absolutely loved it! the event helped renew interest in the game for myself and some rl friends. All of us cant wait for the next event. Keep em coming

Loved

The Horror Movie feel. The lack of information actually helped breed a sense of foreboding.

That it was sprung on us without notice.

That it revitalised the server, got the community talking.

The containment officer gear was cool but, why is all social gear light armour?

 

Not so great. Some of these could be construed as suggestions.

After the initial surprise, it became a bit of a grind.

Rewards for the quests were so-so.

Wished there was more, just more stuff. Was it a terrible accident? Or some sort of fiendish plot?

Was hoping that come maintenance this week I'd log into a special instanced version of carrick station looking like a ghost town some trivial mobs and maybe a cool boss battle. My imagination gets away with me.

Edited April 26, 2012 by kercchaos
grammar

Loved this event, personally i was disappointed that Tatooine wasn't the first stage of the event of many stages and that it would have spread to planets like Aldeeran, Hoth etc...

 

LOVED

- Rewards - The rewards that were on offer were good - they offered something cool and aesthetic for 50's and something useful for lower levels with some other stuff like the pet and companion vanity items being cool. These rewards were done right because if people missed out on an event they won't miss out on an ultra-uber item that makes you that much stronger that you could only get in the event.

- Open World PVP - whether intentional or not it worked. It didn't feel forced which was fantastic, it was simply Open World PVP occurring almost naturally.

- Questing I liked how more dailies revealed themselves as time wore on, which was great as each day you log on you would be like - i wonder what new quest there will be today. I also enjoyed the original story quest and the epic journey around tatooine- fantastic.

 

DISLIKED

- Random rolling on the companion customisation boxes - wasn't that happy to have Corsos even though i am a smuggler.

 

SUGGESTIONS

- PVP Don't force open world PVP by adding in quests to do so. This will simply result i believe in which side has the bigger force on the planet at the time and will turn into a mini-illum of sorts. Just let this play out naturally on the PVP servers. Or if we really had to - neutralise the PVP quest to a very specific area so those that want to quest can avoid it and those that want forced world PVP can go to that area.

- Questing The event needs to go on for a little longer IMO and spread across multiple zones depending on what the event is. What would be cool IMO is that an Imperial/Republic/Other Armada started attacking Carrick/Vaiken Station and you had to go out to their main ship via interfleet transport and do dailies on there.

 

Overall great event - one of the best i have participated in, in a MMO. Well Done

Edited April 26, 2012 by mattyboi

The event was very cool and almost flawless. Things I would like to see on the next one, assuming it would be similar are...

1. No random customization or reward boxes. Make them specific for your current class. Another idea would be to make them tradeable via gtn. that way people could put em up and if they didn't get the one they want, they could then purchase it or trade with friends.

 

2. While I have two lvl 50 toons, and you only had to be lvl 23ish for the last one, I would make the next one on a planet that is accessible for even lower levels. If your just starting the game and this hit, you may have missed out on the fun, and that could have been a big draw for new people to keep playing. Or, maybe stagger some of it so it takes place on multiple planets with different rewards on each. I don't know, something to make it appeal to a broader audience than just for people that have made it halfway to fifty.

 

3. DNA samples were cool, but make them trade able only within Legacy. That way you can earn the com, and also trade the com to your other toons if they need it.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Prenavo
forgot something.

Overall I thought the event was a huge success, people were genuinely excited for it and for the first time I was able to experience multiple massive PvP battles which unfortunately this game had has been lacking in.

 

Some suggestions for next time.

- Put the event vendor on the fleet to prevent any type of vendor camping.

- Have more in-game announcements that explain about the event.

- Unlockable dailies are fine so long as people know about them from the beginning, this way people can't get mad when they start the event the last day only to find out they can't do the additional dailies.

 

Keep up the amazing work! Looking forward to the next event!

Overall I really really loved this event and hope many more like this will come.

 

I liked that there were opt-outs, so that people that didn't want to participate could choose not to do so.

You usually had enough warning to move away from someone before exploding and since people could only explode every 20 mins. the potential for griefing was low and I've never actually witnessed any griefing (not to say there wasn't any, just that I didn't encounter it!). The idea of the vaccine was a great one, though as many others have noted it would've been great if it lasted through death.

For future events I hope you consider those people that do not like to participate in those events and give them ways to opt-out.

