SWTOR: Random Complaint thread. F2P means P2Win

**Insanecyclone** · 2012-04-12 20:56

http://kotaku.com/5901593/star-wars-...free-game-time

Star Wars: The Old Republic Manages to Piss Off Players By Handing Out Free Game Time

After all the trouble Star Wars: The Old Republic has seen since its launch late last year, BioWare today decided to reward its "most loyal players" that stuck with the game a free month of game time. How could that possibly go wrong? It's all about the definition of "most loyal players".

BioWare apparently defines them as "every active account with a Level 50 character as of April 12th, 2012 at 12:00PM CDT / 5:00PM GMT". Accounts that fall within those criteria receive a free month of game time. It's a positively lovely gesture, but not everyone that's maintained an active subscription since the game launched has a level 50 character.

It's not that getting to level 50 is particularly difficult. Some players are alt-aholics, creating new characters every few days. Others are more social players, spending their time online chatting and fooling about instead of leveling. Others still don't have as much time to play, grabbing a quick hour here or there. Those players will still benefit from the Legacy Tauntaun Ram being given out to players with a registered account in good standing, but they won't get the free game time.

One would assume "most loyal" would apply to any player that's stuck with the game over the past five months. Star Wars: The Old Republic has had a rather tumultuous relationship with its players so far. The first major update broke high-end player-versus-player combat. The latest update went live without Ranked Warzones, further irritating the fanbase.

And now this.

The game forums are once again awash in conflict over this "gift". Players with level 50 characters are pleased with the present, as one might expect. More casual players, not so much. From the forums:

Good to know only level 50's matter. A free month would have kept me playing in the hope you would actually improve pvp. I'm not willing to pay you every month on the small chance you will eventually fix the broken pvp in this game.

I'm upset that I'm not going to be able to receive my free month. I've been a subscriber since early access, but because of school and work, don't have the time to play all that often. I have a level 43 and 47 on different servers, and it kinda angers me that I wouldn't be able to get my free playtime even though I've been here since day one.

Some players are trying to explain the decision away as being meant to appeal only to the hardcore PVP crowd, upset over the exclusive of the eagerly-awaited Ranked Warzones. Whatever the reason, this seems like a real boneheaded move on BioWare's part. Perhaps they should have started with a smaller game and learned the ropes instead of consistently screwing up one of the biggest MMO releases of the past decade.

Apparently people subbed day 1 with no 50's because of having a life are not 'loyal' oh lawd

**Ambrosia** · 2012-04-12 21:46

Well that plus the several threads about folks wanting a server merge. People are pretty ticked off about their servers feeling like ghost towns. At the moment you have close to 110 servers at standard and light status (but even folks with the standard status have complained at the lack of population as well). However there are 2 servers that register "Very Heavy" and 2 servers that register "Full."

Someone mentioned that "The Fat Man" server has a waiting queue = Ownage™

4 servers compared to the other 110.

E.A.: Well proof in the puddung. It is Ownage™

Me: Don't you mean pudding?

E.A.: No I eat puddung.

I was going to investigate when all of a sudden I ran into this article posted a couple of days ago.

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/s...ames-ohlen-and

*Snips*

There is a lot of debate in the community about server population. Any insight on how you guys feel about the population distribution?

JO: We always take feedback from the community and from all kinds of different sources like our telemetry metrics, and take it very seriously. When we hear that from the community, we are listening. We have the plan to allow for character transfers in the future.

Is there any discussion of merging servers or adding incentives to move players to low pop servers?

JO: No, we’re not going to. Merging servers is not something we are looking at. We have a very healthy game right now, so that is not something we are looking at in the near future. We're always going to look at ways to make sure a server is healthy. There are a whole bunch of different ways you can do that. We're discussing them. We want to make sure players feel like there are enough players on their server to play with.

**vrumpt** · 2012-04-12 22:21

They can't merge servers until they get their character transfer system up and running. Once that happens and is set up to be automated then they can merge servers.

**Insanecyclone** · 2012-04-12 22:41

I heard it was because of the engine or was that bs?

**vrumpt** · 2012-04-12 22:53

Originally Posted by Insanecyclone

I heard it was because of the engine or was that bs?

probly bs and SWTOR hater crap. Logically since a server merge is just moving everyone on one server to another you need a server transfer system up.

**Insanecyclone** · 2012-04-13 00:30

**Dantrag** · 2012-04-13 12:17

lol

**Hitoru** · 2012-04-13 13:14

So various parts of the game and servers randomly reverted to pre 1.2 patch. Servers are down now until about 7pm EST. Giving people a free day of play because of it or something. I laughed.

**Dantrag** · 2012-04-13 13:24

lol WOW. Mid game revert and planets disappearing. Ouch.

**vrumpt** · 2012-04-13 13:51

A free day of game time to compensate. At least Bioware is following the mantra of "every time we fuck up, we aren't gonna pay ourselves".

**Dantrag** · 2012-04-13 13:56

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/in-game/47043099/#47043099

**Lordender** · 2012-04-13 16:13

That my friends, is the same sound when the Millennium Falcon's hyper drive failed in Empire Strikes back.

**vrumpt** · 2012-04-13 18:05

Originally Posted by Insanecyclone

http://kotaku.com/5901593/star-wars-...free-game-time

Star Wars: The Old Republic Manages to Piss Off Players By Handing Out Free Game Time

Apparently people subbed day 1 with no 50's because of having a life are not 'loyal' oh lawd

Good guy Bioware strikes again!

Hello everyone! At BioWare we're always listening to our fans and we've heard our community's comments around players with Level 50 characters being the only group awarded 30 days of play time. We appreciate the feedback and are pleased to announce that we are expanding our Legacy Promotion, also awarding 30 days of play time at no charge to players that have reached Legacy Level 6 (who may not have a 50th level character).

