Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit

Even if Guild leaders are pushing agendas that promote their own interests with the diversity of the people who will be in attendance this is a good thing. People who have no guild at all would simply be pushing their own personal agenda, at least with guild leaders you get more peoples interests and ideas being promoted.

You are right, everyone has their own agenda. Which is why it is NOT safe to just automatically assume that the views of those actively participating on site in this summit are representative of others and even very diverse.

Also, one cannot automatically assume that this event will promote more peoples interest and ideas by having guild leaders present. The opposite in fact has just the same amount of probability in happening. For instance, we could end up with a situation whereby those in attendance all think alike, cheering and whooping at anything Bioware say and do, no matter what the subject or context. Resulting in a "summit" which actually didn't acheive very much aside from being a "praise Bioware" event.

The entire point for only inviting guild leaders is simply because its impossible to invite everyone. That's understandable. But in only inviting a select few, the accuracy of the results may be somewhat diminished.

In short: Unless we know of each an every guild leaders intentions that are going to this summit, one cannot be absolutely sure how much will be gained from it.

actually no this is the definition of a focus group. Not just that but a focus group of people that will more than likely be regular customers that intend to be around for a while. They are in fact representative of the comunity.

your saying these forums are constructive in some way...have you been watching the very thread your posting in. Think of it like this: How much useful dialog or feedback would they get if they started a thread saying, "hey we want your thoughts on implementing this new feature for guilds"? Now look at the rest of the forums. Do you think they would be able to actually get meaningful dialog going? More than likely they would they get a bunch of posts from forum trolls and people making inane comments like, "You should fix X and Y before you implement new features", and, "Why are you only making up new stuff for guilds what about all of us not in guilds?" Now think about how fast that goes by and how side tracked that thread or any threads like it would get (read as look at this thread). The devs would end up having to lock their own thread because it got off topic and is now participating in an argument over whatever the argument of the month is. By having a Guild Summit they do something awesome for expediting the feedback process. They remove the trolls and a lot of the complainers that slow the process down. Because really who is going to actually spend that much money to go out and troll and complain.

Personally my guild, if we get an approval of our application, will be sending an envoy that already lives in Austin. Mainly because none of us can afford that trip either monetarily or time wise. Our envoy will be running twitter and possibly keeping updates flowing to our enjin shoutbox. He will be the figurehead of our whole guild giving constructive feedback. This will work for us because we are a fairly small guild, but could still work for most large guilds if they set up posting rules for the actual day. Also most large and serious guilds going to this event will be having forum discussion about this ahead of time for what questions need to be asked and what suggestions should be made. So cherry picking certain guild leaders that are the heads of guilds that are or have been very active in the community in a constructive manner is a perfect way to get a litmus test of ideas. Them allowing others to apply for a slot is an incredibly nice gesture that they never even needed to make, and in all likelihood pissed off the people designing their focus group testing.

I wouldn't mind seeing a unified hashtag setup so we can keep multiple updates and discussions community wide. Having someone live stream some of the event with a webcam or something would be more than awesome, but that's a bit much to ask of people. No matter what pumped about this summit as it means that people will report on some of the new features they are entertaining the idea of or are planning on implementing.

P.S. sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes I am posting at work and cannot take the time to proof read.

That can be said for any form of data communication , including surveys. Nothing is absolute. Having multiple forms of communication is not a bad thing.

I think knowing that the summit will happen no matter what is said here...you have three options:

1) Not support it (that's fine)
2) Try to support it but give feed back on what you would like to see a the summit (with in reason, having 1.7 million people in one room can't happen)

I don't think it helps to say the same things over and over on how this wont work. If it fails it fails. If you know it will fail then there is nothing to even debate about. You absolutely can't be wrong if you know for sure.

I think it is better at this point to ask questions or give suggestions about the summit or let it go. I don't see how posting about the many ways it will fail helps anything.

So you're saying that ONLY guild leaders are considered to be "regularly customers"? Really?

Lol. The irony is that that very same scenario in a "summit" situation and end up with the same results. As for "removing trolls" and complainers, are you essentially trying to advocate that only "fanboys" should be attendance? If so, you are proving my point exactly about this whole summit thing is a really bad idea due to the agendas of those in attendance.

And what exactly do you think are the main subjects that those "large and serious guilds" will be biased towards hmmm?

Here's a clue: Ever heard of "Fires of Heaven", and ever wondered why WoW's endgame was so centred around raiding for quite some time after launch?

Nice try at taking what I said out of context there. Look at the entire sentence please.

It seems that bioware is attempting to get the opinions of the community. Such intentions are admirable. But, the moment they DON'T actually ask the entire community, but instead just focus on a small number of guild leaders, they risk dilluting the accuracy of the results and what can be achieved from that event.

Compare the accuracy of information gained from interviewing a select few, compared to conducting a survey involving a much bigger pool of subjects.

If someone responds to your post, it is customary to reply to it. Now, it sounds to me like you are making a thinly veiled attempt to tell me to shut up because my viewpoints happen to differ to yours. Which I really don't think anyone has the right to do so.

Not saying that at all, just saying your views have been stated. You are no longer being constructive. Nor am I for that matter for debating back with you about our views.

Side note it is not out of context. I replied to a point you made about the summit.

That is your own opinion, one that is not necesssarily shared by everyone. So thanks for proving my point about how the viewpoints of a particular individual are not necessarily in line with the opinions of others.

Btw, you DID take what I said out of context, you stripped half the sentence away. Here's what I ACTUALLY said:

Notice how the start of that section puts the rest into a different context.

Do people really not understand why guild leaders are being selected to go? Its not necessarily because they know more about the game, but because they usually have better organization skills. What I mean by this, is any guild leader who gets invited and gives a damn will have already started a thread on their guild's forums or sent out mail asking, "Hey, I got invited to the Summit. What do you want me to ensure gets brought up/discussed and what kind of feedback would you like for me to provide?"

They are going as representatives of the guilds in game. They should be organizing the ideas and thoughts of their guild members and bringing that with them to the summit. If your guild leader is not doing something like this, you should probably bring it up to them. Yes, there are those who arent in guilds (like myself) who wish they could go, but Bioware are picking representatives and, if you're not the leader of a guild, you are really potentially only bringing your opinions and not the opinions of thousands of others. Is this concept really so hard for some of you to understand or accept?

no not saying that. Don't put words in my mouth. I am saying that they most likely are regular customers.

1.) Being a guild leader doesn't make you a fanboy in fact I would bet that some of the cherry picked guild leaders are from guilds that are quite audible in their dissatisfaction yet are still playing and waiting for things to improve.
2.) your really need to work on reading comprehension. Stop seeing what you want to see being said and see what is actually said. I didn't say that only fanboys should be in attendance. I was saying that constructive and directed discussion is impossible on these forums. Take for example what we are doing right now. It detracts from the discussion, and becomes the discussion. This is not conducive to getting anywhere. In an in-person discussion the people leading the discussion can outright stop people from going to far off topic with the discussion.

yes that may happen, that's why there are also people there from smaller guilds which will influence them to make the end game easier for small groups. However one shouldn't forget it is a social game. It should be based around groups accomplishing things together. In that regard you have two options. You can either Raid or PvP. Both of these are done in ops groups. That is what end game is in a social game.


Yet again I apologize for any erroneous grammar and/or spelling