I heard it's a bad sign to drink alone like that

To be fair, some of us don't have as much opportunities as others to play. We make do with what time is allowed, while we're not busy with family/friends/work/etc, which depending on where you live, can cause you to end up playing only several days a week. Additional downtime that could be handled better just adds salt to the wound in a way.

Wait, max level 30? Did they raise it to 60 within the first month? I recall leveling my Huntard and getting ganked by a far higher level Rogue all the time. I'm pretty sure I was over 30, since I was in the Blasted Lands.

Overall, yes. They did quite a nice job on many aspects of the game itself. I appreciated the feel of basic, somewhat imbalanced PvP before it began its current path. Sure it sucked being completely destroyed by a stealth class without any chance of survival, but I got used to it from other games years ago. *edit: deleted some WoW references lol. I enjoy the addtion of a rail-shooter like the space missions. That added MAJOR points for me. It made me yearn to play some retro games, simple yet fun. The storylines, while many seemingly added without much thought, were still enjoyable. Namely the class specific ones, big thumbs up for most. Some of the primary planet quests (the ones you can't remove... irritating) were enjoyable, but the others just felt like they were just copy/pasta-ing it from generic quests. One thing, I just really don't like the way BW is handling their service. I mention this quite a lot, but ever since the first weeks 2 or maybe it was 3 days' "emergency maintenance" in a row, I knew this was going to be a problem. Content patches are being done the same way. It's difficult to understand why they decided this was the ideal solution, assuming their maintenance crew isn't just 1 or 2 people. A tried and true method that doesn't anger people more than normal is to do predictable patches during scheduled maintenance. Save the odd day patches for real emergency maintenance, such as character sprites not loading (which is an actual bug in PvP), servers constantly crashing, etc. Tonights maint, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it falls into that "real" emergency maint. Players not being able to log in at all, is definitely something noteworthy.

Despite people crying about the times, the underlying issue is the frequency. They began a routine of scheduled maintenance (PERFECTLY fine), but decided to include a separate maintenance day for patches (actual notable content patches). These days, that's pretty idiotic to do. Now under the guise of "emergency" patches, they're continuing to do that for every bug they come across. While there indeed were a couple patches that really did require an immediate emergency maint, most of them didn't. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most, if not all of them were known ahead of time that it was going to be done that day. What I want to know is: why they don't include it into their scheduled maintenance times like almost every MMO? Sure, the downtime would usually be much longer, but it doesn't cause your non-priority area players problems. Which btw, if they had lost, would be a significant hit to them. Word spreads fairly quick, just as FFXIV's *** suckage at launch did. People who didn't even play the game were bashing it. Likewise, people who don't even play this game may begin spreading bad claims about it even more than some probably already do. Not a big deal for long standing major names like WoW, but for SWTOR? It can possibly be pretty bad PR.

Most of these threads aren't very constructive, since they're obviously done by people who don't realize others are in different timezones, and that business wise, there is always a priority location. Having said that though, they do need to work on how they're handling this. Multiple downtimes throughout the week (almost weekly so far) when they know they could have done it during scheduled maint, is very bad practice in the long run.

Just FYI, it's pretty damn easy to juggle gaining exp from sources other than questing. In a sense, you skip half the game by JUST questing to 50. Know why? Because you didn't experience PvP at various levels/difficulties (PvP being part of the game obviously). You may have missed out on doing Flashpoints at their intended levels, played different roles in each at the appropriate level, played the game with varying gear differences, done world pvp while leveling, didn't do space missions at their intended levels as you may have leveled high enough to overpower your ship, etc etc. There's quite a lot to do when you try to experience and play a game. It's all just a matter of perspective. That may be a bit much for folks like you to comprehend though. Everything needs to be right in front of you or done in one way only, nothing else matters lol.

Just responding to this. FFXIV was free for a very long time though (minus the cost to buy the game itself).

It's actually still doing well, at least in terms of its priority subscribers (Japan). SquareEnixs' team, as much as I hate how their lead dev took the direction of the game, they actually handle the maintenance well. For the years I played that game before, they were an A+ when it came to server maintenance and upkeep, compared to Blizzard, BW, etc. They only do maintenance once in a great while, rarely extended maint, uncommonly had problems with server stability that required emergency maint, and almost never shut down servers multiple times a week. This was all during its popular period of global subscriptions. BW's methods of applying patches (many of which really weren't emergency related), including the lengthy duration it takes, on separate days is quite a bother. I'm willing to bet that the methods of upkeep between this and other games, really isn't so significantly different. I'm leaning more towards this being BW's first MMO of sorts, so they aren't quite accustomed to it. Either that, or their team that handles this is VERY small.

As someone who played FFXI for years when it launched in the states, I have to say "I don't know" LMAO. I think FFXI was an example of how much info to NOT keep from players. It literally left you with nothing (or scraps of "hit or miss" info), so some help would have been nice lol. Luckily, fans of the game were crazy enough to figure many things out, but yeah. It years to find out what they did, yet many things are STILL unknown. That being said, while considering what's available to us now (both replies from devs and things found in game), they don't need to handfeed us this sort of info. The crafting system in this game (like many others), for example, actually tells us what items are needed. You won't find that in-game for FFXI lol. So like I was saying, they don't need to baby us through these things.