 

Giving the tokens (DNA) through quests and dying was a great touch. It eliminated the "harvesting" of spawns which would've seriously damaged the lower level of players from participating.

 

Having mobs/bosses spawn keyed to your own level, so that regardless of your own level you'd be facing a challenge was great. It prevented the event from being steamrolled by high levels or impossible for low-levels.

 

The dailies progressing day by day is a nice touch, gives an incentive to look every day what there is new. Would've liked it if there was more story discovered this way, with you finding out more day-by-day.

 

The rewards were nice, neither "must-have" stuff or inventory hogging gimmicks without much use. My major gripe was the customization boxes. While random things as such are fun, there should be some limiting factors. I bought 36 of those boxes till I finally got the last (8th) customization. Why not make it so that if you open a box you can't get a customization you have in your inventory (This way one could get all customizations with just 8 boxes AND those people wanting more of a specific customization can get it by mailing those they want a multiple of to an alt).

 

The event length was okay, two weeks is a good amount of time. Not everyone will be able to participate in every event every time.

Had fun and really enjoyed the event.

 

My gripes (if you want to call them that) Little more back story/explanation etc... would have been imo more immersive. Run the event a little bit longer for those of us that can't get online every day or as I had, crashing issues from the patch.

 

Keep up the great work!

Overall, I'd rate it as a positive even though it occurred during a busy stretch for me so I didn't do much with it (my problem not Bioware's...I'm not QQ'ing about missing out on the pet, gratz to those who did get it). The only negative I can come up with was my initial reaction was "Rakghouls? Again?". With Taris, Kaon, etc. enough with the Rakghouls already! lol. But that's just me. Outside of that one negative, I give kudos.

i absolutely loved it... i would have loved to have been more in depth and actually helped get the plague off of tatooine though.. but overall, this was great. i loved the fact that we could plague everyone. It made it feel liek everyone was apart of the story!!

Fantastic event, loved it. I would adore to see more.

 

World events are always fun, you get a break from the routine, you have a chance to get unique items and they do a lot to get people off fleet and improve the cohesiveness of the players.

 

I hope that this returns next year, was unable to get everything I wanted due to so many maintenance periods happening during Aussie peak play time, but it's cool.

 

Hopefully new events will keep including mechanics for the lower levelled player, please don't make them entirely for max levels, every level should be able to do a small part of the event.

I liked that there were several different types of rewards to choose from. I also liked that mid level toons could participate. I thought the scope of the event was fantastic (quests, cut scenes, items to trade, boss fights). As a whole, very enjoyable. The only downside I saw was being rewarded for essentially standing around on the fleet for hours, and I'm also iffy about the random result for companion customization. The event felt a little short.

 

I'd love to see high level bosses spawn on the fleets, or some sort of invading army that everyone had to band together to fight.

 

As a side note, please leave evidence of these world events. It helps to give the worlds more character.

I think the event was fun and it also renewed our interest in the game -- I will say, SWTOR really needs more events and opportunities aside from combat 24/7. Love the combat and missions, but we have three accounts in our household, and it is nice to have something else to do aside from combat.

 

My biggest complaint about the Event, was that the virus was stuck on several characters across our three accounts, and we spoke with several people in the game that had the same problem. Crafty as we are, many of us found that there were some temporary fixes to the problem, such as logging out and back in, space travel, or taking the 2000 Credit vaccine and getting reinfected... all of which resolved the problem occasionally, but we also found there were times this did not work either. We have a few characters that were stuck for 3-4 days, without any recourse and customer service tickets were pretty much ignored. The next, if not equally upsetting, is the fact that we had no idea the event was ending as none of us in the game frequent the "community" or forums much, and well, not one of us got the chance to turn in any of the DNA samples towards the rewards that were available. So, needless to say, we have probably 500+ DNA samples and did not get a chance to use them. I think the vendors should have remained out, and I think it should have been better announced in-world that the event was ending. We were playing when the servers went down that ended the event, and not once was there any mention that the event was drawing to a close.

