Celebrating 10 Years and Looking Forward

[codydmaan]

Here's the thing... we've all had this relationship with swtor for 10 years. Let's say we've been married to swtor for 10 years.

 

If a husband and wife's 10 year marriage anniversary comes around and the husband sais hey I know it's our 10 year anniversary is next week I want to do something special for you. But then he proceeds to wait 2 months and his wife asks him hey our anniversary was 2 months ago are you going to do anything. The husband replies ill get around to it. How do you think the wife's gonna feel, what do you think she's gonna do.

 

Here's the thing you can't hype up 7.0 so much in your live streams, suggest were going to get pvp updates, gsf updates, graphical enhancements "improvements", new story, new combat styles, a anniversary event, anniversary vendors, a new raid, a new Flashpoint. New daily area, and list goes on.......

 

Then provide nothing. So swtor lied to its whole player base.

 

Like what was mentioned before how easy would it be just to throw in a vendor and a announcement on fleet or update the launcher or email a thank you letter to everyone. Thanks for playing swtor for 10 years we really look forward to this upcomming year, please bear with us for the delay in content...

 

I think it would be a good time to capitalize on content and community building since players are flocking away from wow right now. They have alot of issues.

 

Then again there's 3 new star wars video game titles going to be release this year early next year one is a open world game who knows if it's a mmo or not we will see.

 

That being said there's no player base appreciation from swtor.

 

And people feel like their just getting MILKED

 

Keep squeezing till its dry .....

 

You want to keep milking your gonna have to feed your cows. Just sayin

 

May the force be with you

 

Always

Edited January 31, 2022 by codydmaan

[TrixxieTriss]

And people feel like their just getting MILKED

 

Keep squeezing till its dry .....

 

You want to keep milking your gonna have to feed your cows. Just sayin

 

 

Moooo

[scratcha]

Was anyone here playing the ORIGINAL Guild Wars when it was placed on minimal life support, with all customer support automated, if available at all? The game was there (is still there), but it feels dead. There continue to be "events" and anniversaries, but everything has been automated. Like I said, there's a very dead quality to everything and these days it's quite rare to encounter another live player.

 

Even though SWTOR is far from dead, with such a lackluster so-called expansion created by an unenthused skeleton crew, I cannot help but feel SWTOR is on the same Guild Wars trajectory -- everything increasingly repetitive and little to no life support. It's as though EA is moving to completely reduce development costs and cut maintenance to nothing.

 

Maybe I'm all wrong, but having gone through this with another favorite game, I'm having deja vu. Nothing lasts forever, I guess. Hate feeling this way because today, for the first time in a couple months, I didn't bother to log in.

[Cassianus]

Was anyone here playing the ORIGINAL Guild Wars when it was placed on minimal life support, with all customer support automated, if available at all? The game was there (is still there), but it feels dead. [...]

Do you know the reason why the original Guild Wars is nearly dead? It's a result of serious design miscalculations with a game engine even before release. Engine was outdated upon release (2005) and ArenaNet top management realised it just after couple of years (maybe even earlier). After that, GW development was stopped and they switched to new project which eventually became current GW2. But its fate is also questionable because the same mistakes were repeated again, even in different way.

 

The story begins when Blizzard corp. had developing Warcraft III which continued successful I-II series. Mike O'Brien, a programmer of automatic combat in Warcraft II, created a new non-isometric engine and tested it for a while (look at the screenshot). However, this concept was scrapped and another 3D engine created, which later became a prototype of true 3D WoW engine. O'Brien and several other developers left Blizzard and founded new company now known as ArenaNet, he became the CEO. O'Brien decided to re-use his engine for new game Guild Wars. However, it wasn't true 3D rather than 2.5D+ because of lack of Z-axis support. In particular, characters were bound to a surface, cannot jump and may be attacked by foes below the bridge (around the same XY coords). Flying wasn't possible at all. Contrary, Blizzard's WoW engine was free of all these disadvantages.

 

It wouldn't be a great problem if the GW engine was replaced or modernised soon, but the zones and quests in original game were designed using these limitations, "glass walls" were extensively used. Upgrading the engine to true 3D was in theory possible (WoW engine was upgraded several times), but in 2007 it would require reworking of all design created for last 2-3 years. Upgrading should have started much earlier, but the engine programmer was the CEO and other developers have too few options to argue. When GW development was cancelled, many founders quit the company. Now GW is a living monument to its design miscalculations.

