Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit

[Residentx_NA]

This is a chance to socialize and get out town. Austin is a cool place in March!! I"m going!! Edited February 2, 2012 by Residentx_NA

[Dharst]

This is good. Honestly I hope all the guild leaders bring tough questions to the summit and get direct answers.

 

Better be nice up front- could easily be a cherry picking opportunity to say they're done something for the community...without actually doing anything at all.

 

Besides- by March my sub will be about over. I hope I don't have to wait that long to make a decision to renew.

[LegionAlpha]

If I may:

You are doing it wrong

 

 

At this point without having an established player base you'd better ask players why they left.

So invite player who stopped subscribing instead.

 

Now for getting feedback from active subscribers that don't go to the forums, start doing in game optional surveys after the login screen. Then once you start having some real data, work on building focus groups questions and double check the most sensitive trends with 2-3 choices only in game polls. Finally, then and only then send the invites.

 

And the carrot on the stick would be to give a virtual reward like a title or a fluffy item to people who answered the poll/survey.

 

BW always does it wrong.

[SoulstitchMMO]

I still don't see what this will solve. They have the forums. They can run their fancy search engines and figure out what the hot topics are.

 

They have a community management team and staff, why can't they simply address this on the forums.

 

Why does Bioware need to have a dog and pony show... instead of just doing their job on the forums on a daily basis?

 

Is this entire charade so Bioware can push having to deal with the fans till after the summit? Is that the new Bioware stance on community relations? Tell everyone that wants answers from the development team to wait until after the summit now?

 

Why can't people just submit all their questions online through a form and then Bioware can pick out the most popular questions and answer them directly?

 

Doesn't that seem the most fair to the player base? Does Bioware even understand that the internet exists? That people can and do things online?

 

Why does Bioware make it so easy to troll them?

[Xumagai]

Learn to comprehend. The expenses are paid for those selected by Bioware, not those that sign up.

 

I see, my bad. I was confused.

[Balmuck]

Seems like a gimmick really.. Completely and utterly unfair to majority of your player base that you'll fly out select amount of people to give you advice that YOU NEED TO KNOW already.

 

 

Do you not already pay people for these things? What are their jobs for? How about your dev team? Isn't this their job? If I told my boss that he needs to go out and pay some people to come and do my job, not only would he laugh right in my face but that'd be the last time he'd see it.... I'd have my pink slip faster then I could blink.

 

 

Don't waste your money on pathetic PR stuns. You've had hundreds of good ideas and hundreds of good posts that you should have listened to... especially in the beta. Yet, you didn't. The dev team basically came out and said that they didn't care and look at what's happening now. EVERYTHING that people cried about in the beta has been "emergency" patches soon as your sub numbers started to drop.. Horrible FPS, horrible PVP, Ilum win trading, bugs and other issues in PVE zones.. class balance (how many times did someone have to tell you that Melee OP/Scoundrels were OP in the beta before you had to act on it?)

 

The funny thing is... these issues still aren't fixed. You release a patch to fix the Warzone wins not counting.. which I literally reported 7 months ago in the beta.. and it's still not fixed.

 

 

How about that? Is that SOMETHING you NEED TO FLY OUT PEOPLE for?

 

What a fricking joke.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Balmuck

[Deewe]

Seems like a gimmick really.. Completely and utterly unfair to majority of your player base that you'll fly out select amount of people to give you advice that YOU NEED TO KNOW already.

 

 

Do you not already pay people for these things? What are their jobs for? How about your dev team? Isn't this their job? If I told my boss that he needs to go out and pay some people to come and do my job, not only would he laugh right in my face but that'd be the last time he'd see it.... I'd have my pink slip faster then I could blink.

 

 

Don't waste your money on pathetic PR stuns. You've had hundreds of good ideas and hundreds of good posts that you should have listened to... especially in the beta. Yet, you didn't. The dev team basically came out and said that they didn't care and look at what's happening now. EVERYTHING that people cried about in the beta has been "emergency" patches soon as your sub numbers started to drop.. Horrible FPS, horrible PVP, Ilum win trading, bugs and other issues in PVE zones.. class balance (how many times did someone have to tell you that Melee OP/Scoundrels were OP in the beta before you had to act on it?)

