An open letter to our players

[devincor]

I think we are past the point of just trying to communicate. Coming here and talking at us does nothing to quell the fears and frustrations and rage. We need a real dialogue. The players have serious group content questions and concerns that need to be addressed in a professional honest and open manner. No "soon" jokes. No "we'll get back to you". Not just answering the "softball" questions either. Honest, forthcoming answers. Even if it is something we don't want to hear. When you (Bioware) are willing to do that, then you will have communication.

[Ayakin_Solaris]

"30 flashpoints upgraded to be challenging again, 50 operation bosses upgraded to be challenging again, too many heroic quests to count,"

 

i.e. re-hashing existing content and providing minimal new content and also I would say that most of the SM bosses were actually downgraded in 4.0 to be less challenging.

 

But hey, we've spent our time and effort creating "weapon tunings", which is more cosmetic stuff instead of actual new content and also just re-hashing existing effects (for the lightsaber anyway it looks exactly like the Ziost Guardian lightsaber blade effect). Having something akin to the outfit designer slots for weapons would be much better than this, but the cynic in me thinks they've gone this way because they can milk more $$$ out of the cartel market for it (what a surprise that the first effect is only in a pack).

 

I'm done with this game until you release some meaningful new end-game content and I've been a sub for several years - this one chapter per month, one new wz in goodness knows how long and the Eternally-developed Championship fluff content don't count.

[voltaicbore]

Several others have mentioned it already, so I want to add it with just a bit more force: CLASS STORYLINES. I get the feeling that an announcement that we're getting honest-to-goodness class storylines expanded would generate enormous (positive) buzz. Even today, with your allegedly "acclaimed" new content, I still prefer any of the 8 class storylines I've already played to any new story content we've seen from Makeb onwards. KotFE is the worst offender. The moment I completed Chapter I, I knew right then that I could not stomach doing the KotFE storyline than once on any given server.

 

If the game is actually doing as well as you're making it sound, I hope it teaches the team this lesson: there may be a way for you to bring said honest-to-goodness class storylines back. Consider the following:

 

(1) We are willing to WAIT for story content: Indeed, if KotFE is really performing that well, then you've proven that the playerbase is willing to wait for (even inferior) story content to be released in bursts, instead of waiting for huge releases.

 

(2) We are (possibly) willing to PAY for story content: Again, *if* KotFE is doing as well as you say it is, then you've also proven that you can get us to pay for access to story. Sure, you gave away level 1-50 class storylines. But now you've just shown you can put story behind a paywall, and we're ok with not getting story until we pay for it. Admittedly, it's possible that nobody actually likes KotFE, and what's happening is that people are just subbing for all the myriad other gameplay benefits and play KotFE just because it's part of the package deal with the sub. But again, *if* KotFE is as well-recieved as you allege, then I think you can look at that as evidence of our willingness to pay for story, even when you already gave so much of it to us for free.

 

I guess the saddest part about all this is that we get this open letter, a bunch of us post on the forums, and then... nothing. As the letter seems to promise, the dev team is just going to do what it does, and I'm not sure it really cares about anything the community says that doesn't somehow fit neatly into what they were already planning.

 

Just... class missions. Bring them back. I think we've shown that we'd pay for that. That's all your bosses care about in the end, right?

Edited April 21, 2016 by voltaicbore
blegh grammar

[gabigool]

Anyone care to speculate on:

 

a) Whether or not the response is what Ben expected when making this post? It seems very clear to me that the majority of responses were not encouraged by this communication. I wonder if the reaction was expected or if it was assumed this would be well received.

 

b) Whether the general sentiment of dissatisfaction will be considered legitimate or if they will interpret it as the eternally-dissatisfied player base making noise.

 

c) Will there be a response?

 

For me:

 

a) I think they were not expecting this degree of annoyance. I honestly think they assume "Soon TM" would actually make us giggle.

 

b) Probably the latter.

 

c) I do not think there can be. I think they'll give it a few days and unsticky it, or perhaps just delete it.

[KerryK]

Will there be a response?

