Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit

[Caspian_Rho]

Play European MMOs, get European Events.

EvE Online has its fanfest in Iceland e.g.

 

Nowhere does it say on the box this is NOT an EU game. Infact if anything it was launched in the EU BEFORE the US so yeah they should have addressed this in the article.... with something like:

'we understand we have a huge European base, but at this time due to moving the team over etc etc and the extra time/travel disruption and better reinvesting manpower to the actual game we have decided to hold this in the US for the meantime.'

^^^ It doesn't take a genius to repsond with such a comment just to let the playerbase know they are aware by acknowledging them. But obviously your comment is just some sycophantic jibe..

Edited February 1, 2012 by Caspian_Rho

[Zyonix]

I hope, Bioware will make a video about this summit and upload it on Youtube

[Amp_]

Yeah, i saw that. There was also a Tweet by David Bass a while ago saying they had stuff in the pipework. Im very thankful, i just hope that it is not merely a Live Stream of watching everyone else get to ask questions/give opinions.

 

"Involved" is such a vague term.

 

I'm sure they could pull off some kind of conference call.

[PjPablo]

Nothing you said made any sense.

 

Why should you have to defend the company? Irrelevant, the point is, you are.

You haven't seen me describe why it's bad? Then you haven't been reading any of my posts.

 

All I see in you, is someone so desperate to defend a company that makes a product you enjoy, that you can ignore dozens of posts telling you why it's a pointless and insulting, while relying entirely on a fallacy argument, that the alternative to cherry picking a tiny sum of arbitrarily chosen people, is total apathy.

 

Oh you want me to offer alternatives? You mean like the dozen or so times I said READ THESE FORUMS? You know, the ones that are right now, full of suggestions?

 

Really, now. Go read my previous posts. I have been a pretty harsh critic of BW. Hell, the other day I was accused of being one of the worst bashing trolls here. If anyone is being objective here it's me. (Guess I can't win either way here)

 

Could they do a better job responding to posts on the forums? Yes. And I have posted as such many times. I see this for what it is. An attempt to engage the player base in conversation. Nothing more, nothing less. If you honestly think the best place to do that is via these forums you haven't been reading these forums much.

 

As far as selecting a small, select group...I completely agree with that. Hate to break it to you but not all players are created equal. If you are going to target a manageable number of people to engage, selecting guild leaders of prominent guilds is as good a method as any. I trust the leader of a large guild to be more capable of having a fruitful conversation than the average player.

 

You seem pretty bitter about this whole thing so I don't think there is much room for productive conversation. I'll just leave it at that.

 

EDIT: A post of mine from 1/28

 

Lack of communication is not however. From my POV this team is one of the most uncommunicative, least customer focused I have ever seen in an MMO. The game itself is fine. There are bugs but for the most part I enjoy it. What I struggle with is the effort put forth on support items like CS, like building community, like the way the forums are designed and managed, how maintenance is handled, etc. They seemed to have spent so much time and effort on the game itself they forgot about planning for how they were going to support it.

 

I am just giving credit where credit is due here.

Edited February 1, 2012 by PjPablo

[Khemizt]

Because the forums are so hard for Bioware to look at, if you want me to save you all some money I'll just email the **** you need to fix, this would be a good idea if the game was in a playable state, but getting feedback from a game in Beta form, using this method is trash I'm getting sick of BW PR ********.

[Fiachsidhe]

As far as selecting a small, select group...I completely agree with that. Hate to break it to you but not all players are created equal.

 

Done! My 15 a month spends just as well as yours. All players are equal.

 

You seem pretty bitter about this whole thing so I don't think there is much room for productive conversation. I'll just leave it at that.

 

No you'll egg me on, insult my ability to produce a productive conversation after providing none yourself, and then back out after the last word. Yeah I am bitter. You should be too.

 

Bottom line, I'm not interested in what they could have done. Only what they're choosing to do. and right now it stinks.

 

EDIT: Credit isn't due here.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Fiachsidhe

[Abaia]

"ZOMG! Publicity stunt!" - Who cares? Pretty cool event either way.

 

"ZOMG! Stop ignoring all the thoughtful, comprehensive feedback on the forums!" - a) 99% of the posters here are rage-fueled idiots. b) 99% of people who play an MMO don't use their game's forums. c) MMOs are kinda complex, and forums don't lend themselves well to the "discussion" of complex subjects. (They do work well for spewing one-sided, vitriolic, moronic screeds, though.)

