[When is 1.3 coming out]

We haven't announced a date for 1.3 to go live yet, but it will be coming to the Public Test Server in the next few weeks. Check out this article in the Test Center for more info about testing 1.3. We're glad to see the excitement for 1.3!

 

I am excited to see 1.3 since it will be the last chance that Bioware has to keep me as a player till next year.

 

I was really becoming bored and disheartened with SW:TOR prior to the Guild Summit. Many of the things that would keep me with the game were discussed there and I, like many others, came away with the impression that most of that would be in 1.2. Well most of it was not in 1.2.

 

After that the free month for level 50 by a certain time so upset most of the guild that I came to the game with and they have completely stopped playing. In many cases they still have months already paid for that they are not using and they have no plans to give SW:TOR another try.

 

So if 1.3 looks like it has what would keep me with the game I will not let my subscription end. If the items are not there, I will let the subscription end and uninstall the game. I may come back in 2013 to look at what has been added to the game and consider resubscribing then. But right now it looks to me like SW:TOR will be a repeat of STO. I did not return to that game till they went F2P.

[Official Q&A Thread for June 8th, 2012 Q&A Blog Post]

I have enjoyed many MMORPGs that I have played that are like SW:TOR in that they are designed to be PvE games with PvP as an option. I will be honest that in many of this style MMORPGs I have had fun PvPing at times.

 

But I am starting to get worried about the direction of SW:TOR. To be blunt the developers seem to be planning on SW:TOR being a PvP game with a PvE option. Is this true?

 

I get this feeling because prior to 1.2 PvP was the quickest way to gear up for PvE content. After 1.2 PvP still seems to be the best mechanism to gear up for PvE, especially for the Imperial Players. I am in favor of the ranked PvP but with the posts that implies that a significant effort is being put into Open World PvP I am worried. My experience has been that significant open world PvP significantly disrupts PvE play. Especially when the players and developers feel that restricting open PvP to PvP only zones like Restuss in SWG and Wintergrasp in WoW is not open world PvP.

[Does PTS get the live patches?]

If you report a bug in-game and the ticket is closed, it doesn't indicate that we've decided to ignore the bug report (and, of course, it doesn't mean we think the bug is invalid or fixed either), even if it has been some time and the bug persists. We review bug reports and pass issues along into our internal system for tracking. Once it's there, it's prioritized like other bugs, which means that it could be some time before a fix gets out to live servers. We address bugs as fast as we're able, but some fixes that may appear to be simple can be more involved than they would seem. That doesn't mean we don't address them, just that we want to address them as we're confidently able to do so.

 

One thing that we know prohibits some players from testing effectively on PTS right now is that we do not currently have an option to copy your character to public test. This is an option we do want to make available to facilitate testing, and though I can't speak to future changes to testing plans specifically, we're happy to see feedback from people who want to test.

 

So let me see if I have this right.

 

For bugs you run a two tier system for bug reports. Tier 1 is operated by Customer support and Tier 2 is operated by development. This is very common and to be honest is needed, especially on something like an online MMORPG.

 

The problem with the player perception may be that the two are not loosely coupled. When I ran QA at several major companies, The Tier 1 bug reports were closed as one of the following or left open:

 

1. Duplicate - The bug is a duplicate of a bug that is open in the Tier 2 system.
   
2. User Error - From further investigation the problem reported is not a bug and was due to the user making a mistake or misunderstanding how things work. An explanation has been presented to the customer.
   
3. Resolved - The bug has already been identified in the Tier 2 system and the Tier 2 bug has been fixed and had not yet been sent to the live systems when it was reported.
   

 

Of course if they are the first report they are left open till resolved and other bug reports are duplicated to it.

 

This system does not change how things are done by the development team. It does make the customer feel better about their bug report. Simply closing it when it has been accepted by development gets into the situation that was mentioned here. The person reporting the bug, if it was not immediately fixed, feels that they are being ignored. As you point out this is not true but it is had to show players that through actions if a bug has been given a low priority by the developers.

