Some Feedback for Swtor
I've been playing since Christmas right after launch. My wife started a couple of weeks later. We're members of a founding guild and she's the guild master now.
Unfortunately, like many other guilds, ours is almost dead. Before 4.0 we had 14 or 15 active raid groups and over a hundred active players. Within a couple of months of 4.0 we were down to 2 raid teams and 20 or so active players. Now we're down to one raid team after the mess that is 5.0 and maybe 10 active players, maybe less. Our raid team used to have extra people 3 nights a week, now we try to raid 3 nights a week but can only guarantee a group one night a week. Once that dies I'll be out of the game. I am playing elsewhere most of the time now and will likely be there full time by Christmas (It will take a minor miracle to have my raid team still around by then and a major one to have it around by Spring.)
I have loved Star Wars since Episode 4 came out as Star Wars in 1977. I loved this game through 3.x. 4.x took all the shine away as the devs repeated the same mistakes that almost killed the game at launch but I was hopeful the dev team and EA might listen and reverse themselves. Instead we got 5.0 with the worst gearing system the game has seen, absolutely terrible content, more bugs than not and yet more repeated mistakes. The departure of Ben Irving had me hoping for a major change of course, but that hasn't occurred and the game population has continued to drop. Most of the servers are ghost towns, so far 5 days in a row this week and no NA server has gone above light. So, you will find I am bitter about where the game has gone and where incompetent decision making has lead it. IMO, the decision making team the decided on the direction for 4.0 and green lit it and the group for 5.0 who did the same should all be out of the game industry. SWTOR needs a MAJOR overhaul, maybe to the point of a relaunch with a decision making team that actually has a clue listen to their paying customers. FFXIV, ESO and WoW all seem to be pretty good at that. There is no reason a Star Wars game shouldn't be other than terrible management.
So, I am hoping the game pulls out of the tail spin, but am not hopeful. A lot will have to change before anything can get better, from getting rid of a 32 bit client, to engine improvements, to going back to 8 class stories, to retconing out 4.x and 5.x entirely. Somehow I don't see EA spending the money to do that.
OT, I have been in IT formally for over 20 years, informally for 10 before that. I am also the president of a new 501.C.3 non-profit who's mission is to help veterans with PTSD.
