Bear in mind that what I am about to post is pure speculation. What if the overall purpose behind the development of KotFEET was the team seeking to curry favor with Big BW (the "main" studio up north in Edmonton) by going in a conventional RPG direction? Given how much of a developmental departure these expacs were from what had come before, this could be a correct interpretation.

The key to prevent "trouble" is to keep it to informed speculation versus baseless speculation. We can only go as far as the evidence takes us, and then possibly extend it a tad via logical inferences. Since we know nothing regarding who did what and when--and are very unlikely to know ever--there is no point in extending what I wrote further. Mainly wrote that to try and tamp down the gloom-and-doom with a reasonable overview of what we don't know and will likely never know. I know what you had listed was related to fishing with the word "bass" in the title. I had initially assumed that you were referencing fishing games--perhaps even a fishing MMO (yes, this idea struck me as stupid and I quickly dismissed it)--but a quick web search told me that those are fishing boats, since I found it odd you used the word "products" instead of "games." For myself, I'm nearly done with a prospective history journal article that hopefully I'll be getting off before the Fourth of July or on the 5th. Then it will be time to work on writing three Statements of Purposes for the history PhD programs I'll be applying to for admission in Dec. and Jan, taking the GRE and improving my German--and still squeezing in some time for gaming and hanging with pals. I believe it is safe to operate under the assumption that we will have some idea of how things are going to shape up by June of next year. About a year's time strikes me as more than fair to gauge if our beloved game's best days are still ahead of us after all. Let's all keep everything that can cross crossed that this hope becomes reality. Wait and see--and hope--is mostly all we can do in addition to continuing to play TOR.

I see our dear LadyAdmiral tried every conceivable troubleshooting avenue under the sun from a player perspective. My hat's off to her because I don't/wouldn't have the patience for that. There is a varied player base that play for different reasons. I suspect that it is likely impossible to adequately satisfy all the factions with sufficient attention. I play for story and PVP and I'd characterize myself as a semi-casual PVPer. I only ever ran the vanilla ops, only ran KP all the way through at least 10x, the other ones, I only earned achievements for the first two bosses. This was in 2013, and I don't remember if I was running them because I genuinely wanted to or because of some event. Also, from the team side, we don't know anything about the corporate culture they were operating in at BW. We know revenue was being diverted to other BW projects and that the SWTOR team members were shifted to work on other projects as BW felt necessary. From Chris' tweets, it could be fair to say that SWTOR was something BW didn't entirely understand. We also don't know just how involved Lucasfilm is as well. We also don't know how many levels of management there were above Keith. We don't know how much BW supervised the development of SWTOR. Did Keith's roadmap posts stop because the team decided to stop them internally, or did BW decide they were to cease? Devoid of genuine insights and knowledge of the internal workings of BW as a whole, we can only speculate. Did the EP of SWTOR ever have one-on-one meetings with top studio executives post-launch to discuss the game's state, future plans, and budgets? Or are such meetings done at a lower level? Then there are James Ohlen's comments from 2 years ago when he left that BW had become "too corporate." That suggests to me that there were too many meetings taking place and too many decisions needed to be discussed in meetings. Meetings--and needing to get buy-in from several people--tends to slow down coming to any decision.

I still think the best solution is to limit it to guild challenges only. I have no idea how often that feature is used, but limiting PVP premades to that feature could be healthy for guilds.

I just want to also lend my support to petitioning that something be done about premades in PVP. Either limit them to 2 people or limit them to guild challenges only. Also, second OlBuzzard with the idea of being able to repeat prior content with a difficulty boost--and it MUST remove level sync. Imagine going at it with a level 80 Thanaton, Zash, Baras, Rakton, etc. Time will reveal what kind of steward Broadsword will be for SWTOR. In the mean time, let us remain hopeful that this is the start of a new beginning unless future experience reveals that pessimism is warranted.

Remember that we don't know when these talks started. They could well have started sometime in the 4th Q of last year since there would be a lot to hammer out in an MOU. Lucasfilm likely also had some input into the decision as well.

I am heartened the statement says "most of the team" will be making the move and that BW is going to provide assistance associated with any possible "culture shock." I imagine Keith and Eric--at the very least--are currently having numerous meetings with Broadsword to ensure this transition is as seamless as possible for the Team--and us.