 

We come from LOTRO, and still hold accounts there. Granted, I do think SWTOR has a lot of potential and has a lot of great things that seem a bit new and improved, but honestly, SWTOR is a bit behind in things. I realize that it is a newer game and things are still being developed, SWTOR is more hype and the name Star Wars itself is what really draws all this attention to the game. Many people that have never played MMORPG games have come to SWTOR, mearly because its Star Wars, these individuals, would have no insight on what is a great game, bad, lacking or otherwise indifferent, as they are new to gaming. We have experienced many problems since we came to SWTOR, and there are tons of things that we wish they had in SWTOR, such as better and more social events, games and puzzles that you could do, like riddles and those types of missions, wish the crafting was better, and like this recent event, why didn't we know that it was going to end? We play the game nearly 15 hours a day, and not once did we see anything that indicated that the event was coming to an end, and now we have all these DNA samples, and no place to turn them in. Not one of the 24 characters we have was able to turn any DNA samples in. That seems like it really needs some work, and really, it would be nice, if SWTOR had a bit more to offer to its customers than it does. There should be events and games you can play in the spaceports, at the casinos or in cantinas. The thought that we just want to grind battle missions all day and all night, really limits this games possibilities. I realize people will all have their opinions, and why and why not, but the reality for the makers of SWTOR, is they are in business, and if they want their business to succeed, and be better than other games, they will offer a better variety of things.

 

For those that will likely respond (hence the reason we don't do the forums much), the problems we have experienced have nothing to do with our internet connect, our settings or anything like that. We are a household of techies and multimedia specialists, our internet speed is normally 3x faster than most peoples - we have 70-100mb download speeds, and each and every computer we have far surpasses the minimum requirements of this game.

 

We are avid game players in this household, and aside from the ooh and aah that its Star Wars, I really don't see this game offering as much as it tries to proclaim that it does. In research, you would find, that from game to game, yes, there are differences, but this game... for what it is "supposed to be" it really is not. It needs some work. I will say, this event is moving the game in the right direction, but I still think it should have been better announced that it was ending and that we needed to turn in our DNA samples, especially since we had to listen to the announcement about the event in fleet every miniute for about two weeks, but couldn't even get the same courtesy to let us know the event was ending... really bad planning there as now, I am sure we are not the only people upset, we have hundreds of these DNA samples and as far as we know, they are useless.

Edited April 26, 2012 by rmzeyzein
typo

The event was very fun overall, but I think a few parts could have been... funner.

 

For one, I understand that the companion lockboxes were random to try and encourage people to create alts, which is fine, but a lot of people got multiples of the same one. Perhaps they should have had a limit so you could only random one of each companion.

 

The announcers (for imps anyway) said that anyone was authorised to kill infected people on sight. Perhaps infected players should have been PVPable by their own faction. Or maybe if you were wearing all containment officer gear and/or had the title you were able to PVP infected players of your own faction.

 

The concept was solid but perhaps a little more creativity in the mechanics of whatever your next event is.

Hi James, I am a long time researcher of games and game development and have had a special interest in the Star Wars saga and games, the ones that BioWare has done are very good, and this one is excellent. I have studied many MMOs and the special in game event system, and this was a fantastic and very good example I loved it. It was a total surprise to me as I try as much as possible for my first play thru of any game to just play the game and ignore any reviews, forum comments or other outside influence so i can have the cleanest possible experience. This was fantastic, and I loved every minute that i was able to see. I was below level to get to Tatooine until the end, but i did get to see the StarDream and one of the other missions and enjoyed it all.

 

I loved the news announcements and the excitement created by the event and enjoyed the drama in the action of things on Tatooine, there was a big rush of players at the very end and lots of players working hard to get the last few special items and to enjoy the ending of the event, i was in there until the very end. It was sad to see things gone the next day, but really you did a great job, more of that will continue to make this one of the best MMOs i have yet seen.

 

My thanks to the entire development team and keep up the great work! the one down side, that there was some greifing due to trolls flagging non PVP players for their own benefit can be fixed easily by your side at the technical level, and I am sure it will be helpful to watch carefully so that future events are protected from such as they will be looking to do more of the same during future events. We as players can be extra vigilant to weed out that small fraction of players by sending in detailed information via support and report such negative actions clearly That way your team can take appropriate measures. Keeping the game clean and fun is all of our responsibilities....for the good of the game and the good of the Story.

 

thanks again.

 

I agree with Bjoirkus above that a few tokens..i e a few remnants of the events left on the worlds that are affected would be nice, and add to the flavour and immersion of the game.

