Didn't mean for this to be a bash SWTOR thread. And if you think SWOTR isn't polished, then you never played those early MMOs a couple of months in Its more pondering why the big name MMOs don't seem to drfit away from the EQ style MMO after all these years. I've seen some go in with big intentions (Age of Conan for example), yet when the game starts hitting Alpha and closed testing I saw some unique elements slow morph into the familar gameplay and by the end of Beta the whole thing end up in the all to familar format. SWOTR brings something new (well newish) to the MMO, storytelling. But at its core its not far removed from earlier generation MMOs in terms of gameplay. Yet other MMOs that have tried to differ (eg Tabla Rasa....the FPS/MMO hybrid) crash and burn early on. So gameplay not evolving seems to be not an issue caused by "lazy" Devs, but by Devs trying to cater to the market (as other options are financial suicide). Static gameplay is caused by the customer. I remember an interesting discussion with some of the Devs in the early days of AoC. The subject of dynamic worlds was being discussed with player actions actually affecting the gameworld in a major manner. The Devs countered that thay loved all the ideas that were brought up, yet in an MMO you have to offer each player exactly the same chance, the same experience, or players get unhappy and cry foul. Or basically its the playerbase that stymies new directions at times. Devs think long and hard about the development, and probably as much thought goes into player psychology as designing a new graphics engine, They are the professionals at this. So if they design something thats seems to play in a similar manner as other MMOs then basically its because the playerbase as a whole demands it. So I guess you'll always have a few malcontents drifting around the edges of things. And I guess an MMO player does have an 'lifespan' with players drfting away due to work, family, even boredom. And I'm sure this sort of thing has been brought up many times in MMO think-tanks et al. I want to love SWTOR, these nothing wrong with SWOTR. Yet I'm not logging in much. On old MMO games, one of the main hooks in maintaining a player of an extended period is basically the Community. Some get hooked by playing with guildmates, some even get hooked on the message boards Dunno I guess this is the thing that seems to be missing. MMOs like EQ and UO you grouped up because you had to. The gameplay just wouldn't let you solo. Games like SWG had hard core crafting communities, EVE its corporations. Grouping was manditory. But solo players hated to be forced to group. Instancing is partly to blame, but then I also remember the frustrations of non instanced games where ppl would camp a spot in a queue to fight some of the monsters. I remember we were in a queue for nearly a week before fighting a certain EQ Boss (who I'll not name). I doubt even the most seasoned MMO player would stand for this these days. So there's no easy answers

As I travel around the major cities (Nar Shaddar, Corosant) I struck by the sound of....my own footsteps. These don't sound like a major metropolis, more like an office hallway. For example wandering into the Bars in ME2 (I use this example as its another BW game) you are assualted by a wall of noise, with the NPCs and conversations conducted in a shout. Wandering through the market districts of the Citadel you hear advertising slogans and musical jingles from stores. Yet these ommissions from the SWOTR soundscape make the game seem flat and emotionless. Even in the desert of Tattoine, the sounds of wind or sand shifting and maybe the odd sound of a Bantha would spice things up. Sometimes its this attention to the smaller details that can make a big difference in making the game immersive. Anyone else any thoughts on how the background noise could be improved?

Now don't get me wrong, SWTOR is probably one of the most polished MMOs I've ever played.....yet Having played most MMOs since the days of UO and EQ I'm starting to flag in hours logged in. Having played most classes I find everything post level 20 (when you stop gaining "new powers" and instead getting upgrades to existing ones) a bit similar to the last 3-4 levels. The storylines are great, but even that doesn't seem to draw me in. I suppose its due to the old MMO mechanics of Tank/DPS/Healer (which even if the game allows different tactics, most parties end up playing in defined roles) and no matter if I'm fighting in a secret Imperial Manufactering plant or the Dungeon level of Lord British's castle.....the setting differs but the game "feels" similar. The last few MMOs have given me the same feeling of being a retread. Its nothing to do with Devs not being bothered to come up with something new, more they satisfy what the customer wants. It give me pause to consider the term MMO, is it in fact a genre rather than a term used to describe its capabilites. Sure there's lots of different types of MMO, but the more popular ones all seem to "play" in a similar manner. So as an MMO player am I fated to have a number of years playing the big guns of the MMO world before settling down to drift between niche MMO in the search of new gameplay? I guess it all boils down to what the majority of the customers want. And I guess the big subscription numbers lie in not changing too much from a proven formula. ....but then again, if could just be that I'm MMO'd out

As I craft with more than a smidgen of OCD one of the major irritants is navigating to the schematic I want to craft. As I'm obsessively raising each schematic up one rank (3 childs of each schematic) its getting hard to keep track (going further is neigh on impossible). Ideally I'd like to see the ability to select a "base" schematic (Green/Blue) and the discovered child schematic to pop up in an old style windows tree (not the best option but probably the easiest to implement). At the moment the listing "by level" is the only way to organise and the alphabetical listing isn't always the easiest to remember which children you have already discovered. Anyone got any other thought on this? I'd love to see the interface tweaked a bit more, for some of the crafting skills like Armourtech and Synthweaving with large amounts of schematics its starting to get to be more like a memory game than crafting.