Based solely on the past performance of QA in both major and minor releases, I find the sunshine and happiness "will be unaffected" parts of the details page a bit tough to believe. I'd like to, but long past as well as very recent performance makes that a bad bet.

Server has no effect on name collisions. Every character is moving to a brand-new server, there is no priority based on where you came from.

 

-eric

This was the best way to handle it Eric (Keith). Great job on this!!!

I have a question regarding the server merges. In the text it says:

If the combination of the two Strongholds takes you above the cap of eight, they will all be retained.

However, the current stronghold cap is six, not eight (there are seven strongholds in total). Will the cap be increased with 5.5/5.6 or is this a typo?

Can you guys describe how you plan to bring back the remaining companions?

Elara and Quinn's return was so short and perfunctory that the first time I played it I forgot we got them back until I looked at my companion screen after the Iokath story was finished.

Will the missions that return them have some satisfying interactions. This is frustrating since most of my favorites were held towards the end, so the so so characters got these elaborate missions while the others just sort of get thrown back in if the Iokath storyline is any indication.

Also smaller companion storylines where we catch up with the old characters and go into more personnel details for the new ones like Lana would be great.

My guess is Bob created in 2015 gets priority over Bob created in 2016.

no no no, you have it all wrong. They rename my character named backstabber to bob and BOTH of you have to rename. much more efficient that way

1. I am grateful that even though we have mergers, Ebon Hawk is not merging with Harbinger, so for that I thank you.

2. Some of the changes sound good.

3. A clarification if you will please:

If the combination of the two Strongholds takes you above the cap of eight

8?

We have Kaas, Corsucant, Nar Shadda, Tattoine, Yavin, Manaan and we had a cap so unless we took one of them and deactivated it we could not get the train so that makes 6 or 7 not 8. So did you raise the cap to 8 or am I forgetting one, though I don't think so.

Some of these changes may have be postpone me not renewing my sub.

You mean things like this?

 

NAHUT - The 3rd Boss Encounter for Gods from the Machine Operation

New Flashpoint on Copero – Find out what Theron’s been up to with the Chiss

New PvP map

New GSF Map set in the Orbit above Iokath

Yeah A single OP Boss, I'm sure that will have the raiding community flocking back.

New Flashpoint - If it weren't for the stronghold gated behind the last flashpoint how many times do you think most people played it. Here is a guess and the BW can refute with the numbers that most people played it solo 10 times.

New PvP so an instanced PvP that we know nothing about.

New GSF yet nothing done to actually encourage people to play it.

Go check out ESO PTS Patch Notes 3.2 and see what they have coming in November that is actually on the test center to make sure it work as intended. And lets not pretend that is 5.6 a content update amid lots of other content updates. That is all the content that is coming between 5.4 and 2018, even widen the scope look at all the content that has dropped since 5.0 (last November) and 2018. It seems that things would have been better content wise if the original plan had been kept for 3 years of Knights of the ....... story trilogy had been kept, at least we would have another 9 to 16 chapters of content to look forward to and if the plan was accurate most of our original companions returned.

Server has no effect on name collisions. Every character is moving to a brand-new server, there is no priority based on where you came from.

 

-eric

Why not come up with a system to avoid forcing a name change in the first place? It could be argued that character that are used for roleplay are at a disadvantage as many people might prefer to do PvE and PvP content on a completely different class from the one they have as their roleplay "main". At the moment players like that are being put in a really bad position.

I personally find it unbelievable that after so long to come out with an operation it cannot be finished and released within a year. That will make essentially two new flashpoints and half an operation for the year. So what next year? The other half of the operation and a couple more new flashpoints? Compare to other MMOs, just seems to be very much behind. Sometimes I wonder if a Secret World type rework would be better, but I digress... Anyway, kudos to you, Bioware, as you did manage to convince me to do the 60 day sub, and I'm sure that is the point of the Roadmap, so technically a success of sorts. I've resubbed due to this:

Premium players (Subscribers) will have priority over Free-to-Play and Preferred Status players.

Highly played characters will have priority over characters with less play time.

So I've temporarily resubbed with the hope of retaining some character names. But can you please clarify what "highly played characters" means. Does the time include F2P time or just how much you've played a character since the last time you have subbed? Is it total hours played and is this stat saved if you have unsubbed and resubbed? Does it go by creation date? etc and so forth. Thanks.

You know, it may sound crazy, but in real life there are people who actually prefer to live in a small village than a big city.

 

I'm serious....these people exist.

Yea then you know what? How about you go to an actual "small village" and play a single player game. Why would you opposed to having more players around you in an MMO?