 

"ZOMG! Why not me? I'm so special!" - No, you're not. Mr. Rogers lied. You're not born special. Specialness is not thrust upon you. You have to become special through your deeds.

 

Anyway, someone shoot me the schedule. I plan on attending just to hang out after hours. Maybe we can turn this into a full-blown event, a la Fanfaire.

[Khemizt]

I hope, Bioware will make a video about this summit and upload it on Youtube

 

I hope BW see's how ridiculous this is and doesn't go through with it...

[Fiachsidhe]

Because the forums are so hard for Bioware to look at, if you want me to save you all some money I'll just email the **** you need to fix, this would be a good idea if the game was in a playable state, but getting feedback from a game in Beta form, using this method is trash I'm getting sick of BW PR ********.

 

You don't understand, they're reaching out to us, er, them, er someone. If you're not a guild leader, you're just not organized and invested enough to provide feedback. You need to take time out of your vacation, and travel to a special place to get Bioware to listen.

 

Because Bioware has don't the bare minimum so far, even the slightest bit of interaction look good by comparison, so we should be thanking them.

 

I mean we have a PTR server, and forum, and suggestions board. But these ideas really are better served in a hotel.

[Vdarkblade]

Our guild is a very diverse guild with players from all over the US as well as Canada. As the GM, I would love a chance to discuss how the game is going as well as what we as players can do to keep it moving in the right direction. Plus, I live close so it would be a once in a lifetime chance to let our voices be heard in public. I look forward to a reply with an invitation and can assure Bioware that I will have some very beneficial input for the Guild Summit.

[Sirsri]

Which would all be well and good if this website wasn't already filled with constructive, well thought out feedback.

 

I can also make assumptions, and say that anyone who is willing to take vacation days, shell out travel/lodging fees, just to do what they do on the forums, is also the kind of person who will simply gush, and tell them that everything is ok.

 

Or, that they'll be too nervous to tell Bioware what they really feel, when face to face.

 

If I have the bulk of my vocal community telling me what is wrong, and after months of that, I turn around and say, ok let's see what a tiny fraction of you think, in person. What is any sane person supposed to think?

 

It's like they want a focus group, when they have the biggest resource imaginable right here. I've yet to see one Bioware sanctioned poll. If they really wanted constructive well thought out responses they'd have them by now.

 

Cheery picking people from the community based on little more than their guild rank isn't reaching out to the community. If they had any interest in that, they'd be on these boards.

 

 

The problem is figuring out priorities. The forums give you one mechanism to determine what needs to be 'changed' (broadly, fixed, added, redesigned etc.). But a million people who all agree something is broken is not the same as 100 people who figured out that some other problem is going to screw the game completely for the million.

 

I'm not sure guild leaders is necessarily the right approach. You run into a lot of legal quagmire problems, raid leaders especially are experts on how to play your game, that's valuable skill (advertising money) and BioWare is asking for you to pay them for the privilege of using your expertise. But you still need to know how to priortise what's wrong.

 

Take the inability to drop quests. It affects everyone, it blocks progress for a large number of people for a long time because they have to waste time clearing out the log. But it's a bugger of a problem to fix, because in the long chain of sub parts to each meta you'd need to be able to pick the meta back up in the right state. Just upping the quest limit will have serious memory implications (notably in the fleet). So thats the 'technical' side, and probably a reasonable reflection of BioWares internal problems with the bug and what to do about it. But you ask guild leaders and they say 'this a problem that resolves itself at 50, blocks progress at 50, or simply must be lower/higher priority than that ability delay nonsense or a lack of a combat log' and then you have some sense of whether or not it's just really annoying, or if there's something else going on.

 

The feedback on the forums is a bit like the tyranny of the masses. it sounds all well and good to lop the heads off the 1% and take their money. But this is a game, so it's a giant treadmill, and the people who were 50 on dec 20th were leading the charge for everyone else in the last month and a bit. But of course the people at BioWare have jobs, and don't have time to know all of the intricate problems of both leveling and being at max level yet. That's something that will come with time, but in the interim: They have 400 people for development. How many do you assign to the UI? Raid bugs? The quest thing? Character models (I'm sick of looking like I either joined the *** or gutted a buffalo, and stuck the carcass of its head on my head as a helmet, how serious is that?)? Environment art? Even communication. Stephen Ried is sort of a transfer point for information, and a lot of that information has been woefully inadequate, wrong, misleading, misguided, the wrong level etc. That isn't necessarily his fault, and it's not really serious most of the time, but you need to figure out what should be said better.