Yes, a story for non-Force and Force users would have been the most appropriate way to go for maintaining story cohesiveness and player immersion. Valkorian shouldn't have even bothered to notice what the non-Force using classes are doing largely because the actions of the Force-using characters were definitely leaving a mark on galactic history. I feel that a majority of KotFE could have remained exactly the same for all classes, but there would be a difference for chapters 10-12: Here there would be a bit of a fork between Force-users and tech classes. A choice would be provided for Chapter 10: either Anarchy in Paradise or Disavowed could be run. Chapters 11 and 12 would be devoted to Visions in the Dark and some sort of prelude to it for Force-users only. Tech classes would have had some sort of separate training missions to run for their Chapters 11 and 12. There would have to be other changes made, since Arkan, Vaylin, Senya, and Valk would only be foes for the Force-users.

Foreign companies operating in China require a Chinese partner that would then have full access to the foreign firm's IP. AWS--provided their will be sufficient redundancy provided for SWTOR--will likely be a boon for the game. Given that the test server was for APAC, I think we can assume that Amazon has a server farm in Australia or New Zealand. This could provide the game with a greater global reach. Being a military historian, I have no idea of the technical side of things, but the logistics of keeping some of these data facilities stocked with hard drives, servers, networking equipment, etc. must be impressive.

The number of additional items added to the CM regularly was likely more driven by EA and/or BW to get more revenue. For all we know BW may have been promised x% of CM revenue would be funneled back to them by EA. Deprecated armor sets, decos, weapons, etc. could be offered as rewards for completing FPs and Ops. Additionally, they could also be sold on vendors for a lot of credits a piece to aid with clamping down on the credit supply. There are also armors in the game that could be made available in the game--for instance, Vitiate's armor.

Passion and optimism are two positive attributes to see on display. Seems the process is farther along than I had assumed.

We don't even know how in the loop Keith is on the finer details of the move that are likely above his pay grade. Nor do we know how far along negotiations are. Have draft contracts been drawn up yet? How many levels of review do they have to go through? Are the parties just BioWare and Broadsword or is EA also a party to the negotiations? Judging from what Keith has told us, all three may be involved. That probably means three different teams of lawyers need to look things over and sign off on it--even through BW and Broadsword are both EA subsidiaries. EA obviously cannot dictate how this move is going to go; if they could, it makes no sense for this to have hit the news.

We are likely never going to learn about all the internal goings on behind the curtain with this game re: budgets, etc. except vague statements. Companies--like governments--do not like to be embarrassed or to apologize. Reading an article in the latest Journal of Military History (April 2023), I was rather shocked to learn that the British and French still have not fully released all of their records from World War II. There are still some matters of a sensitive nature that they wish to keep secret. Bureaucracies horde information and relish in secrecy and desire to protect their reputations from imagine or actual harm (a bureaucractic ego, if you will). The SWTOR team is a small one that is part of a bigger one--BW--that is a cog in an even bigger one--EA. So there we have three levels of bureaucracy, each one likely with its own particular culture. At least with communication on this issue of moving studios, Keith's communication appears to be coming as quickly as possible, since we have to keep in mind that the whole team could be as anxious as we are about this situation.

It would be wonderful if class stories could return. However, all of us would need to bear in mind that it wouldn't be possible to throw together a new chapter's worth of class quests quickly, since it means coming up with 8 chapters of content as we all know. I do think the story is at a good point for such a thing to possibly happen. A compromise that could be more workable would include doing 4 stories: dividing by faction and Force-sensitivity. This Mando and Malgus business could be seen as an interlude from the war as Empire and Republic work to extinguish a potential mutual thorn in our sides: the Mandalorians, a people whose only loyalty is to themselves and battle. An enduring alliance is impossible with such a culture. With the war proper, we have mainly been focusing our efforts on shoring up our faction's logistical tail. This offers a fine point at which to branch out again and permit our characters to get back to their roots. For example: the smuggler could join the hunt for an Imperial privateer who has been conducting strikes along a major supply line. For Agents, it could turn out that this privateer is actually Cypher 9 operating under a cover identity (could always use the Red Blade as a nice callback). The Trooper could be participating in an assault on an imperial stronghold with a layered defense that will take time to crack. The BH could have some bounties to collect of senators, Pub military, industrialists, etc. The SW could be tasked with leading the defense of the installation the Trooper has been tasked with attacking or defending/attacking something else. The SI could be on the hunt for an artifact rumored to hold immense power--could even be some old trinket of the former Emperor. The JK could be in hot pursuit of the SI.

