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A Message from the Community Manager


JovethGonzalez

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Hi everyone,

 

For those of you that don’t know, I’m Joveth Gonzalez, Community Manager for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

As most of you know, over the past few months, our team, our studio, and our game have undergone quite a few changes. Through it all, we’ve remained committed to the community and have worked with the development team to make sure that your voices were heard.

 

I wanted to take some time to reassure you all that my team, the community team, is still committed to you folks. As part of this commitment, we’re excited to let you know that we have been developing a brand new strategy for our team that focuses on developing new ways to bring you more information about the game and the people involved with SWTOR's development.

 

As we progress towards the recently announced Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more frequent updates to the game (which means more information coming to you) and more developer interactions.

 

The Star Wars: The Old Republic community is large and spread across many outlets, but rest assured that our team is scouring the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, fan sites, and anywhere that SWTOR is being discussed to make sure that we get your thoughts, comments, questions, and general feedback. Know that we are listening you, no matter where you choose to participate in the SWTOR community.

 

In the upcoming weeks, you’ll be seeing elements of our new community strategy as they appear on our site. One of our primary goals with this is to ensure that new information about the game is communicated as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

Last but not least, I will be re-introducing the rest of community team along with this new strategy. You may have already seen them here on the forums or on the website, but you will learn more about Allison Berryman, Eric Musco, Courtney Woods, Amber Green, Lars Malcharek, and Antonio Moreno.

 

We're all excited about the future of this game and with the new focus on more frequent content updates and the introduction of the Free-to-Play experience, you can expect more communication opportunities overall.

 

If you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas, please feel free to send us an email at community@swtor.com. You can also send me a PM here on the forums or reach me on Twitter @joveth. These are three different ways for you to get in touch. We will limit important announcements to only occur on our site, forums, our Facebook page, and/or the official SWTOR Twitter account.

 

Thank you, sincerely, for participating and being a part of our community over the past few months. We look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Edited by CourtneyWoods
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As most of you know, over the past few months, our team, our studio, and our game have undergone quite a few changes. Through it all, we’ve remained committed to the community and have worked with the development team to make sure that your voices were heard.

 

You people stopped communicating on twitter, aside from the ''servers are down'', ''servers are up'', ''oopsie-daisie, we didn't test properly, servers will be down again tomorrow'' posts...

 

There has not been a single post on the forums with any new information in weeks, even the f2p information was first available on another site (which is, I believe, a MMO first, congratulations on that one).

 

So, euh... exactly how, if I may ask, were you commited ?

 

In this new post, you don't even mention the communication-breakdown of the past weeks... so, excuuuuuuuuuuse me if I take your remarks about future communications with a bag of salt. We've heard the promises before...

 

((this post was changed by me after the DEV quoted it, he didn't deliberatly left out the f2p remark in his quote, my bad))

Edited by Yogol
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You people stopped communicating on twitter, aside from the ''servers are down'', ''servers are up'', ''oopse, we didn't test properly, servers will be down again tomorrow'' posts...

 

There has not been a single post on the forums with any usefull information in weeks.

 

Exactly how, if I may ask, were you commited ?

 

The team is responsible for more than just communicating via Twitter and our forum posts are somewhat dependent on new information being available. As mentioned in my post, more frequent updates means that more information will become available for us to post about. Courtney's great weekly Community Round-Up blog has also been a good source of community information during these past few months.

Edited by JovethGonzalez
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Hi everyone,

We will limit important announcements to only occur on our site, forums, our Facebook page, and/or the official SWTOR Twitter account.

 

Does this mean versus having new information shared via fansite interviews and/or media interviews?

 

I recall seeing some complaints in the past on the forums from folks regarding what was perceived as additional details on new content being shared via non-SWTOR owned sites. Is this in response to that criticism? I hope it doesn't mean we won't continue to see Dev interviews on the fansites as those have been very fun and interesting in the past, both as a reader and an interviewer.

 

cheers,

 

Anexxia

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Does this mean versus having new information shared via fansite interviews and/or media interviews?

