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Is the lack of attention to important issues pushing you away?


Prototypemind

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Makeb cost me half the price of SoR, $10 vs $20, and dropped with significantly more in the way of actual content. The story took more then a small handful of hours to complete and had two distinct arcs, Republic and Imperial, allowing some replayablity.

 

So yes, compared to WoW's expansions it was very content lite, but more importantly compared to its OWN first expansion it was content lite as well.

 

P.S. I've played all of WoW's expansions.

 

EDIT: Again, as a customer I don't need excuses. You charge me X amount, I expect Y amount of content. If you are not able to do so, then why exactly am I giving you my money? I am better off giving that money to someone who will deliver Y amount of content. Also, there are F2P games out there that deliver more content as well, with no monthly fee... so am I just paying for the license? Star Wars being the name on the tin is less and less of a reason to play this game, especially with the lack of any real FIXES let alone content.

 

Makeb cost $20. $10 was subscriber discount.

 

yes, SoR is content light compare to Makeb. JUST like WoD is content light compared to Cataclysm and even Mists of pandaria. for higher price tag, mind you.

 

bear in mind - SWTOR subscription is technically optional. you are not paying $15 for content, you are paying $15 for removal of headache that f2p restrictions bring with it. for instance, my friend who is preferred? also has Revan expansion. he has acess to all the same content I do. he doesn't pay subscription to get it - only one time fee to unlock acess. just saying. WoW subscription to acess anything above lvl 20? mandatory.

 

I Do NOT take issue with your complains about SWTOR and recent development.

I take issue with you claiming that Blizzard did it better with WoD. they didn't. they are just as bad right now. they just have an advantage of being on the market far longer and the inertia that comes with being the biggest game on the market. bioware - does not.

 

this is a general video game trend nowadays it seems (with very rare exceptions). raise the price of DLC's while lowering amount of content you get from them.

 

and yes, there are other f2p/b2p games with better more robust content updates while having fewer restrictions on their f2p content. of the ones that I personally play, first that comes to mind is The Secret world (where subscribers actualy get content patches included with their subscription, while f2p players have to individually unlock them)

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/snip

 

Bioware's F2P is not really a viable option if you actually want to do anything, too much stick not enough carrot. So split hairs all you want, Makeb cost me $10 ( with subscription) and SoR cost me $20 (with subscrption) so my original argument stands, twice the cost a fraction of the content.

 

Blizzard's momentum has actually been in a downward direction, each expansion has had fewer and fewer players, with numbers dropping down to 5mil+ as of Pandaria. Yet they continue to put out full sized expansion (maybe not the biggest they have ever dropped).

 

Overall, yes. WoD has been a better expansion if you want to compare value for dollar spent. SOR cost me a third of what WoD did, and offered a tenth of the content.

Edited by SammuelSK
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Bioware's F2P option is not really a viable option if you actually want to do anything, too much stick not enough carrot. So split hairs all you want, Makeb cost me $10 ( with subscription) and SoR cost me $20 (with subscrption) so my original argument stands, twice the cost a fraction of the content.

 

Blizzard's momentum has actually been in a downward direction, each expansion has had few and few players, with numbers dropping down to 5mil+ as of Pandaria. Yet they continue to put out full sized expansion (maybe not the biggest they have ever dropped).

 

Overall, yes. WoD has been a better expansion if you want to compare value for dollar spent. SOR cost me a third of what WoD did, and offered a tenth of the content.

 

Just a FYI (as you left it out) the latest expansion by Blizzard for WOW brought the game back up over the 10 million subscriber numbers IGN Polygon and BLIZZARDS own press release

 

Not that I disagree with everything your saying here

just if your going to use an example, use the most recent and most relevant figures and facts

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Bioware's F2P is not really a viable option if you actually want to do anything, too much stick not enough carrot. So split hairs all you want, Makeb cost me $10 ( with subscription) and SoR cost me $20 (with subscrption) so my original argument stands, twice the cost a fraction of the content.