 

There is also an advantage to using this type of system. If make it easy to show how make customers have experienced the bug. For a development team that wants the customers to be happy, one factor that is used to set the priority of a bug is not only the severity but also how many customers it has impacted negatively. A system like this allows that information to be collected and easily update.

 

I am glad to see that character copy to the test servers has been recognized as a real testing problem. When that is put in place you need to also start fresh on the test servers with each major patch. It will solve some potential problems with character copy on an ongoing test server. But it will answer the question about the test server getting minor patches, it should be the live code plus the changes that are planned. The clean install of the test servers will clear out any code that was tested and did not make it to the live servers.

[Star Wars: The Old Republic Official Podcast Episode I]

 

D) Rakghoul plague

All that was said plus, apology for those who felt griefed either by the

........PvP flagging on PvE servers

........Plague tagging on PvE servers

........Ganking on PvP server due to faction imbalance

........Impossibility to buy rewards due to the vendor being camped on PvP servers or vendor being removed after the event without enough time of announcement.

........Or missed the event due to the short notice of announcement

 

Add something along the lines overall seems the event was well perceived and we'll make sure to take into account all the above for the next event. +throw a bone about the vendor or the event coming back soon...

 

 

E) Speak about misscommunication about "most loyal customers", apologize and mentions in the works, in game, veteran rewards based on subscribed time (vs played or legacy level)

 

 

You may have been a bit harder on them than I would be. But I want to add something to these points.

The Rakghoul plague at the very least should have lasted longer. Since to complete it you had to add a piece every 24 hours it almost forced you to be working on it on day one or two and stay at it every day. For those that have a life and can not play every day they were excluded by the combination of the event structure and the short period of time from completing it. So bad design and implementation part 1.

 

Now to what you comment on. Forced PvP flagging to complete a event that has no inherent PvP theme on a PvE server will never be looked on in a positive manner. If the bulk of the players are on PvE servers, doing things like this is a sure fire way to upset them.

 

Plague spreading to those that did not want to participate was also a predictable way to upset players. All one needed to do to predict this was to look at the plague spreading event in WoW prior to the release of the Wrath of the Litch King event. The developers did it because they wanted players to experience the hopelessness that the characters in Warcraft III felt with the original spreading of the plague. They achieved the goal, but also learned that the average player was not interested in it. This was compounded by players abusing the mechanism to deliberately interfere with the game play of others. So players not liking this aspect on both PvE and PvP servers is to be expected and something that should be avoided if a game is bleeding subscriptions.

 

Ganking during the event on PvP servers. Well this is a problem because of why some players play on PvP servers and is to be expected. The only ways to avoid this is to make the event areas sanctuaries with no PvP or to extend the time to give people more opportunity to complete it. This is something that easily should have been foreseen and plans put in place to deal with it.

 

On PvP servers players camping the vendor is also something that should have been expected. This could have been minimized by replacing the one vendor with one in each factions starport.

 

On top of this you forgot to mention that for many people the jump in populations on Tat created severe lag problems for many people. I was not able to complete the two level 50 operations bosses because I lagged out and DC'ed during both of them. From talking with people this was a common problem on my server. I also had an alt that was at the right level for Tat and I could not play him during the event due to the lag on the planet.

 

The way that the Rakghoul Plague event was presented implied that it went smoothly and was a great success and enjoyed by all. This either shows a total disconnect between the developers and what is happening in the game or that they must tote the company line that everything is going great in anything they say about the game.

 

The "Miscommunication" that you mention was probably the most damaging thing that they did recently. If they had granted 30 days of game time to everyone when they got their first level 50 it would have been seed a lot differently. As it was with level 50 by a certain day and eventually Legacy 6 to try to minimized the damage, many players that were enjoying the story for their character and taking their time to level simply interpreted this as Bioware only caring about players that leveled quickly, spent lots of time in game and worked on many alts. Many that I have talked to as they cancelled their subscriptions said that this proved that the proclaiming that SW:TOR was innovative by focusing on Story was not true. Bioware was clearly, to them, rewarding players that did not take time to enjoy the stories and be immersed in them.

[Star Wars: The Old Republic Official Podcast Episode I]

I want to comment on the testing statements that were made.

