"Are your banks and transactions down now?" Are they down?!!!!!!! The entire country is circling round the drain. That is not melodramatic or exaggerated, it is the blunt truth. Whichever way the referendum goes Greece is in for a lot of economic pain. I have seen a news story today claiming that the banks are down to their last 500 million Euros in cash. The OP is going to have a lot more to worry about then whether they will be able to subscribe to a video game. You really don't seem to realise the economic trouble that Greece is in. Survival and not going hungry are going to be priorities in Greece, not video games.

No I am not. However I do know that marketing involves keeping a constant level of interest and hype. The hype from the last thing (E3 trailer and associated articles and information) is beginning to decrease in a serious way so they need to do something to keep the hype pot on the boil. That was one of the cardinal mistakes with Shadow of Revan's marketing as well in that they didn't release enough information at regular enough intervals to keep people constantly on the hook and really interested in the expansion. Releasing the blog about endgame content, or even telling us when roughly they aim to release it would provide something to look forward to in the case of the latter and something more to discuss in the case of the former. Something of equivalent import would also do, like clarifying what is happening with crafting in the expansion for example.

Well they seem to be messing up PR 101, again. The hype that they generated from the E3 announcement has pretty much run its course and the slew of articles based around that announcement have died down. So now we need to have the next slug of information to keep things going, or at least find out when we're going to get that next slug. I suspect it will at the community cantina on 11th July. However after their last effort in that department they may well just replay the E3 trailer and talk about how excited and stoked they are about the expansion. To say the least I'm not expecting a great deal.

Oh dear. Lacking a bit on the brainpower side as well as being a troll. Roll a character on the Progenitor and check it out for yourself if you're so skeptical.

You can't necessarily say that. This poll has significant problems with sample self-selection, people not following through with what they are saying etc, etc, etc. However it is not just the ops community unsubscribing that is potentially a problem for Bioware. That poll suggests that about 40% of the player base might unsubscribe due to the expansion not having ops content. That likely is a vast over-estimate due to sampling bias etc. Nevertheless even with such problems it suggests that a significant fraction of the player base could well go completely. The thing that it doesn't capture at all is what about those who only subscribe for part of the time? As I have said before there will be people who will subscribe for a month to get a slug of content, work their way through that content and then re-subscribe two or three months later to get the next slug of content. No idea how many people will do that, but some will and that also represents a loss of revenue for Bioware. Is the fraction of lost revenue from subscriptions of those who quit the game plus the cartel market spending of those people and also the partial loss of revenue from people who move to subscribing part time when netted against any revenue from new subscribers enough to be an issue? Bioware have fixed costs and loss of subscription revenue will have a much more dramatic effect on game profitability than the percentage revenue loss would initially suggest. I don't know whether they will suffer a net loss or have a net gain in revenue. Personally speaking if they do only scale up old ops content I will only subscribe for as long as it takes to enjoy the game to its full potential. I would therefore be one of those people moving to subscribing part time. I don't spend on the cartel market, so it would only be part of my subscription revenue that would be lost. Story content isn't repeatable and what I suspect will happen is that people will burn through the story content, wonder what comes next, get bored and unsubscribe. That is part of what happened at the start of the game and this time there is no F2P option safety net available.

Erm no WoW did NOT have a 22 month drought without raids. The time between Siege of Orgrimmar and Highmaul was of the order of the gap between Dread Fortress/Dread Palace and Ravagers/Temple of Sacrifice, ie a bit over a year.

