BioWare Addresses Community Concerns

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a sizable uptick in total posts from the developers on Star Wars: The Old Republic. Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez talks about the communication on the tracker and hints at new blogs incoming tomorrow.

While we appreciate all kinds of constructive feedback, as Allison pointed out, the forums are only one small measure of communication. Do keep in mind that while some days it seems that there isn't any forum activity from us, we're busy hopping around, taking a look at the SWTOR subreddit, Twitter, Facebook, and responding to PMs.

Consider that our fanbase is large and spread across various social media sites, and you can see that we strive to make sure that they are covered, no matter where our fans are.

We're also working on some new community blogs that we'll be posting in the upcoming week or so, in addition to our standard weekly blogs that we already put up.

Finally, while this team is highly visible, a lot of what we do is internal: responding to developer requests for feedback, moderating the forums, writing patch notes, working with localization, sending various documents & ideas for approvals, working with marketing, maintaining relationships with fan sites & guilds, attending game development meetings, escalating issues, following up on bugs, and much, much more.

In short, measuring the number of gold posts every day is not the best indicator of our overall activity. You're welcome to continue to do so, but know that every day we are working with our developers to respond to your questions here on the forums, which results in about 5-10 developer responses even during a light news week.

If anything, measure against what we had before we started our increase in communication on August 8th. I guarantee that you will see a difference.

Stay tuned for the new blogs, which we'll be debuting starting tomorrow.

As always, thanks for taking an interest in this. Constructive feedback is always welcome and we'll definitely adjust our strategies when there is a need .

 For the thread in full, hit the official forum.

Update: Corrected the intro with the correct version.

Comments

  • #22 Uluain

    A month down the road, after approaching the Community Team via most of the avenues by which Joveth invited feedback, I am seeing the same response as I got from the old Community Q&A. Some topics they just won't touch, and same-gender romance is one of them.

    We are now six months on from the Guild Summit, where Daniel Erickson gave the last official word on same-gender content. That is before the big shake-up at BW Austin, and before the announcement of a move toward free to play. What does this mean for the story updates we were told to expect this year?

    As long as the Community Team dodges the hard questions, all the good intentions in the world won't help. I have noticed and do appreciate all Allison Berryman and the rest manage to get out to us by way of the inside scoop. But I just wish they weren't using that scoop to bury certain subjects.

  • #19 Seydis

    The problem isn't just the volume of posts or updates from BW, it's also the lack of frequency and content (in terms of the quality of communications).

    Take a look at GW2 if you want to see prompt, informative updates from a developer/publisher. The feedback and updates from BW are as fluff-filled as the games "content" updates. Which is also a failure in terms of frequency. How's that new content every few weeks thing working out?

    I'm also speaking as a SW fan that's read almost every EU book and is huge SW nerd. I too wanted to be excited for this game. I anticipated SWTOR for years and only got back into PC gaming in general for this one game. It's a shame it turned out the way it did. Turns out that spending most of your budget on voice acting wasn't the killer feature that would keep players around.

    Last edited by Seydis on 8/30/2012 10:57:44 AM
  • #14 Hahakla

    Pathetic...censoring  posts even at minor blogs like this one.

    That is the only thing they can do for now. Crowd control.

    Read this constructive critic: "Biofail your game does'nt worth a monthly fee, because is boring and unfinished" 

    Bring us back the SWG and keep your game for 12 years old kids...A idea : "Is so lame that you should implement it for be a facebook game like farmville...the gameplay is the same".

    People is tired of tell you what is failing in the game, the problem is it fails at so many levels that you need to do a new one to solve it. 

    You know why so many haters ? Because we wanted to love it, 150€ in a CE to end talking crap must mean something.

  • #15 f0xtr0t369

    So harsh dude.

  • #16 notorious98

    Quote from Hahakla »

    Pathetic...censoring  posts even at minor blogs like this one.

    They're censoring posts here?  Funny because I didn't see that anywhere.  Nor did I read it anywhere.  Considering how many posts there are trashing this game on this site, perhaps you misread it.  Or you're stupid.  I'll go with either.

  • #18 notorious98

    Quote from Hahakla »

    They deleted my post yesterday. Thats why i posted this one , much more hard and filled of anger. 

    It was at the 6 months recap and I talked about the low starwarsy feeling of the game, as it were a asian copy of a original.

    this game sucks and Bioware knows it since 2009 , EAlouse told to everyone and now we are seeing it.

    Star Wars don't deserve this. 

    i  don't know why you need to insult me to feel your opinion more valid, maybe your parents are brothers or you need a girlfriend to remove your moronic personality. I will go either... (ey see that?  I can do the same!!, fun)

     

    The BW community didn't delete your post.  A moderator that works for DH/Curse deleted your post.  Quit passing the blame on people who have nothing to do with it.  And that isn't my opinion, it's fact.  Learn how the internet works before posting your inane drivel.

  • #13 ChuckNorris

    I bet SR is glad he was fired back in the day... no one deserves to work as a CM for any MMO. It's sh!t storm every single day... when your game is "a Miss (by EA, your own effing company)" it only gets worse...

    Plus, there is nothing the CT can do to improve the game, so yes... hey Joveth, since Bioware loves constructive feedback, take the "piece of code" that I posted here on DH and present it to the lead programmer down there at Bioware Austin, show it to that woman that commented about the ops issue... I want her feedback/explanation on why its not possible to do something like that to solve the issue on your US$ 200,000,000 worth piece of software.

    And tell everybody to play some GW2 and MoP when possible... get some constructive feedback from these games... lots of people seem to like them...

    Good Luck.

    Last edited by ChuckNorris on 8/30/2012 7:22:59 AM
  • #12 Esras

    So wait.. hold up... I'm supposed to be happy about, no, excitedbecause I get to hear things like "Soon" and "We don't have anything to say about X,Y,Z at this time" more often?? 

    Results please.  Not soon enough.  You've had more than 8 months now.. how much time do you expect customers to give you?

  • #10 McFool

    Alright the wait is killing me, will somebody link me a picture or a vid of the new SWTOR jinx hoodie? I have been combing the interwebz and I can't find anything.

  • #8 battlebabies

    all i read was "blahblahblahblahblahblah"....that did absolutely nothing for me.

  • #11 barfhatrer

    Pretty much . . . 

  • #3 mlm430047

    Oh yes.. Joveth's discussion on Twitter today about True Blood was riveting.  Very informative for the SWTOR community.

  • #5 jovethg

    My personal twitter is exactly that. You should check out @SWTOR for official information. 

  • #6 mlm430047

    Did you really think that I didn't already follow that?

  • #7 Thoroughmas

    Are you a human being? Even game developers get to have real lives dude.

  • To post a comment, please login or register a new account.