 

 

off course not , its a post in which theyll never look back at it

at this point i do not think they care what so ever about their clientele

there are so many bugs , and so little for respect for starwars fans .

im aroud like many of you since the start and i continue to play , but its getting further and further away from the game we once enjoyed .

how about enough talk and fluff and actually fix things that are broke before pushing more one sided content out the door

Edited April 21, 2016 by KerryK

[Chellearia]

Just read the letter. Thank you, Ben.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Anyone care to speculate on:

 

a) Whether or not the response is what Ben expected when making this post? It seems very clear to me that the majority of responses were not encouraged by this communication. I wonder if the reaction was expected or if it was assumed this would be well received.

 

b) Whether the general sentiment of dissatisfaction will be considered legitimate or if they will interpret it as the eternally-dissatisfied player base making noise.

 

c) Will there be a response?

 

For me:

 

a) I think they were not expecting this degree of annoyance. I honestly think they assume "Soon TM" would actually make us giggle.

 

b) Probably the latter.

 

c) I do not think there can be. I think they'll give it a few days and unsticky it, or perhaps just delete it.

 

a) Totally don't think he expected this response, I think he is totally out of touch with the reality of the situation as has been previously demonstrated in the dev streams ...

His post was basically kicking the hornets nest and this thread is proving it imo ... there is quite unanimous annoyance over the post and the issues he is ignoring to the point I haven't even seen many people accusing those on the negative side of "doom n gloom" as we usually see ... probably due to many responses have been more reasoned and thought out though which is better than the usual "game is in maintenance mode im gone" posts.

 

b) He had better take it on as legitimate or we might be looking at yet another producer coming in. He made this post out of some sense of worry else he wouldn't have bothered so something is up in the BW/Everse.

 

c) If they have the next dev stream with no response and act like this thread didn't happen expect things to get even worse ... the ball is in his court now.

[Glzmo]

Hi there!

 

My name is Ben Irving, Producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I don’t often make posts in the forums, in fact, this may be my first ever post. Despite that, our whole team, myself included try to digest all of the internet for SWTOR information – The forums, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Recently there have been questions and concerns around the quality of our releases and the ongoing support for SWTOR and I wanted to stop by to address those concerns.

 

First off, I want to apologize for some of the issues you have experienced in the last couple of months. The monthly chapter release schedule is new and it has come with some unexpected bugs. It has caused problems for some of you and I want to say I am sorry. At our core, the SWTOR team are all gamers, just like you. We empathize with the excitement of wanting to play a great game only to be blocked by a problem. We spend all of our energy striving to make SWTOR the best game possible and when bugs and other issues get in the way of your player experience, we take it to heart. We are committed to doing better and I think Chapter XII: Visions in the Dark shows we are serious about listening to your concerns and making meaningful changes to address them - a high quality chapter, released on time that we hope has met the expectations of our players.

 

Onto the future. Is SWTOR going to receive ongoing support? The answer is absolutely yes.

 

It's worth starting with the things we have already announced, we talk about them on the monthly Producer Live Stream but I think they are still worth mentioning. We had the launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire – 9 incredible story driven chapters, 14 companion recruitment missions, Star Fortress, 5 new player levels, 30 flashpoints upgraded to be challenging again, 50 operation bosses upgraded to be challenging again, too many heroic quests to count, a revamp of the 1-60 levelling experience and a huge number of quality of life improvements. More recently we have kicked off our monthly chapter cadence and our third installment – Chapter XII: Visions in the Dark – was just released. That cadence will take us through most of the year ending with Chapter XVI, our story finale for Knights of the Fallen Empire. In addition to all the monthly chapters we have built great supporting content – Recruitment missions to explore the galaxy with some of your favorite companions, the Odessen Proving Grounds Warzone, the Rishi Cove Arena, the Eternal Championship and new levels for crafting. That’s actually more content following a major expansion than we have ever released and the team is really excited for all of you to play it.

 

The harder part to address, because you have to take my word for it, are all the features and content we are working on that we haven’t yet announced. If you follow Charles Boyd or Paul Marino on social media you may have seen some hints of this. The team recently visited our MoCap studio to create new animations. Charles Boyd spent a week at our VO studio recording more lines of dialogue for future story content. The two most exciting things to share are that our writers are deep into the plot summaries for the next season's worth of chapters and we have started the early design phase for new, non-chapter, content. You all know the drill here, I can’t talk about any of the specifics (yet) but what I can say is that we have some REALLY cool stuff to talk about later this year and the whole SWTOR team can’t wait to announce it. Soon. TM.