Is raiding dead? No. Is high-end progression raiding dead? Yes. Has other raiding suffered this tier due to design and bug problems? Yes. Are things looking good for raiding in the next expansion with the information we have currently available? No, absolutely not. I say the last because the only information we have at the moment is that they are planning to scale the previous raiding and flashpoint content for the new expansion. The problem with that is the raiding community is mostly heartily sick to the back teeth with that content, and if they aren't now then they are much more likely to be so by the end of October this year. The devs have promised a blog post on raiding, and if it doesn't promise significant new raiding content and soon then raiding will effectively be dead in this game. PvP still exists in this game, but the PvPer population of this game is a tiny fraction of what it once was thanks to lack of content. It was always a minority of the gamers, but now it is a much smaller minority. If we don't get new ops content soon then exactly the same thing will happen to the ops community. In fact it has already begun to happen. Raids will still happen of course, just like PvP still happens, but virtually no one will subscribe to the game to raid. The real question beyond the future of raiding is is the rationale behind Bioware's business decision to focus on story correct? Can the financial future of the game be secured by that decision? That is far more important than what happens to raiders or PvPers as players because if Bioware's business decision does go wrong then this game is doomed. There is no option to go F2P to fall back on to save the game, and thus no safety net. This decision has to work otherwise Bioware Austin will cease to exist. The stakes really are that high for them.

Very minor thing FYI: it's PPS, not PSS. PS=Post Script. PSS=Post Script Script which doesn't make sense.

I'm afraid that both your aim and your spelling are off. It is not just raiding content that there has been precious little of since 3.0, it is all content. This is not just a raiding or a PvP problem, it is a general problem with the game. It looks like this expansion will deal with the story content issue, but I've laid out why I think the way they are doing it could catch them out above.

Too late. There should already have been more ops content released or at the very latest to be released within a very few weeks. Not only is that not the case, but there will almost certainly be no more before Fallen Empire and it even looks like Fallen Empire will not release with any new raiding content. It will be like the PvP community with no one left doing serious raiding.

True there are the AOE capping changes and the ranked 2018 expertise anti-troll requirement. We will have to wait and see how those pan out. As for the PVE, it is not an assumption, it is a deduction based on the current information we have. In the information about KotFE they trumpet about scaling up current ops and flashpoint content, but they don't say anything about new ops content. Why do they not say anything about new ops and flashpoint content? Consider the equivalent launch pages for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire. Shadow of Revan has the following to say about flashpoints and operations, "Fight in New High-Level Flashpoints and Operations – Team with allies to face the most epic foes in the galaxy with two new role-neutral Flashpoints, four Hard Mode Flashpoints and ten new powerful bosses across two Level 60 Operations. " Fallen Empire has the following to say about flashpoints and operations, "". It says absolutely nothing about them on the equivalent page. To find any information at all about flashpoints and operations you need to go to a news article on the SWTOR site about the expansion where it says the following, "Additionally, many of our existing Flashpoints and Operations are being scaled to 60+, giving you many more Elder Game options at Level 65." Somewhat of a difference isn't it. There is an emphasis on story in this expansion, but consider that with Shadow of Revan many people assumed there would be a warzone of some kind because it had been so long since the launch of the last new one, despite the fact that nowhere on the launch page is a warzone mentioned. Was there a warzone in Shadow of Revan? The story focus, plus the complete lack of any information about new operations or even new flashpoints leads me to believe that there may well not be any in Fallen Empire. I am not and I can't categorically say that, but in my view it is the most likely situation.

You misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that people don't log in for a month in between subscription periods. I am saying that people play the game as preferred status during the period they are not subscribed. If they time their subscription periods correctly they will get all the content for half the price. Also you have to remember that Guild Wars 2 is fundamentally different from SWTOR in that it is buy-to-play rather than free-to-play. You do not have to make any purchase to play SWTOR. You do to play GW2. So people would be subscribed for half the time at half the cost, and playing all the content. The worst that would happen to them would be delaying activating a subscription period for a few days to make sure that two content releases fall within that single subscription period. That is the problem that I fear Bioware will run into with this strategy and content model.

