A Message from the Community Manager

[Russkiier]

New strategy in the upcoming weeks? It's been three weeks now and I sure havent noticed a difference.

 

have you look at the dev tracker?

[Lord_of_Mu]

I was thinking about making an entire thread about this but decided to simply post it here.

 

Dear Community Managers. Help us to understand what it is you do exactly.

 

How many hours do you work per day?

How does your typical day play out?

What does your job require you to do?

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What do you least about your job?

Do you feel that in order to manage the community you have to be an active part of the community?

Does company policy prevent you from maintaining a close and friendly relationship with the community?

Do you simply treat your job as a job and have no personal attachment to the environment you foster?

Do you think that maintaining a more personal presence on the forums, joking around, making off topic comments, replying to feedback threads and alike would be beneficial to improving the overall community experience on these forums?

[Styxx]

Do you have plans to bring back the companion kits from the Beta? It is getting boring to have the same one companion, often opposite alignment for each spec. We want to see that variation and choice and you folks had it already in Beta.

[Tatile]

Do you have plans to bring back the companion kits from the Beta? It is getting boring to have the same one companion, often opposite alignment for each spec. We want to see that variation and choice and you folks had it already in Beta.

 

I never played in Beta, what were the Companion Kits?

[Styxx]

I never played in Beta, what were the Companion Kits?

 

http://www.swtor.com/fr/community/showthread.php?t=306561

You were able to change role in a limited way, but the idea was really nice. And it would solve a lot of problems if it would actually see fruition, in a better approach: get any of 2 comps`s skills switched. Or have every companion have all 5 roles already and you only pick one and it will just give you the new skillbar and stance/s.

[Styxx]

Forgive me, Mr. Gonzalez, for being off-topic, but I have a song dedication for you.

 

Kansas - Dust in the Wind .

[Dein_Cathair]

Hi everyone,

 

For those of you that don’t know, I’m Joveth Gonzalez, Community Manager for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

As most of you know, over the past few months, our team, our studio, and our game have undergone quite a few changes. Through it all, we’ve remained committed to the community and have worked with the development team to make sure that your voices were heard.

 

I wanted to take some time to reassure you all that my team, the community team, is still committed to you folks. As part of this commitment, we’re excited to let you know that we have been developing a brand new strategy for our team that focuses on developing new ways to bring you more information about the game and the people involved with SWTOR's development.

 

As we progress towards the recently announced Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more frequent updates to the game (which means more information coming to you) and more developer interactions.

 

The Star Wars: The Old Republic community is large and spread across many outlets, but rest assured that our team is scouring the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, fan sites, and anywhere that SWTOR is being discussed to make sure that we get your thoughts, comments, questions, and general feedback. Know that we are listening you, no matter where you choose to participate in the SWTOR community.

 

In the upcoming weeks, you’ll be seeing elements of our new community strategy as they appear on our site. One of our primary goals with this is to ensure that new information about the game is communicated as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

Last but not least, I will be re-introducing the rest of community team along with this new strategy. You may have already seen them here on the forums or on the website, but you will learn more about Allison Berryman, Eric Musco, Courtney Woods, Amber Green, Lars Malcharek, and Antonio Moreno.

 

We're all excited about the future of this game and with the new focus on more frequent content updates and the introduction of the Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more communication opportunities overall.

 

If you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas, please feel free to send us an email at community@swtor.com. You can also send me a PM here on the forums or reach me on Twitter @joveth. These are three different ways for you to get in touch. We will limit important announcements to only occur on our site, forums, our Facebook page, and/or the official SWTOR Twitter account.

 

Thank you, sincerely, for participating and being a part of our community over the past few months. We look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

 

Why don't you guys try and get to know the local Austin community?

How about you guys setup an event some Friday evening where you all dress up in swimwear and get some plastic lightsabers with fluorescent blades and a giant pool of jello and go at it with the locals? oh and some black lights to make the sabers glow.

And webcast it for those of us who cannot attend?

Edited September 5, 2012 by Dein_Cathair

[Kioma]

Why don't you guys try and get to know the local Austin community?

