A Message from the Community Team

[BlackSpin]

You mean Bioware wants to hear from us now? Wow it only took a failing game to realize some things are a necessity. I've always got the impression that Bioware looks down on its customers by the way I've been treated in the past. "We're going to do what we do, if you don't like it, you can piss off."

 

I've met a lot of smart individuals who play this game (I.e. Doctors, Lawyers, Business Consultants, Engineers,... etc.) To ignore these folks would be a mistake. A lot of them know what they are talking about... Listen up.

 

One suggestion I would like to make to Bioware. Have REAL in game support. I always found it fun when a GM or Dev would show up in game (as a Character) wih some fancy effects to help. People like knowing there's folks around to help, not a mail icon received 10 hours after submitting a request. Especially one from a random droid who doesn't have a real name (very personal Bioware.... :/ ) and a canned response.

[LetoAtreidesII]

Hi everyone,

 

I’ll start off by calling out the elephant in the room: yes, there was some restructuring here at the studio recently and we had to bid farewell to some of our colleagues and yes, we are all deeply saddened by this.

 

Their work and dedication to SWTOR will not be forgotten.

 

Here on the community team, we’ve had a bit of time to process this and we’re beginning to look towards the future of SWTOR’s community and what it means for you and for our team.

 

In the upcoming weeks, we’re going to be making a few changes and working on new initiatives in order to enhance our relationship with you, the fans, and with our developers. We’ll also be reintroducing the team so that you can get to know us a bit more.

 

As Greg Zeschuk mentioned in his forum post, we still have plenty of new, exciting content and features for the game, and we’re going to need your continued involvement and feedback.

 

Rest assured that the community team is still here, still listening: whether it’s here in our forums, on our official twitter account, one of the many fan sites, or the SWTOR subreddit.

 

Thank you all for your continuing support.

 

This restructuring raises many concerns for the community and for the future of this game. Addressing these concerns will be difficult and unpleasant for Bioware, as anything they could possibly say may cast the game's outlook in a negative light, so I do not expect responses nor blame Bioware for not responding. However, addressing these issues and concerns would go a long way towards alleviating doubts and building a new trust/accountability between Bioware and the community.

 

These are my current top concerns which I pose as questions (certainly, others will have different concerns which are just as important if not more so):

 

1. Why did this happen? James Ohlen stated: "one of the differences between SWTOR and other online games is we've actually kept the team that built SWTOR together and focused on continuing to build new content going into the future" in this video here: http://www.swtor.com/info/media/trailers/coming-star-wars-old-republic Is this no longer the case? What changed?

 

2. Will this restructuring have a negative impact on the development of new content and features and/or the rate at which they are developed? If so, how much of an impact will there be? Or were those laid off unrelated to those aspects of the game (marketing, forum moderators, CSR's, etc.)? For example, some people bemoan the loss of Stephen Reid, but he did not create any content.

 

3. How do you plan on avoiding the fate of Warhammer Age of Reckoning, whose decline was either caused or exacerbated by the loss of much of the development team? Mythic/EA also tried valiantly to do as much as they could with their diminished resources but ultimately failed.

 

4. Will this restructuring hurt plans for the development of expansion packs? Expansions are ultimately necessary for the long term health of the game, and are often necessary for the introduction of major new content and features and are sometimes the best hope for the revitalization of the community. Plans for the Warhammer expansion seemed to fizzle out after one of the rounds of layoffs at Mythic along with the hopes of many for the future of that game.

[Brittaany_Banks]

Congrats BW, you have taken your first steps into a larger world.... that larger world being the one Sony Online Entertainment and the development staff on Star Wars Galaxies entered when they first started replacing developers.

 

I know you are not ever going to come right out and say it but let ME address the elephant in the room anyway... these firings were caused because you don't have enough "yes men and women" on the team isn't it? If this is true which I expect it is then you are headed down the same path SoE did.

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

The rapid community?! Rapid meaning 'fast'? Or did you mean 'rabid'? This is no worse than any other gaming forum Gamewiz.

 

He meant the rabbit community.

[DarthNuke]

Congrats BW, you have taken your first steps into a larger world.... that larger world being the one Sony Online Entertainment and the development staff on Star Wars Galaxies entered when they first started replacing developers.