We now have a much clearer idea of what is coming this year in terms of content for this game from Bioware. We know that patch 3.3 is scheduled for 21st July, maintaining the 11 week patch cadence we have seen since 3.0 more or less. Patch 3.3 has the Yavin stronghold, may have the Togruta race in it and has the PvP gear cost revamp. The Yavin stronghold is new content, albeit not particularly meaty new content and that is the only new content guaranteed for patch 3.3. We also know that Knights of the Fallen Empire is scheduled for general release on 27th October with early access starting on 20th October. However there are implications for new content in the game which those dates enforce which a lot of people don't seem to have realised. After patch 3.3 had things continued along for Shadow of Revan the next content patch would have been 3.4 to be released 11 weeks after 21st July. When is 11 weeks after 21st July? 6th October. I hardly think that patch 3.4 would be released 2 weeks before early access for the next expansion is due to start which means that patch 3.3 is likely the last "content" patch for Shadow of Revan. What are the implications for the game if patch 3.3 and KotFE are the only remaining content for the year? For those who play the game for class story the implications are that they will get a lot of new content to go through and provided that content is of good quality they are likely to be very happy. That is what Bioware have said they are aiming for and so far, so good. What about those who PvP in the game? The revamp of gear cost is an attempt to revitalise PvP in this game, no doubt. I don't know if it will work, but given the lack of support that PvP has received over the past couple of years, plus the fact that there is no new PvP content on the horizon in either 3.3 or KotFE if current indications are true strongly vitiates against it succeeding. What about those who do PvE endgame in the game? The situation looks extremely bleak for endgame PvE at the moment. If 3.3 is the last patch of Shadow of Revan then there will be no more level 60 raid content. No second tier and certainly no nightmare modes. Worse by far is what is KotFE is a harbinger of. In the information about KotFE it strongly indicates that current operations and HM flashpoints will all be scaled up to level 65 when the expansion hits. It trumpets this as giving "more choice" in elder game content. Only problem with that line is by the time the expansion hits everyone who regularly does endgame PvE content will be heartily sick of the current content. Scaling this content up to level 65 will not provide anything new. If there are new flashpoints they likely to be tactical flashpoints integrated into the story in the same manner as Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi. What does that leave those who do endgame PvE content with to do? Nothing at all. Now we come to the real kicker and what makes me extremely concerned for the future of the game. Those who PvP and do PvE endgame content are a minority in the game, there is no doubt of that. Let's assume that the story content of KotFE is brilliant in its plot and execution. What could be better for those who enjoy story in the game? What could possibly go wrong? The thing that will most likely go wrong is the incentive to subscribe to the game consistently being taken away. Personally speaking between character slot unlocks, bag unlocks, bank unlocks and crafting unlocks I have more than enough to keep a character of each class available to play through story content with no problems as a preferred player. PvP is of no interest to me, so it is irrelevant in terms of subscriber benefits and incentives for me. If flashpoints and operations go as outlined in the previous paragraph then there will be no new PvE content and I am likely to be extremely bored of the current PvE content by then. Consequently scaling it all to level 65 will not provide any new incentive to do it, making subscriber benefits and incentives for that irrelevant as well. What is then left as an incentive to subscribe to the game? The only real answer that I can think of is unlocking new story content with each new chapter release. However Bioware have potentially shot themselves in the foot here as well. As I read things any time you subscribe for a month the story content that has been released up to and including that point will become available. If your subscription then lapses that story content remains available on your account permanently. If Bioware do maintain the cadence of monthly releases of story content what is to stop people subscribing in such a manner that one subscription period covers two content releases? The worst that they might have to do is to delay starting a subscription by a couple of days so that it catches two months' worth of content inside its span. That instantly cuts the subscription revenue from the player concerned by half and it assumes that Bioware manage to maintain the monthly release cadence. Past form would suggest they will not be able to do so. If that monthly release cadence slips to longer periods the subscription revenue loss outlined above would get worse as people would need to maintain a subscription for less than half the time to fully experience the story content of the game. Naturally I don't know what the split between subscription revenue, subscriber cartel market purchase revenue and non-subscriber cartel market purchase revenue is. However if Bioware does end up in a situation like outlined in the previous paragraph where they lose a significant proportion of subscription revenue then it is likely to be very bad for the game's future. I don't know if it would be terminal for the game's future, but that is a real possibility. Bioware releasing a lot more story content for the game is fantastic, but they need to be very careful they don't fall into the trap of spiraling loss of subscriber revenue outlined above. Going free to play to save the game isn't an option a second time.

