Pros:

 

1. The event made the game feel more than it has felt probably since launch.

 

2. I liked the mystery and discovery involved. It was good that there eg. wasn't a NPC in the fleet who would give you a quest to go to the crash site.

 

3. It encouraged player interaction in the form of world PvP. I hope the couple whine threads I have seen here dont discourage you from doing this in the future, if there are any PvE server specific issues fix those seperately.

 

4. The plague itself was a cool thing since it a dynamic element that players could use to make their own gameplay with.

 

5. Well obviously I liked the unique items and codex entries.

 

6. I liked that the event had a personal progression for you though I think all the dailies should have had codex entry associated with them to explain things bit better like the earlier ones.

 

Cons:

 

1. I think the event might have been a tad bit too short. I would probably preferred if it had been about week longer. On the other hand at least this way it stayed rather fresh.

 

2. This game has made a big deal about voice acting and cutscenes and in that regard this event was pretty basebones.

 

3. I REALLY didn't like how the companion customi appearances where behind RNG, when you had very limited time to collect DNA samples and you couldn't trade them with other players. On the positive side at least they were legacy bound.

 

4. As casual player I didn't have lvl 50, and I'm not in a guild so finding raids for the world bosses felt too time consuming for me and I had to unfortunately skip that part of the event.

 

5. Would be nice if you could code the social items so that they were either light, medium or heavy as according to your class.

 

I have about same number of pros and cons, but that doesn't mean I didn't like the event, one the whole it was a great experience and I hope you continue with these kinds of things in the future!

I loved it I look forward to more if these kinda of events.

My feedback from another thread

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4088483#post4088483

 

Regards

Wolf

I still have an infected character that I primarily just use to run slicing missions. As such, he will remain infected until the disease is removed by Bioware. I could potentially (and amusingly) start the chain reaction to reinfect my entire server down the road if the disease isn't removed without doing it myself.

 

I though the event was fun for the most part. Unlocking addional quests on a daily business was alright, but it would've been nice to know before hand and the exact duration of the event. Several people in my guild didn't didn't do the dailies ritually and were some-what bummed when they realized they wouldn't have enough time to acquire the contaiment officer garb.

 

I'd also suggest putting the Jawa vendor (or any future even vendor) in each faction's fleet or planetary hub zone. The jawa did promote open world pvp on Davik's Estate, but it negatively impacted those that just wanted to get to the Jawa in safety to spend thier DNA samples. I also some-what pitied the lower leveled players that attempted some of the quests and have to compete with (and agaisnt) level 50s.

To me, the most fun thing about the Rakghoul plague was that it WAS a surprise. It wasn't hyped, discussed, dissected, and mapped for two months before appearing. While every event can't be done like that, the more events are *events*.

 

I also like that it was short. This means, due to work and other life pressures, I didn't complete every daily or get every reward/piece of armor/whatever, but I could get the things I wanted most -- the Rakghoul pets -- by choosing how to spend my limited play time. I hope Bioware doesn't give in to the whiners who think that if anyone, anywhere, managed to get something they didn't, they're somehow being cheated/robbed/ripped off. Keeping events short keeps them from being tedious, and it also makes what you do manage to get, even if it's not "Everything", more special. As the game ages, year after year, it's a good thing if there's items, emotes, pets, whatever, that were only in the game briefly... if you happen to get them, cool, if you don't happen to get them, it's still cool when you see something new or different, something you haven't seen before because it was only part of the game for a week or two.

 

For future events, I'd like to see more integration with story -- more voice-overs, and possibly class quests for each class. Quest rewards should be things which are visually unique, but not mechanically superior to other items at their level -- no one should ever feel they "have" to be part of an event to "keep up".

 

There's a lot of people whining they want to be able to totally ignore events, to not have to deal with virus explosions or the like. Ignore them. The consequences for gameplay for those who didn't want to do event quests were trivial and easily mediated. No one was locked out of quests, prevented from travel, etc. Some events should be totally localized -- maybe a habitable comet (hey, SW plays loose with science) is passing through the Alderaan system, and the event consists of quests on its surface, while it's there. Others should impact the galaxy and be noticed by all players.