 

The funny thing is... these issues still aren't fixed. You release a patch to fix the Warzone wins not counting.. which I literally reported 7 months ago in the beta.. and it's still not fixed.

 

 

How about that? Is that SOMETHING you NEED TO FLY OUT PEOPLE for?

 

What a fricking joke.

It's called damage control. They can't really be that clueless.

[Residentx_NA]

It's called damage control. They can't really be that clueless.

 

You guys are being too harsh. This game has been live 1 month and several days. You can't expect everything in the first month. Compared to STO, which is F2p by the way[their patching the game everyday!!], this game is doing well. Let's build a solid community. I would like to meet some of the other players and devs since I'm going to be with this game for probably 10 years at least. This event, in my opinion, is more about fun and relationships than damage control.

 

Stop the hating, if you weren't invited I'm sorry...if you were... take lots of photos for the rest of us

Edited February 2, 2012 by Residentx_NA

[Fiachsidhe]

Seems like a gimmick really.. Completely and utterly unfair to majority of your player base that you'll fly out select amount of people to give you advice that YOU NEED TO KNOW already.

 

 

Do you not already pay people for these things? What are their jobs for? How about your dev team? Isn't this their job? If I told my boss that he needs to go out and pay some people to come and do my job, not only would he laugh right in my face but that'd be the last time he'd see it.... I'd have my pink slip faster then I could blink.

 

 

Don't waste your money on pathetic PR stuns. You've had hundreds of good ideas and hundreds of good posts that you should have listened to... especially in the beta. Yet, you didn't. The dev team basically came out and said that they didn't care and look at what's happening now. EVERYTHING that people cried about in the beta has been "emergency" patches soon as your sub numbers started to drop.. Horrible FPS, horrible PVP, Ilum win trading, bugs and other issues in PVE zones.. class balance (how many times did someone have to tell you that Melee OP/Scoundrels were OP in the beta before you had to act on it?)

 

The funny thing is... these issues still aren't fixed. You release a patch to fix the Warzone wins not counting.. which I literally reported 7 months ago in the beta.. and it's still not fixed.

 

 

How about that? Is that SOMETHING you NEED TO FLY OUT PEOPLE for?

 

What a fricking joke.

 

THANK YOU.

 

It's absolutely astounding to me, that so many here can praise BW, for this insanity.

 

They're literally spending god only knows how many thousands of dollars, to fly select players on a free vacation, to tell them all the things we've all be telling them for almost a year. Then they expect anyone else to pay out of their own pocket, to do the same.

It's mind blowing how shameless they are, trying to spin this crap into an event.

 

How gullible and thoughtless, the player base can be, when it comes to swallowing blatant, obvious, PR damage control.

[Darth_Eclipses]

Stop the hating, if you weren't invited I'm sorry...if you were... take lots of photos for the rest of us

 

I don't mind them inviting certain guilds. Absolutely not.

 

I do however mind the fact that the trip is all expenses paid for the invited guilds and for all the others it's on their own dime. Uhh, so when the invited guilds go to eat lunch with the BW developers where are the other guild leaders going to go? The Subway down the street?

 

Uggh. If they are going to be reviewing guild applications and choosing a pool from there - their expenses should also be taken care of.

 

It's simply just tacky otherwise.

 

Other than that: I do think BW does need to listen to guilds and get their respective focus on the game and its future. TBH GOOD guild leaders listen every night about the game's failings in vent/teamspeak/mumble and have a unique POV to offer BW on how to retain subscribers.

 

I just don't think they should be paying hundreds of dollars in addition to a subscription to present that POV to BW. Asking your subscriber base to do that a month from launch is...uggh. Tacky.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Darth_Eclipses

[Residentx_NA]

THANK YOU.

 

It's absolutely astounding to me, that so many here can praise BW, for this insanity.

 

They're literally spending god only knows how many thousands of dollars, to fly select players on a free vacation, to tell them all the things we've all be telling them for almost a year. Then they expect anyone else to pay out of their own pocket, to do the same.

