I heard that the rapid fire patches of Rift have also caused quite a few headaches. Ultimately I didn't care much for the game for the time I played it. The overall playspace is small. The animations just look too stiff. The class system is a balance nightmare. The questing was the same as in any other MMO. The artistic style of the game bored me. There was nothing about that game that gripped me. I had to force myself to level to see what the game had to offer. By the time I hit 20 it felt more like some kind of punishment I owed myself for a past deed.

After talking to a couple of my friends about it they managed to convince me that it is not original for several reasons. I won't go into it but I'll back off from this discussion and simply say that there is nothing original in the least bit about Kaon Under Siege. However we all agreed that original or not they did a good job with the Flashpoint. Better than most of what they have.

Point out to me several of these concepts so we can break them down. Opinion. Point being that it is a very small part of a larger game and therefor not subject to comparing something that took an idea and made it the entirety of the product. I don't see how this has anything to do with what I said. Apparently you seem to think that attacking Star Wars for its obviously unoriginal settings and stories will in some way affect my stance. It only furthers my point. It's difficult to be original. The further along we go the more difficult it becomes. Again, my point was that Kaon Under Siege was a take on survival horrors elements of modern games. The atmosphere of it. Ofcourse I know that WoW had zombies. Hell an entire expansion was based around the Undead. None of those games that you mentioned had anything in them that felt like they were playing a type of Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead in an MMO setting. It's not that it was the first MMO to showcase horrors of some kind. It was the feeling of a modern survival horror theme in an MMO. Borderlands does not count because it is not an MMO. You can keep saying that all you want. If you created a game that was about shooting monsters but then there was a section of you shooting rockets at people engaging in forbidden love that was an obvious take on Romeo and Juliet would that not be original? Survival Horror is a genre of videogames. Subgenre to be more specific. MMORPG is also a genre.

He just needs a tan. Maybe a vacation on Tatooine?

Ofcourse they want to make money off of this but Bioware is not Lucasarts. However aggressive Lucasarts is when protecting their IPs cannot be somehow faulted onto Bioware. Perhaps a very large portion of that Flashpoint? If they don't qualify as references how about nods? Winks? Tongues-in-cheeks? If you didn't play Left4Dead it's not up to Bioware to come out and say "hey guys there's this game called L4D...". If you don't know what L4D is you're not going to understand what they're trying to say anyways even if they quite literally say in a cutscene "...it's like we were.... left for dead". If you know what it is then you'll pick up on it as so many people apparently have. Nothing in interviews or official sources? Has anyone asked them about the Flashpoint and its inspiration? If they did and Bioware said nothing of Valve or L4D then yes I will call BS and stand with you on this but Bioware is not obligated to come out and say it without prompting. Just like Blizzard never had to with any of their references. Obvious or obscure. Except that this is one little Flashpoint in a massive game that combined established Star Wars lore with elements of another game. Point being that trying to do anything original these days is next to impossible because you could even nitpick at Left4Dead's gameplay elements and say they're not original unless combined into what Left4Dead became. No because you're dodging my point. My point is not whether Kaon Under Siege is orignal in and of itself. Because it is not. What is original is the situation like I have been trying to say but apparently you either don't get it or don't want to. So I'll use caps. A DUNGEON THAT IS USING ELEMENTS OF MODERN SURVIVAL HORROR IS ORIGINAL IN THAT IT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OTHER MMOs! Just like the first movie about zombies would have been the original zombie movie regardless of what was written about zombies in the past. A book talking about zombies would be the original zombie book. A first person shooter about zombies would be original in that it is the first FPS with zombies in it regardless of the fact that zombies and first person shooters existed separately in the past. I was making a general remark not actually aimed at the conversation. An aside if you will. Don't get your panties in a twist. If it seems like I sometimes start to stray I apologize. I haven't been feeling all too well the last couple days. Please don't take anything I say too seriously even if it seems like I'm trying to fight about something. Ultimately none of this matters anyways.

Malgus. Respirators turn me on.

Last I heard it was coming in early April.