 

Oh and did I mention they left Ilum being PVP exploited for what, 20 odd hours? They need a stiff dressing down for that stupidity, because that, along with the current kill trading, is going to seriously mess up pvp in the long run, and they've let it go on so long it might be very hard to salvage at this point without completely gutting core systems, which, admittedly, need to be gutted anyway, but not nearly this quickly. And then there's the lowbies looting chests exploits on ilum which is going to serious damage the economy. And yet I still count one person on ilum, empire side, doing it right now on my server.

 

 

This one of those things were the experts at playing your game will know better what's actually going on, and be able to anticipate problems before you cause them better than you can.

 

If I would add my 2 proverbial cents to the general feedback though. Operatives and powertechs should have purely ranged specs (not necessarily 30m range, but 10m range). Oh and multi speccing should have been in at launch. The longer they don't have it, the more people are going to be having less and less fun as we converge onto a 1 tank 5 dps, 2 heals, or 2 tanks 10 dps 4 heals setup. (Maybe even 1 tank 11dps 4 heals).

[Fiachsidhe]

"ZOMG! Publicity stunt!" - Who cares? Pretty cool event either way.

 

"ZOMG! Stop ignoring all the thoughtful, comprehensive feedback on the forums!" - a) 99% of the posters here are rage-fueled idiots. b) 99% of people who play an MMO don't use their game's forums. c) MMOs are kinda complex, and forums don't lend themselves well to the "discussion" of complex subjects. (They do work well for spewing one-sided, vitriolic, moronic screeds, though.)

 

"ZOMG! Why not me? I'm so special!" - No, you're not. Mr. Rogers lied. You're not born special. Specialness is not thrust upon you. You have to become special through your deeds.

 

Anyway, someone shoot me the schedule. I plan on attending just to hang out after hours. Maybe we can turn this into a full-blown event, a la Fanfaire.

 

ZOMG! Congratulations on not understanding a single piece of punctuation, in anything you're commenting on.

[Jybwee]

21 or older?... If the word "open bar" is in the invitation i will fly down!

[bloodygustav]

Jen'jidai's revered leader will be there. "Server first" guilds gotta represent!

[Fiachsidhe]

The problem is figuring out priorities. The forums give you one mechanism to determine what needs to be 'changed' (broadly, fixed, added, redesigned etc.). But a million people who all agree something is broken is not the same as 100 people who figured out that some other problem is going to screw the game completely for the million.

 

I'm not sure guild leaders is necessarily the right approach. You run into a lot of legal quagmire problems, raid leaders especially are experts on how to play your game, that's valuable skill (advertising money) and BioWare is asking for you to pay them for the privilege of using your expertise. But you still need to know how to priortise what's wrong.

 

Take the inability to drop quests. It affects everyone, it blocks progress for a large number of people for a long time because they have to waste time clearing out the log. But it's a bugger of a problem to fix, because in the long chain of sub parts to each meta you'd need to be able to pick the meta back up in the right state. Just upping the quest limit will have serious memory implications (notably in the fleet). So thats the 'technical' side, and probably a reasonable reflection of BioWares internal problems with the bug and what to do about it. But you ask guild leaders and they say 'this a problem that resolves itself at 50, blocks progress at 50, or simply must be lower/higher priority than that ability delay nonsense or a lack of a combat log' and then you have some sense of whether or not it's just really annoying, or if there's something else going on.

 

The feedback on the forums is a bit like the tyranny of the masses. it sounds all well and good to lop the heads off the 1% and take their money. But this is a game, so it's a giant treadmill, and the people who were 50 on dec 20th were leading the charge for everyone else in the last month and a bit. But of course the people at BioWare have jobs, and don't have time to know all of the intricate problems of both leveling and being at max level yet. That's something that will come with time, but in the interim: They have 400 people for development. How many do you assign to the UI? Raid bugs? The quest thing? Character models (I'm sick of looking like I either joined the *** or gutted a buffalo, and stuck the carcass of its head on my head as a helmet, how serious is that?)? Environment art? Even communication. Stephen Ried is sort of a transfer point for information, and a lot of that information has been woefully inadequate, wrong, misleading, misguided, the wrong level etc. That isn't necessarily his fault, and it's not really serious most of the time, but you need to figure out what should be said better.