It's mind blowing how shameless they are, trying to spin this crap into an event.

 

How gullible and thoughtless, the player base can be, when it comes to swallowing blatant, obvious, PR damage control.

 

They had some extra slots and offered them to the community. I have no problems with this. Thanks for giving other members a chance to participate.

[mrcaptainpants]

TL;DR summary at the end...

 

I'm in support of anything that will further open the lines of communication, so I can't bring myself to be hostile to the idea of this summit. If it does some good, then I'll be happy.

 

That said, however...

 

I'm not sure what information you will get from this summit that is not already available here on the forums. That, more than anything else, is what I would like to understand. Also, it seems to me that a great deal of energy is going to be spent interacting with a very small percentage of the playerbase, when opportunities for interaction are being missed right here on the forums every day.

 

Yes, I know, the forums are also home to a lot of garbage posts and hostile people. I don't deny that, nor do I suggest that those kinds of posts should receive any level of official attention. But I feel that there is still not enough of the "personal touch" happening here on the forums, which makes people feel as though their communication is never heard. And though I know not everyone will agree with me (nor should they) I also know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

 

 

Good luck with the summit, though. I truly do hope that something positive comes from it.

 

------------------------------------------------------

TL;DR:

 

1. Can you please explain what kind of information you will get from a summit that is not already available here on the forums?

 

2. Consider stepping up the level of CM interaction here on the forums; Make the forums your own 24-hour E-summit.

[PyxisNautica]

I agree that this is a PR 'stunt', but I don't necessarily view that as a bad thing. They're a business and I expect these types of promotions.

 

What kind of bothers me is that it sounds like the first set of guilds were cherry-picked using an unknown and unannounced set of criteria. This leaves Bioware open to some pretty bothersome accusations of choosing only those guild leaders that will represent them WELL instead of representing them OBJECTIVELY.

 

A much better approach would have been to openly invite all guilds to apply and then pick randomly.

[Darth_Eclipses]

 

A much better approach would have been to openly invite all guilds to apply and then pick randomly.

 

Agreed.

 

Or pick based on a set of criteria - but the difference between paying for some and others having to pay their own way is bad form imo.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Darth_Eclipses

[Sanchpanza]

Seeing as the mass majority of guilds that I see and inquire to people about seem to be about 7-20 active people I don't really think that the mass majority of the fan base is not going to represented in this.

 

I also can't see them flying out any European guild leaders to be involved in this. Unless they're paying for a flight from European cities to America, and then the connecting flight to Texas, I can't see any normal person from Europe being able to afford this. A quick look at the prices for me to get there, for example, is about £800 for a return trip. That's 1200$. And that's just for the flight and I live in a major European city with 2 airports that run flights to the US.

 

Being able to meet the devs and talk face to face is a nice idea, but seriously, they're ONLY letting people do it face to face?

 

A far more cost-effective and fair system would be to have a series of internet chats for people to submit questions for the devs to answer. Plus they wouldn't be limited to what..8 hours of Q&A? They could do them until the community seemed satisfied that they'd had some pressing questions answered.

 

To be honest, I feel like we have no way to give accurate feedback to the devs in this game. I know people say that they read the forums etc, but unless they employ people to look at every forum thread and see if it is a pressing issue then I don't think if I raise an issue it's ever going to be seriously looked at.

 

I hate to wail on BW, but to be perfectly honest their customer service is very lacking. That's not some random accusation, but so far I've had my pre-order code not put in properly, it took until 3 days into the early access period for someone to even reply and get my code put in properly, and even then they didn't give me the correct date that I redeemed the code but instead lumped me in with all the people who redeemed in late december. When asking for them to fix this I had no response for a further 4 days, not, infact, until after the early access period has finished. To add to this, when I tried to ring their European phone line, this is the message I got "If you are inquiring about account security issues we have fixed said security issues, for all other problems please call back later" for 2 DAYS. I've had planet storyline quests fail to update for me and not got a response until 3 days after the event, by which point I've just given up and moved onto the next planet and had to pvp to keep my level appropriate. I've had TOS violations accused against me on more than one occasion, with no feedback to the specifics of my "violation", which were then rescinded after I sent emails to the account disputes email, which is a sign of being trigger happy on the ban front. Also, normally I'm not one to complain about downtimes, but recently they did downtime from 8am - 4pm on a saturday for me, which for central Europe was 10am-6pm. And now they run an event for the community to give feedback, when they're blatently only going to choose the biggest guilds on the USA servers... Just feeling a bit isolated and let down here.

