This.

He just said "more" not "more meaningful" I'm sure as they release new content they'll give you more SG NPC Flirts, but it seems they have no intention of even attempting what we have been asking for since before launch. Equality.

Well it is indisputable that there are no SGRA's in the game and that there won't be for any definition of foreseeable future. I suppose you could claim "oh i bet they are really work hard on it" but seriously we all know they aren't. BW themselves said it was "delayed" without even an ambiguous attempt at when it might no longer be "delayed". Anyone that has spent time playing MMO's knows what that means.

They aren't telling anyone what they are doing because they haven't done anything. That much at the very least was made clear to everyone even if we debate what else the statements mean. Frankly the more willing people are to 'wait for quality" (whatever that means) the less likely you are to ever get anything. The longer this issue drags on the less likely it is going to be they ever do anything about it. At this point I don't expect we'll ever see more than a few random SG Flirts with NPC's whenever they add new content. If they do ever add a SG companion it'll likely end up a generic one size fits all companion that everyone gets. If they never get around to adding SGRA's for the existing companions anything else they add is just scraps. We haven't pressed this issue this hard for this long for scraps. If they don't ever getting around to giving equal SGRA content to the community BW-Austin has failed in their claim "As we have said in the past, allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of. " They can say it all they want, but until they actually do it, it is just words.

I've never found tokenism to be particularly indicative sign of a supportive and inclusive agency.

I can't believe so many folks are buying into this crap. The only reason we are getting SG Flirts is because it likely actually saved them time and money, less alternate dialogue to record and faster implementation time since they don't have to code in gender checks and additional lines of dialogue. Things are now the same for both gender in the flirt options. This just happens to be why the old "time and money" excuse from pre-launch was a load of bull. I also can't imagine how on Earth updating existing companions is somehow "like totally super hard". 90% of the needed content already exists right there in the game. Each romance would likely need only a handful of lines rewritten, rerecorded, and reprogrammed. Likely only a couple of the romances would require any significant amount of rework. If changing a few lines of dialogue is some monumental task on the part of the devs that risks introducing character destroying bugs or extended server downtimes (i can't even fathom why that would be the case) or require rewriting entire sections of game code, content updates are going to be so monumentally slow and rare the game will simply wilt on the vine as you get your yearly content update. How in the world can they add whole new sections of content and gameplay if changing a few lines of dialogue presents such a critical risk? Answer is, it doesn't of course. So all the new excuses really are, in the end, are more excuses. I bet making brand now Ops and WZ's are "like totally super hard" too, but they don't seem to have any problems adding those to the game. No, this isn't an issue of time, resources, or complexity. Its just a fresh round of dismissal and exclusion.

/shrug Take what you want from it. I thought it was pretty clear. I'd bet my house that you will never see Same Gender romances with your companions. "oh this is like really hard and stuff" and "delayed" are pretty obvious Developer speak for "we don't wanna".

I thought Hickman was pretty clear about the fact that they won't be.

The second key point (really I would consider this the first) is that SGR's are not only not coming to the game but not being sold either. What you are being sold is a few post level 50 NPC flirts. When we talk about SGRA's it has always been about Companion Romances. Yes NPC flirts are mentioned occasionally as a "nice to have" sort of thing but the discussion has never been centered around that. What you all are being sold is scraps. Something BW decided they could, with minimal effort, include to deflect any criticism and protect themselves against outside agencies like GLAAD getting involved. Now when GLAAD calls them up BW can respond "Yep we totally include Same Sex romance in SW:TOR" when really they don't. It is a token effort, nothing more. Hickman made it pretty clear Companion Romances are never coming in a meaningful way. They aren't even going to make an attempt at equal treatment for the GLBT community and anyone else looking for SGRA content.

What a completely underwhelming turn of events. These guys are running quite the clown show out there. So a few SG NPC flirts is the bone they are throwing us. Now they can legitimately claim "Horray look at us, we totally support the GLBT community. We are so awesome!" Without having to actually support the GLBT community. Totally done with this game now....

What a completely underwhelming turn of events. These guys are running quite the clown show out there. So a few SG NPC flirts is the bone they are throwing us. Now they can legitimately claim "Horray look at us, we totally support the GLBT community. We are so awesome!" Without having to actually support the GLBT community. Totally done with this game now.....

I know I've said this before, but remember SW:TOR is made by BW-Austin which is separate from the BW-Edmonton team that has made all the great BW RPG's we love (BG, KotOR, JE, ME, DAO, etc.). While they share the BW name that seems to me to be about as far the association goes. BW-Austin clearly has different guiding principles for their game design. BW-Edmonton takes a lot of pride in their inclusive game design and has long been a supporter of the GLBT community. BW-Austin clearly isn't. I'll admit that I too have lost a great deal of interest in anything to do with BW, regardless of which studio a game is being made by, because of the Austin group's dismissal of the GLBT community. That doesn't mean I'll never buy a product from the Edmonton group again but I'll definitely be giving anything they make a close look before I do. I certainly wouldn't ever purchase anything from the Austin group again, though I imagine the Austin group's doors will simply be closed once TOR shuts down.