 

Oh and did I mention they left Ilum being PVP exploited for what, 20 odd hours? They need a stiff dressing down for that stupidity, because that, along with the current kill trading, is going to seriously mess up pvp in the long run, and they've let it go on so long it might be very hard to salvage at this point without completely gutting core systems, which, admittedly, need to be gutted anyway, but not nearly this quickly. And then there's the lowbies looting chests exploits on ilum which is going to serious damage the economy. And yet I still count one person on ilum, empire side, doing it right now on my server.

 

 

This one of those things were the experts at playing your game will know better what's actually going on, and be able to anticipate problems before you cause them better than you can.

 

If I would add my 2 proverbial cents to the general feedback though. Operatives and powertechs should have purely ranged specs (not necessarily 30m range, but 10m range). Oh and multi speccing should have been in at launch. The longer they don't have it, the more people are going to be having less and less fun as we converge onto a 1 tank 5 dps, 2 heals, or 2 tanks 10 dps 4 heals setup. (Maybe even 1 tank 11dps 4 heals).

 

Asking a small group of the same people is going to clear anything up? If they can't figure out what needs fixing, then no amount of guild summits are going to change that.

 

The truth is, they aren't doing this for feedback, they're doing it to give the guilds the illusion of being part of the process, which they really aren't. Not in any meaningful way. By taking guild leaders, the guilds feel they have mouthpiece, and a direct link to the source.

 

The problem is, if those very same guild leaders' forum posts aren't good enough, why is being in the same room?

 

It doesn't matter how many people tell Bioware what needs fixing, and it doesn't matter where. The only thing that matters is what Bioware does, and they have more than enough info. The few people invited aren't anymore insightful than anyone else.

 

This is a straight up PR move.

This is all to garner favor with guilds. They know exactly what needs fixing and they know exactly what they intend to fix. If they don't, they don't deserve our money.

 

The thing is, it works. Just look at all the guild leaders posting here who suddenly feel important. But if legions of beta testers couldn't get Bioware to address issues still around, and the PTR forums goers can't, you guys are not going to either.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Fiachsidhe

[Ransom_BiC]

Jen'jidai's revered leader will be there. "Server first" guilds gotta represent!

 

You were already accepted and received your invite?

[ManiacZX]

Does the person applying for this have to be the "Guild Leader" in terms of the top position in the structure of the guild or merely part of the Guild Leadership?

 

It would seem that another member of the Guild Leadership should be allowed to apply if they have the ability to participate where the Guild Leader may not.

 

Our Guild is primarily European and our Guild Leader is in Norway so his attendance would be very costly and time consuming.

 

However, I am a Council Member and participate in the leadership of the guild and live in Fort Worth, TX so may attendance would be very easy to work out.

 

I would be able to represent my guild, our views, concerns and wishes even though I don't hold the title of "Guild Leader". I've known our Guild Leader since 2001 along with many of our Guild Members as this guild has been carried across many MMOs.

 

Something to consider, hopefully there can be some real yellow text (not the people that write in yellow text to try to trick people into reading their posts) in response to this as I think many more guilds would be able to have an opportunity to participate if they are allowed to select an alternate established guild member.

[Ransom_BiC]

"ZOMG! Publicity stunt!" - Who cares? Pretty cool event either way.

 

"ZOMG! Stop ignoring all the thoughtful, comprehensive feedback on the forums!" - a) 99% of the posters here are rage-fueled idiots. b) 99% of people who play an MMO don't use their game's forums. c) MMOs are kinda complex, and forums don't lend themselves well to the "discussion" of complex subjects. (They do work well for spewing one-sided, vitriolic, moronic screeds, though.)

 

"ZOMG! Why not me? I'm so special!" - No, you're not. Mr. Rogers lied. You're not born special. Specialness is not thrust upon you. You have to become special through your deeds.

 

Anyway, someone shoot me the schedule. I plan on attending just to hang out after hours. Maybe we can turn this into a full-blown event, a la Fanfaire.

 

 

This. In every way. I live in Austin anyway, so would love to hook up with any guild leaders who make it in, if we aren't selected.

[Jett-Rinn]

I'll be there with my hard hitting questions such as:

• Jawas; why can't we marry them?
  
• The door to the shuttle when leaving BT and how it stays there
  
• The shuttle on Correlia and how it flies through a building
  
• Is she more than a pretty sidekick, buster?
  

