Link: http://blogs.bettor.com/Anonymous-Bioware-Insider-blames-fans-for-SWTOR-Video-Games-Update-a173317

 

A Bioware Austin employee has lashed out at fans regarding the state of the recently launched massively multiplayer online (MMO) Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) according to GamerTechTv.

 

SWTOR or ‘Tortanic’ is being called one of the biggest blunders of this generation as Electronic Arts (EA) has thrown away over $500 million of development and marketing funds for the project and will now have to make it free to play because of the rapidly decreasing player count.

 

The failure of the MMO has caused a significant drop in EA’s share price and has lead to major layoffs at Bioware Austin. The Bioware employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, has stated that fans are in part responsible for how the MMO turned out.

 

“EA blames us and to some extent they’re right to. But it was fan feedback from the day we opened the forums that encouraged us to design it for the fans the way it is and that included making it more like Kotor then an MMO like Wow,” he stated mentioning that gamers actually wanted SWTOR to be more like Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR), a single player role playing game by Bioware before it was acquired by EA, rather than World of Warcraft (WoW).

 

Fans have called him out and claim that Bioware is just pointing fingers for their own failure as they opened the official forums on September 12, 2011 where as the game came out three months later on December 20, 2011. It is hard to believe that three months worth of fan feedback could influence the game that was in development since 2006.

 

This news has also confirmed what every gamer could see coming a mile away. EA is finally about to swallow the bitter pill and make Star Wars: The Old Republic completely free to play. It’s either that or let the game die and be forgotten as the user base dwindles until there is no one left.

 

The employee also commented on the current situation at Bioware Austin as the layoffs mean that the remaining team is short handed and is having problems coping with the major changes required to make the game free to play. There has been no official announcement regarding SWTOR going free to play from EA so far but gamers can be certain that it is coming soon.

 

 

Discuss true or not...

use the search button maybe?

a blog....it must be true!

Link: http://blogs.bettor.com/Anonymous-Bioware-Insider-blames-fans-for-SWTOR-Video-Games-Update-a173317

 

 

 

 

Discuss true or not...

 

Tortanic? 500 million cost? You still need to ask?

To some degree I agree with this. In Beta SWTOR was a much different game. More detailed on many levels. For example the commendations system was dramatically different. It seemed there were lots of people on the boards who just didn't get it. Most of the complaints I saw were something like "This is nothing like WOW, so I hate it." So BioEA did what comes naturally to a large corporation, they used statistics to try to make the most people happy that they could. The corporatists soon took hold of what was left of Bioware and the rest is history... The bottom line here is the game was dumbed down from Beta to what we have currently. Game developers who are making games that are worth anything today are ignoring the HERD and following their own history and paths to make better games. EVE is a good example of this trend. What BioEA forgot is this new generation probably had no experience with KOTOR but decided to change SWTOR to appease them anyway. In perfect corporatist logic they opted for the genius Lose Lose strategy - alienate your long time fans by neglecting what made Bioware great and at the same time anger the new MMO crowd with a WOW clone that isn't "exactly like WOW"... I think if BioEA had tempered their reactions to the "fans" and these forums they could have pulled this off. For example look at the mess they made of DAO and ME. The sequels to these games bear little resemblance to their originals, they are completely dumbed down, but BioEA rejects this criticism. So who cares? EA has money and power so they will just try to force feed the herd what they think it wants, but in the process they have completely ruined a once great game company. But yes the "fans" (this new herd) is partly to blame for this fiasco too.

Regurgitating poorly written blogs on the forums, must be a hard life for a troll…

Is that really all it takes to start a believable rumor?

 

I play and greatly enjoy the game. For all its flaws, it's still a wonderful experience levelling and PvP'ing in WZs. Perfect? No.

 

But nothing will compete with WoW for endgame grinding. They could have launched with 1.3 - and it wouldn't have made a dent in that game.

 

Look at ALL the other established MMOs - including AoC, Rift, LotRO, EQ2, and so on. Not a SINGLE one of them has more subscribers than SWtOR.

 

People stick with WoW because that's where they invested all their time - and people like to stay with their friends. It's also WAY WAY ahead in the endgame content curve.

 

The thing for SWtOR to do is to set itself apart from WoW in the endgame segment, and that's accomplished by being smart and unique. Implement a freeform space segment with trading/piracy/PvP and fix up Ilum to make it a perpetually interesting PvP zone. Then you have an endgame that WoW can't compete with.

Regurgitating poorly written blogs on the forums, must be a hard life for a troll…

 

Thanks for this post. There are perhaps 1000's of these type of posts that get rolled up into the corporatists statistics. Margin of error used improperly = SWTOR - the latest dumbed down, herd appeasement, game from BioEA...

