F2P within two years or less is looking more and more highly plausible.

It is pleasantly refreshing to see someone so negative giving the game two or more years of life to it. I mean if it is F2P in two years, then it has to still be alive and thriving, if we follow the LOTRO model of reality at all.

This mentality concerns me greatly for 2 reasons;

 

1) While Gummiebear has offered to 'pass on' other questions he is clearly in a sub-set of guilds that is predominantly focused around PvP. And has been part of organising that subset of players to bring greater influence than they would otherwise have. While I can't fault his methods - he is looking for answers to his groups preferred playstyle - I have to hope his group won't have a disproportional effect on the summit.

 

2) Opening any negotiation (and that's what any two-way discussion of this nature must be thought of as being) with an ultimatum is not constructive. Drawing a line in the sand is not constructive - especially when its as vague as "wrong answers". I'm not expecting anyone to go to Austin and just act like rabid fans whatever is said but this attitude is not conducive to a reasonable discussion.

 

I hope this "PAC" for want of a better term does not end up simply derailing the whole process because they don't get exactly what they want immediately.

I agree 100%.

This seems like a complete waste to me. Why not engage people directly here on the forums? I mean, good lord, every week you see multiple 100+ page threads, sometimes rolling over into 2, 3 or even 4 iterations of themselves, and yet there is never so much as a peep from the development team that the message has been heard.

The only people who are going to be present at this summit are 1) those who already live in Austin, and 2) those who have the money and time, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in the past half a century, to fly cross-country over a video game. I don't feel like either group properly represents me or my concerns.

Waste of time and money. Alienates bulk of community, ignores existing feedback and the guilds were chosen based on secret criteria to make Bioware look good.

And.....you apparently bought up all the tin foil at the local grocery.

Nothing more than a PR stunt.

Premature to make such a sweeping judgement prior to see the outcomes of the summit, not to mention the live feeds from it.

Why not engage people directly here on the forums? I mean, good lord, every week you see multiple 100+ page threads, sometimes rolling over into 2, 3 or even 4 iterations of themselves,

LMAO......Oh lordy....now that WOULD be a waste of time. It would be like interviewing rabid gerbils that are OD on speed and hallucinegens. It would be the mother of all useless reality shows though.

yet there is never so much as a peep from the development team that the message has been heard.

You clearly do not follow Devchat, the developer blogs, or the weekly Q&As.

PPL u understand this is a PR thing, right?

They are not actualy going to say

"You know, you are right, we are going to do it first thing tomorow".

They are going to probably evade any good question such a "How many ONLINe gamers you have?" or lie.

This maybe not the case but i have atended a lot of conferences about programing (like oracle, mac, android and blackberry) and they always evade your question or change subjet. I hope this will not be the case. But there are certain things they are not allowed to say. Such as how pop is droping. Why, if there was extensive beta feedback, they didnt listend.

My hats off to Bioware if they dont evade or change subjets or actualy answer more than 3 questions at a time.

Made up stats are made up, or so I hear.

 

I understand the usefulness of this sort of thing as a publicity tool, but the fact of the matter is the average player will not be represented at such an event.

Really? The average player isn't in a guild? The reason they chose Guild Leaders most likely is because they will bring the viewpoints, comments, concerns, and suggestions from a larger base than one individual. If a guild has 30 players, they get the feedback of those 30 players from that one representative. Rather than inviting random players who may or may not bring with them a wide variety of feedback, that at least ensures that the largest amount of the player base gets represented, unless of course your GM simply hates you and doesn't care about your input and at that point, I'd say that's your problem to solve.

This seems like a complete waste to me. Why not engage people directly here on the forums? I mean, good lord, every week you see multiple 100+ page threads, sometimes rolling over into 2, 3 or even 4 iterations of themselves, and yet there is never so much as a peep from the development team that the message has been heard.

 

The only people who are going to be present at this summit are 1) those who already live in Austin, and 2) those who have the money and time, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in the past half a century, to fly cross-country over a video game. I don't feel like either group properly represents me or my concerns.