 

Sadly I'm terrified that is all that will be asked...it's one of the reasons I signed up.

[Garrix]

Please make sure you pick ones interested in PvP, not just PvE! You will lose a lot of subs if you don't give the PvP servers more attention. A standoff for hours at the Rep base waiting for one of them to run out too far and get pulled, then praying in the lagfest you actually get off some damage and then praying it actually counts as a kill = frustrating and no fun at all. Also, find a way to make WZs not named Huttball spawn more often for us Emps on Veela!

 

This isn't a bash on the game in general, but you guys really need to pick up the pace on fixin g Illum and find a way to make people WANT to fight out in the map, not just at one base.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Garrix

[DTuloJr]

Which would all be well and good if this website wasn't already filled with constructive, well thought out feedback.

 

They've had about 1.25 years worth of well thought out feedback that they've pretty much ignored, as far as what we see in front of us, when it comes to "what counts". The phrase "Damn the torpedo's! Full speed ahead!" seems to describe BWA's attitude from beta inception to now. Thankfully, some of that looks like it will change... But the fact remains that people are now paying BWA to develop a product that should have been planned with specific features for it's initial release in the first place (see, year's worth of NON fanboy, honest beta feedback...), who have been given mere non-binding IOU's in exchange. That's a major insult to BioWare's customers.

 

I can also make assumptions, and say that anyone who is willing to take vacation days, shell out travel/lodging fees, just to do what they do on the forums, is also the kind of person who will simply gush, and tell them that everything is ok.

 

I would not. I'd praise them appropriately where they deserve it, fry them pretty much everywhere else, and let them know exactly what they need to do. Oh wait... there's that year's worth of feedback they've already received...

 

Or, that they'll be too nervous to tell Bioware what they really feel, when face to face.

 

This is a very valid danger. By approaching guild *leaders*, I'm sure they hope to obtain a more mature pool of individuals who may not be intimidated by BWA. I certainly know I'm not.

 

If I have the bulk of my vocal community telling me what is wrong, and after months of that, I turn around and say, ok let's see what a tiny fraction of you think, in person. What is any sane person supposed to think?

 

A sane person thinks that BWA is ignoring every piece of feedback it's ever received, because, as James Ohlen described it in the Gamasutra article, that (paraphrasing) they already know what's right and wrong about the game, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be doing their jobs as developers? And that this is merely a marketing and outreach attempt to put their finger in the hole in the dam before it breaks fully?

 

It's like they want a focus group, when they have the biggest resource imaginable right here. I've yet to see one Bioware sanctioned poll. If they really wanted constructive well thought out responses they'd have them by now.

 

They did a lot of polls during the beta. Nearly all of them were relatively meaningless and had very limited impact, biased questions. A few were well thought out. No clue if any of that information was actually used in any measurable manner.

 

Cheery picking people from the community based on little more than their guild rank isn't reaching out to the community. If they had any interest in that, they'd be on these boards.

 

They are most definitely on these boards. Georg Zoeller has been highly active, and is one of the few devs to pretty much be raw, open, and fully honest about everything, in spite of BWA's marketing machine and just about everyone *else* associated with BW, BWA, EA, LA, or LFL has been.

 

I do have to ask, if they choose guilds as reps from the community... who else are they supposed to ask than the guild leader? GL's or their *reps* are invited. Seems reasonable to me.

 

Of course, I'll never get an invite. And a good 99.99999% of everyone else won't either. I'm not a gushing fanboy. I play the game, I like a lot of it, but I'm a harsh critic. People don't like critics, because we make them feel judged.

[Tenceriker]

This is good but there should be an EU version of this event in the future. Certainly hope people who go lay out the facts because what BW has been doing isn't not nearly enough. Edited February 1, 2012 by Tenceriker

[DTuloJr]

 

...

 

This is a straight up PR move.

 

...

 

But if legions of beta testers couldn't get Bioware to address issues still around, and the PTR forums goers can't, you guys are not going to either.

 

Ding! Winner!

 

Maybe they'll listen *this* time, though...

[Creedon]

This will just be some PR nonsense.

 

I truely hope your wrong about that. But with the previous post about bugs and exploits, and alot of ranting by customers..... I am against the fence on this on agreeing or disagreeing...

 

None the less, atleast its an effort thus far... but actions are what are need more so now than ever.

[Chromiie]

Here's hoping Bioware can learn from CCP and how they communitcate to Eve players.