Google Translate: coming to a forum near you!

 

Linguistically the same level of the CM's

To address the first part of it, I will actually be stepping in as the SWTOR Community Manager

 

As for what will change (if anything) moving forward. I can tell you that Courtney, Amber, and I all have some cool ideas! But overall I think you are all a bit unexcited about reading promises of new ideas and communication. So instead, we are just going to start doing stuff!

 

-eric

 

Well, everybody of you is well known by the community, I think, so in my book I'm glad that there is still a community team.

 

So far with the good news. But may I ask what will happen to the french & the german part of the community? Will there be any interaction with us, the "underdogs"? I'm shure you know that there is more to do than just some simple translations, what will happen to the french and german suggestion corners for example?

 

I'm a little bit worried how things will work in the future ...

Edited February 27, 2013 by Han_Salo

Wait a sec, Allison is gone too!? Since last month, even!? Edited February 27, 2013 by Lurtzello

To address the first part of it, I will actually be stepping in as the SWTOR Community Manager

 

As for what will change (if anything) moving forward. I can tell you that Courtney, Amber, and I all have some cool ideas! But overall I think you are all a bit unexcited about reading promises of new ideas and communication. So instead, we are just going to start doing stuff!

 

-eric

 

That's pretty much the only way this community will believe something you say.

 

"Soon".tm and "great things are coming but we can't talk about them" has basically made the community feel like the Town in the "little boy who cried wolf". The lies have brought us to that point.

 

Take the Collectors Edition for example... Still nothing.

To address the first part of it, I will actually be stepping in as the SWTOR Community Manager

 

As for what will change (if anything) moving forward. I can tell you that Courtney, Amber, and I all have some cool ideas! But overall I think you are all a bit unexcited about reading promises of new ideas and communication. So instead, we are just going to start doing stuff!

 

-eric

 

Thanks for the response Eric, I'm not trying to stick an interrogation probe on you all, but I'm sure you understand that change is disconcerting, and I've seen quite a few people that I like depart in the last year.

 

But I look forward to seeing what new ideas you have in mind and seeing stuff done!

Hey guys

 

Since none of you seem to be hardcore pvper, how about you look for the swtor employee with the highest valor rank and conscript him into the community team?

 

cheers and good luck :-)

Howdy,

 

It's been great to see a little bit of staff posts in the PVP section lately, moar please. Some posters bite, but most aren't poisonous.

I read Amber Green's post and I'm delighted one of Bioware's leading lights is in charge of traffic on these forums.

 

 

 

sorry, Amber - I couldn't resist.

PS - Courtney, love the companion blogs, looking forward to the rest of them.

 

I'm glad you enjoy them! Bounty Hunters should be pleased with the next one

Nice to meet you guys! All I ask is for as much communication with your player community as possible, even if we don't like the answer

 

 

On a side note, would bioware ever consider a player assigned class representative/pve and pvp representative to assist in communication between bioware and the community. I bet you'd have a lot of qualifie people offer to assist for free... I know SWG did it, not sure if other games do it

Edited February 27, 2013 by Cilas

I'm glad you enjoy them! Bounty Hunters should be pleased with the next one

 

So Skadge, right? We all love Skadge!

 

Looks like the companions 101 is going in the order of companions received, so it's got to be Mako next.

 

On the subject of communication, one thing I think the community team could help out on a bit is clarifying 2.0 v. RotHC. I keep seeing pages of threads of people arguing whether 2.0 is RotHC or whether they are separate. We all know Makeb isn't included on the PTS, but is 2.0 going to be released at the same time as RotHC, or before? It seems clear to me that we need the digital purchase to reach level 55, but some people don't think that's very clear.

Hey everyone!

 

With Joveth's departure I just wanted to pop in and take this opportunity to have us, the Community team, reintroduce ourselves! I know at times you will have seen our names in different spots on the forums, Reddit, or social media, but I figured a formal "hello, I am this guy/girl" would be way better! I will have the other Community folks post below.

 

As you can already see, my name is Eric Musco! I have a bunch of different roles on the Community team but the things that are most public facing are that I handle BioWare's communication to guilds and fan sites (I actually came from a fan site myself!).

 

When it comes to The Old Republic itself, I am a big elder game player. I love diving into Operations and the occasional Warzone. I have two 50's currently and am working on my third, why did no one tell me Marauders were so much fun?

 

I also have an extreme love for our Rakghoul forum smileys!

 

-eric

 

I apologize for not telling you Marauders were so much fun, but I was too busy killing things on mine:rak_04:

So, what happened to our German & French CMs?

It looks like they are gone

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5924270

Thank you for the re-introduction.