Cringe? Really? You should probably chill then. I used that to establish a barrier. No one typically cares if a genre takes a page from a different one. However, when two games take from one another in the same genre people cry foul and the forums are in flames. I threw that out there as a point for the people who might not be aware that Left4Dead is not an MMO. I wasn't arguing that person in particular. Perhaps I should have been a bit more specific. Yes the difference between an homage and a ripoff is intention. I think they made it pretty obvious which way they were going with it. Insulting? Again... really? It makes it something original for the genre. When was the last time you found yourself in a dungeon in some MMO that was obviously a take on modern survival horror? True originality these days is scarce without diving into the completely absurd because so many things have already been done. Sometimes you have to take something unoriginal and put it into a different setting just to be original. It is not the same if someone takes an original work and makes it the premise for their entire creation compared to someone who just took a page and used it in a different setting for even one small part of the story. Bioware wanted a survival horror theme to one of their Flashpoints and this was the result. Instead of trying to disguise what it was they gave us obvious references to their inspiration. Honestly at this point show me a story about infectious, zombie-like outbreaks that can be considered original. Left4Dead itself isn't even all that original. As I said, it's original in the sense that it was the first time (that I'm aware of) that a developer gave us a dungeon based on modern survival horror elements in an MMO. It was an homage to a completely different genre of videogames. Considering the very large amount of positive feedback they're receiving on it I'd say they succeeded.

Having played WoW for over 5 years I can tell you that this kind of thing happens all the time for various reasons. I was in guilds where the majority or nearly all of my guildmates had quit the game. From the end of vanilla WoW all the way to Cataclysm. So I can tell you without a doubt that guilds falling apart because people became disinterested in the content is actually very normal. The blame can't be sent to Bioware because it is just not possible to please everyone. There are also so many people who jump to a new MMO expecting the depth and diversity that WoW has built over years, get disappointed when the game isn't as fully featured yet, get angry when it takes time, and leave. It happened in Aion. It happened in Rift. It's happening in The Old Republic. It will happen for Tera. It will happen for Guild Wars 2. World of Warcraft has, in more ways than one, crafted so many barriers for new MMOs that most of them don't have a chance to overcome them.

There was another thread about current subscription counts where it was pointed out that the numbers as of March 1st were holding at 1.7 million since January and that it was not due to the Asian launch because the report came out before that happened. I don't believe we'll know the numbers with the Asian launch until later this month. EDIT: Made a mistake in the timeline. The report was announced as 1.7 million the same day that the Asia/Pacific servers launched apparently. The 1.7 million are still not counting anything gained from those servers, however.

1) Left 4 Dead is not an MMO. 2) Homages are not ripoffs. 3) If something like this did not exist in previous MMOs then it is, infact, original. Original for the genre.

