Recurring issue with every patch

[Sylpherena]

A little backstory on this, first. Around a year and a half ago, I uninstalled the BitRaider client just to improve client loading performance on my PC. Had zero issues with it, everything ran great, etc etc. Fast forward to the release of KotFE chapter 16, which IIRC was late June, early August of this year. I started having issues with patching the game. Launcher would open normally, run normally, do all the things it's always done, except for one teeny tiny little detail.

 

It wouldn't patch. 4.7 came out and yet...no download. So, I tried every single method under the sun that I could find in all the help forums and EA support tickets to correct this issue. Nothing worked. So I decided, screw it, fresh install, maybe it's the fact that I removed BitRaider (even though there have been no forum posts indicating any issues with regards to launch-day patching between BitRaider and non-BitRaider clients).

 

It worked! At least...it worked at first. Fast forward to the next update, 4.7.1 (I might have the numbers off, it's not like I keep a running tally of which is which ) all of a sudden, I had the dreaded 208 error code, cannot connect to patch servers. Well, I could tracert and ping and manually connect to the patch server via the web address, so that OBVIOUSLY wasn't 100% true. Run repair, open and close launcher multiple times, reboot computer, reboot modem, reboot router, verify port forwarding, the whole shindig, all over again. Still nothing. So I did the "last resort" solution. Deleted the (can't remember if it's the correct file, been a while since I checked out the EA support forum) patcher.version file in the SWTOR folder.

 

'lo and behold! It can connect to the patch servers, to redownload the entire game!. Excellent, I shall now be up to speed in about 2 hours, I thought to myself. As soon as the download was finished, I excitedly pressed play, looking forward to continue to endlessly grind heroics for credits and level an absurd amount of toons between multiple servers with the goal of finishing DvL (I got a late start). To my utter dismay, I was greeted by the following message (screencap for sake of space) https://gyazo.com/80e569faa4d43929eef2ed15e9e58424

 

This seemed odd to me, since I mean...my game client had obviously connected to the SWTOR servers to download the game, so SURELY it had downloaded the correct version of the game. Sadly, this was not the case. After multiple hours of trying to get it to work again and again and again, I tried once again to delete and redownload. Rinse and repeat, same exact issue. So I gave up for that day, went to sleep, wondering what could possibly be causing the issue. I wake up the next day, and poof, like magic, it starts downloading the update immediately, 15-20 minutes later, I can play the game, no issues.

 

Now, you might be asking, why am I writing the bug report for this just now? I will answer that question for you. For every patch after 4.7 dropped, I have had this exact same issue. 5.0 early access (which I am eligible for) and the related patch just dropped. At 23:48 local time, I opened the SWTOR launcher, with high hopes that the patch servers would be live and I could start the download and be ready to go when the game servers came back up. As the download started, I was talking to a friend in Discord. His download was progressing significantly faster than mine. It turns out, that for some reason, my patch client thought that it needed to redownload the entire game. I know this, because, well, a 6.7GB patch at anywhere from 4-15MB/s (it's hard to get a solid number, BitRaider bounces around so much) does not take 2 hours and 21 minutes to finish downloading.

 

Sure enough, my current loading splash screen in the game is this: https://gyazo.com/742c6cb201be01ead9a8ece8ae59c473 I also still get the "wrong patch" error at the character screen. Whenever I open the client, it sits of "Verifying: 0%" for 4 minutes, no more, no less, and then suddenly the play button becomes usable. The repair option is completely greyed out, so that isn't even a choice.

 

My question to the Bioware staff trawling the bug report forums is this: Why the hell does this keep happening? Is it location based? I started playing the game when I lived in the States, now I live in Guam (and have for over a year, well before the issues developed). Is it just, bad patch servers that pick one random person for a 6-month to 1-year span of not being able to play on patch day? I am at my wits end with this. I must say, I was completely underwhelmed by the "epic story" of KotFE, but I was looking forward to giving KotET a fighting chance. Who knows, maybe lessons were learned and mistakes were fixed; at this point, though, I couldn't tell anyone, because I can't even login to the game that I've spent over 30 months playing (I know, I'm not a Founder, my bad).

 

Please, for the love of all that is holy, explain to me why, for the last 4 months, I have been experiencing patching nightmare hell that just magically decides to clear up after a 24-72 hour period. Thank you.

 

TL;DR: game won't patch on patch day for several months, getting pissed off about it.