 

I started testing games in Austin in the early 1980's both working for companies and as a consultant. Later I worked for IBM and HP on operating systems and later for companies doing massive real time network operations. I eventually retired as a Software QA executive. So with this background and experience I have some statements to make.

 

To get the type of testing mentioned done the following needs to be done.

1. Major changes need to be done on a clean system. To have the results of past bugs and removed projects persist through retaining past characters only makes the results less and less reliable as time progresses and these build up.
   
2. Players need to be able to clone their current characters to the test server. This can be abused to bring over clones of items if not restrained. The most effective way to constrain potential abuse is wipe the server at each major patch as noted and limit the number of copies per test cycle.
   
3. If the testing emphasis is to be on end game content, players need to be able to also use standardized "Premade" characters with equipment of the type the the developers are designing the content for.
   
4. Since it is easier to get people to place characters on the test realm for major changes the server should not be wiped for minor update testing. So clean server for 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 but not 1.2.2, 1.3.1 and so on.
   
5. Incentives are not needed to get people to test. Generally the best results come from those that do not need incentives. But if not enough players are using the test servers then some incentives are useful.
   

 

SW:TOR is not is a state to implement this yet so how close is it on each of these points.

1. The SW:TOR development team is on record that they do not plan on wiping the test server. In the long run this will be a problem but until they have implemented the automated character move/copy between servers they are correct in not using clean servers. However, when EA can offer character copies they need to reverse this policy and start using clean servers for each major patch.
   
2. SW:TOR currently only has the ability to manually copy or move characters from server to server. This can not be used repeatedly for the test server due to costs and time to do it. Since EA is working on implementing this feature, the ability to do this should be added about that time. It would be at this time that using a clean server at each major update is implemented.
   
3. While it is easier to code the generation of "premade" characters, there is no reason to do this. The most cost effective way to implement this feature is to "copy" from a static character each time. So after the previous bullet is implemented you also manually created these static characters that have the gear and abilities that the developers are designing the content for.
   
4. This is a policy so it is easy to implement and is the current state of the test servers.
   
5. The current incentives are a start, but are probably not enough if clean servers are used to test major patches. Additional limited availability items like those added for the recent plague event could be rewards for testing.
   

 

As I see it the developers are doing the best that they can but the testing will be inadequate until this summer when character transfer is implemented. At that point it can be improved.

 

I would also like to comment on the "invitational" character copy that was done to test 1.2. It has been my experience that invitational testers have a tendency to play the game and therefore test the game just like the developers and internal testers would. They generally will not do the unexpected testing that the developers stated that they need. But given the nature of 1.2 and the lack of an automated copy it was the best that they could do. In the future though testing plans should not be built around repeating this.

[Feedback request from James Ohlen - potential future planets]

I would like to see Dantooine and Dathomir added to the game. Both of these planets would fit into the current time line for the Star Wars universe.

 

Personally I would like to see Naboo, but the situation on Naboo at this time in the official time line would not be possible.

 

For Dathomir I suggest the one from Clone Wars and not SWG.

[So BW is hearing us loud and clear about the models of armor?]

Hey folks - just to make sure everyone concerned about this topic has seen our Q&A comments on it, here's what we said in the March 30th Community Q&A:

 

 

 

It's important to note the last bit about new armor sets having long lead times (meaning it may take a bit before you notice a change in direction), but we've definitely heard player feedback on this!

 

Just to clarify. What most player really are asking for here are Custom schematics for much of the early equipment offered in game. (The colors can differ slightly.) In general these are the traditional looks that players are talking about and the meshes already exist in game and have been properly tested.

 

Most of the players making comments like this are not requesting new meshes or anything that clearly requires a lot of lead time.

 

Also most, especially in the RP community feel that these custom crafted items need to be available at relatively low levels, 15 or 20, so that players can get their look early on and stay with it. For Jedi this also means crystals in the Red, Yellow, Blue and Red "Iconic" colors should be readily available. A case for Cyan, Magenta and Purple being added can also be made.

