people subscribed through vast content droughts. Look at the Nico Okarr stuff over last summer. Look at the HK-55 stuff coming up over the next few months. Nothing more than distraction mechanics to try and stop people realising that crushing lack of new content in the game. Why are Bioware desperately trying to keep people subscribed? To me the only sensible explanation is that they are approaching the break-even point for the ROI on the product, ie the point where the suits at EA look at the product and deem it is not making enough money to be worth continuing funding and that the working capital of EA should be invested elsewhere. The problem that they are now dealing with is that they have burnt their bridges. People have been over-hyped to too many times. People have been lied to about getting answers for feedback and questions too many times. People have suffered from deafening silences when it comes to communications too many times. There have been too many content droughts, lasting too long. Goodwill takes a company through a certain amount of this sort of thing. Mistakes can be and are forgiven. However as Blizzard discovered at the start of this year and Bioware appear to be discovering now once things reach a tipping point and people lose that goodwill things go south very, very quickly and very sharply. Bioware have lost or are very close to losing their community influencers and leaders. Prominent members of the community no longer trust Bioware. Prominent members of the community are now complaining visibly and stridently to Bioware. It is no longer sections of those people who are complaining like watchman sentinel players during 3.0; it is people from right across the community who are complaining. Theorycrafters are not happy. PvP players are not happy. Operation players are not happy. Podcasters are not happy. Bloggers are not happy. Fan site producers are not happy. Data miners are not happy. Heck Bioware even managed to piss off a very large section of the single-player story-is-everything community with the recent companion nerf/buff yo-yo situation. Of course there are still players who are happy with what is going on or are largely oblivious to what is going on. However the bredth and depth of the animosity that Bioware have managed to generate over the last few months is almost unprecedented in the history of the game. I wasn't around for the initial massive drop in subscribers having started to play just after F2P came out in late 2012, but that is the only thing in the history of the game that could rival the current situation in seriousness. The differences this time that potentially make it even more serious are that Bioware are starting from a much, much smaller player base and that they don't have the option of going F2P this time to save the game. Make no mistake this is an existential crisis for the game and potentially for Bioware Austin itself.