SWTOR unsubscribe option goes missing for some [Updated]

@(Unverified) It may have worked wonders for you, but RealID was the worst idea in the history of bad ideas (thanks, Dr Malcolm). It was a MAJOR reason for me to finally close the doors on Azeroth for good, after five years of very loyal service.

It hasn't shaken my trust in big companies, though. I never trusted them to begin with. Big companies are in it for the big bucks, and when you realize that, a lot of these decisions become quite logical.

Still, I have no doubt BioWarEA had no evil intentions in this. They lock a lot of threads for the silliest of reasons (as mentioned above - my first every warning -which was revoked after I complained about it- was also on the TOR forums). The mods there can be a little draconic at times. But it's their forums, so they can do whatever they want.

@Lenn I never understood the whole hate for RealID: It's completely optional. If you have RL friends who play it's great, but if you don't then you can ignore it.

Now the RealID on the forums idea was stupid and that shook my trust with Blizzard, but the community rose up and showed Blizzard they can't get away with whatever they want. I doubt they will try it again, but now we know we can stop them if they do.

@(Unverified) Its fanboism like that that has really gotten under my skin with TOR. Never have I seen a community so willing to attack those that dissent or ostracize those that would take a step back and consider taking a hiatus or criticize a failing mechanic

@Axethor For me it was two things: the RealID as it is implemented now, while great for many, was another instance of facebookification to me. I hate facebookification. Facebookification of the games I play and of the websites I frequent. I don't have a facebook account, I don't *want* a facebook account. Keep your book out of my face, please. Games shouild be games, and not yet another social media for facebook and its ilk to get plugged into.

Secondly, the forum RealID fiasco. Yes, Blizzard backed down from that, but it showed me one thing very, very clearly: Blizzard is now populated by a bunch of halfwitted morons who have absolutely no concern when it comes to the privacy of those who invest in their games. They should never have come up with that stupendously bad idea in the first place. The fact that, apparently, nobody at Blizz HQ spoke up during the meeting in which this was discussed and said "you know, maybe this isn't such a hot idea after all" baffles me beyond belief.

@Nenene

Mythic already had a patent for that :p

@Irem

You two know each other? O.O

@Utakata

...sorry, that was a personal question. And nothing to do with this article. I should of known better to ask. My extreme apologies for that. So just /ignore it. :(

@Utakata
LOL, it's okay. Yes, we live together. In real life she's the nice one.

@(Unverified) Warning, extreme fanatic Blizzard fanboi alert!!

RealID is stupid, everybody using his brain would know that.

@Irem

Ah...okays! And admitting the good cop/bad cop routine goes into reverse with you two when you go offline is...um interesting. But either way, all is good. But I never would of guessed both of your connections...and was surprising as fnding out Space Cobra and NeverDeath where an item IRL for example. O.O

But anywhoose...and back on-topic. I certainly agree with your sentiment for Real ID and leaving WoW. As I stated in a later post, there are some "mistakes" that are unforgivable. And even when they are corrected (as they appear to be now with this un-sub fiasco), there's still that lingering distrust that the player will always have.

After all BioWare/EA/Mythic where pretty much committing theft if they decided never to put that option up there. And the timing of this mistake makes it very suspicious even if they have fixed it. I know I can't trust them after this.

@Utakata
It's more like bad cop/bad cop; she just rolled a natural 20 to diplomacy and subterfuge at birth.

@(Unverified)
It's a fact that using my real name makes me think twice about posting anything at all, constructive or otherwise, and if you lower the number of people posting in a given place the asshole ratio will usually drop no matter the reason. This is an internet hobby, I don't need it reflecting on the rest of my life.

When the real names on the forums thing was announced, among the people asking for it to be reconsidered were professionals, parents, people who felt unsafe divulging their identity, and people who simply hated the idea of being tied to their RL persona while posting about a game where you slay dragons and go adventuring. I remember a lot of trolls crowing about it, mocking the people who had legitimate concerns, and posting their own names just to show how little of a crap they gave. I can only imagine they'd be the bulk of the people posting on the forums any more if it had gone through.

@Utakata
Sometimes something happens with a game company or to a game that you really love that just completely destroys all of your joy and investment into it. For me with WoW, that was the RealID/forums fiasco. I quit that week and I've never gone back.

Ever since then I've been much more apt to read the warning signs of a company signaling that they're about to screw me over. With Bioware, DA2 was my warning sign, and for the most part I think my decision to stop buying their games was the correct one. I love FFXI, but I wasn't about to swallow what FFXIV was trying to sell me either, although I have enough goodwill for the company left to give Yoshida and FFXIV 2.0 a chance.

I think what some MMO publishers are losing sight of is the stark reality, which is this: We don't NEED to buy video games, and if your product is substandard, we won't.

@Irem
Honestly I don't think your statement is true. Smaller groups of people posting really doesn't have anything to do with the jerk-to-nice person ratio. Communities with 1000 people have huge numbers of jerks. The lack of anonymity makes a pretty huge deal in the signal to noise ratio of a messageboard.

@Nenene

I couldn't agree with you more. A natural 20 for insight.

@cotheer yeah. because it's always easier to blame a company and game that you have been hating on before it was even playable than to blame the obvious.

@jslim419
Obvious what?
A day before billing date, browsers decided to go into strike and hide the unsubscribe option, because you know, browsers tend to do that.

Those damn troll browsers.

@cotheer It would appear that no one would really bother to unsub until a few days before, thus the problem likely went unnoticed until the pay up date came and then people were like what! Rawr! Hate! EA sucks! but really other than pulling down the help threads this could be legitimate.