 

Knights of the Fallen Empire is the most successful expansion we have ever produced. It received critical acclaim from press and fan sites but most importantly, it has been successful because all of you have supported us through the expansion launch and the release of the monthly Chapters. In the eyes of all of our partners, SWTOR is a huge success. BioWare supports this game. EA supports this game. Lucasfilm supports this game. Disney supports this game. In fact, for a game that has been live for almost 5 years, we are receiving an incredible amount of support from all of our partners. It’s both amazing and humbling.

 

If there is anything I would like people reading this to take away it’s this: SWTOR is absolutely being supported into the future. We have a lot of content coming over the next few months and even more exciting things to talk about later this year. All of us here at BioWare appreciate your ongoing support and we are committed to providing the best experience possible.

 

It’s because of you, our players, that this game continues to thrive. Thank you for playing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

Ben Irving

Hey Ben, welcome to the forums.

 

Does that "cool stuff" you mentiones also consist of an option to turn on chat bubbles for /say, /yell and /emote chat which we've been promised by your guys for over four years? I sure hope so.

 

Also, would it be possible that you fix up all the KOTFE story content so players can progress through it together and everyone in the group gets credit for it if they opt to do so? This is supposed to be a MMORPG, after all, not a single player game.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Glzmo

[TX_Angel]

KOTOR 3 with $15/month ~hour long dlc.

 

And they even counted operations and heroics as new content. I mean all in all this letter did nothing other than confirm what I already knew. They are a completely inept company, and this game will only ever get worse.

 

^ Yep, all that...

[TX_Angel]

But hey, we've spent our time and effort creating "weapon tunings", which is more cosmetic stuff instead of actual new content and also just re-hashing existing effects (for the lightsaber anyway it looks exactly like the Ziost Guardian lightsaber blade effect). Having something akin to the outfit designer slots for weapons would be much better than this, but the cynic in me thinks they've gone this way because they can milk more $$$ out of the cartel market for it (what a surprise that the first effect is only in a pack).

 

^ Note: The "weapon tunings" are exclusive to the Cartel Market, of course... funny how that never seem to have trouble having stuff developed for it...

[TX_Angel]

Anyone care to speculate on:

 

a) Whether or not the response is what Ben expected when making this post? It seems very clear to me that the majority of responses were not encouraged by this communication. I wonder if the reaction was expected or if it was assumed this would be well received.

 

I honestly don't think Ben cares... he posted damage control/marketing spin and moved on... I'd be shocked if he actually bothered to read this... He can prove me wrong by replying to this post and simply saying, "yep, I'm reading it all, even if I don't reply". I'll bet you a thousand CC that he doesn't however.

 

b) Whether the general sentiment of dissatisfaction will be considered legitimate or if they will interpret it as the eternally-dissatisfied player base making noise.

 

Again, I don't think they care. They only care about sub numbers and CM sales, the rest is complete nothing to them.

 

c) Will there be a response?

 

Is there ever one? We had a post last year from someone new to the team, they posted all of three times then we never heard from them again. Eric posts stuff then never returns to a topic. There HAVE been exceptions, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.

 

a) I think they were not expecting this degree of annoyance. I honestly think they assume "Soon TM" would actually make us giggle.

 

It was funny, once... it isn't funny anymore...

[Exly]

I think we are past the point of just trying to communicate. Coming here and talking at us does nothing to quell the fears and frustrations and rage. We need a real dialogue. The players have serious group content questions and concerns that need to be addressed in a professional honest and open manner. No "soon" jokes. No "we'll get back to you". Not just answering the "softball" questions either. Honest, forthcoming answers. Even if it is something we don't want to hear. When you (Bioware) are willing to do that, then you will have communication.

 

I think that they are afraid that if we knew the honest truth that even more of us would get upset and would leave.

 

Let's face it, they made a choice to put all production of group MMO content on the back burner when they started to develop KotFE, and up until now they have held to the belief that doing so would lead to greater success, and the truth is that it did work for them for a while.

 

Whether that success was truly the result of the change to a focus on single player story content, or was because of the excitement around all things Star Wars that resulted from the release of the movie is up for debate, but setting that aside they must have thought themselves to be pretty smart for making the change.

 

The problem is that the story content, while well received at first, is now getting old, and is not something the I or any of the people that I know that play the game want to do more than a couple of times. Add to that the fact that the star fortress grind is also played out by a large segment of the player base, and the lack of good, replayable, group content is causing many to rethink the value that they are getting by subbing to the game.