[Shutting Catboy down]

2) Once your character was on the romance path, it was not possible to "break up" with Jorgan. I believe this is currently working as intended. That said, we've definitely seen all the feedback on the matter and are discussing possible changes to the system for the future, but I don't think we're ready to talk about any of those potential changes in detail as yet. As mentioned, please don't hesitate to post your own feelings on the matter in the suggestion box to add to the feedback!

 

Well clearly there needs to be a way to "break up" just like there is in real life and leave the romance path. I strongly support a way to end this, especially if entered into it accidentally.

 

I must also be added before any same sex romance options are added. Players may be surprised to accidentally enter into such a situation.

[Community Relations]

I suggest checking out our patch notes, community blog, news site, weekly Q&As, Weekly Dev Track Summary Blogs, Weekly Patch Notes Updates, and of course, here in General Discussion, to name a few places.

 

Of course, our general policy is to not talk in detail about specific features until we are 100% sure that it is on its way. You can imagine what would happen if we gave a specific date, months in advance, only to come up against an unforeseen obstacle that causes us to delay a particular feature. This is why you'll see many replies by us and our developers that simply say "soon".

 

I would like to suggest that waiting for 100% is a formula for disaster.

 

Games like SWG followed this policy and quickly earned the distrust of the player base. One of the biggest problems was that if you wait till you are 100% sure that something will be added and the implementation is hated by all players, there is no opportunity to change and you ship something that upsets the player base needlessly.

 

The SWG team did announce a few things that they were considering doing. In two cases the community rejected the proposal for very good reasons. This saved the development team considerable effort on something that would needlessly upset players. In other cases the feedback guided the development team to implement things that were greatly loved by the players and were seen as a great improvement to the game.

 

WoW does have some upset players, but in general when they make dramatic changes to the game they have won over the majority of players because they start talking about things when they only think that there is a 50-60% chance of being in game. Often most of the discussion is why they feel the change is needed to make the game better and players do suggest alternate mechanism to achieve the same goal. But even there the WoW development team has dropped some things because the players proposed better ways to achieve the same goal or the development costs of what they were planning grew to the point that they needed to drop it and cut their losses. But they have gained far more trust from their player community than other MMORPGs.

 

I have long advocated that being open and talking more about less than 100% plans is the only thing that games should copy from WoW. Since this has been shown in the games that do it to increase trust in what the developers say.

 

As you can see in the discussion about this game the developers are quickly loosing credibility with the players.

[Why not ask for feedback In-Game?]

Posts on the forums are not the only method we use to get feedback. They're definitely a place we look at and ask for player feedback, but we have extensive metrics and telemetry and other resources we use to guide decisions about the game. All the pieces are important, but we don't just use one source to gather information. I don't know if adding in-game surveys is something we would do, but do rest assured that we get lots of information and feedback through multiple channels!

 

Certainly measurements of what is happening in game is very important and is probably the best way to measure if player actions in game match expectations.

 

While I do not bother with twitter and only log into facebook twice a year I do agree that they are a way to supplement the statements in the forums about what people think of the game. Good Customer Relations Managers will understand that most of the comments in all three of these areas will be driven by dissatisfied players and their activity often makes that community look greater than they actually are.

 

As to in game feedback. I personally see no reason to go beyond what WoW has on their test servers. There they ask for feedback on every quest completion. That makes sense to me.

[UI Feature Feedback Request]

Just a few things to say about the UI; both what works and what is missing.

 

First things that are missing.

 

1. You must always be able to set the scale for each individual item.
   
2. More bars - (It is something that has been said is in the plans, just reinforcing that it is needed.)
   
3. Buff/Debuff bars that can be moved and repositioned.
   
4. We need the ability to name and save API and share them account wide with all our characters. (If the UI API could be exposed and a programming language added so that players can develop a way to do this. )
   
5. Add the ability to hide each UI element based on being in combat or not.
   
6. Add the ability to show only ground or space elements. Right now it is very confusing to configure the space elements.
   

 

 

What I like.

 

1. I use a game keypad to do the button pressing. I can now make the bars look like the keypad to remind me what buttons to press.
   
