Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit

This is exactly what I was concerned with too.

Do they really expect certin types of guilds to be able to represent the entire population of the game?

Anyone who thinks this is nonsense doesn't have their head on straight, if you want some input on the game this is a chance to do that. I originally started our guild but gave leader to my best friend bc he's better with people than I am. We are going to get him to apply later tonight bc most of our guild is from KS/MO and driving to Austin in March might just be something we could do

Great idea BW. Infi-kudos.

I get cross faction emotes, but I don't agree with cross faction grouping or chat whatsoever, all that would do is open a terrible can of worms.

I would applaud you if this wasn't cherry picking to the maxium degree. Allow me to correct this a bit.

"we hate bioware, they never communicate!"

While generally posted by people who have no base to their claims, BioWare is not exactly a shining star in regards to their communication right now. They're struggling a little bit and everyone can see it.

"we are holding a guild summit in order to open communication"

This would be great if it was not only for "guild leaders and officers". They're limiting "communication" to a small and very specific group of people, which by the way, is completely unequivilant when you consider that not everyone is in a guild to begin with.

"we hate bioware all they do is communicate when they should be fixing the game!"

Most people who complain about this are referring to the fact that the communication being provided is limited to a small amount of people, located in a very specific area of the "US". A large majority of players are not even from the US and noone even knows if this information is going to be open to everyone else immediately or not or to what degree the Q&A session will go to. BioWare might be providing information, but this is a sloppy way of doing it.

Clearly, the people who want information to be provided to everyone on equal footing are the ones who "don't have their heads on straight." I think you should reconsider your personal views before making an attempt at calling out others.

They should have made the date around South by SouthWest that way people could make it a real vacation.

A very small specific group of people who will likely stick with the game. Yeah it's cherry picking, but if you aren't in a guild you aren't doing it right. You are allowed to choose your representative within your guild and make them an officer (really, nobody will care) and this is similar to how delegates are chosen in any democracy - let your guild vote. It's really not BWs problem who you choose to go. When the person gets back talk to them, then you get the info!

If you are trying to play this game without being social with your guild leader/officers then you are doing it wrong IMHO.

The reason you pick out the guild leaders is some combination of representative democracy and because you need to quickly iterate the discussion back and forth, and those people are hopefully more expert than the random collection of people on the forums. In the physics business in canada every year they have a "chairs" meeting. All of the department chairs in Physics at universities meet up and discuss stuff. There are a lot of other good ideas from just regular physicists but you need some way to filter down, and if you have a good idea you take it to a guild leader and see if they will pitch it on your behalf.

BioWare guys right now are experts in how the game is made (hopefully), but they have no real clue how it actually plays because they've played this, and every previous iteration and how they approach it and what they see is going to be heavily skewed.

And no, guild leaders by themselves aren't going to do it. People who are experts in HCI, quantitative systems design, software engineering will ultimately have to tell them how to fix it. But as you said, they botched a lot of the feedback we gave them in beta, they didn't even test the right things in beta (weekend betas... really?). So you either try and help them learn to do it properly or you give up and walk away. I don't work for free, so even if I got an invitation I wouldn't go, if BioWare wants my opinion my resume is on file, the VP of EA canada has my e-mail, the director of BioWare montreal has my e-mail, they're free to give me a desk in Edmonton or montreal. But that doesn't mean I don't understand what they're trying to do. They obviously don't have a good way to organize or aggregate all the data they're getting from the forums. That's more of a problem better solved by a computer scientist than a town hall meeting with guild leaders, but I see where they're coming from. It's the MBA approach to solving a technical problem, which in the short term is probably the best they can do.

Ha, QFT let's go to Florida or the Carolinas

Then I ask you what are these forums for? What is the Facebook page for? I think it's great that Bioware wants to be more personal with us. That's awesome. But they've avoided the most basic level of interaction. Can't say I blame them, this forum can be very hostile. I'm very hostile. That's something they have to deal with as professionals.

when I make a suggestion I don't expect the developers to come running thanking me for turning their game around, with whatever dollar store, armchair wisdom I decided to crap out that day, as opposed to my usual schedule of equal parts eating, sleeping, and crying, but I certainly don't expect them to call a special summit after so many people did the same as though we hadn't said anything at all.

I don't think that this is the way to do it. If they want to have a nice get together with fans, then do it. o it at a convention, have regular meet and greets once a month but don't alienate the community with invitation only events under the premise that this about feedback.

Especially when the forum is full of amazingly written posts, by very intelligent people who want this game to succeed. If they can't see past the pointless doomsaying and trolling, then I don't know what to say.