I feel that Bioware is allowed to make these 'mistakes' in game design as their product is young and a significant portion of their team hasn't done anything like this. Now if Bioware ends up being guilty of the same thing Blizzard is 4 or 5 years from now then yes I'd say there is a problem. The honesty of Ghostcrawler is nice and I don't want to sound like what he said doesn't matter but we're talking about a game that had been around for quite awhile and they only just now realized some of the growing problems with WoW? The end-game zones feeling disconnected did not bother me as far as the fact that they were quite literally physically disconnected. What bothered me, as someone who enjoys story, is that it was the story connections that felt lost. Going from Uldum and doing everything there and then heading back home while someone barely mentions what we just accomplished before shoving us off to Twilight Highlands with little build-up was, to me, where the disconnect was at. The story disconnections were made worse by the terribly conceived villain. First of all Deathwing had always been a cunning creature in the past. Now suddenly he's just this loudmouthed "RAWR I'M GOING TO BURN EVERYTHING" monster with no rhyme or reason. He makes a few VERY short appearances and even those appearances are nothing more than showing off a huge dragon. Then we had the extremely random and equally short events (I still know some people who play and have yet to cross paths with him) where he just burns things, possibly killing you in the process, and then leaves. For a villain who was so heavily promoted as the centerpiece for Cataclysm we didn't see much of him. Next we have the whole idea of releasing great content for everyone and moving away from linear leveling. I really wish I could have been there when he said this so I could have thrown my collector's edition box of Cataclysm at his head. After which I would have yelled at him, "The Burning Crusade! Wrath of the Lich King! Cataclysm!". Why? Because that's how many expansions it took for them to realize that certain players were left in the cold and that their leveling experience was heavily linear?? In all three expansions, the post-launch content was almost exclusively aimed at PvE endgamers. People who enjoyed battlegrounds or PvP zones would get one or two new ones and then have to wait over a year or almost two years before they got anything new. Content was more and more aimed at gearing people up for raids instead of trying to find new ways to engage the playerbase. Even the dailies that existed were about engaging people for the existing endgame content. What's worse is that in Cataclysm even the PvE endgamers got the finger. They had to wait 7 months before new raid content was released and all they got was an extra boss added to Baradin Hold and a 7-boss Firelands raid. Then they had to wait another 5 months or so before getting another Baradin Hold boss and an 8-boss Dragon Soul raid. The raid boss count for Cataclysm is by far the lowest in WoW's history and it didn't take very long to reach those bosses. The epic raids of past expansions like Black Temple, Sunwell Plateau, Icecrown Citadel, and Ulduar (probably the greatest raid of all time) were nowhere to be found. It wasn't even a matter of quality over quantity. These raids just simply felt like Blizzard either didn't put much effort into them or somehow ran out of ideas. Dungeon runners got two Heroic-only 5-man dungeons in the form of two rehashed, retuned Troll raids and then didn't get to see anything completely new until a year after launch where they got three more Heroic-only 5-man dungeons. The bottomline here is that it was just a total failure in post-launch content all the way around. In all three of those expansions your options were extremely limited for leveling. In The Burning Crusade you went through 5 zones in order until reaching the end in which you had a choice of either Netherstorm or Shadowmoon Valley. In Wrath of the Lich King they did a bit better. You had a choice to start off in either Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord and then you went through the next 5 zones in order to then come to another potential split of Storm Peaks or Icecrown Glacier. Then came Cataclysm where you decided between Mt. Hyjal or Vashj'ir but the other 3 zones were done in order. So it took them 3 expansions to realize that the choices they gave us for leveling paths during pre-expansion WoW (what many felt was a strong point of the game) had taken a backseat to overly linear content and that many players were not happy about it? For all of the criticisms I see leveled at Mists of Pandaria I do feel that much of what they're doing is what needed to be done. Like it or not the Pet Battle System is something very different. A new type of content for those who have become bored of the same old thing but also with connections to other aspects of the game since certain pets can only be acquired through doing other parts of it. The PvE Scenarios are also something that people have snickered at or complained about but once again it is a new type of content giving the players another way to play instead of what has been typically offered. Challenge Mode Dungeons will give a new competitive edge to something that has been seen as nothing more than a stepping stone to raiding. Add onto this that the next expansion will give PvP'ers 3 new Battlegrounds (with objectives that are very different than what has been in the past) right from the start as well as a new map for Arenas and it at least APPEARS that Blizzard is finally acknowledging where they have been going wrong. The big question will be what will their post-launch content look like? If it still ends up being nothing but more dungeons and raids with some dailies sprinkled in then Blizzard will show that they don't understand one of the underlying problems with WoW. That giving something for everyone in the beginning and then catering to one group for the rest of that expansion causes a division in your playerbase. One particular group is getting what they want on a constant basis while the rest are forced to wait years. As far as linear leveling I highly doubt that is going to change with MoP. I could be surprised but based on what I've seen at this point I can't imagine how Blizzard is going to go back to the way leveling use to be. So what should Bioware do to avoid the problems that Blizzard is just now acknowledging as well as do what Blizzard has done right? 