SWTOR Is No Longer Supported By Most Sites

Front page:

Now that it was announced that Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are retiring from Bioware I see no reason to continue running SWTOR Life. If a man that ran the creation of the game for 5 years and has a tattoo of its logo on his arm is now gone to make beer, I see no reason whatsoever to be spending my time on writing or talking about the game the way I did in the past 2+ years.

EA Games is a lousy (I use much choicer words to describe them but don't want a ban) company that has killed many franchises and many MANY successful developing houses through their buyouts and subsequent ****** of said franchise/developer.
Did this happen in this case? I can't say for sure, but EA DID force release before the game was ready.

Its embarrassing to witness all the sites give up on the game. Its embarrassing to see all the lead devs and producers give up in the game.

The reason why most sites have/are giving up is simple. Its bad, real bad, Community Management on Biowares part.

Communities and the many fansites are the life blood of any MMO. If you fail to support them, you fail to gain support as is the case with SWTOR. From the early days when Sean was the so called Senior Manager to Stephen Reid, the community team failed to help support fansites.

Sure, we had a couple of 'guild summits' but I am talking about giving exclusive screenshots, interviews, live developer chats through out the pre launch build up and general 'community love'. I did run a site for the game early on, mostly down to my connections with LucasArts at that time and those of you who played Galactic Battlegrounds, Empire At War and SWGalaxies etc will know me from there.

So I would arrange all my community stuff directly through them. Then once EA took over everything - it changed. I was told a so called person whose name is that of a popular Sega fishing game, NOT to attend any media events in the UK any more, make no requests for live chats and that there wont be any kind of support going forward.

Personally, I was stunned. A member of the community team telling me that there wont be any community support. SO I said 'stuff it' and pulled all my plans and ideas to support the game and looking at whats going on around, so is everyone else.

That's the main reason and even still today, the Bioware community team still just don't get what community management is about - its more than just a forum, or a pointless tweet.

This is just a game, so no street riots yet; but the principles are the same when dealing with corporations and the corporate world in general. They are nasty animals! I was very reluctant to try this game out. Despite the exciting SW theme, a large galaxy to explore and the story element.. i always have this image in my head, that behind all this glitter and sparkling promises of adventure and fun, lies a huge monster controlling everything. We can't see it, but when you think about it, you kind of lose passion for gaming. It's all business and a big money scheme.

Talented and passionate game designers put a lot of work into creating a good product; then you have the greedy corporate megalomaniacs - with no other talents than making money - siphoning credits from customers.

It's no doubt that customers are disposable to a certain degree. A Corporation is like an organism and it feeds on individuals, it's a cunning predator. Like the flowers that lures their prey all the way in, then suddenly the leaves shut. The problem is that nothing will change until people stand up and say: "We don't accept this".

As Admiral Ackbar would say: "It's a trap!"

One case where EA has basically killed the game is Warhammer. I loved that game I have a collectors copy EA (through Mythic) is still trying to get a sub from players. They have a FTP to lvl 10 or something but because I payed for the game I can't access it on my collectors account.

Also as happy as I was to get SWTOR I do think EA forced them to release early. It should have come out about the time Mass Effect 3 started to wear off. I have never unsubbed to this game and I don't plan to anytime soon. I don't play every day but when I do play I really enjoy this game. So thank you Bioware for all the work you have put into It and please don't pay to much attention to the rage quitting trolls.

Bioware did this to themselves. Although I cant think of any successful MMO's out there that Lucas arts has been involved in. They refuse to listen to customers. There are bugs still in the game that have been since beta. They have failed in every place that they needed to succeed in.

People haven't given up on the game, but advertisements might have been switched out, and so on, but I see a lot of advertisements on sites for SWTOR now, "SWTOR GOING FREE TO PLAY" and so on. The developers are still working hard on the game, and reviews of the latest version are coming out quickly, guides on how to level up quickly are being made once more, to show to the new influx of players. The developers that worked on free to play were working on it while the devs were working on releasing new content, which they DID, with the updates that came with FTP.

There's so many of the posters that complain that take it way too far. "DERP; THE GAME IS DED IN -X- AMOUNT OF DEYS ANYWAY." and "IM GUNNA QUIT COS I LOST THE LOTTERY." My tip to you, read this and play for as long as you enjoy the game, and you'll see that new content, be it cartel items or new features, are on the way.