How about you guys setup an event some Friday evening where you all dress up in swimwear and get some plastic lightsabers with fluorescent blades and a giant pool of jello and go at it with the locals? oh and some black lights to make the sabers glow.

And webcast it for those of us who cannot attend?

 

Or, as a far cheaper and more effective alternative, why don't you (the community team) and the developers actually release some more information on the things people want information on? Because I'm pretty sure if you did that it'd actually go a long way to helping.

[Styxx]

On a more serious note, what`s the ETA on refreshing missions in Crew Skills? The randomly "vanishing" missions, which need searching by reloads and zoning. With this new predictibility patch philosophy, this is the best time to make Crew Skill missions predictable as well, or, as Mr. Peckenpaugh says, more readable, more predictable, and less chaotic. Edited September 5, 2012 by Styxx

[Cupelixx]

have you look at the dev tracker?

 

I have. I have also seen zero hard answers on hard questions, and very little to address some important questions which have been around for a very long time. This whole thing is a farce.

[Costello]

I was thinking about making an entire thread about this but decided to simply post it here.

 

Dear Community Managers. Help us to understand what it is you do exactly.

 

How many hours do you work per day?

How does your typical day play out?

What does your job require you to do?

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What do you least about your job?

Do you feel that in order to manage the community you have to be an active part of the community?

Does company policy prevent you from maintaining a close and friendly relationship with the community?

Do you simply treat your job as a job and have no personal attachment to the environment you foster?

Do you think that maintaining a more personal presence on the forums, joking around, making off topic comments, replying to feedback threads and alike would be beneficial to improving the overall community experience on these forums?

 

It would be nice to get these answered.

 

As it stands its hard to work out where the blockage of information is coming from. Is it the community team not asking or giving the correct questions, is it the devs ignoring everything with a we know best attitude or is it the execs who feel the element of surprise is the most important thing in a game and have 1 million cancelled subs to show for it?

 

Currently the length of time between content, the lack of much requested features and lets face it anything new is a serious issue. What are people doing and other than free to play what is being done to keep or even increase the subs. It seems the game will be run into the ground by the lathargic indifference by those working on the project. Even the most commited fanbois will finish all the ops and flashpoints or simply give up with a never ending grind of gear quickly becoming a meaningless reason to keep logging in.

[dayhak]

Hi everyone,

 

For those of you that don’t know, I’m Joveth Gonzalez, Community Manager for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

As most of you know, over the past few months, our team, our studio, and our game have undergone quite a few changes. Through it all, we’ve remained committed to the community and have worked with the development team to make sure that your voices were heard.

 

I wanted to take some time to reassure you all that my team, the community team, is still committed to you folks. As part of this commitment, we’re excited to let you know that we have been developing a brand new strategy for our team that focuses on developing new ways to bring you more information about the game and the people involved with SWTOR's development.

 

As we progress towards the recently announced Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more frequent updates to the game (which means more information coming to you) and more developer interactions.

 

The Star Wars: The Old Republic community is large and spread across many outlets, but rest assured that our team is scouring the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, fan sites, and anywhere that SWTOR is being discussed to make sure that we get your thoughts, comments, questions, and general feedback. Know that we are listening you, no matter where you choose to participate in the SWTOR community.

 

In the upcoming weeks, you’ll be seeing elements of our new community strategy as they appear on our site. One of our primary goals with this is to ensure that new information about the game is communicated as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

Last but not least, I will be re-introducing the rest of community team along with this new strategy. You may have already seen them here on the forums or on the website, but you will learn more about Allison Berryman, Eric Musco, Courtney Woods, Amber Green, Lars Malcharek, and Antonio Moreno.

 

We're all excited about the future of this game and with the new focus on more frequent content updates and the introduction of the Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more communication opportunities overall.

 

If you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas, please feel free to send us an email at community@swtor.com. You can also send me a PM here on the forums or reach me on Twitter @joveth. These are three different ways for you to get in touch. We will limit important announcements to only occur on our site, forums, our Facebook page, and/or the official SWTOR Twitter account.

