Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit

It's not insulting at all. Your 15$ a month grants you the right to play and receive updates. That includes: patchs, bug fixes, or general game content.

I think it would be time better spent to contact your guild master and see if they plan to go. Create a forum post on your guild website on all the concerns you have. . If done right they could voice many people.

Fixed that for you.

I guess I don't understand all the rage. Bioware is using this opportunity to glean more info from the player base. I acknowledge that the majority of people upset by this are forum users who feel that because they provided info on the game here, that should be enough to work from. I also recognize that many of the people I have seen posting in this thread feel their suggestions have fallen on deaf ears, and for quite some time.

That being said, this event provides a definitive unique place to exchange ideas and information. And where I come from, it's better to have too much information than not enough. Does it suck that there was little notification for this event for players to plan around? Yes, I think so. Is it a gamebreaker? Nope. I have faith that whatever info Bioware gets from this summit can be utilized in a positive way regardless of whether it's Guild leaders, PvP'ers, RP'ers, or Joe Single player that are offering input. Who knows, depending on the success of this one maybe they will do a Dev/PVP summit in the future. Now that I would like to see. Just my 2 credits.

Actually you can bet that bioware is not going to pay to fly the individual out to Austin. In fact it will most likely be "Travel/Food/Lodging" are to be pied by the individual

Those of you that are complaining, YOU BOGGLE ME! Take the opportunity here to voice yourselves with something other than complaining. A solution to your problem maybe? People! Really?

I think you missed my explanation about why a casual guild leader is far, far less likely to have the time, money, or interest for a "Guild Summit" than a hardcore guild leader.

Re. Negativity/feedback: Exactly what purpose is served by gathering feedback in this way, when even a cursory understanding of human nature is enough to realize "this might be a fundamentally flawed tactic"? Saying "this isn't likely to go well" isn't being negative. That's being realistic.

Re. WoW and raids: You can argue the whys and wherefores all you like. WoW's numbers peaked during the expansion all the hardcore players called "too easy". Their numbers dropped sharply during the expansion all the casual players called "too hard". Neither of these is deniable. I did posit, without the data to prove, that I think WoW's numbers peaked because all players had goals they could work on. But that's tangential to the main point I'm trying to make: "hardcore only" equals "no subscribers". Casuals aren't just the majority of the player base, they're where the *money* comes from. (Side note/other tangent: There is a true workaround for this, but it involves the dreaded "microtransactions" model instead of a flat subscriber fee)

Re. raiding in general: I'm inclined to agree that "people got tired of doing the same thing" and left WoW because of it. But that "same thing" is raiding. There are only so many ways to make players jump when you say "jump". At some point, the very principle of "large # of people dodging ground effects while one 'tank' keeps the big bad guy's attention and four healers spend their night turning yellow bars into green ones" is going to start feeling tired and stale, no matter how you slice it. Reskinning raids to have light sabers doesn't change anything. The declining numbers in WoW suggest (to me) that it's time to move on. There were hundreds of directions a Star Wars MMO could take; raiding doesn't need to be a sole focus, or even a main one.

I am a casual guild leader and am hoping to get picked. I am married and have a job. However I will pay my way to go see it

I think many people are doing the

"This is doomed way to go bioware" type of response rather then just giving positive or negative constructive feedback. Not saying you are. As for it being "realistic" that's from your point of view. There are many other points of view that think it is a great idea.

I think the hardcore and casual players have one thing in common. They are in a guild. My guild is all in support of me going and we are pretty casual. We still try to stay competitive. However we only downed SOA on hardmode and that's it. The raid group i am in raids 1 to 2 nights a week.

Bioware said they selected guilds of all types before making this public. To me that means they picked guild leaders who were running casual, RP, PVP, hardcore guilds.
I agree with this 100%. I wish I could redo my survey options because one of my feed backs was about raids. However , after asking my guild what they would ask if I got a chance to go, they talked about a lot of stuff in our Team Speak server

Things like end game content with companions, pod racing dailies, fleet ships, and multiple topics about endgame that was not about raiding.

Is it me, or maybe this event should turn into a recruitment drive? :P

Yes, I like all of these.

I also like these ideas which have been put forth by other people:
* Group space missions.
* Space raids. Take 15 of your friends and face the death star. (Really? BW didn't even think of this? ...really? I asked about this at their PAX booth last year, and the dev looked at me like I was from Mars! It was very nearly the Jenna Marbles "How to Avoid Talking to People" look.)
* Ship appearances being customizable, inside and out. They're effectively player housing from level 17 onward.
* Cosmetic professions that do things like customize ship appearances, inside and out. And character appearances, for that matter. I mean beyond the 70s/emo hair styles. I want my Chiss Sniper to get a facial tattoo!
* Open "sandbox" style planets.
* Repeatable missions, even daily quests, with tangible light/dark side gains, and corresponding rewards for things like "go from full light to full dark" or vice versa.
* More battlegrounds. The ability to board factions' ships and PVP there as a battleground.
* Guild space stations, where the guild not only designs it, but gets to implement security, and groups of players can assault them.

...and so on.

All I'm seeing, in this thread and elsewhere, is whether or not raids should be hard. That's a bit like looking at a real city, asking its residents "how can I improve this city," and restricting the answers to the shape and accessibility of the sports stadium.

Curious....

If you say that you selected those that contribute the most constructive feedback on the forums anyway, then why have a guild summit? Why not just take the ideas/suggestions that they had already posted on the forums?

Curious....

To be honest, you moderators and such have deleted the majority of everyone's threads that had something to say about what they disliked with this game. All you did was select the people who always has something good A.K.A "constructive" to say about what you have created.

I know of the guilds that you selected and I have seen them talk about it outside of this thread. To be honest, non of them are SMALL guilds.

I know that you will delete this, or you will send me a warning, but at this point it would just give me even more reason to unsubscribe and while I'm at it to take my entire guild with me back to League of Legends.

Sure, you won't miss us initially....

But, I can guarantee that the community that I brought with me from Tempest would eventually soon follow...

You have a community of good players here whom have been crying out to you over and over on the forums. To select the Elitist Jerks and Hoard guilds from every server will get you no where and fast. The crazy thing about it is, those guilds don't even really care....they will all be in Guild Wars 2 or Diablo 3 when the time comes.

Good luck at your guild summit.

Pink

To be fair though...we both know how MMO forums are. Most people that come here complain, I have not heard from any of these guilds that are going.

But from biowares response it seems they took notice to guilds that were also active and helpful in the community

not just the people that gripe 24/7 and state things like "make it harder! fix your bugs first!"

I have high hopes for this summit for these reasons. I like all your ideas and, if your guild leader is planning to submit a survey, you should inform him or her your concerns.

good luck!