Edited April 26, 2012 by CrisG

Loved the event guys, was pretty awesome work except for a few things. Random companion skins was horrible, I only just managed to get one Quinn skin on the very last day and had so many duplicates of all the other classes. Secondly didnt like that flagged people exploding flagged you specially on a pve server. Lastly, chained quest for dailies wasnt the greatest idea, event couldve gone an extra week and those quests shouldve been automatic for the second week to allow people who couldnt be online every day to finish the event.

 

Keep up the good work!

For one, it brought our server back together. We had multiple groups going to complete the dailies and form larger groups to defeat the world bosses. I also really loved the cool trooper gear we got too(although I didn't like how the color scheme was very similar to the columni trooper gear), so armor earned from dailies is definitely a must in future in-game events.

People standing around Fleet for hours on end for a measly 5 DNA. Pretty sure this wasn't what BW had planned on the drawing board. If you'd made the dailies reward more than a CRAP 5 DNA too. Well then people might have actually got off the fleet.

 

Daisy chained dailies- very poor idea. Should have had all the dailies open from day one and not forced into a 6 day effort. Have to realize people do have work/families. I ended up not being able to finish my officer set by ONE piece of gear.

 

Needed to be longer. Way way way way way too short.

 

Appreciate the effort and minus the obvious flaws it made the game not feel as dead. Once the event ended I was quickly reminded how stagnant and dead the game feels. More dynamic events in the vein of this event would be nice.

I would say the event was alright, but there were a few things that were disappointing. I'll start with the positives, then the negatives.

 

PROS:

• Mobs that scaled to the players level to allow for everyone to participate to some degree
  
• Fun, cosmetic rewards
  
• Interesting story with the Rakghouls
  

 

CONS:

• Reward costs and the random boxes both encouraged farming
  
• Large group, high level bosses left some players unable to find groups to complete the title
  

 

The low DNA rewards from dailies, combined with the high costs of the rewards made it a requirement to farm the DNA. With only an hour or so to play SWTOR a night, I wasn't able to sit and farm DNA day and night to get all the rewards I wanted. In fact, all I was able to purchase was 12 Companion boxes, which leads me to my next frustration.

 

I only play a Bounty Hunter. All I wanted was the Mako customization. I got all 7 other companion customizations, except for Mako (including 8 Kira's.) This really left me disappointed in the event as a whole. I also wanted the Pale Rakghoul, but my priority was the Mako customization. So in the end, I felt like I wasted a bunch of time with this event.

 

The bosses were another aspect I missed out on, due to not being able to get a group to do them. I missed out on the first day of the event due to Easter. I was not able to devote more than an hour at a time during the following weekdays, and that was spent trying to stay only 1 day behind on the gated dailies. By the following weekend, no groups were forming to kill the bosses.

 

I really wish Bioware would have learned from other games mistakes with events (Rift's first few come to mind.) If they were going to tie achievements and a title to killing bosses, than they needed to be 4-man max, and there needed to be incentive to "farm" them. This would have allowed people who missed the initial rush on the bosses a way to still get a group and the achievements from the bosses. I missed both level 50 bosses, while spending 2 hours this past Saturday trying to get a group together.

 

I would like to see Bioware follow in Trion's footstep. After all the mishaps with Rift's first event, and things they could have done better, they compensated any character created prior to the event with event rewards and the missed achievements that were restrictive to get. It would be a great gesture to the player base.

The event was a success, because:

1. It was a surprise.

2. It was different. Not related to an event IRL, i mean the event was SWTOR-specific, like, it wasn't "Happy Plague Day" or something last week (or was it?). Though of course we'd also like Christmas-themed world events, etc.

3. It encouraged community effort, I think specially on PvP Servers where you get camped easily.

4. of the Daily Objectives and Progressive Content.

5. of the Achievements and other exclusive rewards - pets, armor sets, etc.

6. of the Player Interaction element on that event (plaguebreak).

7. This will most probably be seen in the future, possibly on a different planet or something.

 

We would definetely want to see more. GJ BW.

The event was fun. It would have been more convenient to have a starter quest at the space station or upon arrival at the Tatooine spaceport that led to the quest line or even a quest hub. It took some googling to really get a grasp on the event. I will say however that having the dailies occur as area quests did promote community interaction which was really positive. We had a lot of people asking questions and a lot of people being very helpful and lots of public groups were formed for the bosses. I guess if I had to choose I like the way it was done as one had to really explore to find everything involved with the event. I wish we had prior notice of the event ending on the 24th as I missed the opportunity to cash in my DNA because I sometimes don't play for 2 or 3 days at a time and I just barely missed it. Overall it was one of the most enjoyable events I've come across.