 

Now some of these people have simply unsubbed, and we can see the affects of that by lower server populations even during peak times. While others are hanging around and making noise by asking for more operations, warzones, gsf maps and etc., on the forums.

 

BioWare is now faced with another choice. Do they stick to their guns and stay focused almost exclusively on solo story driven content, or do they give in to the wishes of many of their customers and develop more MMO content.

 

The choice is theirs, but in making that choice I suggest that they remember that "choices matter", and choosing to continue to ignore those who are asking for more group content is likely to lead to a loss of players as more choose to unsub due to lack of content.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Exly

[TheSeventhJedi]

I belong to a guild that was, at the time I joined it (around RotHC), so large we had to have separate guilds for our alts. For the past three years, there has always been something going on in guild. It's been dwindling pretty steadily since KotFE.

 

Tonight, for the first time ever, I logged in (during prime hours 7:00-9:00 EST) and I was absolutely alone in guild. One of the over 100 unique members who have let their subs lapse was our GM. It was a sad, sad night. What's the point of MMO features if there's no online to play them with?

[DarthDymond]

His post was basically kicking the hornets nest and this thread is proving it imo ... there is quite unanimous annoyance over the post and the issues he is ignoring to the point I haven't even seen many people accusing those on the negative side of "doom n gloom" as we usually see ...

Unanimous? I think you may have a bit of confirmation bias going on:

 

Looking forward to the new stuff you guys have planned!! Yay for more KotFE chapters!

Bruh thanks for the real talk. The most legit post posted by bioware in years.

I think this is a much needed, and widely appreciated post.

Thanks for the letter, I'm glad to hear things are going well and the support is there (or at least is supposed to be ).

Thanks for posting and letting us know that what we say is being heard even if its not always possible to please all of us.

I would like to thank you for this post too!

Wow! Good stuff!

Thank you Ben for taking you time for writing this. This was needed and I am excited to see what to come.

I want SWTOR to be around for a long time, because I have a lot left to do. So this is good to hear.

Thanks for the communication. It's appreciated, at least by some of us.

I'm another who wants to thank you for taking the time out to respond to the player base, Ben.

Thank you Ben; for taking the time but also taking a realistic approach to keeping us informed.

Thanks for the post, really apreciated. And please do this more often, we like to hear what is going on, it really helps.

Thank you for the informative post. I believe it will go a long way to debunk many of the rumors that have been floating around the community of late.

I, for one, was very thankful for the OP - what a great update, and exciting news for the current and ongoing support for this game.

Thanks for the post Ben.

I know you'll still take crap for some really stupid things, but I hope you are able to brush it off. And if you guys ever need a round of beers, look me up; I'm only a couple hours south of Austin.

Very happy to read this. Thank you for the communication!

I for one, really appreciate this open letter and the positive vibe I get for the future of TOR. Sincere "thank you", and 2 thumbs up!

Very excited and happy to know that SWTOR will have more time to fight and get more content in the future!

Thanks for the communication.

I love this game, thanks for the letter!

As people have said, it was a much needed post. Keep up the good work.

Contentment, I has it.

Thanks for the post! I've been enjoying KotFE very much, and I'm looking forward to seeing everything you've been working on.

ATLEAST, have some positivity. Just for once.. my god

I am very happy with the efforts you make to create a awesome game, sure there are bugs here and there but so has all games.

Good idea, communication such as this is the way to keep players hooked up.

Thanks for the letter Ben - KOTFE is the most I've enjoyed the game in years, in spite of the noticeable up-tick in bugs, and I'm loving the return to focusing on story.

Ben, thank you for the info. Can't wait for the last chapters and what ever new content comes our way

The focus of Star Wars: The Old Republic shifted towards Bioware's central competance, heroic stories.[...] Personally I am perfectly fine with that.

I'm a returning player who's thoroughly enjoying KotFE and I really appreciate all the hard work you and the other devs have put into this game. Glad to hear things are going so well.

Hi Ben, thanks for taking the time to let us know what's happening. [...] It's really nice to hear about all the plans you have for the game, sometimes the doom and gloomers can get me down a bit.

I am glad you took the time to write this as it was solely needed due to some posters going around stating the game is dying, (which they been doing since day one).

Thanks for this open letter. It's very encouraging to see this type of communication, not to mention the content of it.

