Again, Bioware should be responsible of having all the information in one place if they want attract a lot of new and former players, and saying "but the servers will be full" it's not really an excuse to do a crappy job at advertising. And for the record I'm not saying "do more advertising" I'm just saying that they communicate well the information in their own website at least.

I already agreed with you on them needing to do a better comparisons chart (a la LoTRO). But many will not even read it... before coming to the forums and starting a thread asking what the differences are.

As for the rest of your insistences, I disagree.

Anyone who cannot spend 5 minutes googling for an official list of preferred features, read them, and understand them..... game over for them anyways IMO.

On marketing.... you do marketing when you want to flush out and attract customers. There is plenty of guerilla marketing on the internet going on for that right now. They are using the various internet fan sites as their marketing channels with their pre-releases of information and interviews. It's smart, it's cheap. They will go more formal with marketing when these run dry and they need to inject more buzz.

Anyone who cannot spend 5 minutes googling for an official list of preferred features, read them, and understand them..... game over for them anyways IMO.

You would not believe how wrong you are.

Again. You can't throw away people's money just because they're lazy. Effective information management is not even remotely a waste of time, because lazy people's money still pays the bills.

I mean, if someone doesn't ask about all the features of a car before they take it for a test drive, does that make it impossible that they'll buy it? Does it mean that you as a salesman should fail to inform them about BRAND NEW FEATURE because really screw those low-information buyers anyway?

You can't throw away people's money just because they're lazy.

In the context of this discussion, it's the person who can't be bothered to look up information that is throwing their money away, NOT Bioware.

It's not like the information we are discussing here is buried behind a 256 bit encryption algorythm. It's there. It's easy to access. It just requires a speck of personal initiative on the players part.

Besides, even if Bioware spoon feeds the player base with the best presentation of information ever, people STILL won't read it and will spam up /general chat or general forum with questions. And you know it!

In the context of this discussion, it's the person who can't be bothered to look up information that is throwing their money away, NOT Bioware.

 

It's not like the information we are discussing here is buried behind a 256 bit encryption algorythm. It's there. It's easy to access. It just requires a speck of personal initiative on the players part.

 

Besides, even if Bioware spoon feeds the player base with the best presentation of information ever, people STILL won't read it and will spam up /general chat or general forum with questions. And you know it!

You know what I am decent at googling and finding information. I have been doing it for years in other games. I personally found that locating good solid information on the real ramifications of the various crippling for F2P and Premium was not easy at all to find. There are many people that are not going to be willing to waste an hour or 2 hunting infor when there are many other games out there F2P that document their benefits much more accessibly.

I already agreed with you on them needing to do a better comparisons chart (a la LoTRO). But many will not even read it... before coming to the forums and starting a thread asking what the differences are.

 

As for the rest of your insistences, I disagree.

What rest? that was the only point I was making on this thread

Anyone who cannot spend 5 minutes googling for an official list of preferred features, read them, and understand them..... game over for them anyways IMO.

Im sure many people will do a google search, and most likely the first thing they will find is that crappy F2P chart that you already agreed it needs rework

My point is... preferred customers are NOT potential customers. They are in fact customers that have paid money to Bioware, and most of them are subscribers who have lapsed their subscriptions. These people either follow the forums already, or they know how to use the search function (I know I know... but you get my point I think ) or google. Everyone knows how to use google, but if they lack the desire... then that's on them IMO.

 

Any customer that wants to know something... google will deliver. If they can't google, they probably should not be playing MMOs.

I recently did come back after several months not paying any attention to SWTOR. What brought me back was a buzz about the F2P move, and when I google'd to find more I found that chart, which didn't paint a pretty picture of what was/wasn't available to people at the various levels. And no I didn't look around at the google results more, why should I? I was on *the site for the game* which I thought should have the information about gameplay at the different tiers.

I could understand the "google and find it" argument if we were talking about a chart on some fan site or some unreliable information source, by why on earth would I think the actual game's site would be missing information?

I recently did come back after several months not paying any attention to SWTOR. What brought me back was a buzz about the F2P move, and when I google'd to find more I found that chart, which didn't paint a pretty picture of what was/wasn't available to people at the various levels. And no I didn't look around at the google results more, why should I? I was on *the site for the game* which I thought should have the information about gameplay at the different tiers.

 

I could understand the "google and find it" argument if we were talking about a chart on some fan site or some unreliable information source, by why on earth would I think the actual game's site would be missing information?

Also some of the Fansites I visit didn't have any additional information either, because they were reading from the charts, I have checked out TORWARS, SWTOR REFORGED and TORVERSE and they were under the impression that the ONLY way to get cartel items and account unlocks was to pay real money, either that or the simply forgot to mention at all the fact that the Cartel Market is meant to interact with the ingame economy, which in my opinion, changes everything