After a news-full convention season things have calmed down to the point where regular Friday updates, that the SWTOR community team releases regularly, are becoming a source of frustration rather than source of much needed revelation. In the past weeks we had a new playable planet, Ilum, revealed. We got to view a new entry in Timeline holorecord about the fall of Exar Kun. This Friday was October Fan Friday filled with great community creations, another developer corner and some new avatars and smileys (Ithorians are so cool I had to include the image of the smileys above) for the official forums. Some new character biographies were also revealed.

Guess what – no one seem to care! The community is in a bit of an uproar. With the advertised release date looming ever closer (6-8 months) people are starting to be anxious wanting to find out about core and important game mechanics. We are still missing info on most advanced classes specifics, detailed combat mechanics, end game options, playable species, PvP, crafting, companion mechanics and this is just to name a few of the more important things. Why does the community think that revelation of this information ASAP is so important?

I remember both World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online had extensive closed beta tests for up to a year prior to game’s launch. In these tests rather large portions of the most dedicated members of the community and beta testers constantly provided in depth feedback, based on which developers modified their concepts. Whether this just meant tweaks or completely abandoning certain features it was all done before things were set in stone. With only 6-8 months remaining before the game is supposed to hit the shelves and none of this community-development process interaction happening people are becoming worried. By the way, LOTRO had one of the most successful MMO launches in the history (not in numbers, but in stability and richness of content and features) and we all know about WoW.

I would suggest reading Jedi Archive Online’s article on the subject or visiting Part 2 of a thread on the official forums aptly titled “Bioware, I’m rooting for you, but you’re shooting yourself in the foot” to read more about these concerns.