Nice letter. Good to know someone read our topics and listen our opinions.

I don't think I have ever been so mentally satisfied by the SWTOR team regarding the game than I am now. [...] Thanks to this, I know for a fact that I will renew my subscription.

Just read the letter. Thank you, Ben.

Thanks for the update and continued great experience!

 

And plenty of complaints about the 'doom and gloom' forum warriors:

Read doom and glommers!

Thanks for the great read, Ben! Hopefully, this will stop some of the more insane Doom and Gloom posts...

Thank you for posting this and reminding people that you are hard at work on things that you can't talk about yet. So many people here lose sight of that and think that if you aren't talking about it, then it must not be happening.

Thanks for the reassurances Ben. [...] Hopefully it will quell some of the naysayer type posts, cause I'm getting really tired and fed up with those.

If anyone needed proof that gamers are the hardest customers on the planet to satisfy, they only need to read this thread.

SWTOR is stronger than ever. KotFE has been the best expansion the game has ever made. The future is bright.

Thanks Ben, i am glad the doom mongers are in the wrong here! It is good to see SWTOR continuing to grow and i am looking forward to the content release for SWTOR in the future.

Forum fighters or the rest of the players actually playing the game and enoying it as it is? I don't feel cheated in any way, what exactly did the devs ever said and not kept their word, hm?

MMO forum criticisms of a game and it's studio much more closely the model of communications practices of frustrated Chimpanzees..........throwing backside excretions at anything and everything.

The concerns about "maintenance mode" from people that have absolutely no clue what it means have been addressed. It won't help, because they had no clue what it meant before, and will continue to have no clue now, but it's been addressed.

Thank you for posting this, even though I hate that you have to placate the minority of loud, raging gamers that do not truly represent your player-base, so that they do not cause PR nightmares for the game for no good reason. Rabid fans are the bane of any good thing and they are blind to that fact.

 

Edited April 22, 2016 by DarthDymond

[Durokon]

So....How are you gonna UNF@#% this massive clown fiesta bioware? I wasnt one of the ones who was banned, but that would irk the living hell out of me if I was. Instead of taking the time to fix stuff, you just went and banned anyone who remotely looked like they were doing something wrong.

 

So again, how is this clown fiesta gonna get unf#$%'d?

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Unanimous? I think you may have a bit of confirmation bias going on:

 

 

Quite right, I misspoke - not unamious I should have said something more akin to "majority of".

 

Now I don't know how far through the thread you went but there are 39 individual posters in your list. I get to 39 posters who aren't so appreciative of the "letter" and found it lacking by page 10 ... I'm sure if I go half way through the thread you would get 39 posters who are outright pissed off about it and/or the state of the game.

 

This is quite a change from what I've observed where such posts would tend to be in the minority.

[Hornakkan]

First off, I want to apologize for some of the issues you have experienced in the last couple of months. The monthly chapter release schedule is new and it has come with some unexpected bugs.

 

That's great but that's only solo content doable in 1 hour or less ... nothing exciting when we realize SWTOR is an MMO, not a solo RPG.

 

 

 

Onto the future. Is SWTOR going to receive ongoing support? The answer is absolutely yes.

 

It's worth starting with the things we have already announced, ... blablabla solo content ... blablabla. That’s actually more content following a major expansion than we have ever released and the team is really excited for all of you to play it.

 

Again, it only received solo content and nothing new for PVE players : no new operations to chew on since almost 2 years !!! Doing CDE since Beta, Karagga "shortly" after launch, etc. it's getting boooorrriiiiiiiiiinnng.

Do you want SWTOR to become a solo RPG ???

 

 

 

You all know the drill here, I can’t talk about any of the specifics (yet) but what I can say is that we have some REALLY cool stuff to talk about later this year and the whole SWTOR team can’t wait to announce it. Soon. TM.

 

Hope you're talking about 4 or 5 new well balanced Operations, else big PVErs won't come back. That's pretty simple, on BM huge PVE guilds are only hitting 3 to 4 players max at Prime Time where they used to be 15 to 20 players.

 

When will you get rid of this crappy solo content and start launching MMO content ????

[Golgulok]

You may all find this article very interesting.

 

Ben... Why don't you have read.

[Rootchify]

Good day Ben. I am great full to have an opportunity to address one of the top people of this most amazing creation. I have spent money on this here piece of gaming art for the last year and do not regret one minute of it up to now. Despite my countries terrible exchange rate.

