SWTOR forums

Not that I'm in the least surprised by this, but as I've lurked around the SWTOR forums this last week looking for some kind of update on what the heck is going on with the game, it's clear that the forums are a hive of toxic behavior. I know, shocking, shocking. Never seen that before. Let me be clear about two things up front.

1) Yes, the communication director on the forums is a woman (I presume, and everyone seems to treat her like one.) That does NOT mean that criticizing the communication from BioWare is sexist. Anytime anyone throws around "sexism", that's a clear red flag that they don't want to have an honest discussion about the issue that you're trying to talk about, so they're reverting to pointing and shrieking in an attempt to shut you up and make people forget the uncomfortable questions that you're asking. I don't know whether it's because Star Wars tends to attract more SJWs than I'd like these days, or because it tends to attract more simps and try-hard, cringy betas than I'd like these days. Or, for that matter, I don't know if there's a substantial difference between the two sets of people.

2) Yes, I don't live in BioWare's offices, or Austin, or even Texas. HOWEVER! I'm an ethnic Texan. I grew up there and stayed until I was about 26 or 27. My parents still live in Texas. As do my in-laws. As does my sister. As does one of my brothers. As does one of my sister-in-laws. Not to mention a good half a dozen nieces and nephews. And almost all of my old high school and college contacts. I'm aware of the situation in Texas. Unless BioWare is somehow uniquely and statistically unlikely hit worse and harder than practically ANYWHERE ELSE in the state, the idea that nobody can take a few minutes to post something on their website updating the customers about what their changed plans are because of being thrown off due to snow, ice, loss of power, water and internet across much of the place where the developers live and work is kind of absurd. Nobody is faulting them for being behind. What people are criticizing is not letting anyone know what they're doing. The winter storms are starting more and more to sound like an excuse than a reason for lack of any kind of update. I don't mean an update to the game itself, but an update to the communication with their customers about the game.

3) That said, I don't particularly care about the game update happening or not happening. I'm a little disappointed that we unceremoniously started the Gree rotating event when we were overdue for the Bounty Hunter rotating event, which had been announced. I am getting more and more unhappy about the super defensive stance that the company is taking when customers are—rightly—asking what's going on and when they can have updates that they can actually rely on again so that they know what's going on. Regardless of what's happening in the world, let's be clear; at some point, customers just kind of quietly wander away if they don't know what the devil a company is doing that they're paying for a service to. And not necessarily with any particular malice, or throwing up their hands and telling them to go screw themselves; they just wander away and do something else. It happened to me with Red Dead Online when I got tired of waiting on dumb updates. Even when better (I presume) updates finally started coming out again, I didn't care anymore; I'd moved on. I'm done with RDO. Don't care. Not installed on the PS4 anymore, and can't imagine ever playing it again. 

Granted, that probably would have happened anyway, at some point, regardless of how good the content updates were or how good the communication about them was. But the fact that the content updates we got were the absolutely stupid and frustrating hippy Naturalist role, and we were kept in the dark about what the devil was going on for months certainly accelerated my departure. Heck, if they'd released a Mexico update, and some kind of smuggler or heist role, even if it was just warmed over GTA Online content, I'd probably still be playing now. Even if they hadn't released anything like that, but they'd announced something like that, I'd still have a toe left in the water instead of getting up, moving on and not looking back.

Now granted, I'm not there yet with SWTOR. There's still stuff I want to do with SWTOR. But lots of other people already are legendary players, who've done all of the stories multiple times, and without something new to look forward to, they're about where I was with RDO. 

This isn't a case of people being jerks and unempathetic about the impact of a bad weather situation that has made life uncomfortable for a lot of people. But it is what it is, and throwing around excuses—even good ones—won't change it.