 

Blizzard's momentum has actually been in a downward direction, each expansion has had fewer and fewer players, with numbers dropping down to 5mil+ as of Pandaria. Yet they continue to put out full sized expansion (maybe not the biggest they have ever dropped).

 

Overall, yes. WoD has been a better expansion if you want to compare value for dollar spent. SOR cost me a third of what WoD did, and offered a tenth of the content.

 

tenth? really? nope. not seeing it. most of my time is spent not actualy dealing with content, but rather trying to navigate ridiculous terrain. that is when I'm not doing chores in a Garrison. heck if not for current month having 3 events (counting Darkmoon faire) + patch, I would have ran out of stuff to do already. as it is, I'm mostly out of stuff to do on my main that is not of the daily chore variety - and with 19 days left on a month I paid for.

 

incidentally 5 million is still 5 times more than one mil SWTOR has (and I'm being generous in my estimate of SWTOR subscription numbers)

 

as for there being 10 mil rather then 5... 10mil subscriber number is from the WoD release month. that expansion brought a lot of people back becasue it went to Warcraft roots. that one limited anniversary event.

 

last but not least. pure f2p is not very viable if you don't like being nickle and dimed. but it still offers acess to pretty much all of the game. you buy expansion? you do NOT need subscription to play it, you can acess it without.

 

honestly - this is becoming a very pointless subjective argument and we are going nowhere fast with it. lets just agree that SoR has less content and with no discounts to subscribers to boot and general management of the game post 3.0 has been going down the downward spiral and call it a day.

Edited by Jeweledleah
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So I started playing the game in launch and I quit after 6 months, I had a good time leveling up with another friend of mine...I came back after ShadowOfRevan, And I'm going to leave in the next month... I can't complain because the expansion provided me almost three months worth of fun. But the broken PvP, Has pushed me away.

 

With games like FFXIV a realm reborn, That are amazing, this game just screams 2012.

 

 

It's 2015. It's time to move on.

Edited by hiddenpookie
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last but not least. pure f2p is not very viable if you don't like being nickle and dimed. but it still offers acess to pretty much all of the game. you buy expansion? you do NOT need subscription to play it, you can acess it without.

 

honestly - this is becoming a very pointless subjective argument and we are going nowhere fast with it. lets just agree that SoR has less content and with no discounts to subscribers to boot and general management of the game post 3.0 has been going down the downward spiral and call it a day.

 

But the nickel and diming didn't even work for the F2P here

EA themselves admit openly that the mass majority of cartel shop sales are done by subscribers

 

The F2P and Preferred folk might like us all to believe they will buy more if given more for free but thats a obvious falsehood as they already refuse to spend anything at all on game and choose to go with out rather then make the small purchases to gain access.

 

As for SoR, said it before and say it again

 

SoR is your standard EA $10.00 DLC product and completely fails as a MMORPG paid expansion.

 

It only has 12-16 hours of content outside of Ops (and as detailed Ops on a continuous basis is only appealing to a small demographic of the over all player base)

 

Visually the Expansion was quite well done I found

Challenge wise it set a whole new standard to easy mode play (outside of ops)

Story wise it was a weak product that failed to live upto SW:TOR previous standards regarding story lines

Previous content would have at a minimum, separate Imperial and Republic story lines

SoR was just a short story force fit to run for everyone and then marketted as a lie (they mentioned new class story lines but failed to mention those were only 10 minutes long. People went in thinking full length class story lines because thats how it was sold to them)

 

I have no immediate plans on leaving the game but I do know my days of pre ordering expansions for SWTOR are over and done with.

 

I (and others as I truthfully got in fairly quickly but still think what they did was grossly unfair and unethical) pre ordered SW:TOR only to be locked out arbitrarily for days (others went full week +) because EA was dishonest on how exactly the staged entry would be handled at launch.

I paid for Makeb, only to have it given away to all the people who didn't pre order

I paid for SoR and truthfully received about 20% of the product I was led to believe I was pre paying for.