 

Yes I have been stuck in phases and experienced some of the bugs people speak of in the forums but it has not put me off the game one bit as there are a multitude of success in game to revel in. It work very well. A venture of this magnitude will of course run it's course in development issues. I know you guys will sort it all out as soon as possible as you guys also enjoy the game it self.

 

Thank you for all the hard work to all the teams involved in the design of this master piece. Good to know that all the money spent by your clients will not suddenly come to and abrupt end. You got us hooked now you have to deal with that...lol Gratz:wea_03:

[Opaknack]

...

First off, I want to apologize for some of the issues you have experienced in the last couple of months. ...

We accept your apology.

 

But... NOW WE ARE WAITING FOR SOLUTIONS !

 

Do You have some precice news what Bioware will do to solve the following issues?

- new pve content, mmo content, operations

- stupid loot system ( the best gear in highlighted but still easy hardmodes)

- completely broken heal balance in pvp (massive nerf for sorc/sage heal ?)

- broken class balance in pvp in general

- force barrier exploit 1 ( sorc/sage wins every acid in arenas)

- force barrier exploit 2 ( in odessen bg to defend a spot )

- sage/sorc plague in pvp ( almost 50 % of the played classes in ranked are sages/sorcs because they are still overpowered)

- hackers in ranked pvp ( acid exploit of stealther they dont take damage )

- instant deaths (stuck spots) in the rishi arena are ruining ranked for jumping classes.

- waiting time on empty servers for pvp / groupfinder

- easy wintrading in ranked on empty servers

- why not cross server queues ?

- why not server merge ?

- why want you increase the character transfer costs? It's your job to do something for empty servers with only 20 - 30 chars on the fleet at the primetime. But you leave in the lurch the players and in addition you let us pay for a problem in your game. And transfers will never solve the problem but only move it around the servers.

 

How long we have to wait for exact answers and solutions ?

Edited April 22, 2016 by Opaknack

[DieAlteHexe]

Quite right, I misspoke - not unamious I should have said something more akin to "majority of".

 

Now I don't know how far through the thread you went but there are 39 individual posters in your list. I get to 39 posters who aren't so appreciative of the "letter" and found it lacking by page 10 ... I'm sure if I go half way through the thread you would get 39 posters who are outright pissed off about it and/or the state of the game.

 

This is quite a change from what I've observed where such posts would tend to be in the minority.

 

Remember, the majority of players (especially the content ones) no NOT haunt forums. They're too busy enjoying the game.

 

It's foolish to try and claim "victory" (on either side). Some people like this, some do not, some are on the fence. We do not have anything even close to a data set to work with.

[JediJRB]

You've removed any semblance of logical player development/growth by neutering the value of Flashpoints where players learned roles and the core group gameplay principles. Now, at level 50, I can queue into a SM Operation, get bolstered and have a complete set of raid gear before I can even equip it.

 

You've taken away the need for proportional risk/reward with the creation of the HHM system. What used to require a HM Revan kill is now obtainable from SoA.

 

SoA.

 

Look at the tuning of Torque. Master Blaster. Cora. Objectively - they make zero sense. I won't even discuss tacticals.

 

This.

[ybdron]

We accept your apology.

 

Do not use the word "we" here. You are clearly just speaking on behalf of yourself and the PVP community. I highly doubt the PVE community accept his apology.

[Frenesi]

Remember, the majority of players (especially the content ones) no NOT haunt forums. They're too busy enjoying the game.

 

It's foolish to try and claim "victory" (on either side). Some people like this, some do not, some are on the fence. We do not have anything even close to a data set to work with.

 

I'd say it still gives an idea of general mood. There are happy people around forums, white-knighting all the day long. Yet they are a minority here.

 

If, let's say, only 10% of players visit forums, it still doesn't mean that their opinions aren't representative. That's how polls work IRL most of the time, yet their results are considered accurate (well, somewhat).

[Gokkus]

Nice to read. I to have been frustrated when I had to redo a quest because of bugs but I refrained from making any threads about it on the forums.

 

I actually go here to get informed about the game, make sure I dont miss anything and know what lives among the SWTOR community. It is often a bit of a letdown since a lot of topics start of with no interest of a healthy discussion or actual feedback. Its just venting...sad thing that.