Are OPS passes coming back to the game?

Tyth Mastermode?

Just to quote myself and ask the question rephrased: When is Tyth Mastermode coming? Can you comment on that in your roadmap too? Or just a comment here would be nice too. Your own website says this: "Face Tyth on one of two different challenge levels: Story Mode or the more challenging Hard Mode – with Master Mode coming soon!" http://www.swtor.com/eternal-throne/updates When is "soon"?

Perhaps i missed it, but isn't there supposed to release Tyth Mastermode in July as well?

Copy of my post on Reddit: Before there was this reflect meta (zzzzzzzzzz) there were these great M&B tactics. When 5.0 hit, sins could use their reflect on Master to push the fight quickly into last phase. Yesterday i could see a sin tank using his reflect on Master but damage was no longer returned. The question is: can any other sin tank confirm if reflect doesn't work anymore in the M&B fight to push Master down to his grave? I am suspecting a stealth change in 5.2.1, because i cannot see any change about it in the patch notes.

A very big welcome to Keith in this position. Goodbye Ben. Keith your vision could do a lot for the future of this game. Honestly i think there is a big "sigh" relief going on in the community right now. Still there are hurdles to take, like EA's support. I'm glad that you are a player too, someone who actually knows the game from our perspective. Best of luck to you Keith. Make SWTOR great again!

I'm one of the people who said: "i will be gone forever, uninstalled the game yadieyadieyadie" when 5.0 released. So i did. I uninstalled the game and left a game and a playerbase i loved. The 5.0 plans were no good to the game and it's playerbase. Statistics have already been showing proof, even more servers have become mostly unoccupied by players and less people were logging in. Now with 5.2 i think you guys, Bioware, have made a good decision. Apart from new OPS bosses, which is really nice, i like the fact that you are leaning more and more towards the old way of gearing, while keeping the new one intact for the people who want to use that. Reading the patch notes and listening to your plans, it's safe for me to say that i can fully support this adapted road you have turned in to. I have seen some old school players returning to the game and i hope it's not too late. Even if it would be too late, now you have my support for listening to the crowd and adjusting the game to it. Thank you. Resubbed and playing the game i still love. Please keep this up and don't fall back into the abyss.

I have 5 days left on my last gametime card and i called it. I think i have said multiple times that i am out, but after testing 5.1 yesterday i can only conclude that the RNG has not gotten less, it has just become RNGception. RNG within RNG within RNG. All these smokescreens, false advertisements, false promises and yes there will be more false promises tomorrow at the livestream, i am completely done with it. Even after all of my criticism i thought i should give Bioware one last chance, which i did. But no, it's done. I will never ever return to this game again, just because it makes me so damn salty whenever there is a discussion going on about it. I want to play the game i used to know, the one that made me happy, the old SWTOR. Thanks for everything guys, community is most of the time a nice community. This will be my last post. Signing out. Peace

I giggled. SWTOR won that by miles ahead of the "competitors"

+1. No, +9999999999999999. So much this, it's Star Wars. That was all folks.

Absolutely not, because it doesn't even deserve to be nominated.

DUDE! No way! It's really time to throw salt now, sorry you have to take it Eric, but i am also not sorry. Yes Bioware is about storytelling and having companions and how you build relationships with them, not only in SWTOR but also in Mass Effect, Dragon Age and so on. But in no possible way has SWTOR the last few years come close to SWTOR as it has been. I have played this game starting in the beta. It was GREAT. Going from level 1 to 50 with having all of these different stories, sidequests even being mandatory and they were great too. They had their own storylines. I cared about my companions, i had to make choices about who to take with me because their abilities were different, i needed influence on different ones, it mattered! Flashpoints were great, also woven into story. Raids were introduced, built on story and they felt great. Difficulties were introduced and it was all awesome. Hell, even planets like Oricon, Makeb, Yavin, they all felt great within the story and enough to do to keep people satisfied for a long time. Ofcourse SWTOR has hit the "not much to do now" a couple of times before. But that is with every MMORPG, that is why there are expanions after a while. So no problem there. But Eric! Things changed drastically. Perhaps we can even go back to the point where people weren't allowed to pick their own utilities in a skill tree anymore, but they were bound to those tiny boxes that they are now. Or when 4.0 hit and there was no increase in raid level difficulty. Or when KP and EV NiM were removed, because they had no extra mechanics so why bother to have them anyway? Or when everything was so damn simplified because people "would not understand it otherwise" ----> removing stances, removing abilities, removing different sorts of gear/stats, binding gear to a class, simplifying flashpoints, simplifying SM OPS, create the "general companion" spec, introduce reflect for too many specs (REALLY!?) and so on and on and on. So many things that mattered in the early days of SWTOR are just a selling point now that is not being fullfilled. You talk about story and companions? Companions do not matter, they are all exactly the same but with different skins and voices. Story has dumbed down to one general story for each and every single class. Choices do not matter at all, just replay your chapter and experience different choices. A choice matters when you CANNOT turn back. The decision has been made and you will never see the other choice unless you create another soon to be hero. New planets starting @ KOTFE have no stories. They are empty shells with nothing to do but run through them because the chapters say so. The story chapters are good, absolutely! But compare them to SWTOR as it was up until 3.0 and it is nothing. An MMORPG is meant to dig deep. To understand. It's difficult, it takes time and you get rewarded for it because you understand it all. You can make different choices, a lot of choices. Gearing is to be understood. People can finetune with different stats, to create their own unique meta if they want to. That is gone Eric. The game has been oversimplified to get in the average retard who loves to play a singleplayer game and is willing to pay a monthly subscription for it. Well guess what, just turn down the damn servers, create SWTOR offline and give it a chat function so they can chat with others. Or don't, whatever. I respect that you try to keep selling it to the crowd, but you damn well know, as any other SWTOR veteran out there: this game is absolutely nothing like it used to be. If you want it to be like the old days, as much as i want it to be, fullfill the expectations: - Story divided into the different classes; - New class(es); - Complexity in stats, give people something to think about and build their own meta; - Different companions, so choosing a companion matters; - Getting a companion should be an effort (like getting HK parts back in the day); - Something to do on new planets: dailies, bosses, heroics, whatever you can think of; - Get gear from different places, hell split gear into pieces that are spread out across different activities, only way to get a gearpiece is to get all the pieces for that gearpiece; - Reimplement complex skilltrees; - Invent new ways of mechanics (if you need examples, let me know, i got a gazillion); - Let people actually progress instead of grind, let them use their minds instead of pressing a button without thinking (and even getting results with it, a.k.a. press 1 and let your companion do the rest); - Hire a new employee who knows art and create good looking cosmetics: it all looks the same now (or rehashed old cosmetics); - New complex OPS; - New complex group content in general (IT WAS HARD TO KILL COMMANDER MOKAN!); - New ways for PvP, could be new GSF maps or warzones, or something in the open world. For example guild vs guild with leaderboards. Hell even silly minigames are fun from time to time; I'm sure there are many more ideas, some of which i have said in this large comment, some of which others have better ideas. Stop letting this be EA's cashcow. There is no "thrill of the hunt", there is currently only "boredom of the hunt". Let there be thrill! Surprise us! Make it worth the money again as it was for a long time. Good luck.