 

I have a dozen big and small issues that I personally want to raise and get feedback on, but I really don't see the point in putting them on the forum because the threads are just going to be trolled, or lost in the multitude of "This game sux, I'm quitting" threads, and never get a response.

 

Sorry to be so negative on this thread, but it really is just a gimmick and will do little to help the community relations problems. Infact, I think it will more than likely make more people feel isolated than included in the discussion.

 

Oh, and I'm saying community relations and customer service, I'm not complaining about their patching or bug fixes at all. I think they've done a good job of getting bug fixes out quickly, even if there are still some issues that really need attention, I think they're doing a lot of work on that front and it really shows.

[Xanthias]

I appreciate the Devs doing this, but Sunday to Tuesday?! Sorry, but I have a RL and a job. Can't be missing it to attend an event like this. If it was on the weekend, you better believe I'd be there.

[Residentx_NA]

Seeing as the mass majority of guilds that I see and inquire to people about seem to be about 7-20 active people I don't really think that the mass majority of the fan base is not going to represented in this.

 

I also can't see them flying out any European guild leaders to be involved in this. Unless they're paying for a flight from European cities to America, and then the connecting flight to Texas, I can't see any normal person from Europe being able to afford this. A quick look at the prices for me to get there, for example, is about £800 for a return trip. That's 1200$. And that's just for the flight and I live in a major European city with 2 airports that run flights to the US.

 

Being able to meet the devs and talk face to face is a nice idea, but seriously, they're ONLY letting people do it face to face?

 

A far more cost-effective and fair system would be to have a series of internet chats for people to submit questions for the devs to answer. Plus they wouldn't be limited to what..8 hours of Q&A? They could do them until the community seemed satisfied that they'd had some pressing questions answered.

 

To be honest, I feel like we have no way to give accurate feedback to the devs in this game. I know people say that they read the forums etc, but unless they employ people to look at every forum thread and see if it is a pressing issue then I don't think if I raise an issue it's ever going to be seriously looked at.

 

I hate to wail on BW, but to be perfectly honest their customer service is very lacking. That's not some random accusation, but so far I've had my pre-order code not put in properly, it took until 3 days into the early access period for someone to even reply and get my code put in properly, and even then they didn't give me the correct date that I redeemed the code but instead lumped me in with all the people who redeemed in late december. When asking for them to fix this I had no response for a further 4 days, not, infact, until after the early access period has finished. To add to this, when I tried to ring their European phone line, this is the message I got "If you are inquiring about account security issues we have fixed said security issues, for all other problems please call back later" for 2 DAYS. I've had planet storyline quests fail to update for me and not got a response until 3 days after the event, by which point I've just given up and moved onto the next planet and had to pvp to keep my level appropriate. I've had TOS violations accused against me on more than one occasion, with no feedback to the specifics of my "violation", which were then rescinded after I sent emails to the account disputes email, which is a sign of being trigger happy on the ban front. Also, normally I'm not one to complain about downtimes, but recently they did downtime from 8am - 4pm on a saturday for me, which for central Europe was 10am-6pm. And now they run an event for the community to give feedback, when they're blatently only going to choose the biggest guilds on the USA servers... Just feeling a bit isolated and let down here.

 

I have a dozen big and small issues that I personally want to raise and get feedback on, but I really don't see the point in putting them on the forum because the threads are just going to be trolled, or lost in the multitude of "This game sux, I'm quitting" threads, and never get a response.

 

Sorry to be so negative on this thread, but it really is just a gimmick and will do little to help the community relations problems. Infact, I think it will more than likely make more people feel isolated than included in the discussion.

