Sorry guys...the cleaning crew is in and they unplugged the server so that they could vacuum. Someone is driving to the office now to bring the servers back up and onlline. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This is one of the most accurate statements that I have seen about this. So many people, including myself, had such high hopes for what SWTOR could be. Taking from lessons that should have been learned (hell, RIFT learned them), this game should have been amazing. BUT because like you stated, they wanted to rush this game out for the holiday season, they pushed out a buggy, beta - KNOWING that there were a lot of people that would stick with it, just because of the name on the game and the previous experiences they had with it. To an extent they are right....but even the most hardcore fan can get sick of their game locking up, without fail, every time they boot it up. IT's just annoying and should have been taken care of in Beta. 18 pages of people posting show it's not just a "trivial" matter. This game should have been better.

I *TOTALLY* agree, but that's why temp firms exist !! Again, if you look at past precedent -- wow went through this, and somewhat got a pass, because it would be easy to over look how popular the game was. Unfortunately, with pre-sale numbers, 2 open beta's and the INSANE following this brand has, I don't see that as a viable excuse. Also, the "firings" would be no different than those that happen during the holiday season when stores beef up their numbers to deal with crowds. Also, should need surpass what they had hired, there would not be a need to fire, as they would have more than enough capital to pay the extra labor cost. There is also something to be said about putting out a bit extra up front, in the area of CS to stop a PR nightmare. If people can talk to a live person, even after a half hour wait, they will feel much better than waiting for 2 hours, only to get DC'd or get a canned answer that was already given to them on the forums. I'm sure Sony would agree with that, as would a few other developers that were embarrassed by the gaming community when their CS fell well short of expectations. It goes back to a basic rule of implementation you can have it: Inexpensive Well Done, or On time Pick 2. My initial thought is that EA has chosen As inexpensive as possible and on time. NOT Saying the game isn't well done...I'm just saying it could have used another month or 2 in development. I know these issues existed in Beta (quite a few alerted them of it). So it should have been investigated....but hind sight is 20/20

I see what you are saying, and it's a rational thought. BUT, the Project Manager in me stands up and screams that they should have foreseen this, and hired more people. They could have taken the pre-order data, then extrapolated that to a projected number that they could say - within reason - would be able to handle 2000+ tickets, whether that means temporarily hiring a distributed call center until launch hysteria died down, or just flat out hiring more people. Regardless....as a project manager, that excuse falls a bit flat.