Thanks for the Bioware historical refresher. I had forgotten about the clusters of Andromeda and Anthem, and how the Kotaku article (which I went back to reread) makes it clear that the game languished in pre-production hell because there was no single final decision-maker on the project until very late in the development cycle. Now I can vividly recall the lifeless, dead eyes in Andromeda and the quickly repetitive play of Anthem--also, its lack of a captivating story or, honestly, much of a story to begin with. Then there was Galactic Command with the launch of TOR's 5.0 update in Dec 2016. Before this update went live, I didn't read patch notes or look at the forums much. I was in my first grad school class at the time--historiography--and had gotten into my head that Galactic Command was going to be a new mini-game that was going to introduce some military strategy into the game: with being able to move fleets and armies around the galactic map to defend against Eternal Empire attacks. I was incredibly disappointed to log into early access to see it was just to score points and with X points you get an RNG loot box. Hopefully EA will continue to provide sufficient resources, and Broad Sword is interested in investing in the game. Hopefully, the acquisition of TOR for them is part of a long term strategy.

I am hoping that this could breathe new life into the game. It would be interesting to know just where the impetus for this transfer of studios came from. I looked over Schmidt's Twitter thread, and, while I think his changes with 7.0 were awful, his brief points strike me as valid: especially the lack of marketing (on either the part of BW or LFL/Disney) over the years and BW using the TOR bucks generated to invest into their other games; not our game. It stands to reason that Anthem's spectacular failure has likely soured BW's desire for games as a service and this may have led to this decision of letting SWTOR go (assuming BW initiated the scouting for a new home for TOR.) If it was EA, perhaps the decision was made in a strata or two above BW that BW should just focus on the IP it owns 100% from now on. Were all these back-end investments--64-bit, cloud servers, etc.--done as a way to make SWTOR more attractive for a new studio? Keith and the Team may not have even been told that this was another reason for making funds available for such developments. EA may be the good guy here given that it was BW that decided what portion of the funds EA gave to the studio would be put towards TOR's development. EA could have been involved somewhat, but I doubt to a great extent considering they own 20 studios. The EA C-suite isn't going to have much time to micromanage each studio, unless problems arise that need to be rectified. They would be more focused on matters of strategy for the entire company, not the operational decisions of an individual studio, unless decisions made start to detrimentally impact on the overall business strategy. Hopefully Broadsword Entertainment is looking at an SWTOR acquisition as a major get that they are willing to invest in.

There is something that all we players are missing: the dimensions of the problem. Eric, if we could get some game economy data in the thread that would be terrific. What has been the aggregate credit supply year over year and what are the yearly and monthly credit inflows and outflows? Let us not belittle the notion of high price, one shot credit sinks. They will help reduce the credit supply faster. My recommendation for this would be to add some gambling terminals on Nar Shadaa that would offer decos and old in-game gear from the early days (old gear, crafting schematics for old gear, Jawa junk) There could be several different chips offered to play these machines, with each higher level chip costing more credits, but offering a greater chance of scoring some sweet loot.

I am pleased to hear that Schmidt has left BW.