 

I know you are not ever going to come right out and say it but let ME address the elephant in the room anyway... these firings were caused because you don't have enough "yes men and women" on the team isn't it? If this is true which I expect it is then you are headed down the same path SoE did.

 

I'll throw in my 2 cents. I think the firings are on the Pub side of the house. The Imp team smoked them big time and really hit the mark. From gear visualization, ability concept, ability activation, starship designs, even storyline. The Pubs, not really much reason to play one, when you get a better gaming experience playing an Imp. But...I could be wrong.

[mattgyver]

Thank you for the message. I appreciate it.

[Rogoo]

Thank you for the message. I appreciate it.

 

What message ? We didn't get any message at all. It's all just meaningles PR babble.

[danpen]

Are they trying to get some more help from over people or not.

[mat-ster]

My god what a STUPID post by a Bioware employee.

This game had such great potential.

1) I ignored the species options.

2) I ignored the focus on "more stylised characters" - no limb severing, Star wars Grime...!

3) I ignored the patch "multi-trucks".

4) I ignored the lame focus on "legacy" - I have one character and NEVER planned on having loads of alts.

5) I put up with the boring, repatative "daily, WoW esque quests"

6) I only ever played a handful of space "missions".

7) I put up with the "STORY".

 

You should have listened to Musco, you could have avoided the "leveling grind" and tried something radical and different. No levels just skills you learn.

You made some of the clasess look pathetic - running around with a dunce's hat on - LOL.

You turned a MMO game into a single player game and did not even see it.

 

Shame on you Bioware - I have been following this game for YEARS before it was even released, now I feel like I have been cheated.

 

FFS - my character does not have any footprints...........!

1 more month then - if I do NOT see any significant improvement - goodbye.

 

Sorry to say it but hey what a numpty http://tor-talk.com/storm-preparation/

Edited May 25, 2012 by mat-ster

[Jaavik]

Hi everyone,

 

I’ll start off by calling out the elephant in the room: yes, there was some restructuring here at the studio recently and we had to bid farewell to some of our colleagues and yes, we are all deeply saddened by this.

 

Their work and dedication to SWTOR will not be forgotten.

 

Here on the community team, we’ve had a bit of time to process this and we’re beginning to look towards the future of SWTOR’s community and what it means for you and for our team.

 

In the upcoming weeks, we’re going to be making a few changes and working on new initiatives in order to enhance our relationship with you, the fans, and with our developers. We’ll also be reintroducing the team so that you can get to know us a bit more.

 

As Greg Zeschuk mentioned in his forum post, we still have plenty of new, exciting content and features for the game, and we’re going to need your continued involvement and feedback.

 

Rest assured that the community team is still here, still listening: whether it’s here in our forums, on our official twitter account, one of the many fan sites, or the SWTOR subreddit.

 

Thank you all for your continuing support.

 

Many of us are really hopeful that more direct lines of communication will begin to open between the developers and the subscribers. We've really begun to feel like something ominous is being hidden from us. The constant stream of "coming soon", "we're working on it" and other vague responses has created some real concerns about the game and it's future.

 

I know that you guys don't want to make promises and break them, that's understandable. But with the news of "loss of subscriptions", "lower stock prices" and now layoffs within the company, we are now officially getting more news of problems than we are of solutions.

 

I really hope we can turn this around. Many of us really love this game and we want it to succeed, but we aren't going to wait indefinitely for it to get back to being "Massively Multiplayer" for most of us.

 

Please, please, PLEASE! Talk to us. Most of us can take disappointment if something needs to get back-burnered for something else, so long as we aren't waiting in a haze to see if it's coming tomorrow, No?, Maybe tomorrow then, Still no? ....hmm, we'll probably get it tomorrow then...

[Maxipad]

Stop ignoring the PVP player base, a good many of us are still here watching and waiting for change. Many of us are still subbed and others un-subbed but not wanting to play because of the mess that is PVP post 1.2.

 

If you keep us in the loop and listen to us/work with us you can get the game in far better shape.

 

A good fun and balanced game = more players.

 

Please for the love of God, shape up! You as a company are on borrowed time now. Sort it ASAP or the players left are just gonna walk and God help you if you don't fix the mess before Guild Wars 2 comes out.

[FeelFlow]

Best of luck:) Just focus on making this the amazing game that we all know it could be - and on telling us about it of course!