Two things come to mind. 1) Profiling purposes. Like jazz music in a bar redneck bar. 2) It wouldn't be fair because if a fat man were a better dancer, the more physically fit man will end up with the job. Kudos to anyone who knows what I'm referring to lol. But yeah, in response to that part about why there's more female strip clubs, I think that has something to do with us men usually being more openly perverted lol.

I always lose important things before I get a chance to look at them. :/ ... Also I procrastinate a lot

Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't catch that until it was too late LOL. Apologies.

You really never even played WoW post LFD did you? lol Now's the time to admit it. I'll give you the latter two points, about poop slinging and hair growing in odd places (I've looked in the mirror), but the first two? If you truly believe that, I think you need to understand that the server is comprised of more than just yourself and your group of online friends.

Agreed. What ignorant children these people are. I actually deal with K-12 kids and they're far more open minded than most people here. Interestingly enough, it's mostly the younger grades that I'm referring to.

I'm completely against this (unless it'd be optional to no longer get exp). When I first did space missions and saw that it was a viable leveling alternative, it added major brownie points for me towards this game. I enjoyed the fact that there were a variety of ways to level besides the generic questing and mob grinding. It made me hope for more as time goes on (more methods to earn exp that is).

Decided to play with just 1 hand, ended up keyboard turning as a result. Sad pathetic day.

Paying customer or not, you're not in a position to demand anything in regards to "rights" for something like this. Now, it would be a different story if you were a lead developer for BW, or a CEO, or some very high ranking investor. You know, the ones who actually control their income or position.

Like others had pointed out, repeat things like instances (particularly Black Talon for Imps) is a great way to build up that affiliation and affection. Not to mention social points if that's available to you.

Very very much so this.

Actually there's only maybe single digits in terms of players that populate the forums that don't want the LFD for WoW (just guessing). People may not be 100% for it, like here as well, but it was a damn blessing to have in more aspects than otherwise. What you might be referring to are the people who don't like other people they encounter through LFD lol.

I respect nostalgia greatly, I really do, I mean I have a part in that as well. It's not really MMO's that changed, it's the times. Think about it, todays mentality is fast-paced. Why? We have so many things to do, or that we can do, that it's only "logical" to get things done faster. WoW may have had a huge part in bringing that mentality to MMOs, but it's not the cause. It was inevitably going to hit MMOs at some point in time (and that point in time would have already long occurred). Look at console games these days, people are rushing games out full of bugs. It's amazing how indie games actually play better and have fewer problems than mainstream ones. They even often promote longer or repeated plays for a few dollars, compared to the buggy (and sometimes totally unplayable (crashing)) games by bigger names that cost $50-60+. Think back in the days of Atari. You really didn't have much to do to keep yourself occupied (electronics or even entertainment wise). You were pretty much forced to stick with what little you did have, meaning you wanted more out of a single product. Not because of money or anything, but because you didn't want one of the few things available to you to just end. When things like Everquest arrived, it was the epitome of what the general gamer wanted at the time. An unending adventure. Now, with so many things like that, and other forms of entertainment readily available (both electronic and general RL), we don't care as much to seek those things.

I facepalm when people defend a non-LFD with it not promoting social play. A couple immediate things come to mind. The first is, if making groups now is difficult because people don't care to sit around for hours, it means everyone is soloing... what's social about that? Second, the only difference in terms of social aptitude is the "LFM/LFG" portion you see in general chat. After the invites are sent, there's no required degree of chatting involved that an LFD wouldn't have. Another thing I saw was someone mentioning the anonymity promotes jerkiness. Anonymity would only exist if it were cross-server LFD, I don't think anyone in this thread is asking for that. Also, LFD ruined WoW's community? Use that as a defense, and you clearly don't understand what you're saying. Guilds are still being created/joined, people are generally having fun, people that would socialize still are, so in what way is it ruined? Maybe it was ruined for you because you encountered the D-bag that's found anywhere (RL, online forums, games, etc), but most of us can actually stomach them usually. If you can't, and you just ragequit instantly because a mostly positive tool was introduced, I imagine you have sharp objects readily available for you to escape life with. I'm not for or against an LFD, but take a neutral approach to things (and not a biased one) and you'll start to see positives and negatives. Remember that the main argument against LFD is the social aspects, not the gameplay direction. In WoW, the mentality changed and LFD sped up the process for it to become a race for gear (both good and bad). But if you were playing it back in the day, as well as being attentive to change, you'd know that LFD wasn't the cause. The direction/mentality changed long before LFD.

"Need" gives you priority roll, whereas "Greed" is like a baseline roll. The system will consider Need rolls first, if no one used it, it will follow with Greed, and if no one used either, it will just sit idle on the target for anyone (I think) to loot the corpse.

This is true for when my house phone rings