 

Oh, and I'm saying community relations and customer service, I'm not complaining about their patching or bug fixes at all. I think they've done a good job of getting bug fixes out quickly, even if there are still some issues that really need attention, I think they're doing a lot of work on that front and it really shows.

 

When the truth comes out about this event, I'm sure the "paid" people were international or non-us. US people can pay to get to Austin but a fair "committee" would have to be made of international members right? The international people are the only ones in my opinion that have a legitimate gripe....but if a few are paid to come I'm okay with that.

I hope BW tells us at least what countries the paid members are coming from.

[jztrotter]

You know why they pull a select few? Because half the people on these boards are nitwits who don't supply constructive criticism and all they do is complain. It's really difficult to fix and issue when people are so nondescript. Cry more. And i'd like to see you do their job. QQ, cancel sub pl0x.

 

Yes, clearly your overwhelming maturity is exactly what these forums need, instead of the people who complain about valid points.

 

Go play with your legos and let the big boys handle the forums. Your clearly out of your league.

[SoulstitchMMO]

Honestly though, what's the point of having forums if developers are going to select players and only answer those questions after those people have flown across the planet and stayed in Austin for a couple days.

 

Does Bioware even know they have forums?

[Force_Storm]

When the truth comes out about this event, I'm sure the "paid" people were international or non-us. US people can pay to get to Austin but a fair "committee" would have to be made of international members right? The international people are the only ones in my opinion that have a legitimate gripe....but if a few are paid to come I'm okay with that.

I hope BW tells us at least what countries the paid members are coming from.

 

yea and I hope they don't invite any communists or other sort like terrorist ***

[jztrotter]

Honestly though, what's the point of having forums if developers are going to select players and only answer those questions after those people have flown across the planet and stayed in Austin for a couple days.

 

Does Bioware even know they have forums?

 

Exactly.

 

BioWare can coat it with whatever topping they like, but it dosen't change the fact that its;

 

1) A huge money sink for anyone not invited.

2) Unneccessary on all fronts, since they have the means to awnser anything that needs to be addressed here.

3) a huge and unneccessary PR stunt.

[Residentx_NA]

Honestly though, what's the point of having forums if developers are going to select players and only answer those questions after those people have flown across the planet and stayed in Austin for a couple days.

 

Does Bioware even know they have forums?

 

Most of us know that the forums only represent the most passionate players or 1%. Most just don't bother with the forums...their just too busy

Edited February 2, 2012 by Residentx_NA

[SoulstitchMMO]

Exactly.

 

BioWare can coat it with whatever topping they like, but it dosen't change the fact that its;

 

1) A huge money sink for anyone not invited.

2) Unneccessary on all fronts, since they have the means to awnser anything that needs to be addressed here.

3) a huge and unneccessary PR stunt.

 

How hard would it actually to set up a form on the website where players submit their questions, bioware picks out the top questions for various developers, those developers would then answer those questions on fridays like they did those other things during beta.

 

 

There, saves everyone heartache and stress, and gets involvement with your playerbase... and I'm not even on the community management team...

[SoulstitchMMO]

Sometimes it feels like Bioware is trying to invent the pen to write in space instead of a pencil.

[darkdayze]

THANK YOU.

 

It's absolutely astounding to me, that so many here can praise BW, for this insanity.

 

They're literally spending god only knows how many thousands of dollars, to fly select players on a free vacation, to tell them all the things we've all be telling them for almost a year. Then they expect anyone else to pay out of their own pocket, to do the same.

It's mind blowing how shameless they are, trying to spin this crap into an event.

 

How gullible and thoughtless, the player base can be, when it comes to swallowing blatant, obvious, PR damage control.

 

and no one has given it any much thought that they might want to actually meet some of their player base. All I hear is whining. What other company does that for it's players? Do I hear any? Nope. Ok then. Good lord. What is wrong with meeting some people, having a good time doing it all the while, chatting about the game? They will and have been listening to the forums. How about something different? Why do you have to criticize every move a company does? Is this what is wrong with the world now? They have to scrutinze a move by a good company, just cause you can? That's what I thought.