I personally find it unbelievable that after so long to come out with an operation it cannot be finished and released within a year. That will make essentially two new flashpoints and half an operation for the year. So what next year? The other half of the operation and a couple more new flashpoints? Compare to other MMOs, just seems to be very much behind. Sometimes I wonder if a Secret World type rework would be better, but I digress... Anyway, kudos to you, Bioware, as you did manage to convince me to do the 60 day sub, and I'm sure that is the point of the Roadmap, so technically a success of sorts. I've resubbed due to this:

 

 

 

So I've temporarily resubbed with the hope of retaining some character names. But can you please clarify what "highly played characters" means. Does the time include F2P time or just how much you've played a character since the last time you have subbed? Is it total hours played and is this stat saved if you have unsubbed and resubbed? Does it go by creation date? etc and so forth. Thanks.

Wait, you resubbed....because of a name??

I have a question regarding the server merges. In the text it says:

 

However, the current stronghold cap is six, not eight (there are seven strongholds in total). Will the cap be increased with 5.5/5.6 or is this a typo?

It's a trip that you can have double Strongholds...whoa.

Well, actually, people who play for story and companions DID get something. Didn't you read it? Raina Temple is coming back. Likely the least interesting LI they could have picked

You are ever so right!

I can't even find the proper words for my disappointment with this road map.

What will happen to my Legacy?

 

Legacy Name and Level

Since Legacy names are not unique, you will not lose a Legacy name as part of this process. However, if you have two Legacies which are brought together, the name and level of the highest level Legacy will be maintained.

 

Ex: You have the Level 10 “Skywalker” Legacy on The Bastion and the Level 40 “Organa” Legacy on The Harbinger; these will combine into the Organa Legacy at Level 40.

 

As always, if you wish to change your Legacy name you can do so via a Legacy Name Change from the Cartel Market.

Keith and Musco, I have some feed back regarding the merging of our legacies.

If you have multiple legacies over a few servers, instead of defaulting the legacy name to the one with highest legacy lvl, how about you allow us to pick which one we prefer,

For example, If you have a lvl 10 legacy with the name Skywalker and a lvl 40 legacy name of Organa, when the two are merged, you could have a pop-up to ask us to choose the name.

Either that, or have a legacy name change option similar to people who have the same character name. This would only need to be implemented if an account had multiple legacies that had different names.

I also have a question regarding the moves to the new destination servers.

Is it possible you might allow us to decide which servers we can move to. For example, I have legacies on most of the English speaking servers, but lag is now hindering me more than before from playing group content properly in the EU and East coast servers. Would it be possible to move all of my legacies to the west coast destination server?

Some more feedback about the destination servers.

Can you please reconsider the name for the west coast server? “The Hot Prospect” sounds more like a tinder date than a swtor server. 🙄

Other feedback

My initial take on the roadmap is good. Most of the things are good and I can see you have heard what we are saying. Even though some things aren’t 100% where I would like them, I can see you’ve made some compromises on most things. So hopefully they will be enough to bring people back to the game,

I still feel that Bolster in pvp is too low, but the ability to gear Alts faster should make up for that.

I’m sure I will find some more feedback as I reread the roadmap. But that’s it for now, it’s 8am here in Australia and I’m off to bed after staying awake all night waiting to read the road map. 😴

8? [sNIP] So did you raise the cap to 8 or am I forgetting one, though I don't think so.

I noticed this too. Unless it's a typo, it sounds like part of the QoL update will be increasing the Stronghold cap.

Character Names

In most cases, nothing will happen to your character name. Names will only be impacted when there are two of the exact same name on the new United Forces server at which point a governing system determines which character has priority:

 

Premium players (Subscribers) will have priority over Free-to-Play and Preferred Status players.

Highly played characters will have priority over characters with less play time.

So cynical blackmail to make us resub?

If you are not a subscriber get ready to lose your character names?

Low, even by EA standards, low.

All The Best

No real story content is a no-go for me...i dont count 5-10 mins of actual storyline in a flashpoint "a story"....

nuf said

Basically, there is a new perk that you can purchase. That perk increases the CXP you earn in your Legacy by 25-100%. What the % is, is determined by how many CR 300 characters you have. My understanding is that you need 4 characters at 300 for the 100%, but I will verify.

 

-eric

... to do the EXACT SAME CONTENT we have been doing for the past however-many-years, much of which dates back to game release.

Eric, do you actually spend your time doing this? Getting characters to legacy 300 doing the very same thing we've been able to do since release? How can you honestly think that's okay?

And while you're thinking about it, can you figure out why we should even bother? Why do I need my character's gear level higher than what it is now? There's nothing else to do but the one op boss you guys happen to release every half year or whatever.

Another question for you, Eric, and maybe you addressed it and I missed it.

