Exactly. Tython and Korriban are actually 2 of my favourite maps I think because they feel like they just serve their purpose well - they look great and when I've just rolled a toon my wanderlust isn't as big in relation to levelling, the drive to get my story underway and adapt to a new play style. Variety in world design which the game doesn't have as Goretzu said is so important! Other top MMOs have a noticeable visual change when moving between zones and what I think SWTOR could use most is the impact seen in MMOs like GW2 and even WoW where the sighting of say a capital city in the distance builds your suspense for arriving at it. In TOR, the lack of variety means you don't get to notice some impressive development from afar and there is no satisfaction of discovering say a dense, vibrant township or a dynamic change from the overused world layout. There really is little satisfaction of wanderlust compared to other supposed first-rate MMOs.

I know them feels bro. When you're in the rain everything feels more hectic and intense (in a good way); when you're inside and it's raining you feel cozy and sercure QFT vvv

haha yep I'm shameless but seriously I make some good points

I said the above and a bunch of other stuff in this thread here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=470745 (WoW's) Undercity was another fav of mine due to the interplay between the levels of the location. Vertical depth I think is a major thing for creating a dense-feeling and immersive world particularly for those city areas and hubs. Places like the fleet need it more than anything. Otherwise everything feels way too single-planed like the game does now. Everything laid flat in front of you. Granted, some places need this (like Tat and Hoth) but I think SWTOR sorely misses the bustling feeling of walking into something like the Heroes' HQ in DCUO or Orgrimmar in WoW (obviously player-driven movement as I quoted above is the primary factor for that feeling but density from multi-storey instances goes a long way too). From that thread I linked:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=470745&page=2 I'll quote myself in a later post so I don't have to say I'm shamelessly pulling a necro here then!

The worlds look good at first glance (especially Nar Shadaa IMO) but I completely understand what the OP means. The worlds don't feel great (lack of immersion, lack of impression of vastness, etc.) I mentioned a few things I think would help in this regard are in this thread below http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=470745&page=2 From that thread:

This would be a practical way to help devs know how best to make the game better for the people who play it.

I'd like to see a rare drop with a physical, visible, handheld shield. Of course, this would require more work to implement than a lot of people probably think it'd be worth but it'd be pretty sick for tanks.

true dat. Or like in DCUO you can just stare at Batman, Superman and Wonderwoman in the HQ or for the villains the Joker, Luthor and Cersei or whatever her name is. Thing is though, .

Cool, thanks for letting us know.

And back to the stuff about the fleets: the other day I was taking a shuttle from Carrick to Gav Daragon on the pub fleet and I thought how cool would it be if there were a whole bunch of shuttles flying between these metal space behemoths while all the players running around on them could literally see them out the windows of the ships/spacedocks. Make the fleets a more visually pleasing experience by creating some player-driven movement between the ships of the fleet and allowing it to be seen even when you're not shuttling around the fleet yourself. Also keep in mind the idea I've been going on about most in this thread and that is of giving the game world some vertical depth without separating levels in the game by instance loading/instant travel elevators, but rather ramps/walkways/moving lifts between levels FROM WHICH you can see at least parts of levels below or above, creating a more dense and less single-planed feeling. All this would make the fleets much less boring. DC Universe Online gives a little inspiration in the way of creating an open feeling for the main hub of an MMO faction (moreso the heroes HQ than the villains). Combine that open feeling with the potential to make the fleets like bustling harbours of shuttles and starships and the place where you spend most of your time in the game becomes so much more appealing. The more I think about it, the more I reckon the fleets need a complete overhaul, or at the very least add or change part of it and use questing and vendors to traffic players to that area. Do something like this and the fleets actually become a hub of space shuttles and toons moving around an actual fleet rather than players running around on a circle (with some 50s occasionally flying to another ship so they can do an op. or whatever) The idea is: use player-driven movement to make the game more appealing. When I first started playing MMOs, the thing I liked most about them is that I'm running around a virtual world and I can see other people doing the same.

OP makes a great point. It would bring back all the greatness that was KotOR by building a more immersive and fast-paced game while still keeping everything that an MMO basically needs, and would cut costs!

As a TL;DR and a bump: The planets LOOK fine and good, but they don't feel very amazing once you start walking around and I feel this is mainly due to the single plane feel of every instance (and to a lesser extent and on a less crucial note, the lack of weather cycles and other stuff mentioned already in this thread). Like Nar Shadaa looks awesome, but after first glance the world feels like a linear path and every level of the city is separated so there's no interactivity between points in the character's y-axis (or the map's z-axis, if you will).

Of course the problem with merging servers is that those with more than 12 toons on the the APAC servers combined wouldn't be able to have all of them moved to the same server but there are easy ways to overcome that problem, even if it means selecting which characters you be least unhappy about deleting. (Transfers would mean we wouldn't have to do this.) What would be better than the current situation though, is that if BW isn't going to do anything about this until F2P is implemented, then couldn't they just say that are going to wait until then to do anything? It'll be better in the long unless they are going to try resolve this issue before then...