Hello JPryde,

 

You are correct in that Antonio and Lars are no longer a part of the EU SWTOR Community Team. Due to this change you will see less communication in general in your forums than you did see previously. However, I want to stress that we will still be continually receiving feedback from both our German and French communities and addressing that feedback just as we would the English speaking community.

 

Just as we have in the past, we will continue to make sure that communicating all critical things such as timed promotions, maintenance announcements, etc. will still be communicated to you.

 

I hope that answers your questions!

 

-eric

Unfortunately "less" in this case is equivalent to "none", as Lars was barely visible in the forums. Only lately, we rejoiced, when he came up with a bit of much sought-for information... and in result, he is no longer part of the team.

 

Yes, it answers my question, but not in a very positive way.

I guess the important thing is not the size of the team but what they do and are seen to be doing. Even if every post is read and passed on to the correct development team and ideas flagged if nothing is seen to be done then the comunity assumes nothing is being done. On the flip side if they see loads of yellow posts they assume their thoughts are being considered even if the info was passed straight into the bin.

Unfortunately "less" in this case is equivalent to "none", as Lars was barely visible in the forums. Only lately, we rejoiced, when he came up with a bit of much sought-for information... and in result, he is no longer part of the team.

 

Have to agree on this, Lars was already ways too inactive (at least in the forum) even before that incident now, the German community was lacking important information over a long time. And now you took us the last guy who at least kept up the communication a little bit... great, just great.

 

One question though, why was this decision met in the first place? I think the European community is interested in getting an answer on that!

Edited February 27, 2013 by Eskala

Well, to look at it another way, if he was that inactive, what were they paying him for? (no offense intended, for all I know he was hard at work doing a lot of stuff but just blocked from getting much useful information to the public, which in itself would lead me to think things may need to change)

 

Whatever the case, still, I can't really find any positive spin on cutting down on community support. If they had to make budget cuts, I guess that's the "safer" avenue to go down. Probably moreso than cutting the designers or Q&A people. Also It appears that several new art/graphics and tech/software/client/server engineer positions have become available for Bioware Austin since January.

 

But hey, this is all idle speculation on my part and may have no base in reality. Who knows how these things work, gaming companies and their mysterious ways.

 

And this is probably going down a bad path, they just wanted to say hi and introduce themselves and here we are getting all conspiratorial and doom and gloomy.

Edited February 27, 2013 by chuixupu

Musco really isn’t joking about his love of Rakghoul smilies…. I prefer Jawas myself!

 

I’m Courtney Woods, Community Production Specialist here at BioWare Austin. My main responsibilities on the team include localization, maintaining, writing, editing, and managing content for SWTOR.com. An example of one the blogs I am responsible for is the Companions 101 series. I am crazy about Companions in our game so please feel free to PM me about any of your favorites!

 

I am an “altoholic” – I spend a lot of time figuring out creative ways to level up my characters with the Legacy System. I currently have two level 50s and three characters in their 40’s that I switch between, plus about 5 lower levels.

 

I look forward to chatting with y’all – especially about the story ("The Fourth Pillar"), Companions, and Flashpoints in our game.

 

Pa-chow!

 

Courtney

 

That's all? I've got 16. One for each advanced class. Dark and Light.

Nous voulons le retour de notre Community Manager !

Wir wollen unsere Community Manager zurückzukehren!

 

(We want to return our Community Manager!)

 

 

:jawa_mad::jawa_mad::jawa_evil::jawa_evil:

Sup Musco, Courtney, and Amber! I already knew who you guys were because i follow you on twitter (hipster rakghoul)

Ich bin ja mal gespannt wie das mit dem Feedback wird, jetzt wo außerhalb des Supports keiner mehr Deutsch kann.

Da Ankündigungen für Patches oÄ gerne mal nur <24h vorher veröffentlicht werden, frage ich mich welches Übersetzungsbüro da so gut eingebunden wird, das wir nicht erst nachher erfahren, was gerade passiert ist.

 

Der deutsche TwitterAcc ist ja auch seit einigen Wochen hoffnungslos lahm.

Hello JPryde,

 

You are correct in that Antonio and Lars are no longer a part of the EU SWTOR Community Team. Due to this change you will see less communication in general in your forums than you did see previously. However, I want to stress that we will still be continually receiving feedback from both our German and French communities and addressing that feedback just as we would the English speaking community.

 

Just as we have in the past, we will continue to make sure that communicating all critical things such as timed promotions, maintenance announcements, etc. will still be communicated to you.

 

I hope that answers your questions!

 

-eric

 

Eric, I've already seen more communication in the past week than I had in the past several months. Whatever you're doing, keep it up. The community appreciates it

SWEET!

 

Its nice to see the human side of you guys once in awhile. And its especially heartening to know that you play the game too

 

As a side note I kinda feel sorry for amber... She probably has the most work dealing with player complaints about bugs, which in this game are unfortunately ENDLESS....