I played from day 1 and ok yes the original UI was like swtor but....... Velious launched in 2000 .... 12 years ago..... I think you even said as much in your own post..... customization in the year 2000!

I was thinking more along the lines of 1985......

Im thinking more for pugs not guild events...

Born 1972, trust me I was alive in the 80's , and yes it was an exaggeration. And ok its not a loading "bar" but its dead time that serves no purpose other than to delay you.

I tell you what, as a compromise how do the anti meter people feel about an activity meter? It it will display is how much activity x player did during an encounter? If I cant see how much output they are doing I'd settle for seeing that at the least they werent afk / watching tv for a big percentage of the encounter ...

I posted this in another thread but i felt it needed its own home .... I just wanted to add because it drives me crazy, this is how many times i have to "load " / "zone " to change planets for example:- Load from area to dock load from dock to ship load to map load back to ship load from ship to dock load from doc to area and sometimes load again from space port to transport then load again to planet..... are you (expletive) kidding me... do we really need this time sink? stick a panel outside the ship dock to bring up the map and select a destination. Have another button for the lift if we really need to go on the ship for something such as the companion chats (though why they feel they can only talk to me on the ship is super annoying) or for the 1980s retro "space combat" complete with 1980 graphics. Vent over..

I just wanted to add because it drives me crazy, this is how many times i have to "load " / "zone " to change planets for example:- Load from area to dock load from dock to ship load to map load back to ship load from ship to dock load from doc to area and sometimes load again from space port to transport then load again to planet..... are you (expletive) kidding me... do we really need this time sink? stick a panel outside the ship dock to bring up the map and select a destination. Have another button for the lift if we really need to go on the ship for something such as the companion chats (though while they feel they can only talk to me on the ship is super annoying) or the 1980s retro "space combat" complete with 1980 graphics. Vent over..

Addons wouldn't be needed at all if the game came with a UI from 2012 rather than the 1990s. This has to be the worst UI in the creation of MMO's , Everquest 1's Ui was more customizable than this pile of festering manure. The great thing about addons for Bioware would be they would not have to invest the time and resources into fixing some of the issues with the UI and fix all the basic issues like memory leaks and the engine not using all 4 processors etc. However if we have to endure a modless game at least add a sliding scale to the UI , targets target, some kind of threat warning, and if you really dont want damage meter numbers some kind of bars to show what percentage of damage we did. I get that some of you just want to play and not be judged by a meter, but just as many people dont want to get grouped with someone who only presses an attack key once every minute cause they are watching their favorite soap opera while they play. If there are any reasons at all not to have a damage meter it is the following in no particular order 1) this means the community will be able to see how unbalanced classes are in terms of damage output easily which will require the devs to do something about it 2) you're a lazy player and want to "carried" through everything with minimal effort on your behalf and hide the fact 3) it will show that certain abilities are completely pointless to use (think mage in wow, go go 2 button rotation) and remove some of the variety to the game play which again gives the devs some work to do. Bioware do yourselves a favour let the mod community fix some of the glaringly lacking Basic UI functionality for you at the very least, then consider allowing the more controversial addons at a later date. This game really needs the UI fixes NOW. I haven't logged in for 2 weeks because I cant bring myself to deal with the crappy UI and the endless travel times (due to how many cut scenes loading screens it takes to get from one place to another) in the game. These issues should be priority number 1 not removing light side / darkside from colour crystals... just saying.....

And how can something that you don't use impact you? If you and all your friends dont want to use it don't.... No one is making you. If your guild and friends are all the perfect mix to create groups any time you please that's awesome. I am still failing to see how dual spec or lfd will impact you. Its not like passive smoking. You have a choice not to use any tools that are implemented. I ail to see how any kind of tools will change the type of people you come across. If you group with someone who thinks you suck in an lfg message in general chat or a lfg tool they are stll going to have the same opinion.... Same with dual spec. If you don't want to be anything but dps you simply don't make a second one. It seems to me that the issue here isn't anything to do being able to play multiple specs and more to do with people being able to play both specs better than your 1. If you had no choice as to what class you were when you logged in for example. Lets say you get to server creation and it says due to server balance you can only choose a tank class how would that sit with you? I look at all the posts against dual spec and lfg tools and see not a single arguement against it that holds water. The ONLY thing that i could think of that would be valid is IF it forced you in game into a spec you didn't want to play. All the time you have free will to queue as tank / heal / dps there is no issue. If your argument is people will queue as heals /tanks so they get a faster queue even though they aren't good at those roles, it supports the fact that naturally not enough people want to fill those roles. The group would never be viable in the first place if the said person hadn't have tried to fill the vacant roll, so what have you lost? Nothing.....

