Does BioWare take pride in their MMO?

The proof that they havent lost faith in it is that we just had an expansion announced and an F2P option come out aswell as several 6 week patches.

You know, I wasn't sure if this is attempt at trolling, but I'm going to answer you anyway. Both of BioWare's founders, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, retired Sept. 18th, 2012. These men were the visionaries that lauched the solid company that was BioWare. Then the Lead Designer Daniel Erickson left Oct. 4th to look for greener pastures. Executive Producer Rich Vogel also left just before another massive round of layoffs for the SWTOR team. BioWare is not the entity that once made the amazing titles they were known for. Now it is merely a subsidiary of EA. To many, including myself, BioWare no longer exists, it's just EA.

Coupled with the fact that the new Executive Producer, Jeff Hickman, who's pedigre includes Customer Service Director and then (when EA took over) Executive Producer of Dark Age of Camelot and Executive Producer of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. His assignment to SWTOR is indicitve of what happend to the two other games he helmed, status quo and stagnation. Cut everything out and tread water is his hallmark.

So yea, not a whole lot of exclusive information, you can find it plastered all over the internet. You just have to take time to look. (in case you didn't, I provided links )

You are simply never going to see them go back and tidy stuff up, or fix bugs in old content, or revise old content to adjust it to optimize it, or whatever you want to call it.

There was a time and a budget and a calender schedule and a set of hours for a specific employee(s) to do the job on a given thing. After that, they are required to move on to the next thing.

No employees are allocated time and/or money to go "let's fiddle with old stuff and make it right, or better".

Once a cash shop hits, this problem becomes greatly exacerbated. "Content" will be pushed out in dribs and drabs and you will pay for it, on top of your subscription. Cool content in terms of gear, mounts, titles, toys, etc. will be pushed into the cash shop, and it will be vastly superior in looks (and sometimes in utility, if not in stats), to the gear that comes generically.

Once you accommodate yourself to this you'll have entered the Realm of Lowered Expectations, and like Milo, will be more able to cope with reality(tm).

How the direction of this game is going, it's obvious they don't even play their game.

We are talking about a company (EA) that has taken something that is taken very seriously and is sacred to many (Star Wars franchise), and spit on it. Not only have they spit on the Star Wars franchise, they have spit on us, the Star Wars fans. They show you every day with their lack of action. They show you every day when they push more CM items than actual real playable content. They show you by making spending money on the CM more attractive than doing what it takes to earn something in the game itself. Look around at what they are doing with this game. Pay attention to where they are placing the bulk of their resources. I promise you, it's not on this game. I mean the playable game. The only reason I am sticking around is that I hope that all of the money they pull from the suckers is used in a more beneficial way. I have patience, but it's not infinite.

Makeb has been announced a long time ago, even with video sequences of it. I'm pretty sure, after this so called expansion SWTOR won't see much more "new" stuff, because there simply isn't any content left that has been in stock till now.

For me, the draconic F2P system here, the constant lack of considerable content updates and the horrible QA is proof enough, that EA/BW has lost faith in this product. It's mere financial damage mitigation they're trying to do right now, by squeezing money from every bit of the game, without delivering the amount of service other companies/games do.

Worst thing is, that isn't even necessary. If they would change their rip-off-and-coerce-strategy (which was ill-reputed all over the net even before they activated it), to a treat-customers-and-potential-customers-as-friends-and-make-fair-and-sound-deals-scheme they would make more money and could deliver new stuff comfortably.

It doesn't mean that players do get everything for nothing, it just means EA/BW has to deliver a great product and add something on top of it, which is cool and tempts people to throw money around. That's not witchcraft or something, but a system that has been successfully tested multiple times. Seeing beyond the own nose would have been a healthy thing for the game and the company alike.

At the moment EA/BW is it's own worst enemy.

Amazing. How did you get all this exclusive inside information?