What about Cartel Market stash? The current limit is like 500. Let's say I have 265 items in my Pack Explorer on Ebon Hawk and 280 on Shadowlands. Will I lose items from Pack Explorer? Will I not be able to get more stuff from the Cartel Market? I'm assuming you are going to merge the Pack Explorer so it's all in there, but what are the ramifications of that, if any?

Thanks!

The Good:

1. Server mergers: needed to happen a long time ago, but I'm sure a lot of ppl will be happy about it.

2. A New Warzone

3. New GSF Map

4. New Flashpoint

5. Prioritizing ease of access to Multiplayer activities (wow, someone remembered this was an MMO).

6. Increasing Legacy Command XP perks

7. PVP Bolster increased to 242 (again, long overdue)

Neutral:

1. Vague QoL references

2. Roadmap makes the United Forces Patch rewards sound like a daily area thing, but the blog makes it sound like an event, only available for a limited time. Which is it?

3. Adding another clone companion to the stable isn't exactly a thrilling enticement.

4. "Great New Rewards"....could mean anything, and maybe you should clarify BEFOREHAND if any of the rewards are...say, locked behind Stronghold max counts or something similar.

Negative:

1. So the next stat increase in gear is walled off behind ONE Flashpoint only? Really?

2. "We know Companions make this game feel totally different while pulling on your emotions and making conversations exciting, frustrating, and extremely entertaining." -- This is clearly ********. Otherwise, we would actually HAVE conversationS with them, and the most meaningful ones wouldn't be AWOL for 2 years and counting.

3. You do remember we were supposed to have all five Ops bosses by the end of the year? Not three...

4. Raina Temple returns. Bioware needs to prove they are actually going to handle companions correctly instead of the half-assed way they've been handling them for the last two years. Until then, I'll remain wary.

5. Adding in things that should already have been there, and then acting like it is a great feat: Customizable companions, class balance and utilities adjustment, etc. are all things that should never have been an issue.

6. "The next Roadmap update will arrive in the early part of 2018"....lol okay. RIP "quarterly" updates. This one was a month late. Don't want to put ourselves in that bind again, do we?

7. No major expac announcement: the game really needed a big expac to generate interest and bring players back who had been alienated by the GC system and long droughts of Ops and multiplayer content. So, not only is there no major expac on the Horizon, GC is getting left in place (though it's "under review"), there's still not going to be a full Operation out, and the "story" will only consist of a FP snippet.

8. The absence of any mention of "Bug fixes" was rather painful. My Sniper, Slingers, and Merc STILL have to realocate skill points EVERY time they login.

I personally find it unbelievable that after so long to come out with an operation it cannot be finished and released within a year. That will make essentially two new flashpoints and half an operation for the year. So what next year? The other half of the operation and a couple more new flashpoints? Compare to other MMOs, just seems to be very much behind.

Even some MMOs that don't do a lot of dungeon and raid type releases (Guild Wars 2, for starters) give us actual new exploration zones and stories between expansions.

SWTOR doesn't give us that and this roadmap basically puts an exclamation mark after that point.

Every house needs a good foundation. if your foundation is not good, any improvements you make will be four naught as your house continues to fall apart. I see this roadmap as a way to secure the foundation in order to make improvements to the house. Everyone will find things they like and things they dont like. Im not 100%, but made the investment into this game a long time ago and I choose to see these changes as a way to sure up the foundation and get to adding on that new room.

I'll still continue to play as I do, but, now, I will probably start doing more group content. I used to do FPs like they was nothing else in game to do as well as PvP. You cant tell, but i used to be an OK pvp'r. Not ops, though...never really do those here or anywhere. I think the closest i came was the corvette in SWG. I think i did somethign in molten core, too...and the dragon thing...bah...derailing.

I do like the changes to GC and i cant say how pleased i am with legacy credits. i consolidated my toons a long time ago and ventures off the Ebon Hawk were short lived. Will need to find a place for my trooper from Shadowlands, though. and my Sage will need to venture forth into the Hot Prospect from BC...which i thought was a RP server...good luck, guys....I hear an unnamed server is brutal.

im still boggled that folks have 50+ characters across multiple servers that they actively play...to think of the hours spent to do anything with them...in just one month....head hurts. my toons should feel grateful. they get touched at least once a week....er...um. ok.

i intend on re-reading the roadmap later so that i can digest it better. However, /bow3

Yea then you know what? How about you go to an actual "small village" and play a single player game. Why would you opposed to having more players around you in an MMO?

Ahh, empathy is not one of your talents. My apologies for replying to you.

So cynical blackmail to make us resub?

 

If you are not a subscriber get ready to lose your character names?

 

Low, even by EA standards, low.

 

All The Best

Why's everything gotta be a conspiracy with you? Subscribers ALWAYS have priority. Always have, always will. Or was this whine because you let your sub expire? Sour grapes much?