 

Far as I'm concerned, when it comes to SW:TOR paid for content, SoR was strike 3. Going forward I will wait for actual player feedback thats accurate and detailed so I know TRUTHFULLY what I am paying for.

 

EA has just played it to loose and unprofessional these past 3 years to give them benefit of doubt any longer when it comes to pre ordering ANYTHING from them. They have shown clear as day they do not think we the consumer deserve any respect or honesty when it comes to selling their products.

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Just a FYI (as you left it out) the latest expansion by Blizzard for WOW brought the game back up over the 10 million subscriber numbers IGN Polygon and BLIZZARDS own press release

 

Not that I disagree with everything your saying here

just if your going to use an example, use the most recent and most relevant figures and facts

 

Trend - the general course or prevailing tendency.

 

I am aware WoW is back up to 10mil players, time will tell if its a blip or a shift in direction for them. Over the years, the population had been dropping, which was why I used that particular phrasing.

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Trend - the general course or prevailing tendency.

 

I am aware WoW is back up to 10mil players, time will tell if its a blip or a shift in direction for them. Over the years, the population had been dropping, which was why I used that particular phrasing.

 

Of course, the flaw in the entire debate is assuming numbers = quality when, to quote Agent K...

 

'A person is smart. People are stupid.'

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Trend - the general course or prevailing tendency.

 

I am aware WoW is back up to 10mil players, time will tell if its a blip or a shift in direction for them. Over the years, the population had been dropping, which was why I used that particular phrasing.

 

It surges with each expansion and then drops right back off, but it hits lower numbers each time iirc.

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I (and others as I truthfully got in fairly quickly but still think what they did was grossly unfair and unethical) pre ordered SW:TOR only to be locked out arbitrarily for days (others went full week +) because EA was dishonest on how exactly the staged entry would be handled at launch.

I paid for Makeb, only to have it given away to all the people who didn't pre order

I paid for SoR and truthfully received about 20% of the product I was led to believe I was pre paying for.

 

All 3 of your strikes are unfair and 2 are simply wrong. EA clearly communicated staged access at launch and that the class stories in SoR were 1 quest only. Makeb was given away a bit too quickly, but prior expansions are always distributed cheaply after some amount of time.

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My esteemed colleague, TUX. You forgot this gem of a post from Bioware about the number of PVP player kills to NPCs killed.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20141126

 

This information article is so much Empire-focused - like everything else. Bah.

If it hads been written from an Republic perspectived, it would have sounded and looked so much different.

SWTOR has become an "Empire Game".

Edited by AlrikFassbauer
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This is the second constructive accurate post I have seen today. Speaking of the original post on this thread. To me swtor devs/EA/Bioware always acted, and act like they have developed something as good as world of warcraft. What I mean by that is Blizzard does not care about its customers either, but they do care about getting money from the majority, and they can afford to lose subs left and right due to the share size of their sub base. They never made the mistake of f2p. The devs have always acted like that, the problem is swtor is way behind everyone else, and lacks items that even older mmorpgs had. Not to mention their player base is much lower then wows. I could go on about the failure of the f2p experiment but thats not the purpose of this thread.

 

One thing the op did touch on is the lack of communication ill give you a prime example. Earlier this week they posted a teaser trailer up on their face book account, but they did not post it on the main swtor website. I had to hear about it from a friend to find out that they even posted it. This is not the first time they have done this. Far too many times they will put important pieces of information on facebook/tweet but not the main swtor website. Yes there is dulfy.net but I will not believe that the person running that website will do that for the rest of their days. Eventually at some point the information there will not be updated. Anyways my point is poor communication skills does not help. For a final example this new outfit designer thing, still no details or solid info on it.

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FOREWORD: Apologies on length of post!!

 

Let's be honest here. There are simply (When it is boiled down) two reasons why this game still exists and has not died:

 

1) Because it is Star Wars and as we know, it helps swtor BIG TIME that it is currently the only Star Wars game in town.

 

2) Because it has voice acted class/story lines, something hardly any mmo has.