For endgame players SWTOR already effectively is in maintenance mode. New warzone content just isn't happening at the moment. New operations content has only happened in the context of a paid expansion and one instanced boss on Ziost,. Not exactly much different from what maintenance mode would be. That's why I'm thinking that 2016 will be the crunch point without something radical happening. By then if the current content pace continues people will be fed up to the back teeth with Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice and thus won't want to subscribe for them; people will still not have had a new warzone and won't want to subscribe for PvP. That leaves leveling through 12 times XP as the major subscription draw. Thing is that leveling with the XP boost takes only a limited amount of time. So what will happen is that people will level through the XP boost whilst subscribed, get to endgame and find it a dead wilderness. They will then have no reason to subscribe and so will stop. They may even not play the game any more. With the XP boost it will probably take players between 3 and 6 months to run through the vast majority of the story content for the 8 classes. Some more dedicated players will be faster than that and those who will likely go through it slower than that are unlikely to play enough to make it worthwhile subscribing in any case. So if we get a slug of new players coming in following hype about the game connected with The Force Awakens, and a number of them subscribe to take advantage of the XP boost they will probably burn through all the level 1 to 50 content by about 6 months later. That takes us into the first quarter of 2016 or so. At that point as the Force Awakens players discover what happened to class stories after level 50 attrition will start to bite hard into their numbers. Once they head out of the game in large numbers it won't really have a large source of subscriptions left. PvPers won't subscribe. Raiders won't subscribe. Players naturally coming into the game to do the story won't be in huge numbers to keep up the subscriber base. What can stop that scenario happening? I really am not sure how it can be stopped.short of the dramatic increase in content outlined in one of my earlier posts. So I reckon that this game is likely to be in the early stages of severe trouble by this time next year and by the end of summer next year needing life support. Fallen Empire had better be something pretty good and dramatic.

They have set themselves up big-time for this announcement. Given how starved we have been of proper content, anything short of an expansion larger than both RotHC and SoR in content terms is going to produce a very, very negative reaction. We had hard modes of two flashpoints in 3.1. We had Ziost with a short amount of story, one instanced world boss and one un-instanced ops boss and a daily area with virtually nothing to kill and the costume designer in 3.2. We will be getting a new stronghold in 3.3 and possibly a new species unlock. It is true that there have been significant quality of life improvements in the game, but they are NOT new content. One stronghold, one daily area, one instanced boss, one short amount of story, the costumer designer, HMs of two existing flashpoints and possibly a new species unlock. That will be AFTER 3.3, not now. Since 3.3 is scheduled for the middle of July that will be nearly 8 months since the original launch of Shadow of Revan. There is one word which describes the amount of content that Bioware will have released by then: PATHETIC. Competitive PvP in this game is essentially dead. Progression raiding in this game is now essentially dead. More routine level raiding and PvP in this game has suffered massive attrition as well. Tell me again what it is we need a subscription for in this game? We certainly don't need it to experience any of the content outside of warzones and operations. If Bioware continues down the route they are going they will end up in a situation where the only people they have playing the game will be non-subscribers. There will be a bit of cartel market income of course, but from what I understand subscribers are the big cartel market spenders as well. What happens to the game if only non-subscribers play it in significant numbers? What happens to the jobs of those at Bioware Austin if only non-subscribers play it in significant numbers? Game is shut down, Bioware Austin is shut down and everyone there loses their jobs. That is now a very, very realistic scenario at some point in 2016. I don't know if this game can be saved. There are certainly actions which are necessary to save it, but the problem is that they may not be sufficient to save it. The largest elephant in the room is the lack of proper content and the necessary action is to release content more frequently. Let's see what we need to have released before the end of the summer for Bioware to have a decent chance of saving this game: At least one new 8 v 8 warzone A full new operations tier Another daily area with a decent number of enemies that you actually need to kill A second, larger set of story content with at least differing stories for each faction Not particularly likely to happen is it? If Bioware don't do something that big and that radical then one of two things will happen. Either the game will shut down and Bioware Austin will shut down or it will complete its transition into the world's first MSORPG. Massively Single-player Online Roleplaying Game. Things have been trending that way in the MMO world for a while, but this would be the first game to essentially completely abandon any multiplayer content in the genre.