1) Content updates should be as diverse as possible and on a consistent timeline. We won't always get something like 1.2 and that's understandable but don't make your players go an entire year, through 3 updates, and all you've given them are a handful of Flashpoints, a couple Operations, and a new daily area. Also, updates should come every 3 or 4 months. Release new content too early and players won't feel like they had adequate time to do the previous content and if you release an update beyond 4 months you had better make sure it's a huge update. 2) Try to step away from linear leveling. I understand that Bioware is trying to tell a story but that can still be accomplished even when giving the players choices as to where they level. Story completionists will still go back and do the other missions on the other planets but don't force players who do solo PvE leveling to go through every single planet in the game. It's fine the first time but after 2 or 3 characters it becomes a headache. It's too familiar. Repetitive. They're already going to have a lot of repetition in the endgame. Don't make that something they experience from start to finish. I don't even care if you give us certain choices for some areas but then force us into others. For example; Aa or Ab -> B -> Ca or Cb. Any variation of that would work as well. Just give us something significantly less linear at least. 3) TOR needs to match or exceed WoW in UI and Guild functionality, content amount and diversity, and depth. They need to not simply do this casually either. They need to be aggressive about it. Blizzard has been all too casual with such things but they could afford to. There was no significent competition. 3a) The UI and Guild functions need to pretty much be at the same level as WoW by the end of the first year and Bioware should push Guild features further afterwards. 3b) Blizzard is expanding their content diversity greatly in WoW very soon and Bioware needs to step up and challenge them. Pet Battle Systems, PvE Scenarios, and Challenge Mode Dungeons will need to be met by new types of content in TOR. Possibly by adding things like minigames (Pazaak, Dejarik, Swoop Racing), expanding the space experience (which they apparently have plans for), and maybe even the PvPvE Battlefields that some people have suggested as a separate form of content from Warzones. 3c) Bioware seems to be doing a solid job of providing Flashpoints and Operations. Though Operations are declared too easy right now I think we'll see the difficulty ramp up soon. TOR's Warzones need to play catch-up with WoW's Battlegrounds. I'd say there should be at least 5 Warzones by the end of the first year but push for as many as 6 of them. In-game events need to be added which they say will be coming. Seasonal, monthly, one-time, and random events would go a long way in giving life to the world and giving players reasons to go to other planets they forgot about. 3d) Additional ways to expand the combat abilities of your character in all aspects of the game and modifying your gear more than is currently available are things that I feel will become necessary in the future. This shouldn't be an immediate concern but definitely something that Bioware should prepare for. Things are relatively simple now but I believe they will have to gradually make things a little more complex as time goes by. 4) Bioware needs to own their cinematics. This is the one part of TOR that Blizzard can not even hope to compete with Bioware on. Current cinematics are too often static or focused on just the conversation. Cinematics which cut away to show you things that you and the NPC are talking about (like showing a battle between Republic and Imperial forces at a base or a warship orbiting the planet waiting for the call to bombard a target) is something that myself and many others envisioned when Bioware was talking about their cinematic scenes. It may just be for show but that's not a bad thing if what we see is entertaining or gives us a view of something we will fight for or just fought for. 5) Finally, Bioware needs to increase the life of their worlds. So many planets in TOR don't have nearly as much going on as they could have. For a game as old as WoW, their zones feel much more alive even in areas that you would normally associate as being lifeless. More critters, mobs that have very large pathways, fewer mobs that just simply stand in one spot, and scripted little NPC events that have no effect on you nor can you interact with but simply giving you the sense that these NPCs have lives and things happening to them as well would go so very far in making TOR feel alive and not simply a shooting gallery. Sorry for the long post that just crit your eyes but I wanted to be thorough. I've been thinking about these things for a little while and wanted to get them off my chest.