Short version: Shedloads of fun.

 

Things I liked

• The interesting nature. I haven't encountered a plague in any MMOG I've played.

 

• The short life of it. I found it exciting to hurry and do stuff knowing that there was a timer. Few things in MMOGs have timers.

 

• While I appreciate that the crowding was a bit forced it was still lots of fun to be doing stuff with lots and lots of other characters in the same area doing the same things. TOR sometimes feels like a single-player game (which is good, its the main reason I am playing) but a reminder that it is multiplayer is always good.

 

• The Crimson Rakling.

 

I hope

• That the Rakghoul Plague never gets repeated. I want to summon the Crimson Rakling in years to come and have people ask "where did you get that" so I can give them the "many moons ago there was this plague on Tatooine" story. Don't get me wrong - I want other events but I want all the events to be different.

 

Suggestions

• That crashed ship should have had a Weyland-Yutani logo on it. Or maybe a Cerberus logo? More seriously, it would have been good for the quests to investigate who was shipping Rakghouls and why.

 

 

Thanks.

I happened to be on the Fleet when I heard the "newscast" of the plague. That was my first indication that something was happening, and I thought that was cool. It felt like I was actually discovering something, akin to seeing something happening live on CNN or something. I do wish that the focus had been more direct: I took the broadcast at its face value to avoid Tatooine (I'm not the only one who thought this way) rather than the appropriate first thought to charge the planet. Since the Fleet is populated with countless heroes, one would assume that the announcement would ask for help rather than warn us away.

 

I'm glad it only lasted a week. It was becoming tiresome by day 5. I think the ideal event would be to enter an instance of some sort, perform some tasks & get your rewards in a day or two. I came upon a quest that was impacted by the event (timing worked out perfectly for me, as I was questing on Tatooine anyway) in that the normal quest mobs were overtaken by event mobs. I still managed it, but it got tiresome camping the handful of mobs I needed.

 

I like the [area] quests. Some bigger bosses that can be attacked by everyone for credit (a ratio of contribution) would be cool, similar to what Warhammer Online did: a small area to kill multiple mobs and stronger bosses. Seems like the event world bosses required a bit of coordination to achieve, and LFG is already a problem.

 

I would have liked to have seen an event wrap-up broadcast. As it is, the event ended and everything seems to have simply disappeared. Maybe there was some storyline somewhere that I missed. Fleet would be an ideal place for the newscasts to wrap things up.

 

Lastly, I noticed a performance hit on Fleet during the event. I understand that in order to keep the event a surprise it couldn't be tested on PTS, and I don't know what could be done to prevent adverse effects in future events without PTS testing. Hopefully you are aware of what may have caused the problem. I'm glad it happened, and look forward to future events.

The event was great... my only feedback is...

 

Don't take forever between them! It is really sad that it took four months for this game to have it's first event. Many of us have been playing MMO's for a long time now and doing live events like this is nothing new, and most games nowadays do them on a very regular basis. A four month gap with not a single event in game was really weak. Now the event itself was fantastic, and I do hope we see more in the near future, and not make this some rare occurrence that only happens every few months.

i liked the limited time items amd unique companion customizations. the story was ok.

i like that your doing them.

i didn't like that the rhakghoul serum was not persistant after death as a pvp'r..

I didn't like that the Armor reward was light armor only. So after the first two pieces i didnt bother going back.

I like the concept of the random events (although I didn't participate in this one), but I think it needs to be kept off the fleet. I have a good computer, but it was slowing down horribly with 100+ people all standing on the fleet pass spawn point spamming their AOE. My friend couldn't go to the fleet as it would cause his game to crash or drop his connection. So maybe if another infection is done have the containment NPC's on the fleet be champions similar to the robots in Kaon that kill people who come on board with it. Would make sense to keep the central hub disease free.

 

Another downside was it negatively effected people who didn't want to participate. Keep spending money on vaccines (not a problem at high levels, but it is for low levels) or have random times when you are knocked off your speeder, unable to do anything whilst fighting, or die. Maybe a few of the medbots should have given free injections of the vaccine. They would need to be clearly marked though so people who want the plague don't go to them. This of course wouldn't be as big an issue if the fleet was a clean zone.

 

I do look forward to seeing what the next one is going to be.