It is pretty obvious the "due to time and money" BS was just a smokescreen to begin with. The decision to exclude SGRA content from the game was clearly done due to the ideology of BW-Austin's leadership during development. The extra voice recording and programming time required to create a mechanism of gender checks for dialogue (both things done no where else in the game) to exclude the GLBT community from the game by itself would have been stricken from the development schedule if this was truly about time and money. This has pretty clearly been about someone(s) prejudice since day 1.

Wow, more strawmen on this last page alone than in the entire state of Kansas. These repeat trolls are really getting their act down now. Pay2Gay. Not only do you get the pleasure of being excluded and discriminated against for the last year now you get to PAY Bioware to tell them it was okay to do so. I'm sure that is going to go over well. I would hope that would be the point folks still holding out hope would realize BW-Austin just doesn't get it.

There's actually quite a lot of folks in this thread who have never been able to advance far enough into the game to really experience much of anything yet. Most of my characters are frozen around the level 12-15 range because I'm waiting on them to finish adding in all the base line content so I can play the game.

That's pretty much the only reason, yeah. At this point I'd suggest we throw the folks at BW-Austin into that group as well. They seem to find the idea of SGRA's so "icky" they won't speak up and even just acknowledge that there is a problem with the game more or less have an idea of how/when to fix it. BW-A seems to want to just stick their heads in the sand and yell "la-la-la-la-la" at the top of their voices while pretending gay people don't exist. That approach seems to make them quite happy, otherwise why would they keep doing it.

That's not atypical behavior for companies like this, they want the good press from looking like they support a minority community, but aren't particularly interested in doing the work to go along with it. "Yay! Look at us! We are such a great company because we support the GLBT community! Just don't expect us to include you in the game." For anyone interested in this issue, we've been getting quite good coverage lately in gaming sites and news outlets, hopefully this will create some momentum for us and get the word out to even more sites. Do we think this will lead to EA eventually getting off their duffs and giving us the content we deserve? No of course not. But just getting the word out and seeing so many folks asking why was the content missing, and why won't you talk to this community is a reward unto itself. Join us there, since for the most part we aren't particularly welcome on the general forum. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=476215

Agreed, I have little hope anymore that we will ever get the content we deserve, but it is great to see the support the issue is getting. A lot more sites seem to be picking this up than I expected. Great work Natashina. You should probably consider collecting links to all the gaming sites that are running articles on this and any non-game site news articles/blog posts/etc and take this to some of the larger gaming sites like IGN, PC Gamer, Gamespot, Kotaku, etc and see if they'll run articles as well. They will probably be more like to jump on a bandwagon that to start on.

You're right, and I do hope your efforts come to some sort of conclusion, I just don't think that conclusion is going to be satisfying for anyone here. Anyway, I'll bow out now since I honestly don't have anything nice to say about it anymore. And we all know what to do when your run out of nice things to say.

If it was coming they would be talking about. Additionally, I'm not sure how much worse the BW-Austin group could look at this point. They might be figuring as long as they have already hit rock bottom might as well stay there.

Because they can't obviously. I haven't seen a single post anywhere on this forum opposed to SGRA's being added that wasn't based entirely in fear and ignorance. That's really all there is to say about it.

Honestly? I don't think they care. That haven't done anything to make me think they care. They'll just do what they already did this time around and give out a bunch of hand waving nonsense "We'll confirm whether we are confirming this once we confirm whether or not SGRA's are confirmed. Or not. Thank you and please continue to subscribe to our hemorrhaging MMO!" They are likely content to skate by for years with answers like that if they have to, though I imagine it won't be long till folks just stop asking all together.

Again I would point out that the SW:TOR division of BW has no history of being inclusive as they are completely separate from the rest of the BW teams. But even if we just take BW or even EA as a whole, simply failing to be inclusive in one game isn't a terrible thing considering their history, being that the game is their flagship MMO does make it worse though, given that they like to parade around the fact they feel they are inclusive makes it still worse, given the fact they let it 'slip' in video game site articles that TOR actually does have SGRA content makes that even worse, considering the fact that the posters in this thread have go to said sites and get them to correct the article makes that even worse, and the real kicker is the treatment of the community throughout all of this and the attitude from EA/BW that we don't even exist back here that just makes the bottom fall out of the whole issue. So it isn't just BW-Austin's failures in living up to the purported philosophies of EA and BW as game developers, its the entirety of the situation taken as a whole that really makes this a black mark on EA and BW's reputation as inclusive developers.

Its been pretty clear for a while now they aren't coming. Likely ever.

Something for everyone to read and think about and consider how this contrasts with the way the BW-Austin group has and continues to treat SGRA content and the community that is asking for its inclusion. A recent tumblr post from the wonderfully talented David Gaider, lead writer Bioware's Dragon Age series. A lot of relevance in what he posted to this issue within SW:TOR. http://dgaider.tumblr.com/post/38151639841/the-impact-of-games