You know, after Eric's post i still have hope, but i also keep thinking about what the Lord of the Rings Online community manager said. Before Eric's post i thought: hey there might actually be really good group content coming up (and yes i love raids). After Eric's post it has dumbed down to "i hope so". The community manager from LOTRO stated that for a dev team it requires focussed attention in order to create raids. It doesn't necessary need to take a long time (several months instead of a year), but it requires focussed attention while doing nothing else. Now that Eric said: "there will also be story" i think, mweh, dumbed down, yep. So, based on the LOTRO community manager's info (which ofcourse was meant for his own game) the BW dev team will completely focus on group content or BW must be hiring new devs so they can focus on group content AND create story at the same time. "I hope so" @Eric: thursday will be really really really really important for quite some players and especially for myself. Make or break the game, it's up to you guys. Good luck.

This +1. I was fed up with the feeling that they simply removed those companions so they could begin from scratch. Perhaps they even did plan to bring them all back within story and/or missions, but experiencing all the problems and delays in releasing the 4.0 chapters much could have been cancelled or postponed "until further notice" (which means never).

Depends what you call "dying". SWTOR is something like a milking cow for money now. Which i can understand from a business perspective. According to the annual reports, which can be found here, SWTOR wasn't doing particularly well with dollars in the last few years. In 2016 it showed this in the annual report of may 2016 (and i quote): "For fiscal year 2016 , service and other revenue was $1,899 million , primarily driven by FIFA Ultimate Team and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Service and other revenue for fiscal year 2016 decreased $48 million , or 2 percent , as compared to fiscal year 2015 . This decrease was driven by a $421 million decrease primarily from Titanfall and Battlefield 4 Premium . This decrease was partially offset by a $373 million increase primarily from the Madden NFL franchise, Need for Speed 2015 and SimCity BuildIt ." Which means SWTOR is doing better compared to the previous years. Progressing through 2016 there is a decline in subscriptions (found in the annual reports after that) and for 2017, well we shall see. Now, back to "dying". Is it dying? Well it currently is as a traditional MMORPG. There is more focus on singleplayer content instead of multiplayer content, although the plans for 2017 should be more towards "group content" as Bioware calls it. Will that bring more players to the game? Hard to say, apparently 4.0 did something good financially for SWTOR, so the real question is if they are willing to invest a lot in SWTOR again when the money is made in forms of a bigger positive revenue. Currently the game is being managed to get the most bang for the buck for the business that is called EA/Bioware. Again, quite understandable, a game that just makes losses cannot be maintained. That bang for the buck is not for the player, especially players who have been playing the game for a long time feel that they need to do a lot of stuff over and over and over again. According to servers dying, well yes. A lot of servers are very light on occupancy. The two biggest servers (Harbinger for US and Red Eclipse for EU) are also starting to show some decline now that 5.0 has been around for a little while. I remember Red Eclipse being on a 1.60 occupancy rating right after 5.0 release and now it is back to 1.47, which is the same as slightly before 5.0. What the numbers mean in amount of players, we don't know. But what can be said is that the number rating shows decline. Check it for yourself here. In the long run one could say this is a good financial move. Getting more money into the game resulting in more investment in the game. But that remains a really big question mark. EA has multiple game branches, money can flow through those if they wish. Meaning that money made in SWTOR doesn't necessariliy have to flow back into SWTOR. Also, there currently hasn't been any proof of the development team being expanded, last news we received is that a developer team for operations (or "group content") basically has fallen apart which resulted in operations going into maintenance mode. I hope for a good SWTOR future, but in the end it all depends on the money EA and Bioware are willing to invest.