It is actually very easy to tell how bad this Hero game engine is, anywhere you find yourself, not just the FLeet, as you are walking along start to open game windows, like your inventory or anything and notice the pause as you open each one....

Are you kidding me? The barber shop in WoW never showed up until I think about 3 years ago, so it was not in WoW at launch either....

The thing is though if you make an alt why make it on the same low pop server that you are on? That makes no sense, and lets face it making an alt or two or more is part of playing an MMO. I am on Bergeron Colony and the pop there usually says HEAVY, although when I go to high level planets like Hoth, Corelia, Quesh, etc I sometimes see less then 10 people there with me. Once I was on Quesh with some of my guild and the 3 of us were half of the planet's population...not sure why it says HEAVY when I log in then....

I have noticed the same problem and quite frankly this is just a cash grab for Bioware/EA because it is in their best interest that our accounts be as secure as they possibly can be. There is NO good reason to limit the security key to specific game purchases, all editions SHOULD come with a security key not just collectors edition. I am more upset with this issue then most of the other things that plague this game, well the choice of the Hero game enging tops this one but that is only because from past experiences with Bioware, that I know for a fact they DO have the ability to develop their own game engines and there is absolutely no excuse for them not to have developed their own game engine for SWTOR. NONE!

When you first start any class you go a few levels with no companions at all. I think maybe you just need to play a bit longer and then you will get your first companion.

The main difference is with the Scoundrel you hear the BANG! BANG! BOOM! of your guns all day and the Operative with their knives they are a lot quieter....

Sometimes I have had a class quest that is red to me on my list, and that is because I was to into the storyline and was rushing ahead with it before the previous planet was finished. If you do that you WILL run into problems, garanteed.

I installed them the other day and before I did I was getting texture shimmer on Hoth and Tatooine, it is still there with the new drivers but it has been improved somewhat. NVIDIA Geforce GTS 450

hi

The problem I have with Bioware is the way they seem to fix things. For instance the Smuggler class quest "The Lightspring" had some players in the Smuggler forum complaining that is was too hard. So what did Bioware do???? 1.1.2 Patch Notes — 2/7/2012 •The Lightspring: The toughness of Vaverone Zare and Nariel Pridence has been decreased. This mission can no longer be failed There was absolutely nothing wrong with that quest, sure it was a bit tough but it would teach you how and when to use your interupts and this I thought was the purpose behind the quest....instead all Bioware did was give it the "easy button" fix and if that is the way things are going to go then soon there will be no challenge left in the game at all. Not only that but the same quest on the Empire side that teaches the player to use their interupts, "Defender of the Empire" is bugged with targeting issues yet no "easy button" fix for that one so far...are they planning a more elaborate fix or did they think that it was The Lightspring that had the bug?????

Instead of that just and a bind point on our ships and most of that tedious type of travel would be eliminated...

One thing Bioware has done with SWTOR that WoW has none of is the story aspects of this game, they are brilliant and if anyone wants to come out with a new MMO they will definetly have to consider voice overs for all the quests. Some of them could have been done better, there is no doubt about that but right now SWTOR has more story in in then pretty much anything else out there in the MMO genre. Until an MMO is developed that breaks the current WoW clone and comes to the market with something new and refreshing and it is successful out of the gate, no other developer will try to break with tried and true MMO design that they KNOW will make money. It just takes one developer to have the intestinal fortitude and financial backing to make a change in the genre and Bioware has done that with adding in great story so much so that the story is what compels you to play, not leveling, gear, ... but story. Now if SWTOR remains a success like it seems to be now then from now on if you want to compete in the market your MMO will need voice overs...I can even see a future WoW expansion that will be fully voiced especially if next year at this time SWTOR is gaining subs. That is how it all changes so actually Bioware has caused a small change....story.

The part that bothers me the most with the Hero engine is how it seems to completely change what an MMO feels like when playing one. In WoW it always felt like I really was in the world, where as the only time I experience that in SWTOR is when I am in some story/conversation in the game and even then it is more like I am playing the latest Knights of the Old Republic single player game. The Hero engine seems to make everything so dependant on instances that there is no feeling that I am in a large expansive world. Also the enviroments are so lacking in variation that planets seem the same, if you swapped colors around on Hoth and Tatooine they could easily be swapped out for each other.... Thats what bothers me the most about it, the Hero engine makes it like I am playing KOTOR 3 with few friends in multiplayer mode....

This ^^ Also the Inqisitor companion, Khem Val, after his "feminine side" emerges is absolutely hilarious.

I nearly always tend to pick the smallest body type I can create because even though it really makes no difference to targeting in PvP the perception is if I am smaller I "feel" more stealthy and deadly....

This is actually a valid point to make, although I would have handled it differently and contacted them privately. Recently I got an email from them asking me to send in my oppinions on the game thus far and I am preparing a document to send in, that is where I would have put something as trivial, yet important enough to mention, as this is.

If they are going to do this then make it a place you can go when you learn a new skill to find out the best way to use it. They could even have it voice assisted to help the player recognize exactly when and how to use any given skill. You can enter at any level and it cost credits to get in the simulator and you can set it to teach the player how to use any skill from any class in the game.

Would love to see them add Guild ships to the game and come up with guild ship space missions where somone pilots the ship, someone else is navigator, and the others maning the gun turrets.

I don't get why they never developed their own engine for this game, pretty much every game they have ever made they made the engine for. I can almost garantee that they had a launch schedule they had to meet and developing their own engine would not have allowed that. So hopefully they have been developing a new engine for SWTOR and with games like Mass Effect going multiplayer as in Mass Effect 3, I am really hoping that they are developing that engine to replace this one at some point....we can only hope I guess.

The thing I don't really like is the lack of variety in landscapes. For instance if you were to change the colors of Hoth to the colors of Tatooine or vice versa, I think the planets would look almost identical. Also on Hoth and Tatooine if I have anti aliasing enabled I get this odd shimmer effect at the edges of the textures, if I turn off anti aliasing this goes away. I have no idea why it does this but I am pretty sure that is why it was not enabled at launch, so instead of fixing it they just decided to enable it and let it slide as is...

I think what he was trying to say with the stuff about WoW is that it managed to hold his interest longer then SWTOR has and a lot of that was due to the fact that he probably came to WoW late in its development so most of that stuff was already there when he started playing WoW. So most MMO players do not realize that WoW had no BG's at launch and very few raid dungeons. 95% of the stuff the OP talks about WoW having it did not have until several years into its on going development. It is more important that SWTOR tries to get this content into its game quickly because a lot of its customers will not really realize that WoW was about the same as SWTOR was at launch. I think WoW was a bit more polished then SWTOR was at launch because it had a combat log, macro's, mod's, etc, and with the mods it allowed the community to actually participate in the development of the game itself as many of those mods got added to the game in future updates and expansions. Mods would definetly benifit SWTOR in terms of community because then the community is helping the developers to see the potential of their game with more input from players.

In my oppinion the Agent has some of the best dialogue with their companions of any of the classes, Kaliyo is pure gold and Ensign Temple is also very well written though my character has just met her on Hoth and she is not part of my crew yet. the scenes with her are all very well done, as were all of my companions, though the bug man is my least favorite. The other companion that I absolutely love is Khem Val, the Sith Inquisitor's main tank companion. It is so funny because...

Still its a sweet weapon cause its different. In UO once I had a lute that was named by a Seer..the lute of spirit silence... it was just a normal lute with a special name but still everyone wanted to see it on display at my house...

The only time they will "accept responsibility" will be when they announce they have scrapped the Hero engine in favor of the new one they have been developing and everything can be ported over to the new engine... So in other words likely never to happen...