 

Thank you, sincerely, for participating and being a part of our community over the past few months. We look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

 

I really do feel bad for you as a community manager. After reading a lot of these pages, it seems you are coming under attack as if this is all your fault. So fellow gamers, please understand it is not his fault. Joveth, you must be able to understand the harsh critiscism and frustration up to this point though. Most players felt like we were promised a product that simply did not deliver on any of its promises...

 

I love SWTOR, I think it is an excellent game, but I can honestly say that if I wasn't a huge star wars fan, i would feel significantly different. Looking at this game from a strictly gamer perspective?

-The game has had way to many game breaking patches

-Some of the strangest changes to classes I have ever seen

-Content updates has been a joke (MMO's are supposed to be at their best when you reach max level, not painfully boring)

-The weekly Q&A was appalling

-Paid transfers are not even in sight almost a year after launch

-Communication has been on and off again (Much much more off than on)

 

Again, I realize this is not your fault as the community manager. If the dev's don't give you answers, what are you supposed to say?

 

Unfortunately the community at large is tired of hearing, "Hi, I am so and so... moving forward we are going to improve our communication". We've heard that sentence from multiple people, multiple times. Unfortunately it doesn't happen and all we keep getting is, "Here is what is coming, but we cannot give you any kind of timelines of release"

 

As I said, I love TOR and I will play for as long as the game is open, but without some serious amounts of content updates, timely responses to bugs, and a serious committment from the dev's to show us that they value the opinions of the community (and just saying this is going to happen, just doesn't cut it anymore. We're gonna need to see it happen) I don't see this game making to christmas 2013.

 

I truly believe Bioware has created a game that could compete with any of the MMO giants, but the game has been so poorly managed by bioware/EA that it is going to have a heck of a time recovering. Not to say that it can't, but I think there is a long road to gaining our trust back. At this stage, SWTOR is the last bioware game I will purchase, and I am usually pretty stand-offish when I see EA unless it is sports related....

-

[Russkiier]

I have. I have also seen zero hard answers on hard questions, and very little to address some important questions which have been around for a very long time. This whole thing is a farce.

 

I don't know what "hard answers" are. Sometimes the community team/devs/whatever, don't have any new information. Its better to hear "nothing new" than nothing or a lie. I am satisfied with the change to the communication, the caveat being that it continues. Im sorry that you aren't

[jprife]

As we progress towards the recently announced Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more frequent updates to the game (which means more information coming to you) and more developer interactions.

 

I seem to remember something very similar being said back in February...

[Rapa]

Any word on when the friends lists will be fixed for people that transferred servers?

Mine has been broken since server transfer was enabled, have submitted four tickets and still no fix.

 

Still wondering about this. It's been months and no news.

[chuixupu]

Hey, I just want to say that I can definitely see some improvements in communication lately and I appreciate it. I now read the developer tracker every day.

 

I'm still a bit puzzled at the overall silence about what's going on and what to expect in future patches...but I understand that the community managers are not to blame there.

[Metalmac]

Hi everyone,

 

For those of you that don’t know, I’m Joveth Gonzalez, Community Manager for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

As most of you know, over the past few months, our team, our studio, and our game have undergone quite a few changes. Through it all, we’ve remained committed to the community and have worked with the development team to make sure that your voices were heard.

 

I wanted to take some time to reassure you all that my team, the community team, is still committed to you folks. As part of this commitment, we’re excited to let you know that we have been developing a brand new strategy for our team that focuses on developing new ways to bring you more information about the game and the people involved with SWTOR's development.

 

As we progress towards the recently announced Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more frequent updates to the game (which means more information coming to you) and more developer interactions.

 

The Star Wars: The Old Republic community is large and spread across many outlets, but rest assured that our team is scouring the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, fan sites, and anywhere that SWTOR is being discussed to make sure that we get your thoughts, comments, questions, and general feedback. Know that we are listening you, no matter where you choose to participate in the SWTOR community.

 

In the upcoming weeks, you’ll be seeing elements of our new community strategy as they appear on our site. One of our primary goals with this is to ensure that new information about the game is communicated as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

Last but not least, I will be re-introducing the rest of community team along with this new strategy. You may have already seen them here on the forums or on the website, but you will learn more about Allison Berryman, Eric Musco, Courtney Woods, Amber Green, Lars Malcharek, and Antonio Moreno.