Oh dear. Rage storm is supposed to do that. Only abilities that make you immune to knockback like hold the line or entrench will prevent your character flying backwards. The fact that you don't know that speaks volumes.

Need to L2P. That is still true despite what you say. You will get the occasional wipe from red circles not showing up and a rock squashing people. You will get the occasional wipe from the cross bugging out if someone has an exceptional amount of lag. What you will not get is five-and-a-half months' worth of wipes from that. I simply do not believe that people who take five-and-a-half months to kill Underlurker SM were downing DF and DP HM at level regularly. Underlurker SM is difficult compared to the other SM bosses, but it is not that much more difficult.

Don't stand in stupid: it's that simple. Your group was clearly taking vastly more damage than they needed to by not executing the mechanics correctly. Not stacking for healing in between add phases. Not moving as a group from add to add to maximise AOE healing. Ranged DPS not staying out of add melee range to avoid the add melee attack. Probably not executing the cross phase correctly either. It is also quite possible that their DPS was low enough that one or more of the adds was still alive after rage storm. Also you quote HPS for the sorceror healer, not EHPS. EHPS is a much, much more valuable thing to quote.

Erm L2P and gear up a bit more? I'm sorry to say that with Blood Hunt it really is that simple. That first boss has been toned down, but it is still pretty tough for a FP boss and probably still harder than Underlurker as well. I've killed it once before nerf and once after nerf. Both times I was pulling over 3 k DPS during the fight. The second time the nerf really showed up because doing that much DPS allowed me to almost single-handedly kill both the Mandalorian adds that spawn. The first time I was doing that much DPS and I would have been nowhere near killing both adds. To successfully attempt the first boss of Blood Hunt HM with the "recommended" gear you have to be an exceptionally good player. Fully augmented decent rating 186 gear with a few rating 192 pieces will allow it to be a bit of a challenge but achievable by a more average player. It is also important to note that although looking at health pools will give you a general idea of someone's gear it will not allow you to properly, fully judge their gear. If a DPS or healer does not have proper, fully optimised Ziost enhancements or better by now then they are not a serious player in the game with that character. If they have rating 192 or rating 198 comms gear enhancements in preference to those Ziost enhancements then they may well be suffering from a serious case of noob-itis. The rating 198 enhancements will bump someone's health pool up a great deal compared to the rating 190 enhancements but will mean that they will do vastly inferior DPS or HPS. The fact that your tank guarded the healer right from the get-go also suggests a less-than-competent tank which will again not help.

He may not be. In fact solo ranked queuing without full PvP gear is something I would consider to be trolling. That is worth reporting.