 

Once you get over the two big factors of SWTOR, this game is just another bug riddled mmo where the developers occasionally release stuff into the game but rarely go back to fix any past issues or issues related to new content (Hell there are many issues still outstanding from launch) and swtor has become a front for their precious Cartel Market which in itself screams absolute laziness what with the reskinned content and often clipping issues on the armors. Very few and far between original cosmetic looks in the game as the majority of the cartel market armors borrow from existing looks already in game or from lore characters to help ensure bigger cartel pack sales.

 

With relation to what OP posted:

 

1) PvP

 

Being a big pvper myself, I understand that this game like any mmo is primarily PVE based and PVP is just an added "feature". So I won't be screaming like many others do that PVP is ignored etc. That being said, What annoys me is two things:

 

1) The focus on a new hutt ball map instead of a new style of pvp play for example a classic CTF type match where you steal the enemy flag and bring it back. Sure it is old but it was popular for a reason back in past games. Hell at this point I would settle for just a new map that is NOT hutt ball related. I love all the NON-hutt ball maps in this game and would settle for just a new map. But probably not gonna happen so would love to see an option to opt out of Hutt ball maps instead which also won't happen lol. :p

 

2) Mid Range PVP is just a joke. It is sadly too easy for me on any of my lvl 50+ toons to obliterate anyone in pvp but at the lower end, it is a......................challenge when playing on my low 30 toons to take out anyone higher then 55+ given the extra health they have not to mention all the extra powers they get post lvl 52+. Bolster is and probably always will be a joke. Hell I logged into my lvl 37 TK sage once and saw how the bolster gave me 1800 expertise. Ok I thought, let's put an expertise crystal in my Cathaar sword to bump it up a bit before the match started. It DROPPED by 200 points instead of going up or down the exact expertise amount the crystal provided. I thought "What the *CENSORED*?? I would love to see PVP Bolster removed and make it that everyone is given a set amount of health and stats based on their class and it come down to nothing but pure skill, not who has better gear but again not going to happen so I have to learn to accept PVP in swtor is as good as it gets.

 

2) Persistent bugs.

 

Well as I mentioned before, the bugs that never get fixed are a major issue but worse is that the bug list keeps piling up, never going down. Look I worked in a Software company years ago. I know that bugs exist in software and while we are imperfect humans, our software will be likewise. However with the software company I worked for, with a development team far smaller then what Bioware has, We also tried to knock down the bug list we knew existed in the product already while trying to stamp out any new bugs released with any new version of the software. This is where Bioware have lost the battle already with bugs in this game coupled with the fact Bioware have become outright lazy and don't care anymore with the quality of the product as evidenced with the farcical SOR expansion. The bug list is so damn huge at the moment that it would take a very very long time with a very very large development team to even halve the bug list. Both things Bioware no longer has. It is a battle Bioware has lost and they know it which is why they just keep moving forward, release new content with new bugs, fix the occasional, easy or game breaking bug where forced to and then keep moving forward releasing new content while ignoring old bugs - rinse repeat. As much as it sucks that we are paying for this, we have two options - walk or put up with it because at this point as I said, the battle is lost for Bioware, they didn't stay on top of the bugs and now the bugs control them, not the other way around.

 

3) GSF

 

As much as I love space fighter games, GSF was never going to do well and I am surprised Bioware even bothered to waste their resources on it. There is a big problem with GSF now which I will point out in what personally I have problems with in SWTOR after commenting on OP's thoughts.

 

4) The CM slot machines.

 

As an idea, not the greatest but not the worst way they could get more lvl 11 mats out there for any and all players whether they are GTN barons or just the casual player. However the whole situation was probably one of the worst things I have ever seen in this game where a very butt hurt vocal minority cried murder and threw out claims of how this would break the economy and their tiny bit of control over it and Bioware capitulated to them while forgetting that the vast majority of players wanted a better way to obtain mats if Crew Skills are just going to be ignored by Bioware. Then the Nuke nerf happened and wow, what a joke Bioware became what with their zero communication to the community post nerf as to why they made the slot machine next to useless nor commenting on why cartel certificates and the green/blue jawa drops were also nuke nerfed to death despite not putting it in patch notes and to this day, still have not commented on it.

