Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree is coming soon!

It is true MMO's should not STOP new content development to fix bugs and that all MMO's have plenty of bugs. The problem is that UNLIKE most MMO's, SWTOR's development is generating new bugs much faster than it can quash them while old ones go unfixed. They are piling up. This was not always the case with this game.

The problem was two-fold. First was the massive cut to the game's budget and staff last Spring. Before that happened, bugs were fixed at a decent pace. While not all bugs were fixed, they were at least fixed faster than they were generated. Major issues like a memory leak were actually resolved (mostly) in a fair amount of time.

The second was the introduction of the six-week major patch development cycle. The moment Bioware announced that, I knew what was coming, and everything that has transpired since then has justified my concerns. With reduced money and manpower, not only would each major patch see fewer existing bugs fixed, but with such a short development cycle there would not be enough time to ensure that new content and features are properly completed and tested before they are released, to say nothing of unintentional new bugs.

The result is that every patch will create more bugs than it fixes and/or introduce broken content. This is exactly what has happened. For instance, Heroic space missions, a major feature of 1.6, were broken when released and a month later they still have not been fixed. A large portion of the playerbase, that is, everyone using 32-bit Windows, cannot play this game without constant crashing due to a memory leak re-introduced in 1.4. Four months later, it still has not been fixed. It was fixed in about one or two months the first time around, before the budget cuts. It is offensive that you dismiss such major issues affecting so many people as "whining."

Most MMO's in my experience at least strike some semblance of balance between the fixing of old bugs and the introduction of new ones. Not so here. Here the bugs are piling up like cancer cells. Bioware has stretched the limits of their meager development budget and staff past the breaking point with this ridiculously short development cycle. And this wasn't always the case. The situation was pretty well balanced before 1.4.

Bioware needs to either adopt longer development cycles (or re-adopt them, rather) or put more money and resources into the game so they are able to do more in less time, or preferably both. However, since money and resources are not forthcoming due to EA's loss of confidence in this game, the only realistic option is to extend the development cycles. They should never have shortened them to six weeks to begin with. It was not realistic.

They could also, with their existing budget, redistribute their funds at least temporarily to address the imbalance. It is true that software development companies have different departments that do different things. So they can't have everybody in the company work on bugs. Artists and designers can't go through lines of code to fix bugs. However, what a development company can do is adjust the size and money they allocate to each department. They can lay off 10 people from the new content department and hire 10 people in the QA department.

Bioware needs to embrace the Blizzard philosophy of "we will release it when it is FINISHED" not "we will release it whatever state it's in to keep to the schedule."

Explore Ilum's contested area in the Western Ice Shelf to uncover the mysterious purpose of the Gray Secant, an enormous ancient Gree starship.

Unlikely. As far as I know, Legacy wasn't so it makes sense that this would fall in the same category, but I would love for BioWare to prove me wrong on this. I have so many alts...

Considering Makeb comes with a lvl cap increase, new abilities & reworked talent trees I think it's a pretty safe bet we won't see any meaningful balance changes to the existing system. Effort better spent on getting the new system right.