Those rating 190 pieces of gear are a mixture in terms of how good they are. The mods are far from the best easily available which title goes to either rating 198 comms mods or (for DPS and healers) rating 192 ops token gear if you can get hold of it. Ditto the armorings which are far less good than the rating 198 comms armorings/rating 192 set bonus armorings. The offhand is also vastly outclassed by the ultimate comms stuff. Tank enhancements are also inferior to the crafted rating 186 stuff which is the best you can get hold of short of ops token drops. Where this gear does shine is the enhancements for DPS and healers. It is the fourth best you can get, and two of those are very tricky to get hold of indeed, dropping from HM Colossal Monolith, HM Ravagers and HM Temple of Sacrifice. The good rating 192 enhancements can either be got from HM flashpoint drops or SM ops drops and are thus considerably easier to obtain, but still a lot trickier than the Ziost ones for only a very small improvement. in stats. Another, perhaps less-noticed, but still important area where Ziost is important is main hand barrels and hilts. The Worldbreaker Monolith, ie the uninstanced world boss, drops rating 190 main hands which are the best that are available outside of ops drops. So if we are talking pure comms gear or crafted rating 186 (due to it not needing any ops-based materials) here are the sources for the best in slot stuff: Offhand from ultimate comms Mods from ultimate comms Armorings from ultimate comms Tank enhancements from crafted rating 186 gear DPS and healer enhancements from Ziost vendor Mainhand from crafted rating 186 gear Tank earpiece and implants from ultimate comms DPS and healer earpiece and implants from either Ziost vendor or ultimate comms according to stats needed in the slot So as can be seen from the above list crafted rating 186 stuff is almost obsolete for BIS comms/easy crafting gear, only appearing from tank enhancements and the mainhand barrel/hilt. Ziost gear proves extremely useful in giving access to more powerful DPS/healer enhancements and increasing the stat choice available for implant and earpiece slots. For example strength DPS comms earpieces come with either strength/accuracy from ultimate comms or crit/surge from Ziost and strength DPS comms implants come with either power/surge from ultimate comms or accuracy/crit from Ziost. The stat budget for ultimate comms stuff is 224 and for Ziost stuff is 226 meaning virtually no difference in level of meaningful stats, although the ultimate comms stuff will have a lot more endurance of course.

I've tracked someone down only from an internet handle and a little knowledge of their job before. I needed to pass a message to them and ended up sending an email to their secretary which reached them. I could have telephoned them if I'd wanted to pay the international phone charges. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and, frankly, the thread would be better off without your contributions. If serious threats against its employees and family members of employees have been made then Bioware has a legal obligation to its employees to track down those who made the threats and make sure that they are dealt with. The customer is NOT always right. However that meme has come into being to reflect the fact that generally speaking businesses should try and cater to their customer base. Bioware have consistently failed to do that over recent months for significant portions of their customer base. Hence the fact that serious PvP has long been effectively dead in this game and the strong likelihood that serious PvE progression raiding is also now dead in this game as well. If they shift to an online version of KOTOR do we need to subscribe to experience that sort of game with current F2P and preferred account restrictions? No we absolutely do not, which means that the rational response of the customer base is to unsubscribe en mass. What would be the result of such a mass unsubscription: end of the game as non-viable financially. Blizzard Entertainment have been treating their customer base in a similar fashion recently, and the parallels between the two games and the two companies have been striking. They have suffered the loss of nearly a third of their subscribing player base inside three months. That stands as a stark warning to Bioware of the consequences of the behaviour that they have been engaging in recently. It is also quite correct to say that the jobs of the whole team are on the line as Bioware Austin does not have other projects to fall back on and reassign people to so far as I am aware. EA would close Bioware Austin and make the vast majority of the staff, and indeed possibly all of the staff redundant. So Eric and all the other staff at Bioware Austin need to pull their fingers out and start doing a decent job, otherwise they will find themselves out of work.

How about not costing the exonium? That exotic element equaliser requirement for mass manips from the vendor was always excessive.

Don't recognise the name of that poster on Reddit. Without a link to more than "someone said" I don't believe it in and of itself. It would be consistent with their recent behaviour and trends, but this does not settle things by a long way. Now if someone like one of the Zorz members who was there said something along similar lines, THAT I would believe in and of itself. Similarly if one of the known prominent figures in the player community said something along similar lines I would believe it. This just strikes me as a troll stirring the pot.

The reason that I think that this time may be different is the steepness of the drop-off in population that we have seen. This is far more than normal attrition you see in raid groups between content patches. It is not just parts of raid groups quitting, but entire raid groups and even entire guilds. It is also not just the top end that is seeing this kind of attrition. Pretty much all levels of raiding seem to be seeing this kind of attrition of players, which means that the pool that the next bunch of nightmare raiders can be drawn from is shrinking dramatically as well as the number of existing nightmare raiders shrinking. To me this bodes extremely ill for the whole future of raiding in this game, not just nightmare progression raiding. The base of the pyramid is crumbling dramatically, not just the top.