 

I am of the mind that they could have made it so much easier if they instead of releasing the slot machine (They should have ONLY released the slot machine to drop reputation and nothing more), instead worked on crew skills and fixed the return rates on that. Refreshing the mission list would go a long way. Why would I want to send my Dark side diplomacy crew on only 2 dark side missions and be given 4 light side? Or my underworld trading crew on underworld metals but the list mostly shows anything BUT metal missions. See my point? But as we all know, Crew Skills is ignored much like Crafting is in swtor.

 

5) Taking away end game rewards for the majority of end game players.

 

I guess it comes down to whether this is how Bioware will do things now or if this is a bug and if it is a bug, why is it taking so long to fix when the Slot machine was fixed in one week but then the Ravager exploit took almost a month to fix. Their priorities are completely warped at this point that for a game that has a primary focus of PVE, should really be fixing this asap.

 

 

 

With that out of the way and they are all valid points OP, My personal issues pushing me away:

 

1) Release new content then ignore it.

 

As I alluded to in the GSF point, this is my biggest gripe with the game. When the Seeker probe side activity was released, Bioware banged on how they were excited (A Buzz word they use far too liberally) about this feature and how they wanted to expand on it in the future. Well great, we get a few planets we can treasure hunt on with the probes but since the Makeb expansion??? NOTHING. I hoped that when SOR came out, that either Yavin or Rishi would have new areas to do Seeker probe treasure hunting in but instead we got nothing of the sort. Sure there is the 2 daily missions on Rishi where it ends with you having to find things but that is not treasure hunting given you need the find to finish the mission. I am talking more of how you could hunt for Star Forager (I have 3 full sets) and Dread Seed ( I have 4 sets) armor pieces and the 3 different speeder types (I am proud to have found 2 full sets of the Pleasure PMP speeder parts - Yes I used to do Seeker Probe Treasure hunting A LOT!!).

 

But this goes back to my point and it is the same with GSF, housing and crafting especially. They have either:

 

* Not updated a feature whatsoever since it came out (Seeker Probe crafting boxes for example still only have lvl 9 craft mats max)

 

* Do piece meal updates like they did with GSF - This I put it down to the fact a very very tiny sliver of swtor players actually play GSF still so they no longer bother with it given it wasn't the big hit they expected it to be

 

* Make a feature almost be reliant on the Cartel Market to do anything with it like Housing and yes I know you can buy SOME furniture from different vendors but look where a mass majority of housing items comes from - The Cartel Market!!

 

* Or my pet peeve, how little they do with Crafting. Oh yes we got some new mats with the SOR expansion. Yup items that are either useless (The new crystal Artifice gets are a joke given the mats involved and the color - urgh), a lazy effort like with the new adaptive armor Synthweavers and Armormech can make being the EXACT SAME LOOKING ARMOR or new green/blue armors to make for LVl 56 and RE to purple however these armors are worthless when you consider the reward drops for completing the SOR story are far better stat wise then anything you can craft. Or my favorite craft - Biochem, having new stims that makes having Biochem of 500 pointless where all you need to do is ensure you are lvl 56 to use them. No reuseable ones for Biochem crafters to use themselves.

 

This is endemic of the current Bioware mentality now. They are keeping their eyes forward and forget about anything that is in the past which sadly is what makes a vast majority of the game. Be it bugs or items in game. It also seems that Bioware have a cut off point of what they will fix or not fix. Cartel Armors for example have and keep being released with slightly askew groin flaps on certain armors but they are never straightened. Several Cartel armors are bugged with clipping issues but again despite us PAYING for it via packs (or those who spend in game credits via the GTN), rare is it for them to fix the armors.

 

2) Class Missions

 

Yes we know Bioware are no longer releasing new class story lines and instead focus on the lazy route of one story fits all regardless of faction as seen with SOR (At least Makeb had a cool dual story line depending on faction) but for a game that continues to promote itself as:

 

"Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ is the only massively-multiplayer online game with a Free-to-Play option that puts you at the center of your own story-driven Star Wars™ saga."