When are you guys gonna stop sabotaging this game? There are so many exagerations and lies written. The general forum needs shutting down, if your playing the game why would you highlight this rubbish blog? And if you dont like the game why would you be posting on here or even care?

 

I love this game. But I hate the general forum its full of rubbish posts.

Already the Free to Play horde is making the starter world chats unbearable. If EA goes that way then there will soon be nothing left of this game... The ingame experience will then soon bear a remarkable similarity to these forums.... which I very seldomly dip into now... I used to read the old Bioware forums very often... now? Not so much... Buh Bye.

When are you guys gonna stop sabotaging this game? There are so many exagerations and lies written. The general forum needs shutting down, if your playing the game why would you highlight this rubbish blog? And if you dont like the game why would you be posting on here or even care?

 

I love this game. But I hate the general forum its full of rubbish posts.

 

yet another "fan" who has difficulty distinguishing criticism from abuse.... ahh the wonders of our modern educational system never cease to amaze

Edited July 24, 2012 by catherder

This information is not real, is another illogical information trying to sabotage the game.

Thx for the information and don't you worry, I'm sure this game will be awesome for a long time!

Thx for the information and don't you worry, I'm sure this game will be awesome for a long time!

 

in what world are you living, good sir?

Edited July 24, 2012 by Rikeryo

Tortanic? 500 million cost? You still need to ask?

 

What's wrong with the boat? Leave our ship alone, it's doing well if you ask... ICEBERG!!!

Ah yes, this one again. This quote is from the same source as the quote in the OP I believe. So why not throw it into the mix, huh?

 

"Hey guys i'm a bioware employee and I don't expect anyone here to believe me but I just wanted to let you know all this doomsaying is just a load of bull.

 

The truth is there are no plans to go F2P anytime soon. Yes we have a contigincy plan if subs managed to drop well below 200k. But after looking at the trends there isn't any signs that will happen.

Our plans our to keep rolling out content with 1.4 planning to come out in late September and 1.5 in December. We still have more then enough developers to keep this game alive and well.

 

So fear not. "

 

Enjoy!

yet another "fan" who has difficulty distinguishing criticism from abuse.... ahh the wonders of our modern educational system never cease to amaze

 

He does make for some humorous reading you must admit.

I totally disagree with the OP.

 

The game is good, its better than good.

 

The Problem with the game is:

 

Shoddy programming. A Broken combat engine (ability delay completely dominating PVP and PVE recurring problem that comes back almost every patch).

Slow fixes, slow updates.

hi guys I know you probably won't believe me but i am a developer on Blizard and WoW is going F2P soon. also after it has gone F2P they will start charging money for things like pandas and panda zone. trust me guys when you see that pandas cost money you will totally beleive that everything i say is true.

 

The supposed BioWare employee on the other hand is completely fake, or as Stephen Reid put it on Twitter:

That's a fan's wishful thinking, or at best a very uninformed lower level employee. No further comment.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Rassuro

Well let me say first off that any coward that will not give his/her name should never be quoted so far as im concerned the entire write up is a work of fiction.

 

But as for the "we got feedback" line, which Ive heard before.

 

Day one of forums opening, people were talking about Pazzaak, swoop racing, and DAoC style RVR

 

None was put in game despite the fans giving feedback for over 3 years on a semi regular basis

 

In fact, I remember reading massive threads all telling EA not to copy WOW and to just make the best game with out falling into the WOW trap of "easier and faster is better"

 

Yet we got easier and faster is better and the game is often called WOW in space (You would think they would learn as SWG was often called UO in space and was also a massive failure, investor expectation wise).

 

But as we all know, no one is really calling game TORtanic but some mouthy 13 year olds. That line tells us all we really need to know about the value of the people and site writing the article.

 

Im not sticking up for TOR. EA made unforgivable mistakes on this title and frankly people deserved to be fired and I sure as hell hope they are black listed from working in the gameing industry again for the ego driven, selfish, and out right moronic mistakes they made IGNORING (not listening) the experienced player base.

 

There is absolutely no reason this game should be forced into F2P and not carrying 2 million plus subscribers. Thats ALL on the designers who simply didnt understand the genre and ignore the iconic parts of the KotOR series people loved (and continue to ignore to this day sadly).

 

Im not sticking up for EA and TOR. But Im also not going to take some unheard of nobody writing "a takedown peice" (thanks Newsroom) quoteing some imaginary at best and cowardly janitor (at worst) as some source. Why dont we all go ask Batman on the LA strip for his opinion next? Come on.