2. Most elements can be relocated so that I can make it look like other games that I play. This means that I do not have to relearn the key parts of the screen to watch. I can put those elements in the same screen location and off I go.
   

 

 

I have read several suggestions by others and I know many in WoW and other games where players can modify the UI using LUA where much of what they are asking for is possible. I do know some that even use that but more and more I am hearing people that are no longer using many of the things that I have not mentioned. So my advice is to look at where the requests are coming from and what is readily used in other games before prioritizing the work.

[Official Q&A Thread for May 11th, 2012 Q&A Blog Post]

Our guild is currently disintegrating because of decisions.

 

As a Roleplay guild players were enjoying leveling up. Then the Level 50/Legacy 6 reward was announced. Many players who were no where close to getting this reward, felt insulted and have stopped playing and canceled their subscriptions.

 

Others have found that game changes made it difficult to impossible for them to solo their class storyline until they have way outleveled it. They do not want to ask for assistance since they do not want to spoil the story for others. Many have left the game since they feel that the developers neglected to adjust storyline quests to be doable with other changes that they have made.

 

These are just a few examples of why our guild members have been leaving recently. Are the developers aware of these unintended consequences and are they planning to address these issues?

 

(As an observation. While not a great fan of the last few years of SWG, the developers for that game, using NDAs did put in place a set of player advocated to provide feedback on changes like this.)

[Community Q&A – April 27th 2012 Blog Discussion]

Rift has free transfers, to be fair WoW is probably the only subscription based game that reliably gets away with charging for transfers. but I know, with people like you standing ready with wallet in hand expecting to pay for something that should be free, the rest of us gets shafted.

You might want to reverse that; Rift would be one of the few games that doesn't charge for transfers. At least, not general transfers.

 

For those that played Star Wars Galaxies, the final mass loss of subscribers started with the free transfers. What happened there was that everyone transferred to the fad Server of the Moment and they the lag drove many of them from the game. I can very easily see this be repeated if SW:TOR were to add free and regular server transfers like SWG did and Rift does.

[Community Q&A – April 27th 2012 Blog Discussion]

I have to admit that I stayed around for 1.2 specifically since multispec was implied to be there. I was willing to wait for 1.3 but it will not be there either.

 

At this point I will be letting my game time lapse and return to the game in the future should they implement more interesting things to do. At this point the guild is bleeding characters which has made hard modes and operations impossible for me to do. I have done all the story lines that interested me.

 

So while there are lots of planned things that interest me; it looks like I will be better off waiting till after the release of MoP to give this a try.

[Official Q&A Thread for May 4th, 2012 Q&A Blog Post]

It was mentioned that there will be additional player playable species this year.

 

Will there be a species change option to go with that or will the number of characters per server be increased? We have already seen many players complain about 1.2 in that they have to delete characters to play races that they wanted.

[Alt Species with 1.2 Legacy! Not fair to already leveled alts!!]

Not going to happen. When new races have been introduced in other previous games they havent said "Oh wait that level 50 Orc youve been playing for the past 5 years, yeah you can change it to an elf..."

 

They are introducing new races in this game, not just legacy unlocks in future so Dont play any more characters until theyre available....

 

This was brought up at the Guild Summit Legacy discussion. The developer response was very much open for discussion. They clearly stated that there would be no way in 1.2 for players to adjust their characters to fit what they would have done if the 1.2 information was made fully available when the game launched. The people at the summit did express a huge disappointment about this.

 

You need to watch the video but my personal assessment from the full discussion was that the developers see no issue with people leveling alts or even rerolling characters. I even got the impression that they expected this to be common place and a fully acceptable thing for players to do. But I will admit that a personal bias may have affected my perception of it.

 

Let's hope we will get "plastical surgery" NPCs (think "Barber Shop", just allowing to change you everything about your character except faction and class - yes, even gender and species - by re-entering the character creator) some time soon.

 

There are instances in the Star Wars universe where agents completely change their appearance, species and even gender to infiltrate whatever they need to infiltrate, so it would fit into canon, too.

 

Some game do offer all of this and faction but not class change as a fee based service. I expect that to happen eventually but not this year in SW:TOR.