 

or

 

"Choose from one of eight iconic roles and become the hero of your personal Star Wars saga—an interactive storyline with cinematic dialogue and full voiceover for all in-game characters."

 

once players reach lvl 50, they will find the focus deviates from what they promote where it is now one quest fits all and even parts of SOR are no longer voiced over.

 

And yes there were the god awful (and boring) 5 mins class mission for each class in SOR but let's be honest - they were pointless. There is only so many times I can do ROTHC or SOR on my toons before it becomes boring despite what class I am playing. It is only fun for the different class mechanics. Story wise it is a chore because it is all the same regardless.

 

LACK OF COMMUNICATION

 

There was a guy who made a thread a week or two back where he believed Bioware are giving us the silent treatment. I posted a reply saying that Bioware are not giving us the silent treatment. What they ARE doing however is choosing when, what and why they will comment or post things to us. Gone are the days where big issues according to the community are given responses by Bioware. Now all we get are posts on topics they want to comment on and often ignore almost every thread or fail to follow up to what they may have said initially. We have a community manager who is AWOL (or as I called him in that thread about silent treatment a "Absentee Landlord") and a community team who do not care about the community who post on the forums regardless of how huge some threads get and how many people air the same grievances or issues. What is the point when you log a ticket to Customer Support (Also a pet peeve but we can all agree they are just terrible and will never improve), they say post this issue on the forums. WHAT FOR???? So Bioware can ignore it there like CS just ignored my ticket (assuming they sent the correct template email response first of all which rarely happens)?? Why should I log a ticket about a bug then post it on the forums? Why doesn't Customer Support actually do their job title and SUPPORT the customer, not make them do their job for them?

 

At this point, all the forums are now is a place to vent for all players and a place where Bioware no longer cares what is said or the issues raised. At some point Bioware will need to look behind them and see that the train of people they thought were following them is getting smaller and smaller with every month to the point that eventually they can release stuff, ignore us and ignore in game content but no one will be around to see it anymore. You would have thought Subscriber numbers and people who log in would tell them that but I guess they ignore that as well....... :rolleyes:

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Lots of excellent replies. I think the most telling thing is that 99% were either agreement with being pushed away, acceptance that this is the only SW game in town no matter how badly it's run and so it's worth the abuse to some, or other who say that they put up with it because whether it's guildies or a few quests that they still want to experience it's worth sticking around for now.

 

That said, I think that by the end of my current subscription period I will have cancelled. There's nothing major on the horizon, Ziost will be yet another same for every class planet/daily area, and the devs will continue to be less than stellar in how they handle things. Maybe I'll go ahead and upgrade the system for Witcher 3 and for Black Desert, maybe I'll just stick with finishing up this semester and having my fun elsewhere on the side, but this game is slowly but surely being run into the ground. I have no doubt that there will be a surge when the new film is released, but I don't see anything that says there will be the content to keep those players around for the long haul.

 

Keep the replies coming as you will. I definitely enjoy seeing the community involved in the game discussion even if the devs are not.

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This is a major thing for me since I enjoy doing OPS but this fight usually bugs out and players leave in rage.

 

About the only thing I enjoy from this game is raiding, but even there is losing any sense of appeal as each week is just another **** show of broken fights and random buggy encounters.

 

But hey, lets focus on the cartel market Bioware Austin, that'll right the ship.

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The bugs are keeping me from doing content.

 

Such as, I am sick of having to kill Coratanni 4 times for her to finally work and not reset. I am sick of wiping on Underlurker 15 times and still not downing him, and this is with competent well geared people.

 

So yes, it is pushing me away.

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Yeah it is. Mainly for the lack communication and cheesy content patches. 3.1 two new HM which should have been in the game at launch.

 

I will stay sub till something new catches my eye or they annoy me with another lacking content patch. (3.3) If your not going to give us content at least tell us about what coming.

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