I'd chalk the problems up to BW self-inflicted wounds and wounds inflicted by EA. Keith mentioned that EA wanted to take the 10-year anniversary as a "soft relaunch" and that involved the UI redesign. The idea for this was not organic to the Team; therefore, this was an additional development goal that was foisted on the Team, perhaps by an EA exec that Keith has regular contact with, or perhaps one he only sees once a year--if at all. Point is: someone at least one rung up the food chain in the parent company issued an order. How many other things were dropped in the midst of being worked on to provide sufficient staffing to work on these unneeded UI overhaul? Then these dropped items eventually need to be returned to--how easy was it for them to do that? We also don't know when they truly began working on LotS and when the EA directive for the UI overhaul came down. Communication has been abysmal. They go into minute detail about the Malgus bug and the Level Sync issues, but for most of us, this detail is meaningless because we aren't computer programmers and/or game designers. While this information is nice to know because it shows that they're doing a lot of work to attempt to squash the Malgus bug, but the information being provided is meaningless to us. It might as well be written in Old English or Aramaic. I would find it far more useful to know how many aggregate work hours are being invested into squashing a major bug that is still unresolved. Their release schedule has obviously been blown to bits. I find it troubling that no new story content has yet to be pushed out to us. Makes me wonder just how much of LotS is actually in a completed state. How much of this was due to the Team's own inability to temper its vision with the possible and how much of it was caused by EA demands or others possibly within Bioware. We have no idea of how the meetings that Keith attends are typically structured. How many other people are usually in the room with him? How many total fingers are in the pot to have a say over SWTOR's development? We're into the 2nd quarter now, and there haven't been any new story cutscenes, and we have heard NOTHING from the Devs regarding when we can expect new content of any type be that for the story, PVP, or the upcoming new Op. Just give us an idea when we can expect stuff, with the proviso that it is subject to change. Dates to the day need not be provided; I'd just be happy with having months named. For example: R4 Op: May 2022 PvP Revamp: June 2022 etc. Thankfully, companions have been fixed, and I was delighted to read Chris' post that the root cause had been identified. Now we just need to wait for that to go to live--for which a rough ETA would be nice. I don't consider "weeks" to be good enough.

The smart thing to do is to separate PVP and PVE. Once that PVP toggle is clicked, damage/healing abilities for abilities refer to a PVP Damage Table/Database for PVP content that would be totally distinct from the same table setup but only for PVE values. It is impossible to balance the game for both PVE and PVP content because both are fundamentally opposed to each other. Time-to-kill in PVE is not supposed to be terribly lengthy except when facing a silver or gold enemy. If time-to-kill in PVP is too quick, PVP is broken. The only sensible solution is to have an ability bifurcation between the two. This way, PVP and PVE can each be balanced on their own terms. Instead, the Devs constantly reinvent the wheel, instead of just taking the existing wheel and improving the current wheel--smooth it out more, reinforce the spokes, or do other things to this now tortured analogy.

The questions I wrote were all being directed at Lucas. What did his Sith have to offer? The dude just isn't a very deep thinker in my estimation. I think the greatest problem for the Republic is their being tied to the hip of the Jedi. The Jedi want the Sith destroyed. The Jedi have twisted the Republic so it embraces Jedi morality, making a lasting peace impossible because the Jedi are moral absolutists.

That was Georgie boy's call. Lucas is brilliant at the big picture stuff, but when it comes to the finer details of building up the history of the GFFA, he should just have kept his mouth shut. Lucas doesn't think historically, and he seems not to give much thought to his universe beyond the period of time the films take place. So if the Jedi and Sith never waged one (or several) war(s) upon each other, what is this "revenge" that Maul spoke of having "at last?" Did some Jedi Master beat a Sith Lord at Pazaak and that's how the whole feud started?

Just ran the first chapter of KotET on Vet with lvl 49 and 50 comps--no problems encountered. Companions did sufficient healing and behaved as anticipated--no deaths.

Could you mind explaining why anyone around here--player or Dev--should care about what Tyler F. M. Edwards thinks about anything? Who is he? He seems to be well known to you. Is he like the Stephen King of gaming or MMO journalism? SWTOR is the only MMO I play and all the other games I play are older FPS or military strategy games (really into Paradox's stuff for example). Edwards even admits that he "has never been a big Star Wars fan." Looking through the SWTOR tag on this massively OP site reveals that he has only written two articles about SWTOR going back to April 15, 2019. Why should any of us--Dev or player--care about what an SW and SWTOR neophyte thinks about our game? EDIT: Additionally, I am puzzled at how anyone could be dismissive of the "faction conflict," and have been really pulled into the game for the first time with KotFE. At its core, Star Wars is all about the faction conflict. There was also some yammering about seeing characters go through "personal struggles" yet he makes no mention of any origin stories that have "personal struggle" in spades: Agent, Inquisitor, Warrior, and Knight.

Where you have gone, I don't think any of us the rest of us can follow.