Considering that both the Republic and the Empire have shown to have splinter groups in their ranks it wouldn't impossible for two groups who are under the same general banner to fight eachother for control over something. It's a stretch but still arguable. As already posted, I'd rather have PvP in which the background is a little tough to swallow than no PvP at all.

I have to agree here about the Smuggler. The gear looks pretty damn ugly. I really like the look of the rest of it though. The Inquisitor gear styles look to be going a little overboard but I can't deny how sick they look.

Nah it'll be fine. MMOs of lower quality than TOR and with no group finder have been going for years. Patch 1.2 will be adding quite a few things that people have been wanting. It'll likely be enough to hold people over until 1.3 when even more features and content are released. I wouldn't worry about the state of the game now. I'd wait until after the game has been around for a year to see it's state and make these kind of predictions.

Except that if they take too rigid of a stance in giving people options to acquire effective gear that will allow them to run the latest Operation they run the risk of alienating many players from ever seeing the content while it's current. I remember how it was in the early days of WoW. Once raid content got to a certain level you had little to no chance of ever seeing later raids because guilds wouldn't take you unless you already had gear from previous raids or you had to find a guild that was already way behind the rest. I certainly don't want to see gear given away but if we're at Tier 3 and we're telling new players or late comers, "Sorry but you have to spend months running Tier 1 and then Tier 2 before you can begin Tier 3" then you can expect a lot of people to give up because by the time they reach that Tier we're either moving on to the next Tier or a new expansion is out and now none of that content they spent months trying to catch up to means anything. At least allow people to get into Story Mode Operations without having to spend so much time in previous Ops. Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode... yeah I'd say make those the ones where progression is serious.

According to the Guild Summit a Group Finder is going to be added as early as Patch 1.3 but that it will be Server Only. It will also not be a system that automatically takes you to the Flashpoint. The way they made it sound is that it would be an automated system for finding groups instead of spamming chat. You would still have to get to the entrance on your own steam.

Our starships act as our home and the Legacy system will provide us with a way to unlock additions to our ships such as mailboxes and whatnot. As far as some robust housing system like has been promised for Aion for years now, don't hold your breath. The devs were asked about that a long time ago and the general idea of their response to it was that they didn't want to take the time to create such a system when 1)they already gave us a type of housing, and 2)they would rather focus their efforts on strengthening existing content types and adding new ones that have a more Star Wars feel than personal housing.

Did someone seriously just try to pull the "this feature RUINED another MMO" card when referring to cute mini-pets? Is this how ridiculous people are becoming to try and resist changes or additions to the game?

Patch 1.2 is bringing Ranked Warzones, a new level of PvP gear, and a new Warzone. If the devs hit their mark we're only a month away. In the meantime why not try rolling a completely different class, a different role than your current toon, and on the opposite faction? It'll be a fresh experience.

According to the devs during the Guild Summit, Valor was not intended to be a long term gateway to higher gear. It was supposed to be a non-combat enhancing prestige. They used Valor in the beginning to gate the content and prevent people from acquiring Battlemaster gear too early. Thanks to Ilum in its initial form that was shot to hell for many. However, with Ranked Warzones being a prerequisite for the War Hero gear as well as bringing in a new set of entry level PvP gear for level 50 players, people having Battlemaster gear won't be nearly as big of a deal. The landscape will change and there will be a new tier to strive for and beginners won't have to suffer merciless beatings hundreds to thousands of times before they can compete. Sorry but sometimes this happens in MMOs. Something you worked hard for is now not so hard to acquire. This will not destroy the game. More matches will now be determined by who has greater skill and team coordination and not simply who farmed the crap out of Ilum or mindlessly ran Warzones to gain a significant edge over most opponents.

Quite frankly I love this idea. I don't see many ideas (especially regarding the Legacy system) that make me go "wow... that would be excellent" but this is one of them. Sometimes simply deleting a character for whatever reason doesn't feel like you've done them any justice. This would be a great way to make you feel like your Legacy is truly a Legacy.

According to the devs at the Guild Summit earlier this week (and stated once or twice before) they are working on a secret project involving space but that's all they've said. So if you're looking for a different experience than what we have now you'll likely get it eventually. As far as your difficulty with the space missions we have now the only thing I can recommend is make sure you have all of the latest upgrades you can get and keep at it. Some missions are tough at certain levels but I was able to beat all of the missions even without all of the recommended upgrades. Just gotta keep at it until you figure out the little things that will help you.

So dramatic. MMO's are never a finished product until the servers close for good. Not being able to handle bugs or glitches (which happen all the time in MMOs and some to greater extents than others) or certain features not being present at launch is your problem. Thousands of random crashes? Funny. I haven't crashed once. Neither have any of my guildmates. I had a random D/C once but that was my internet acting up.

No crap? I had no idea that my subscription was being used on an MMO. Spare me. Seriously. If WoW can have little children running around Stormwind with chat bubbles saying "give me back my dollie!" then TOR can have thieves being chased by security guards yelling at them to stop. It would not take much at all for them to put speeders in high speed chases above you.