Its going to do about as well as Rift. I see a lot of people going back to where ever they came from after their free 30 days / 1 month sub run out. Too many missing features, not enough content, awful coding. I enjoy the main class story line. It really is a 1 player game with some co op bolted on. i havent really found a reason to group yet. I have to play with friends but there really wasnt any need.

Sadly they did make a game along the lines of Everquest.. Vanguard... It never took off. Fast food society killed off challenging games because the mass populous buying games have been spoon fed with what they want, when they want it all their lives. The kids of the 90s onward have had life real easy in terms of getting everything they want. Until the generation of kids being born today where the economy sucks and you have to work hard to get what you want again, mmos will continue along the path of heres your free epics. Ultima and Everquest were very innovative for their time. I even met my wife playing Everquest! Im still waiting for Sony to pay up on that one. No where on the box did it say this game my result in marriage! Sadly the long grind out to reach max level is gone, and oh how I miss real AA points to diversify your class instead of the cookie cutter trees. I just don't see that happening again for some time. When EQ2 launched I wish they had just made EQ1 with updated graphics alas this was not the case. I ended up in wow like most because it was where the majority of people ended up. Crowd control was gone, class diversity was gone, there really has been very rare need for it except maybe Sunwell. I remember being in Velks lab just waiting for a group opening for top , middle or bottom. When I got one I'd play for hours killing the same spawns of mobs over and over lol. I got my epic swords for my ranger. I ended up playing an ogre shadow knight. i had a shaman and Id do the mass buff in PoP. LdoN were far better than any instances that have come in any game after.... Unfortunately what drives an mmo is community, and the majority of the community is not playing that kind of game. That said if they released Everquest with updated graphics and not much else changed than that i would certainly go back.

And nothing will change because I'd hedge a bet 90% rolled a dps toon, groups are tiny at 4 players so there just isnt going to be enough tanks and healers to go around. So guess what you'll still be waiting........ As many people have pointed out you dont HAVE to dual spec, you dont HAVE to use the LFG tool if you want to group with guild and friends the tools will have no impact on you what so ever.

Lets talk about WOW again..... Mages ... Warlocks.....Hunters.....Rogues...... They dont have healer or tank specs...... Guess what their world didn't end, they still get groups. Just because you can heal or tank doesnt mean you HAVE to either. The whole point of dual spec is to be able to make a group / raid viable if a key person is missing. No one is going to force you to heal or tank. In almost all MMO's ever created there is a huge majority who play dps vs heals or tanks. Dual spec is not going to break the game its going to make it more flexible and help compensate for the massive abundance of dps players. I'd say support classes are just as important for crowd control etc, but apparently everyone playing this game has no clue what cc , assist or any kind of logical system to avoid engaging multiple targets is. pew pew .. agro .. dead dps....why am i dead .... maybe its cause we dont have a healer cause there is no dual spec ....

I think the biggest disappointment was running into this huge casino and not one single interactive item in it whats so ever. Not even seats..... The static mobs, unblinking lights, low population due to im guessing hardware ability all add to it feeling dead. I am enjoying the story of the class, its a good single player game. not seeing any benefit to it being an MMO thus far.

Look at it this way. If you go buy a new car from a new manufacturer, and it costs the same price as a Honda Civic and the monthly payment is the same as a Honda Civic. Just because Honda have been around a while you'd still expect your new car to have the same features, cd player , a/c , electric windows etc. They haven't got to develop anything, same as a new car manufacturer doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. All the tools are there for all to see, mostly created by the community and then implemented as base content into games such as WoW. Game developers who want to keep a healthy community have to provide what has become the standard if they wish to maintain a player base. I promise you in any industry a product released with less features than a predecessor will fail. Rift is an example of this, hundreds of hacked accounts due to no security key. No mods at launch made a few more leave, before the game was 6 months old the servers were getting closed. Shiny new graphics will only hold people for so long, its the functionality etc that keeps people coming back. this game can only survive if it appeals to the mass market because all these games are in part community driven. No community no game. Telling people to leave and go back to WoW will destroy this game. You need a community and some of the changes people are asking for are not game breaking. They remove some time sinks and allow for a better flow of game play.