We just released the innovative Legacy System as part of Game Update 1.2, and felt that looking at Legacy point progression across all of your characters was a great way to reward our most avid players. This means that any of the experience you earn with any of your characters brings you closer to the goal of Legacy Level 6. The choice of how to get to Legacy Level 6 is yours.

First, you need to have passed Chapter 1 to unlock your legacy. Examples of how to get to Legacy Level 6 include:
A pair of characters Level 45 and 42
A trio of characters of Levels 45, 32 and 32
A bunch of characters Levels 35, 33, 31, 29 and 20
A single 50th level character that has enjoyed the endgame for a brief time
Remember these are just examples – you’re free to choose how to earn your Legacy experience to gain Legacy Level 6.

We've also got another significant piece of good news: everyone will have until April 22nd at noon CDT (5:00pm GMT - click here for a time zone converter) to have a Level 50 character or Legacy Level 6 on their account to get 30 days of game time on us. (Your 30 days of game time will be applied to your account on April 25th by 11:59pm CDT.) Players will now have multiple options, as well as more time, to try and reach these goals.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and will do our best to surprise and delight our customers.

Dr Greg Zeschuk
Studio GM, BioWare Austin

**Dantrag** · 2012-04-14 17:55

Wow, such a troll company. Or you could just... give it to everyone who has founder's and still subbed...

tol · 2012-04-14 18:47

sure then everyone who doesn't have a founders title would cry endlessly

**Rulke** · 2012-04-16 13:21

Have I bitched about this before? I can't remember, but if I have it's because this kind of garbage is STILL in the game. I'm talking about the little glitchy crap that BW can't seem to patch properly:

* Enemies dying standing up
* My npc spawning with her light saber out, then if she puts it away, it still "on" so she runs's around with a live lightsaber clipped to her belt >< It magically fixes itself when away from towns and out in battle. While this is a nwe occurance for me, my wife's NPC has done this for months.
* Invisible speakers in cutscenes. Holy crap. This is supposed to be one of the draws of this game. When the speaker is missing and vocals are blaring away it ruins any "immersion" they are trying to accomplish.

I guess I am bringing this sort of stuff up again beause its always the little things that bother me and just seem sloppy. Imo these things should be patched/fixed on a weekly basis. When everyday gameplay is buggy it doesn't bode well for longevity of a franchise I think.

**Ambrosia** · 2012-04-17 01:52

*Puts on Monocle™*

*Ahem*

Let's see what we have here shall we?

From the interview Darth Hater had with James Ohlen and posted on April 10th 2012 one of the questions was:

Is there any discussion of merging servers or adding incentives to move players to low pop servers?

JO: No, we’re not going to. Merging servers is not something we are looking at. We have a very healthy game right now, so that is not something we are looking at in the near future. We're always going to look at ways to make sure a server is healthy. There are a whole bunch of different ways you can do that. We're discussing them. We want to make sure players feel like there are enough players on their server to play with.

Well let us now fast forward to April 16 2012. 6 days into the very distant... extremely distant future.

Now Gamer posted an interview with Lead Designer Daniel Erickson, here are some of the highlights:

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1324496..._possible.html

"One of the problems we’re running into right now is kind of a classic MMO problem, which is that our overall population of players has not changed, but our peak concurrent users has changed," Erickson told Now Gamer.

"Are server merges a possible solution? Absolutely. Are character transfers a possible solution? They’re a definite solution and we’re going after that first."

Well now that is a completely "almost" different answer to the one given just 6 days ago. A long long time ago you say?

*Sips on some Earl Grey tea*

Let's see what else we have here:

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...Transcript.pdf

"I've heard from investors today saying that we must have 800,000 subscribers. I heard 600,000 yesterday. So what I think a lot of people have misunderstood is we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago. What that was about was the fact that only about – just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers. We had about half that total still in the 30-day trial period, but they're subscribers because that first month is including with a package good. What I said a month ago was, just over half."

As someone stated:

"We sold 2 million boxes. Of those 1.7 million people activated the game and are therefore included in our subscriber numbers for Q3 ending 12.31.2011, since you have to subscribe to play the game even if you only play for ONE MONTH and cancel at the end of that first month.

Officially, EVERYONE who bought the game and activated their subscription is a subscriber to our investors. Unofficially we're in trouble. Handing out free time and free days and free months and free trials for friends and their friends and the friends of their friends...

Get out your Maybelline, this pig needs a LOT of lipstick."

**ringthree** · 2012-04-17 09:00

But, but, but! 1.2 SAVED SWTOR! SAVED IT I TELL YOU.

That was an excellent post. I chopped up some parts of it to post on another forum. I read that earnings report and it wow... that is some serious doublespeak. LOL

**Dantrag** · 2012-04-17 09:05

We had about half that total still in the 30-day trial period, but they're subscribers because that first month is
including with a package good. What I said a month ago was, just over half. I can now confirm for you today that
the vast majority of the 1.7 is now triggered through that point and they're recurring subscribers.

So fucking confused. I think he's doing that on purpose...

**ringthree** · 2012-04-17 09:10

Originally Posted by Dantrag

So fucking confused. I think he's doing that on purpose...

What IS completely obvious is that the 1.7 million players that fan boys tote is NOT what the real number of subscribers is at. It sounds like it's just above half, and then it sounds like the "vast majority". I don't know if talking like that is going to resolve the anxiety that he is talking about at the beginning of that paragraph.

I want my fucking $60 back for this piece of shit game, Bioware.

Thread: SWTOR: Random Complaint thread. F2P means P2Win

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