 

I recall seeing some complaints in the past on the forums from folks regarding what was perceived as additional details on new content being shared via non-SWTOR owned sites. Is this in response to that criticism? I hope it doesn't mean we won't continue to see Dev interviews on the fansites as those have been very fun and interesting in the past, both as a reader and an interviewer.

 

cheers,

 

Anexxia

 

Of course not! This just means that we will be sure to spread out our communication when WE have new information for you. This does not affect fan sites or any interviews conducted :)

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Of course not! This just means that we will be sure to spread out our communication when WE have new information for you. This does not affect fan sites or any interviews conducted :)

 

Fantastic-- glad to hear it!

:)

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I hope it doesn't mean we won't continue to see Dev interviews on the fansites as those have been very fun and interesting in the past, both as a reader and an interviewer.

 

I think that it is a good thing that all official information is done on the official sources.

 

I was one of the complainers about the fact that you had to read 25 different sources to know what was going on. It would be nice if information is in one central place. Not everyone has time or energy to check all over the internet to find out of the cap will be raised this year or not.

Edited by Yogol
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The team is responsible for more than just communicating via Twitter and our forum posts are somewhat dependent on new information being available. As mentioned in my post, more frequent updates means that more information will become available for us to post about.

 

First off - I've been a constant sub since launch, very pleased with the game as of right now, but not the direction it's been heading as of late. It seems the only way I derive enjoyment from the game nowadays is to actually play it and not read what's being said about it.

 

Secondly, and lastly, one of my main gripes with the community team right now is the lack of activity on the Dev Tracker.. This is one of the main places I check throughout the day for updated info - not Twitter, not Facebook, and certainly not a third-party fansite. I understand that sometimes there is not much to announce other than maintenance outages or server disruptions - That's OK. I'm fine with that. What I am NOT fine with is the lack of actual interaction with the subscribers. It doesn't have to be anything game-related, but I'd feel a lot better if the community team took the time to interact on the forums with the people who help pay the bills.

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This is starting to feel like the boy who cried wolf, but I continue to hold out for you SWTOR, prove us wrong that you do actually care. You can start with this:

List of Bugs from the August 7th Patch (Yesterday) as submitted by /r/swtor

 

I'm aware of my previous post. Circumstances have changed substantially since then and we are now in a position to deliver on the things I have outlined. The list of bugs is currently being looked into and we will update as soon as we have more information. Thank you!

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Secondly, and lastly, one of my main gripes with the community team right now is the lack of activity on the Dev Tracker.. This is one of the main places I check throughout the day for updated info - not Twitter, not Facebook, and certainly not a third-party fansite. I understand that sometimes there is not much to announce other than maintenance outages or server disruptions - That's OK. I'm fine with that. What I am NOT fine with is the lack of actual interaction with the subscribers. It doesn't have to be anything game-related, but I'd feel a lot better if the community team took the time to interact on the forums with the people who help pay the bills.

 

We're aware that different folks get their game news from different outlets, and we're trying to broaden out to make sure that more people get information.

 

Additionally, one of our goals is to make sure that developers interact more with you folks. Allison and I will be working together to ensure that this happens more often.

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one of my main gripes with the community team right now is the lack of activity on the Dev Tracker.. This is one of the main places I check throughout the day for updated info - not Twitter, not Facebook, and certainly not a third-party fansite.

 

<nods in approval>

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This is nice and all.. but, when will the Community team actually start engaging with the Community again. You know, providing information, answering questions (with something besides a "soon" or a link to an unrelated blog/Q&A).

 

Unfortunately at this point, the SWTOR team is in the "actions speak louder than words" phase, as there is very little trust (I think) between the community and BioWare. We need real information, we need real answers to our questions, and we need them soon than later.

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I'm aware of my previous post. Circumstances have changed substantially since then and we are now in a position to deliver on the things I have outlined. The list of bugs is currently being looked into and we will update as soon as we have more information. Thank you!

