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Star Wars: The Old Republic posts final weekly community Q&A
It's going to be a few more months before Star Wars: The Old Republic goes free-to-play, but the community still has questions about what will happen with the change, and the latest community Q&A is meant to address the most pressing of those questions. Among the answers is confirmation that neither gear nor characters will be deleted if you opt for the free option rather than a subscription; you'll be able to choose which characters are playable with your limited number of free slots, and you'll retain everything you had as a subscriber with those characters. This week's installment is also the last of the weekly community Q&A posts. As explained by community manager Joveth Gonzalez in a recent forum post, the team is trying to move to a more active system of communication on the forums and through social media rather than providing a structured answer session once per week. Gonzalez hopes that the net effect will be more information for the players and less ambiguity. That being said, if you're curious about the change in business models, there's still important information within this final installment of the weekly series.
When is "ready"? SWTOR's Community Manager discusses player concerns
Many fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic have been concerned about the amount of information released in the last few updates, especially considering the fact that a lot more information was released during the summer. Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid hopped on the forums to address these and other concerns the SWTOR community had. BioWare's line for the last couple of years has been, "We will talk about it when it's ready." According to Reid, the mantra still holds true, but the explanation is a bit deeper when considering what it actually takes to be "ready." Presentation is the first on his list, as Reid explains in a post, "While some of you might say 'But I don't care! I'm sure it'll be good in the final game! I can totally forgive you this time!' I'm afraid we don't get that latitude with, oooh, pretty much 90% of the rest of the world." Another reason is some systems that are ready depend on other systems that aren't ready. And lastly, there are public relations and marketing considerations. In another post, Reid addressed other specific community concerns, such as EU testing and, as one community member put it, "We in the EU do feel like second rate citizen here sometimes." Other concerns like the low amount of developer posts on the forums, in general, and the community's influence on the final game are engaged as well. The full posts are located on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forum, in the developer tracker. Be sure to check there for more information.