[Roderickje]

Ok new person came to work there, is fine, is a rotating wheel right?

If something is wrong with your job is right thing that you give your seat to someonelse.

Now, i think we need to know what exactly there is of exciting, we need to know NOW, because there is no time anymore!!!!

Server are loosing lot of player every day, i love this game, i dont want to see another SWG NGE 2, and wait other 10 years for another SW based game.

You guys need to share your idea now, before you loose more time.

Legacy system is Great, but is not exciting, is not fun, is unusefull.

Most of player base is asking for world PvP, ranked wz, and more than 1 month is passed, personally i lost so amny friend tired to farm wz......

At least give the possibility to group in 8 person!!!!! Now not in another month.

Plz listen, comunicate and share your plan before to waste time.

 

 

HALLELUJAH my friend HALLEFREAKINGLUJAH i couldnt agree more . Just tell us whats goin whats happening?

The people that are still playing are just as commited to the game as the dev's are now at this point of time .Can we plz start communicating? All i see on the forums (and maybe this will be different now that the main buffer has resigned/got fired whatever) Is yes we are working on it and we see that the community is asking for this.

This my good friends at bioware isnt communicating .This is copy/pasting (wich is also needed in the game btw) certain responses that you appearently need to use for some reason .

Why not just tell us whats going on? What are you working ? How much longer till server transfers and 8 man queues? Hell if its a programing thing im pretty damm sure alot of great programmers are playing this game ask for help!

We need you guys to get your act together .For alot of us mmo's are a commitment and personally i went from 1 mmo to this 1 bcous i still think this has so much potential so listen to the community .Or put a dev in the big pve and pvp guilds of the servers and have him play with them ,have him listen to their complaints .

Ive never qq'ed or trolled you guys but there is so much im not hearing that i really do need to hear sooner or later .And plz dont copy and paste a response respond to me person to person im a reasonable man ,so lets have a conversation it would probably help us both out.

[maxetius]

14 pages of one of the most vile MMo communities I've seen. A person can't even post 'thanks for the heads up' without someone leaping down their throats in response.

[Tuscad]

14 pages of one of the most vile MMo communities I've seen. A person can't even post 'thanks for the heads up' without someone leaping down their throats in response.

 

I am waiting for them to burst through chests too, like Alien.

[danpen]

I am waiting for them to burst through chests too, like Alien.

 

I am sorry to say they will not do eney chests for the game at all they will never do it at all ok mate.sorry:)

[TriviumIsGOAT]

Fix world PVP, or say goodbye to yet another subscription, and say hello to more firings. Edited May 28, 2012 by TriviumIsGOAT

[Drunkenpig]

Hey, what's the latest on when they publicly stated they will try to do something in an attempt to make the population issue less of a huge problem (I was going to ask "when will they fix the population issue" but that would have been a stupid question. Last I saw a couple of months ago was some promise about transfers-how did that work out? Been gone a month or so).

 

Still enjoying playing Tera. Dont mind being ganked in open world pvp, even. I got a zerker, which is not the best owpvp option. When I started SWTOR I was concerned about owpvp and got a ranged class. Stupid mistake.

Edited May 29, 2012 by Drunkenpig

[TylerTrojan]

Hi everyone,

In the upcoming weeks, we’re going to be making a few changes and working on new initiatives in order to enhance our relationship with you, the fans, and with our developers. We’ll also be reintroducing the team so that you can get to know us a bit more.

 

Just wondering what the status is of these "new initiatives" which will "enhance (y)our relationship" with us? I know that things take time, but I'd really appreciate some communication from the community team about how they're going to communicate with us.

 

I understand that things are probably pretty crazy around the office right now, but a "new and improved" community team which posts one message board note, then goes back to business as usual doesn't seem very new or improved to me. I think that more than anything else, proper communication with the players is important to sustain the game through the ups and downs. After this post, I was hopeful that we would be able to see just that, but a week later, with no follow-up, seems unfortunately similar to what we have heard before (over-promising, giving false hope, and then failing to follow up until too late).

 

Good job on the Q&A (one of the best ones yet), but would really like to hear more of what you have planned!

[Jonoku]

Fix world PVP, or say goodbye to yet another subscription, and say hello to more firings.

 

Yup....... No Open World PvP kills me.