Here's a crazy idea that is probably very flawed: As far as I've thought about it, the only problem with applying maintenance for APAC servers at a different time to NA servers is that a whole bunch of Americans would flood our servers while theirs are down. (Although I'm not entirely sure about the nuts and bolts of maintenance, such as how easy it is to simply change when the servers go down for a particular region.) Our servers being flooded from overseas could be a good thing in a way. Of course, I understand there are obviously a LOT more NA players than in the APAC area, so this "flooding" may cause ridiculous queue times, but the image of any sort of queue to get into one of our servers is somewhat of a nice one. Someone would have to do the math on how many people woul actuallyd go on APAC servers if only NA and/or EU servers went down (that's if it's even realistic to stagger the availability of/apply patches to different regions at different times). APAC servers could possibly share the load with EU? Dunno; there's something wrong with this which can't be overcome, isn't there?

Maelstrom Prison has the Exile in it, doesn't it? And in the Foundry the person to whom Revan is referring as "friend" once you defeat him I believe is also the Exile. Lord Scourge's backstory involves when the two teamed up if I recall correctly. Search the Exile in Wookiepedia. The post KotOR 2 story for her (female according to cannon) explains this stuff. EDIT: re-read and I see BlznSmri (Blazing Samurai?) mentioned Meetra Surik (Exile) so yeah. w/e

Also,

On a neutral note, I like pumpkin soup during winter.

It's not so much that the visual design of the game worlds is bad. Obviously, lots of people love it and I can understand that, but I feel it's more to do with if well-designed areas feel like a part of the same world the toon is in. Making mountainous areas, cityscapes and the like more than just backdrops and more a part of the world the toon has access to would create a much greater sense of immersion. Perhaps that's one of the main reasons I liked places like Orgrimmar and the like: there was a greater sense of immersion because I knew there was at least the potential of activity going on overhead and underneath me, and that the good visual design I could see was more than just framing for a corridor towards the next place to level up. Also, and this is may be the wrong thread for this, but I reckon the fleets could be more interesting. Like what do we have? We have a circle, and to top it off each faction might as well have identical fleets as far as lay out is concerned (the visuals of the Republic fleet in-game I find much more appealing but I can see why Vaiken Spacedock looks the way it does but anyway). I know there's a sense of practicality to it, but I reckon some of that can be sacrificed to make the structure of these hubs a little more interesting. Maybe?

Yeah I guess I said y-axis because I was speaking about the vertical (like from the point of view of your toon, y will be up and z will be towards/away) but anyway, whatever. I don't see map navigation as a massive problem, or rather a problem big enough to stop devs doing more of what I was suggesting. If you think about maps used for navigating the locations I mentioned that were in WoW, they were clear enough so that you could tell if whatever you were navigating to was on say an overhead pass or if you had to take a lower route to get there. Anyway, IMO that sort of problem isn't too big of a deal as I said. Alternatively, 3D maps? Or, more easily implemented would be just adding the extra dimension in the co-ordinates (x,y,z).

Mentioned this in a dead thread: And yes, day/night and weather cycles would be nice but I doubt the devs will consider for a very long time.

What I'd like to see are planets which are less singularly planar. The fleets and city planets especially I think could do with some depth/height to make them feel more dense. If you think about Orgrimmar (yep I'm using this as an example) and a few other places in THAT MMO, you had overhead bridges and underground tunnels in the same instance as everything else. Yes, we have different levels accessed by elevators, but that's not the same. Give greater variation in the y-axis for locations accessible by toons, and you get a more dense and vibrant feeling world, and things feel less linear.

Yeah cruising around Ilum and the open world pvp area on Tatooine, you can see maybe what the devs were going for when they were designing these locations or I at least imagine what it'd be like to have teams (as in lots) of players going around these places so I'm kinda surprised sometimes that they don't try capitalise on what they already have or try make them work by simply giving players reasons to go to these areas. (When they got rid of the weekly that takes you to Ilum for example, I thought it's like they were keeping players away from what is already a dead planet.) Personally, and this is probably in the wrong thread, but I reckon that not enough attention is given to maps and the game world. Like I often think the biggest thing SWTOR needs changed is to make it seem less singularly planar. The fleets and city planets especially I think could do with some depth/height to make them feel more dense. If you think about Orgrimmar (yep I'm using this as an example) and a few other places in THAT MMO, you had overhead bridges and underground tunnels in the same instance as everything else. Yes, we have different levels accessed by elevators, but that's not the same. Retarded comment, I know

Um, why are we still complaining about this?

Servers which even just seem like they are more populated are obviously more fun to play on. That's why I can't wait for when I get to transfer to Asia-Pacific servers in April or whenever it is. It's more because the population is concentrated in these few servers than the dramatically reduced latency. I rolled a JC the other day on an A-P server and Tython was packed; was great.