 

The developers are working on a method to obtain additional character slots.

 

No, it was not supposed to be part of the game at launch.

 

At the guild summit the developers stated that the 8 and 40 character limits would not be changing. They were asked this and they explicitly stated that they did not see it changing in the future. I would like to see more slots be available but I doubt we will see it till the opening of the microtransaction service that both LA and EA said that they were planning for SW:TOR.

 

As to it not supposed to be part of the game at launch. The developers clearly stated that the Legacy system was something that they had designed the game around. It was not complete enough at launch to turn on more than what they did. They clearly could have talked about some aspects of it such as the Species unlocks as being something to plan around.

[1.2 release date?]

We don't know its not here this week, all we know is that's its not launching on Tuesday. Last Friday there were 2 release windows that slipped through.

 

The 1st was the 10th in a now replaced video, this has been officially denied, but the denial was specific to the lack of release on the 10th.

 

The second, the slip up has not been denied, and indeed there have been tweets alluding to that answer but not denying it.

 

As has been mentioned many times in this thread bioware have not felt bound to release on tuesdays.

 

While it would be a bit far to say that it will come this week, equally its a bit strong to say its not comning this week.

 

Yeah. We have been repeatedly told that there would be plenty of warning about 1.2. A casual comment in twitter with no statement in facebook or the forums would not be what I would define as plenty of warning.

[Medpacks... are you kidding me?!?!!?!?]

1- There exists no mechanic to determine when a fight over and the next mob begins for your character alone. Considering that there exists a bug where you companion agros mobs on it's own now.... this becomes even more problematic.

 

For your character the timer to use another should start once combat ends, even for a millisecond. Even in the case where your companion agros a mob after combat ends there should be enough of a break to start the countdown to using it again. Also the bug effects can be minimized through how you set up your companion.

 

2- Group mechanics currently can not differentiate if you are out of combat if your party wanders off and attacks something while you yourself are trying to catch a second wind. This is clearly demonstrated by elevators that will not let you use them if you party is in combat, loot boxes that can not be opened and the like.

 

Well the party should not be wandering off. Some of the mechanics that you mention are to prevent zerging a fight. Some other games do not even allow you into the Flashpoint/Operation until all combat ends. Bioware is not being different from today's common practice.

 

2a- Does anyone NOT see a problem when -1- member of a Operation is -stuck- in combat mode and no one can use a med pack????

 

Since the developers do not seem to want to go down the path of medpac use being a primary healing mechanism instead of healing classes this change makes a lot of sense. The alternative would be for boss fights to include lots of AOE damage to force players to constantly use medpacs so that boss damage is only healed through the use of healers in the group.

 

But that also means that those same developers need to review the mechanisms where a member gets stuck as flagged in combat when they are not and that does need to be fixed.

 

3-This change was not asked for by the player community.

 

The players did not request this directly. They did request more PvE content. This seems to be a change to minimize the variables that must be considered so that new PvE content can be created faster. That was requested by the player community.

[Community Q&A – April 6th 2012 Blog Discussion]

I think the real problem is that Bioware has a PVE MMO on their hands, with only a modicum of PVP content, and they've now realized what a mistake this was to begin with. Yet, they refuese to cut their losses; this game will never rival real PVP MMO's, it doesn't even have a mechanism for realm v realm, something MMO's have been doing for almost a decaade, and still they insist on having a very PVP-heavy game update, with little word on more PVE.

 

While there's nothing wrong with continuing to improve PVP, they should really be focusing on cranking out more content for PVE. 1 new Flashpoint and 1 new Operation after a 3 month wait? Unless you have something else up your sleeve for the PVE players, you're going to start losing them as fast as the PVP players. A lot of us are done (or close to done) with everything that you can do in EV and KP, and dropping to one raid night a week to clear Explosive Conflict will kill our guild (and many like us), unless you have something coming out very shortly after 1.2 launches.

 

When Star Wars Galaxies introduced their GCW with an emphasis on PvP their subscriber loss through the loss of the PvE players accelerated again. It accelerated even more with the Paid and then Free CTS as the PvPers started saying the servers were dead and started migrating to one. They were followed by the PvE players who heard that things were better on that server. But with the server being so heavily overloaded they again had an acceleration in player loss, now from both PvPers and PvEers.