Having seen how a "plague" event could be a total fiasco in another game that shall not be named, I'll have to say that with the rakghoul plague, BW, you did just about everything right. With one or two exceptions, of course. I didn't like the fact that a flagged infected person of the opposite faction could "force-flag" an unflagged player by exploding on them, regardless of their desire desire to be flagged or not be flagged. Especially on a PvE or RP-PvE type server, that kind of thing is just not cool. I have a feeling a decent amount of world PvP would have gone on without this particular little "feature," that in most cases presented to the unwilling flagees as a nuisance and a detraction from their enjoyment of the event, especially if the victim was below 50, and got jumped, force-flagged, then ganked by a group of flagged opposition players.

 

Second...a speeder point out near the crash site or Jawa vendor would have been nice. It would have cut down a little bit of the travel time to get from the outskirts of civilization to the crash site, and from the crash site to each faction's research center. I know for a mere week-long event, this kind of thing likely isn't terribly doable, but for an event any longer in duration, I'd hope you might consider this.

 

On the whole, well done!

Personally I really liked that it wasn't announced.

People slowly coming on, either to fleet or Tatooine and seeing/hearing the reports.

 

Bad for people who don't play as much, or follow the forums though. But I liked it.

Also the whole death by explosion was rather fun.

 

I would have much rather preferred that the armor parts were bind to legacy though.

I only have so much available time to play and grinding daily quests every day for a new piece is not something I can do, so I ended up with a light armor suit for my trooper...

What I didn't like about the event:

 

1) It boiled down to just another quest chain.

 

After the initial run through and excitement, the event was basically just another quest chain to grind. Apart from the crimson rakghoul quest, they were all very standard, nothing particularly interesting or fun. No group content or anything. This is the main reason I hardly did anything: it was boring after the first day!

I really never understand posts like this. What exactly were you looking for? 99.9% of content in MMOs is "just another quest chain."

I completely loved logging on and hearing an unexpected news bulletin and finding myself in the middle of an epidemic. It made the world feel more real. The fact that it wasn't announced ahead of time and I didn't know when it would end, was a plus for me.

 

I would love to see some type of war break out where we can go to a planet we normally don't go to for our faction... I guess maybe a phased area that the other faction can choose to go to so it doesn't interfere with their leveling but definitely something that allows us to get immersed in a war scenario. A plus would be if our actions had a role in when the war ended and/or the outcome of it so that each server could actually have a different variation of the war.

Loads of fun! Loved that it wasn't announced, that it just happened. I didn't manage to score all the armor but I came to the party a day late.

 

I think it would have been great to have the addition of the news announcer on the fleet saying that the plague had been contained on the couple of days after the event, just to give it a nice wrap up.

 

Also I would suggest maybe this was a great opportunity to make the armor a bind to legacy to showcase the option.

 

Despite the two suggestions above; my son and I loved the event and add our thanks to this thread!

it rejuvinated the game imo. the population was kind of slow, guilds had fewer people logging on, the game was just kind of dragging on because it had been the same stuff over and over since launch, and then this event happens, and the entire server is just alive and buzzing about it.

 

my only request is that when the event ended you should have just cured all plagues, instead of allowing people to continue to explode and infect others, and get DNA samples they will never be able to use again.

 

that said, the event was the shake-up i think the game needed to keep everyone interested.

My sub runs out this August, so I will play until then and see what improvements are made in the game and how the events are handled. If another event is handled as poorly as this last one, you will help me make up my mind to cancel or continue my sub when it expires.

To me this first event transformed swtor into what i deem an mmorpg . I have 7 characters , 4 of which are tied in a group of 3 , you can guess how much play those 4 characters have had , hardly any really. i don't really like to solo , so I only have 2 solo characters and 1 character in a tied party of 2. So to my original point , after reading something was going on on tatooine I rushed to log on and found the begining of the event.

 

It took a few days/hours to work out what was what , but I loved every min of it , daily missions for non level 47 plus characters , great , also a new mission everyday after completing the ones for the day. I could also grind/farm DNA samples , to be fair I couldn't do this for very long on a daily basis but I did it for while. I worked on 3 of my characters earning crystals for all 7 of my characters , superb.