 

We're all excited about the future of this game and with the new focus on more frequent content updates and the introduction of the Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more communication opportunities overall.

 

If you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas, please feel free to send us an email at community@swtor.com. You can also send me a PM here on the forums or reach me on Twitter @joveth. These are three different ways for you to get in touch. We will limit important announcements to only occur on our site, forums, our Facebook page, and/or the official SWTOR Twitter account.

 

Thank you, sincerely, for participating and being a part of our community over the past few months. We look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

 

I am very concerned by the Free to Play affecting my game play with Server Lag.

 

How will Free to play affect me the paying customer when it comes to Server lag?

[Kioma]

I am very concerned by the Free to Play affecting my game play with Server Lag.

 

How will Free to play affect me the paying customer when it comes to Server lag?

 

I would assume it'll affect you in exactly the same way as if a whole bunch of paying subscribers started playing again - only you probably wouldn't be 'very concerned' about that.

[Blackardin]

This post is a month old as of today. We've heard nothing more since that time.

[Superawesomerman]

This post is a month old as of today. We've heard nothing more since that time.

 

Expanding. Like a bloated corpse.

[EJedi]

Hey, I just want to say that I can definitely see some improvements in communication lately and I appreciate it. I now read the developer tracker every day.

 

I'm still a bit puzzled at the overall silence about what's going on and what to expect in future patches...but I understand that the community managers are not to blame there.

 

People are probably busy updating their resumes.

[MidichIorian]

My interpretation of the BW community<->staff interaction is that the BW employees who post here only act as middle men. On other Dev sites I'm visiting you're able to get a straight answer, sometimes within minutes, directly from the employee who is posting. Hell, I've even PM'ed and played with some of them. On this site however it always feels like every reply has been run through an executive.

You're holding back on way too much and instead of creating anticipation you're only driving people away. I think you could have kept a good deal of the players who also visited the site if you had come off as more personal and honest and given us straight answers from time to time. If someone is thinking of leaving he's not going to stay because an update will happen "soon", how about just saying that you're "aiming for X date" and if it doesnt work out "yeah it didnt go as planned"- Such honesty would have been accepted whereas pretending like everything is fine is seen as a corporate approach.....and no one likes that.

 

tl:dr: Other devs, not all but some, seem like chill people whereas BW currently only comes off as a stiff company.

Edited September 10, 2012 by MidichIorian

[Superawesomerman]

BW currently only comes off as a stiff company.

 

Must be that rigor mortis stuff I hear about on csi.

[Lord_of_Mu]

It would be nice to get these answered.

 

As it stands its hard to work out where the blockage of information is coming from. Is it the community team not asking or giving the correct questions, is it the devs ignoring everything with a we know best attitude or is it the execs who feel the element of surprise is the most important thing in a game and have 1 million cancelled subs to show for it?

 

Currently the length of time between content, the lack of much requested features and lets face it anything new is a serious issue. What are people doing and other than free to play what is being done to keep or even increase the subs. It seems the game will be run into the ground by the lathargic indifference by those working on the project. Even the most commited fanbois will finish all the ops and flashpoints or simply give up with a never ending grind of gear quickly becoming a meaningless reason to keep logging in.

 

I agree, Bioware doesn't seem to be all that interested in establishing a solid foundation with their game or consumers.

 

Every promise made by Bioware has not been delivered. We got an amazing story experience that dropped the ball in every other way possible. And they're stuck scratching their heads trying to figure out where they went wrong.

[parchedgoose]

I agree, Bioware doesn't seem to be all that interested in establishing a solid foundation with their game or consumers.

 

Every promise made by Bioware has not been delivered. We got an amazing story experience that dropped the ball in every other way possible. And they're stuck scratching their heads trying to figure out where they went wrong.

 

Well, lets see how they handle it this time, they know theres a problem and with all problems solutions can be found...are they up to the task.....if its going f2p...won't cost a thing to find out now will it?