 

EA, if someone made that quote, find out who and fire their butt.

 

All they doing is hurting game even more cause you just know some kid will grab this and start up some hate campaign pointing to this as prove or validation.

 

Personally I will not give EA (Bioware no longer exists beyond name and calling this new entity Bioware is a insult to the great designers and developers that were around before EA bought them) a inche of slack and will call them on any REAL issue. Because they have not earned any leeway.

 

But im also not going to crucify them over some imaginary or cowardly source.

 

If I hear a developer say this and its credited to a real life developer, then id probably be pissed for being blamed for their short sighted and narrow veiw in designing game. But not till then. They deserve that much at least.

the game is fine, the game engine is still broken and hasnt been fixed since beta in some areas, but the majority of the game is great. although i seldom like grinding, some times its enjoyable playing FP's waiting for a strange fun and unusual round to come along and such.. missing outright space exploration and such, something i still hope they can release at some point.

 

i think the game will keep and remain with a steady amount of people, most mmos always have the hardcore fanbase to rely on for a while. but the best thing to do is leave the bashing and get on with it and create the best thing you can and since nothing is perfect (an imossiblity to find that), then you may as well just keep going until it does become unfeasable and again at some point this will come and that will be the end of it.

i will never understand.

 

if you don't like a game, why pay subs so you can trash it on the forum? Just move on, there are plenty of games (or others fun activities) out there.

 

Why do one spend money, time and energy just to bash a game. It's kind of useless too, most people on these forums have first hand experience with the game and thus forge their own opinion about it.

 

i think i am reasonably intelligent, but this is beyond my comprehension of the human psyche. You need a physhology degree to understand these forums some days.

i used to bash STO on their forums while i was subbed for it for a while, i just liked that it was a challenge and had to overcome the game, the forums was just a vehicle to push me on to overcome the game and do better, the usual e-peen tosh if directed properly is a great motivator on the forums and the game itself is a great challenge.

 

some people like to use the chance to be insulted like that, i mean pandering directly to their lack of precision to do the task, it can be a brilliant cataclyst, but if bioware instead respond by making it easier instead of tell em to overcome it, well whats the challenge of the game? if you immediately know whats at the end of the tunnel, there is no point travelling to get at it.

i will never understand.

 

if you don't like a game, why pay subs so you can trash it on the forum? Just move on, there are plenty of games (or others fun activities) out there.

 

Why do one spend money, time and energy just to bash a game. It's kind of useless too, most people on these forums have first hand experience with the game and thus forge their own opinion about it.

 

i think i am reasonably intelligent, but this is beyond my comprehension of the human psyche. You need a physhology degree to understand these forums some days.

 

You do know that a lot of people had faith and bought 6 month subs, only for the game to partly fail (said partly to keep the drones happy) and leave a lot of unhappy players stuck on empty servers, which is now being forced on others (I moved already, others haven't), along with a vast amount of bugs & issues, as well as dumb things like taking down servers 5 times a week (sometimes without notice) and botched patches... the list is endless. And yet, here we are... Trapped. If people don't like the trapped, unhappy players posting, they shouldn't attack them (as always), try complaining to BW/EA to give them refunds to "just get rid of them!" once and for all? Bet I know BW/EA's answer.

bioware`s only mess up in my opinion is regarding the community...all of this stuff going on right now is all part of normal developement cycles...that most people cant see past there own situation to understand

 

bioware`s mess up with the community isa that they were nice,sometimes absent,but nice

 

 

what they shouldve done is use the ironfist methodology...games with ironfist style rules over there community generally are nicer places to be

yet another "fan" who has difficulty distinguishing criticism from abuse.... ahh the wonders of our modern educational system never cease to amaze

 

How educated is it to cast ad-hominems at those that disagree with your analysis rather then formulate an educated and convincing contention to the contrary?

 

This is not "criticism", it is disparagement and very poor attempt at such. It is, at its core, no different then the childish attacks you have just leveled at every poster that does not agree with you, and it is just as worthy of journalistic praise. It is uninformed opinion based on hyperbole and conjecture rather then fact and analysis.

 

All the bullying and rhetorical brow beating in the world will not override the many questions raised as to the level of this bloggers integrity, or cause any clear thinking individual to take at face value this random blogger's "inside source" that has not been identified or even substantiated (was it the fourth floor janitor?).

 

There are legitimate issues with this game, but this blogger, rather then write a thesis on the subject matter has chosen mud slinging at the level of a bad, Jerry Springer show, with all of the drama and hype that goes along with it. Anyone bolstering this as anything more then a random facebook level blog surely would have been shortchanged by the education system.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Blackardin