 

The future , well just more of the same please it really has made this game amazing. One thing to note though was when you became feverish , I found a great place to fly over in your speeder to explode at the bottom , there was a ramp behind the jawa vendor , it was classic , brilliant. More events please and thanks for reading. Oh and it also has got me into using the GTN on a daily basis now looking at prices etc , which is how I normally play mmorpg's , a big thumbs up.

 

Cheers,

 

Badorb.

Edited April 26, 2012 by BadOrb

No more. This event was terrible.

What was fun about the event? Difficult to answer... due to the short time frame, and apparently the structured manner of the quests... when I discovered the event (on the 23rd), I was only able to do a small portion of the event.

 

For me, the most fun part was learning the story, and participating in the quests related to the event.

 

However, I wasn't really able to do that in this event. Not because I was on vacation or wasn't able to log on. It's just that I didn't know how to participate in the event until the last day. I only learned where to pickup the quest from an article linked on theforce.net. I don't spend much time if any on these forums, and the information on the rest of the website seems to be so lacking in specifics as to rarely be worth looking at (i.e. the video on the rakghoul plague that said avoid tatooine... nothing on how long the plague would last, nothing on what the source of the plague was... nothing on where on Tatooine to go to "help" contain it.).

 

It was only after reading an online guide for the event that I learned what we were supposed to look for to get the quests to participate. Of course, being that I only found that information the last day, my participation was limited to the last evening of the event. The way the quests were structured, that made it impossible for me to actually complete the quests related to the event.

 

I know that there are a lot of vocal players that liked the discovery aspect. However, there have also been quite a few that have spoken up on these forums, and others in my guild that have voiced problems with the lack of guidance as to where to go. Watching the video on the fleet... or the video at Anchorhead should have given the character a quest to find the crashed ship. At least then we would have known what to look for. A giant circle on the Dune Sea tied to the quest could have narrowed the search while still giving those that like to explore something to explore. Plus, there was that entire scavenger hunt portion of the event that wasn't necessary to pick up any of the other quests that explorers could still have done.

 

I think future events should also consider that most of this game sends players for long periods of time to places other than the fleet. So, information should be made more available in-game at the faction bases on the various planets... maybe a news video screen in the cantinas to give updates on what's going on in the rest of the galaxy.

 

If the idea is to do more events like the plague that slowly spreads through the game... then it should last long enough for players that are infected after several days into the event still can fully participate. I don't remember when I was first infected in a pvp game... but it was then another day or two before I exploded, revealing the dna and the hint about Tatooine. Unfortunately, nothing on Tatooine guided me any further, so I logged out for the weekend.

 

As for future events... I would enjoy seeing events that relate to existing SW Canon. I thought that the design of the planets included a lot of interesting ties to things that appear later in the novels and comics.

Why we liked the event?

 

I hated everything about it. I avoided it like the plague. I had zero interest in a yellowish green black crystal or companion pets. The plague going around on people was very irritating. People didn't treat it like a plague, (which they should want to avoid or cure), they abused the mechanic by standing around in clumps trying to infect each other.

 

On raid night one of my raid members brought the plague into karaggas palace. He blew up in the middle of the Rancor fight, infecting me. Later, while dealing with the three turrets, I blew up, infecting 5 other people. Finally, during the fourth boss, the droid/puzzle, we had the boss down to 18% and all five of those people suddenly blew up. It was kinda funny, but my point is that the plague got in the way of normal gameplay.

 

But the worst thing about the plague was how it worked with PvP flagging. For some reason if a PvP flagged person infected someone, it would flag that person. Tatooine turned into a PvP gank fest, even on a PvE server like mine. This is one of the biggest reasons I avoided this event (aside from pure lack of interest in the rewards). I chose to play on a PvE server because I didn't want to deal with that kind of 'ganking' gameplay. I likewise chose to avoid this event which promoted 'ganking' gameplay. I feel like all you were trying to accomplish with this event was to generate 'ganking' gameplay on PvE servers.

 

I like that you are doing events, and I like that it wasn't announced. But I hated this one.

Edited April 26, 2012 by BlackMink

My thoughts on this event:

The good:

1) It was a live event that was random and out of the blue.