 

"Now in a position"? Really? So, before, all these times broken bugs have been broken for months at a time (Soa being a fine example), it's because you guys weren't in a position?

 

Here's another example: Explosive Conflict is broken and you can't complete it right now. Lolwhat? Sorry, but that's pretty inexcusable to make content that many people can do, and many others have on farm, stay broken for over 24 hours. I can't remember off the top of my head the last time I was in a game where existing content stayed broken for over a day in WoW or Rift. This could be rose-tinted glasses I'm wearing, but the fact that it's broken in the only Operation we currently have released in the last few months tends to bother me.

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you can expect more frequent updates to the game (which means more information coming to you) and more developer interactions.

 

As apposed to the last time it was stated that you guys wanted to release new content every month to a month and a half... yeah... that didn't work out too well either.

 

Sorry if I'm bitter, but you guys haven't persuaded me to believe that you're actually turning over a new leaf from the bad customer relation I feel this game has had with it's community thus far.

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I think that it is a good thing that all official information is done on the official sources.

 

I was one of the complainers about the fact that you had to read 25 different sources to know what was going on. It would be nice if information is in one central place. Not everyone has time or energy to check all over the internet to find out of the cap will be raised this year or not.

 

I think that fansites and media interviews provide extra flavor on topics, due in part to the players interviewing devs and coming up with interesting questions. I for one would be bummed to only see dev discussions on game topics only on official channels.

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"Now in a position"? Really? So, before, all these times broken bugs have been broken for months at a time (Soa being a fine example), it's because you guys weren't in a position?

 

Here's another example: Explosive Conflict is broken and you can't complete it right now. Lolwhat? Sorry, but that's pretty inexcusable to make content that many people can do, and many others have on farm, stay broken for over 24 hours. I can't remember off the top of my head the last time I was in a game where existing content stayed broken for over a day in WoW or Rift. This could be rose-tinted glasses I'm wearing, but the fact that it's broken in the only Operation we currently have released in the last few months tends to bother me.

 

This. this. this. This is where you guys, as OUR community team, need to be hammering the devs for a fix, and standing up for US (the community). Or has everyone with a backbone been let go?

 

How are we suppose to justify spend $15/month to Op in a few months if Ops stay broken due to a bug introduced by a patch that was not properly tested.

Edited by Agarwaenn
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How are we suppose to justify spend $15/month to Op in a few months if Ops stay broken due to a bug introduced by a patch that was not properly tested.

 

I'm not totally upset that a bug was introduced, but I can't remember being unable to raid new content or farmed content for even one day because the instance was broken. I understand bleeding edge guilds may hit bugs on content as maybe the developers didn't have certain bosses on the PTS and such, but this isn't new content and now every person who wants to progress in gear in content that's been cleared out since the first week the operation came out... is now stuck waiting for a fix. As I said, I can't recall this happening to me in Rift or WoW where raids had to be cancelled because game-breaking bugs were released in the raid instances... I just feel that when certain bugs were released that were pretty game-breaking Trion and Blizzard got those fixed in hours. I feel like they either had the man-power to do that or that they would properly re-prioritize to get those bugs fixed. I do recall BW shutting down the servers for an instant fix on things such as PvP Valor abuse and GTN bug money duplication, but they won't do the same where scores of players can't complete farmed content?

Edited by Lostpenguins
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One of our primary goals with this is to ensure that new information about the game is communicated as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

May I politely ask, that what with this new strategy and all, you think about communicating less about the communicating, and more about the game. Let's start with a few things we would like concrete answers to, outside of the whole F2P FAQ I assume (and hope) is being cooked up somewhere:

 

  • New content expectation, HK, v1.4
  • PUG RWZ
  • Choosing specific WZs when queuing
  • Server transfers and legacy merges
  • Fixing identified bugs
  • Ilum
  • Dual spec
  • Longer GTN postings
  • Character customizations (both gear and character model)
  • Companion customizations
  • Minigames

 

We don't need to hear that you're listening to us. We'll know that you are when we hear what you're doing for us.

 

Thanks

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