First Impressions: SWTOR & Potential Consumers

[Fadore]

First impression by definition:

 

1. The initial idea or concept, which stays in someone's mind: a lasting effect, opinion, or mental image of somebody or something tangible.

 

2. A general idea: a belief about or understanding of something.

 

In life, dating, interviewing, and even gaming first impressions are a reality. Another reality is publicity, both negative and positive. It is very unfortunate that the current waved or staggered release BioWare is employing is causing a huge surge of negative publicity and may affect the company and the games ability to retain customers and attract new customers.

 

While BioWare has the power to delete or lock posts on the SWTOR site, the news is spreading through other media such as Twitter, Facebook, and other MMO Gaming sites nonetheless.

 

A bad first impression is sometimes hard to overcome, and can cause a lasting positive or negative affect in the future. At this point BioWare has caused a negative first impression with the larger portion of the current preorder customer base, and at the same time has already influenced future sales through this outbreak of negativity and bad publicity spreading on the internet.

 

This debacle as many in the MMO gamming community view it sets a lasting impression on how BioWare intends to handle the SWTOR game community with regard to the players who pay for the game. False impressions can be made about BioWare's ability to fix in game issues, and certainly raises questions on how future releases, patches, and content upgrades will be handled after the release on December 20th.

 

I got in the beta and loved the game play even though there were some apparent issues. Since then I have been in discussion with many friends and colleagues boasting what a great game SWTOR is going to be, and real competition to the behemoth known as The World or Warcraft. It is depressing now that I am being riddled with posts and emails from the same people I was trying to convince to try SWTOR, now stating what a joke the game and BioWare are.

 

I only hope that BioWare as a service to the gaming community steps forward with some form of confession or well thought response to the MMO community for the poorly planned early release, and the almost negligent actions of the moderators deleting posts from concerned customers that paid for the game/service.

 

In the perspective of the players from the other side of the fence, some see the release date only seven days into the future. If the game has the need for a staggered release to evaluate server load at this point then there is definite cause for concern for anyone who has preordered and definitely will influence other players contemplating buying the game for release or in the future.

[Bezit]

Best post I've seen all day.

[Fadore]

I just cannot understand how their marketing team and executives do not understand how much this has already spread and how damaging this could potentially be to the sales and revenue.

 

/sadface

 

I already cancelled my WoW subscription and I am down with SWTOR for the long hall, but I am fearful how others who did not get in the Beta perceive this issue.