2) Scaled to level so anyone who was of level for Tatooine could participate

3) Seemed to get the planet hopping with people for more good times on each side

 

The bad:

1) In an era of real time interplanetary communication, I did not receive an email about the event until half way through the event. I'd have expected some sort of email notification for players who don't play every day to occur on the first day of the event if they want it to be a surprise event and not announce it ahead of time.

2) Event was only a week long, I really can't see a plague like this being "cured" in a week from an in-game character perspective. From a player perspective, missing half the event time (see previous point) I felt shafted since I was way behind on gathering DNA samples.

3) Companion kit randomization really sucked. I personally bought samples to try for more "rolls". I tried 11 boxes and got 4x Mako, 3x Tharan, 2x Vector, 1x Kira, 1x Corso. I only play a trooper, so this was all useless and I can't trade to get the one I want. I saw other posts where people rolled huge numbers of boxes to get 1 of each. Trading or some mechanism to get the one you want should be in place otherwise you are punishing the players who want to actively play and pay you money.

4) Having to wait a day to unlock the next daily quest. I would have expected this to be server unlocked, not per character. Those who got late notice now can't do all the dailies and get the social gear if they like to collect that.

5) Why is the gear choice still light? I wear heavy as do all of my companions, so the light gear is useless to me since I can't mod it and keep the same armor values as if it was heavy armor. There should be options to get the same appearance gear in light/medium/heavy so everyone can make use of it.

Edited April 26, 2012 by zergoth

I enjoyed the event.

What would I like to see in the future..?

• Events linked to your alignment.
  
• Lightside fight for this objective, Darkside for a different one.
  
• Events that are more spontaneous rather than scripted....
  

How can this be achieved - simply have a character controlled by a real person who can "roleplay" by walking around different areas....offering quests and rewards. (I would suggest you have a chat to Musco on this).

 

Rewards that can have an effect on your characters appearance -

• for example rare colour combinations for custom "chest pieces".
  
• Banners / tabbards - that show allegiance.
  
• Chage in character effects e.g. Flame burst for BH with a green tinted falme effect.
  

Complete and total inofrmation disaster if you make event make sure player know about it. Especially with this short events.

 

Quest opening system was uter fiasko was way too easy to miss quests, lore and codex due progression mechanism being tied to characters individually not on dates. This was highlighted especially due information disaster.

 

Now it seems there will be forever quests, codex and vanity items that wont never be available again with this event or similars only happening once. Especially with this attitude we keep everythig suprice and continue information disater highway only pleasing small number lucky player who notice everything early enough and have time to join event everyday rest can forget to ever enjoy lore, quests, codex, vanity items fully etc as it so cool.

 

Oh well time to find something else where content is not restricted to only lucky minority of players to enjoy them fully.

I agree that there should have been more warening and avertisement.

 

The Event was fun and I am really looking forward to more.

 

Will there be a place to turn in the blood samples or will they be valid in defferent events? I vaulted them for now.

 

Craving more!.....

To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed. When I think of "in-game events" I think of things that impact your normal gameplay in a significant fashion. As far as I can tell, this "event" was just a series of quests on a single planet. It could be active all the time and it wouldn't change the game significantly. The biggest impact this event had was on the forums where it spawned epic threads decrying infection griefing on the fleets and something about pvp being ruined or whatever.

 

As an example of a truly impressive in-game event, take Amarthiel's invasion of the North in LoTRO. With their first expansion on the horizon, Turbine decided to wrap-up the storyline of their initial release in epic fashion. The main antagonist Amarthiel made random appearances across the land smiting the PCs directly or spawning enemies to attack them. And it wasn't just some random mob. Amarthiel was a GM-controlled avatar that would interact with the players. You could taunt her, challenge her to a duel, bow down before her, send her love letters, beg her for mercy, etc.

 

My fondest memory from LoTRO was while waiting at the Ranger camp in Angmar for a Rift raid to form up. I decided to ride down to the Rift ahead of the raid so I could /afk at the entrance while the straglers arrived. As soon as a I began the descent, I saw a solitary figure striding confidently up the path towards the Ranger camp. It was Amarthiel. Now, bear in mind, I have a huge crush on Amarthiel so I immediately raced forward to lay myself at her feet--and with a flick of her wrist she struck me down! She walked right past me and summoned hordes of trolls and uruk-hai to swarm the camp. I was defeated from the start and missed the whole battle, but it was a blast watching the fight unfold as my kinmates struggled to push Amarthiel back.