 

The current emphasis on PvP additions to TOR have me worried that I will be seeing a repeat of what happened in Galaxies.

[Community Q&A – April 6th 2012 Blog Discussion]

Many of the class story bosses are intentionally very difficult. This is something that all classes face and is not unique to Smugglers. The fact of the matter is that Scrapper DPS is closer to target in 1.2. Understandably, if you were already struggling with an encounter, you may view this as an undesired change. For clarity, we don't agree that this is "unfair" for "pure PVE" players as the changes are not meant to (despite popular perception) specifically target PVP over PVE.

 

But on the specific topic of class story bosses, The difficulty may need to be looked at. These encounters need to be solo-able for many reasons.

 

The most important reason why they need to be designed to be done solo is tied to leveling alts. If they are designed to be done it a group this is a big mistake. For many people they do not want to help someone do a class story boss since they do not want to participate in a spoiler for when they do the story for themselves.

 

I am not advocating that they be easy, but whenever the damage of any class is reduced, each of the story bosses need to be double checked to see if they are still solo-able by that class and a companion.

[Official Q&A Thread for April 20th, 2012 Q&A Blog Post]

The Legacy panel at the guild summit stated that players who wish to only focus on a single main character would not be placed at a disadvantage in the Legacy system.

 

So far the real character impacting abilities of other class buffs and combat skill still seem to only be available by leveling alts. Is this a reversal of what was stated at the guild summit or a feature that is not yet available to test in 1.2?

[Medpacks... are you kidding me?!?!!?!?]

Changes such as this are never requested by the community. However, it makes encounters easier to design around. Medpacs are the emergency, going to die, need health instantly type item. Being able to use them several times throughout the fight mitigates the encounter. This type of change was required for balance.

 

Correct. This is why WoW did this same change and now that EA is trying to design more complex encounters they realized how much this type of change helps their design and testing.

[Why are we charge to remove mods?]

To keep game inflation in check every game needs to have credit sinks that remove credits from the game.

 

The cost of removing the mods from armor is one of these credit sinks and is probably one of the best ones to have. Removing mods is a personal decision since in most cases you have the option to wear the armor. Also except for the mods in T1 and T2 Operations gear it may be easier to just get another mod to put in your preferred armor appearance.

 

While I hate paying the current prices, I also do not feel that they are unreasonable or need to be changed. I did understand from the invitational Guild Summit that they are looking at reducing the cost to remove mods and adding other credit sinks since they feel that there are not enough sinks and people are earning way too much money.

[No Cross Realm LFG tool please!]

I am disappointed to see the cross realm LFG tool being talked about as a future addition to the game. I was really hoping to keep that out of TOR just because of it's ability to destroy community in a game. I would be all for LFG server wide but cross realm is a no go for me.

 

I have never understood why people feel that this kills community. Even in game that have that tool the best groups are built from you guildmates and from your friends list. If you are playing at a time that is not part of your normal schedule or do not like the politics that guilds generally devolve into, such a tool and especially a cross server tool that aids this lets you experience parts of the game that you would otherwise miss.

[Server population is dropping...]

Any one else noticed that the servers were all full during peak times the other week and now all the full ones are now only heavy or very heavy. Lots are just standard now and you log on to them to see what the populations are like and you'll get like 20 people in a zone compared to around 80 in the very heavy ones.

 

Bioware needs to start merging servers before they make the mistake every other developer has done with mmorpgs ever since WoW. If you're part of an unpopulated server you're more likely to quit because you cannot find the people to play with.

 

It's not a doomsday thread but Bioware need to get on top of the population decline before the servers get too underpopulated and people quit.

 

However, if the servers return to queues and heavy lag like they were in December or Starsider was in SWG you would find more players leaving than in the current state.

 

In fact some of the heavier servers are in their current state because of people leaving due to lag.

 

I am not against their implementing the industry standard $25US paid character transfer. But I do not see a need for server merges or a FCTS.