I have to agree with your opinion on this.

This entire summit reminds me more on Blizzcon because it looks more like a marketing - propaganda summit than a serious meeting where many of the problems and issues of the game will be discussed .

Bioware way of communication has not been very good since this game launched , devs should be more open and step in to communicate with the community members and answer some of the more important issues throught the forums , they should look on the way how Trion devs communite with Rift players now because most gamers are pleased in the way how Trion devs communicate with their community regularly on the forums about each more important issue which did poped up in that game.

Also one fantastic way of how would they get some better picture of what community thinks about their game would be to have surveys with the polls about each aspect of the game in the game.

My biggest surprise about this guild summit is that there are actually 150 guilds left in this game!

That is barely 3 guild per server, alone on my server I can think of 10 guild names without even thinking too much. ETA so naturally they had to filter and limit the number of guilds. Otherwise too many people would have wished to attend.

Really? The average player isn't in a guild? The reason they chose Guild Leaders most likely is because they will bring the viewpoints, comments, concerns, and suggestions from a larger base than one individual. If a guild has 30 players, they get the feedback of those 30 players from that one representative. Rather than inviting random players who may or may not bring with them a wide variety of feedback, that at least ensures that the largest amount of the player base gets represented, unless of course your GM simply hates you and doesn't care about your input and at that point, I'd say that's your problem to solve.

I am not in a guild, and I mostly agree with you. But keep in mind too, that some problem might also be completely overlooked by guilds. How often we non-guildy were told to "just enter a guild" when we had problem finding PUGs ? So, yes the variety of feedback will probably be greater, but there is still a chance not all feedback will be met. See above with the space combat imemdiately dismissed as "just a minigame".

That said, seeing how some of the discussion pannel are 30 minutes, I don't think there can be much meaningful discussed anyway. That gives you the time to do what ? 10 minutes presentation and maybe 20 minutes Q/A , so maybe answer 3 to 5 people's question superficially ?

In the end I think before judging the event one way or another , I'll wait that it happens, and see how it was handled. At the moment there is IMHO not enough info to judge. Just cross finger that it is not only PR.

This seems like a complete waste to me. Why not engage people directly here on the forums? I mean, good lord, every week you see multiple 100+ page threads, sometimes rolling over into 2, 3 or even 4 iterations of themselves, and yet there is never so much as a peep from the development team that the message has been heard.

 

Seriously?? Do you read the forums? That would be a total waste of time.

Appearance Tab

Better Crafting

Player Housing/Cities

Roleplayer Vendor (items, props, effects etc)

More Warzones/Planets like Ilum

Unlock-able LVL 50 Story/PvP Regions... on ALL PLANETS

oh...

and no more black core sabers. They look horrible

Oh wow, so much negativity in here. Slating this before it even started, so what if they have a 3 hour break? That break might be for anything. If the cameras are on for the full 3 hours and they are just having a buffet lunch for it all you'd complain about that too.

I heard they are playing Phantom Menace in 3d at the summit, that might just be where the 3 hour break is coming from.

The 3hr "break" isn't a break. Whoever put up that schedule didn't write it out fully.

11:00-1:30 is a tour, and lunch, at the Bioware Studio, then back at the hotel at 2:00pm to start the discussions.

Though Tuesday is still tickling me with a 1hr Marketing Focus Group.

Waiting to see what it's all about.

Would have liked to be there representing my guild. Oh well.

I hope it is productive.

1591 viewers...bored cause right off the bat this live feed is late, supposed to be on at 10AM. Wassup, B?

10 AM CST. Like 20 mins from now.

Very tight schedule. How much can they really talk about in 30 minutes?

Well these are supposed to be just the "information", the introduction and what not. The Guild Summit page which features the streaming says, "Over the next few days..." There is going to be feedback discussions over the next 3 or so days... so don't espect a lot of info here other than what they would release on the forums anyways. I hope its not like tha in reality, but it seems for now that the wizard is definitely still behind the curtain.