 

A less staff-intensive example of a good world event comes from EQ2. As a lead-in to the Kingdom of Sky expansion, ruined portals to the "realms above" were discovered across the land and a project to rebuild them commenced. Players gathered resources, crafted materials, and otherwise contributed to the reconstruction of the portals. When one was finally completed, a dragon descended to destroy the portal and prevent the uppity humanoids from ascending. The dragon was a raid boss and it wreaked havoc on the people rebuilding the portal as well as the ones who had just gathered to witness the finished construction. But the word got out and raids formed up to deal with the dragon. Once people knew to expect a dragon, raid guilds would form up at nearly-complete portals to try to get first crack at the dragon (and the title you got for defeating it). It was quite the show, hundreds of people standing around a portal, some waiting to pull the dragon, others just waiting to watch the action.

 

I guess my point is, if you're going to have a special in-game event, you might as well go all out on it. This plague thing was just small-scale and easily ignored.

Complete and total inofrmation disaster if you make event make sure player know about it. Especially with this short events. (Rest of useless rant deleted)

 

Y'know, when I was eight, I went out trick or treating, and one house was giving out Hostess fruit pies. A lot better than the crap most people were handing out. But by the time I'd heard about this from one of my friends, it was too late, and they were out.

 

This was very upsetting to me. BECAUSE I WAS EIGHT.

 

Anyone who is older than eight, and STILL gets upset that someone else got something and they didn't -- when they didn't actually LOSE anything, just failed to GAIN something -- has emotional maturity issues.

 

As I said in another post.... if I'm walking along and find a five dollar bill, and take it, you are not five dollars POORER just because I'm five dollars RICHER. I had way too many work and other life issues, such as my wife needing to go the ER, to play the event more than a handful of days. I enjoyed the time I could spend on it, got the rewards I most wanted, and hope to have more time for the next event. If I had missed the event entirely, would it have made my character WORSE? Would I have lost skills, equipment, quest completions, etc? No. I'd be exactly as I was before. No change in status.

 

Thus, BY DEFINITION, the event as held could ONLY give you things -- give you a new item, give you a new codex entry, whatever. If you could only do part of the event, you got a few things. If you did more of the event, you got more things. Thus:

Doing none of the event did not harm you.

Doing ANY part of the event gave you SOMETHING, and something is better than nothing -- and you were not "entitled" to anything.

 

So, to everyone complaining they couldn't do EVERYTHING, and that's UNFAIR -- shut up, and grow up. Ideally, in that order.

I guess my point is, if you're going to have a special in-game event, you might as well go all out on it. This plague thing was just small-scale and easily ignored.

 

So, what is your response to the people in this thread who are complaining that they couldn't ignore the event?

I loved it. I liked that you could get useful, cool things from it ((the green/black crystal)) that kind of thing is usually absent from other MMO events. I also loved the sense that the plague was spreading everywhere. To different planets, off of tattooine, onto the fleet, and all while there were people trying to contain it. It was a lot of fun, keep it up!

I enjoyed the event.

 

First off, it came at a good time. My main was at level 45 and I was getting ready to go back and do the Alderaan bonus series -- which was green to me -- just so I could go back to Voss and not be under level. The Tattoine quests were closely packed, easy to acquire, and fast. I did the series for six days to get the costume set, traded in my samples, and was done and level 46 1/2. Never had to go to Alderaan. The event got me through a dry patch in terms of quests.

 

I liked the way it was revealed. Players were talking about the event before any official announcement was made. It was more organic and exploratory, and for us roleplayers that made it more interesting story-wise.

 

I liked the rewards. I don't need a new crystal, but I could pick up a PvP crystal as an alternate against the day that I dabble in Huttball or something. I got the red Rakling pet from the scavenger hunt quest and it's perfect. I only had enough samples for the crystal and one companion box, but I got a great one: Quinn. Since my main uses Quinn in battle almost all the time, and I really dislike the fact that he betrayed me, I decided to give him the Rakghoul virus as punishment. I feel much better about him now.

 

I know many have complained that the event was forced on people, but I cannot agree. Vaccines were long lasting and easy to acquire.