 

How this story is linked to SWTOR, one may ask. Directly: many current SWTOR problems are originated in the beta Hero Engine, which has been heavily modified internally since release instead of using the officially updated versions. As a result, current engine isn't compatible with last Hero, cannot be easily rebuilt to 64-bits and suffers of many disadvantages like outdated DirectX, lack of working memory, not enough multithreading (remember the constant delays when riding in Belsavis, even on a PC with fast CPU and SSD), no background downloading etc etc. BioWare doesn't have the resources to upgrade engine internally, cannot use the official Hero (need to write a compatibility layer for it), cannot replace it with other engine like UE, even if it's licensed by EA for other projects. From the code perspective, SWTOR is slowly dying; whether this process will be as long as for original GW or be ended sooner with the end of SW license, we can only guess.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Cassianus

[MystyqeofXev]

Mr. Kanneg: "We have a vision for the next few years."

 

Fan: "The game will be around for many years."

 

The next few years does not equal many years. At the moment - even his news! - reads more like they're wrapping things up. Just look at the quote: Nothing specific whatsoever was mentioned. Only empty marketing-speech. He's been talking about "exciting updates" all the time. Where are they? A 2-minute-cutscene every 6 months or so?

 

Where are the 10 years celebrations? Where is the joy? Where is the fun? They weren't even able to include the new anniversary gifts to the vendor. I ask you fellow players: What did/do we players get for their 10 years anniversary? What about us players who have funded this game without a break for 10 years? Not even another droid-pet or deco. Or an e-mail from the devs. Nothing! That's the reality of this game. Stop praising them for an empty marketing letter and one thread in this forum.

 

I think it's telling that the 10 years anniversary happens only here in a forum thread, started by the employee who is the shortest in the team. Mr. Musco? You have any anniversary-words for us? Mr. Boyd, how about you? Are you there? 10 years. With nothing but silence. What a shame.

 

Did anything happen in-game on 20th December 2021? I didn't notice anything, except some things that some players or guilds organised. Was there maybe an announcer on the fleet mentioning something? A news on the launcher "Today marks our 10th anniversary! Hooray." A character appearing in the fleet's cantina, spreading anniversary joy? No? Oh well. How could have a casual player known that it was the 10th anniversary? He couldn't.

 

I'm all for giving thanks and praises when they are due. In this case, I can unfortunately only conclude that they COMPLETELY botched their 10 years anniversary. No one can claim otherwise. And they know it. That's why they've been so quiet about it.

 

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they already know an end-date. Nothing that happens (or doesn't happen) at the moment points to BW being in a healthy state anymore.

 

What is the most memorable Swtor-thing for me? I think it's the big exploit of winter 2014 which they didn't fix until 2 months later or so, and then it was too late, because the damage was already done. It started the inflation you still see today.

 

It's called "Sunsetting a game"

[Jesira]

I've loved this game since it came out, but this cannot qualify as an expansion. To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement, but I can't say I didn't feel it coming with how short Onslaught was compared to previous expansions. The content cadence for this game has dramatically slowed, and what they do provide when the content drops is not worth the subscription money it takes to access it. Most of it has been a 30 second conversation on Odessen for the last year, anyway. I can honestly say, unless something changes this will be the end of the road for me with SWTOR. Edited February 16, 2022 by Jesira

[RevBurt]

10 Years and frankly the graphics look dated. If you are looking ahead at some point you will have to upgrade the rendering engine and not have swtor look so cartoony.

[LatiaRenz]

Hello SWTOR Community!

 

Happy anniversary to all of you! Today marks the 10 year anniversary of SWTOR and our one and only Keith Kanneg just published a letter to all of you which you can read here!

 

Happy 10 years. Still my favorite game.

[Soultranna]

... not sure what the word "Celebration" means at BW, because I'm not seeing much.

 

I still have fireworks from the first two anniversaries. I have all of the pets that have been sent out. All of the vehicles.

 

This last year, there was a ship model, and ... that's about it.

 

This feels like the anniversary that was completely forgotten, and then a token gift picked up at the gas station on the way home.

 

I get it that y'all are on a skeleton crew, working on a game built on code that probably can't be upgraded or even optimized due to support for it no longer being available.

 

But if you guys are planning on sunsetting a game, please, Just Say So! We don't need another City of Heroes, where the company running the game basically says "yeah, ok, that's it, we're turning the servers off in a month. Bye." There's still a lot of pain around how that was handled (I haven't so much as touched an NCSoft game since.)

 

As for the 'Vision'... it's time to Read The Room. If your vision for the game is contrary to what the players want to play, then congrats, you now have your own private instance of SWTOR to mess with, cos there won't be anyone else playing it. No subscriptions, no Cartel Coin purchases. No reviews (good or bad). No one following the Youtube channel, or Twitter, or wherever.

 

I started playing this game as a beta tester. Collector's Edition, preorder. I'm the old cranky one in the back, growing old as this game grows old. And no amount of new players can make up for losing the old players. Trust me on that one.

 

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