I think people are over-analyzing the playstyle terms here. The difference between casual and hardcore is the approach the player takes to the game, and what they find fun. I would say the hardcore players enjoy the number-crunching part of the game. The hardcore players are the ones min/maxing, and spending time to ensure that there character is running not only statistically flawless as possible, but that they are controlling their character with the keyboard and mouse in the most efficient way to accomplish their particular role as best as possible. Hardcore players like this part of the game, and since they have fun doing this they tend to be some of the best players in the game. Casual players don't care about min/maxing their character or trying to be one of the players with the best gear on the server. They may say they do (which everyone wants to be the best), however they don't put in the time and/or effort required to be a hardcore player. It's not saying they couldn't, but it's saying that they don't find that part fun and don't care to. Casual players usually don't participate in the extremely time-consuming and difficult parts of the game. Time, in my opinion, is an irrelevant statistic for both groups -- and by time I mean time spent playing the game. In fact, I would say hardcore players tend to take their time seriously so they try to be efficient as possible with it, so they can spend less time doing the trivial/less fun things and more time spent doing what is fun -- the actual encounter. On average the more "hardcore" players probably spend more time playing the game, however it's certainly not required since I knew people who were some of the best players in the nation but only logged on when required of them to raid or pvp. Anyway, casual and hardcore have nothing to do with what they do, but how they do it. Playstyles ask "How?" not "What?". Both casual and hardcore players raid. Both casual and hardcore players do warzones. Both casual and hardcore players do dailies, and quest, and gather things, etc. etc. etc. They do the same things for the most part, but they do it in a different way.

An MMO is supposed to be a living breathing world, meaning the players take the result of actions made in the game toward them just like they do in real life. They never asked you to like it. Drawing the line on when is too much is dependent on the developer.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that the developers couldn't implement the good designs of other games into their own. It seems every developer has something great and something awful. If they could only mix the two.

Yes, but not long-term. WoW reached its peak when the game seemed to be more centered toward the hardcore crowd back in vanilla-late TBC. They changed it, and there was a surge of players, but since Cata subs seem to be decreasing a bit. Mostly it's probably because people are tired of WoW, which I was, however his post has some merit. I would say that WoW was made for people who were already in the MMO scene, like those who played EQ and what not, as well as their playerbase in WC and D2. I don't think Blizzard expected the massive surge of players who were new to the MMO genre. Regardless, they still kept to their idea that endgame was the way to go and keep the players entertained for years, and I would say it was pretty successful. The casual playerbase doesn't really care about raiding that much. The problem in WoW is that they centralized raiding as the primary objective of the game, so everyone wanted to do it. The problem is that raiding is suppose to be difficult, so when you have a bunch of people who don't care to be so good at the game in order to defeat a raid the developer has to make it easier, which makes your hardcore playerbase angry. I can count how many things I can do in WoW in one hand. Raid, arena, BG, dailies, and RP. Nothing else is fun for 95% of the playerbase because it's either not there, or just so lackluster that nobody wants do it. Achievements are just for those who have nothing else fun to do. If Blizzard were to add other things to do (such as a good open-world PvP setup that doesnt suck) then the game would last longer for more players than just those who raid and PvP. I think we see the same problem here in SWTOR, the only difference is that casuals (and those who like this) have the glory of a great leveling experience, something that WoW lacks. If this element was brought into WoW I think the game would be SO much better because the raiders would still enjoy there part of the game. There would still be attunements and gear progression that didn't give handouts to everybody, while at the same time the casual players would have so much do in the open world and leveling up new characters with a great story. TL;DR: If WoW wasn't so centered on endgame raiding and PvP and brought in other objectives that players (both casual and hardcore) could enjoy, raiding would still be enjoyable for the hardcore playerbase and casuals could have other things to do. Casuals only felt the need to raid because Blizzard centralized that as their game.

A game can be targeted for casual players, but in the end those games end up dying out quickly and don't last very long, or just have such a small player base of about 100-150k people after a few years. As for games who simply target for the hardcore niche, aka EvE, those games end up at the same result, a few hundred thousand people after a few years. The best option for an MMO is to, of course, target for a wide range of audiences. I feel like SWTOR did that but I feel that most of their resources were spent to benefit the more casual audience. That isn't so bad, because this game has done fairly well, however I feel like the longevity of the game is most likely going to lack. The best thing a developer could do is design content in their game that appeals to as many audiences as possible, NOT necessarily the largest amount of people who enjoy it. In my opinion, and as a future game developer, a game is going to be more successful if content is made to appeal to more audiences, instead of more people. Content that appeals to many of the casuals, hardcores, PvPers and PvEers, and RPers is probably going to a lot better than content that merely is appealing to the vast majority of casuals and RPers. For example, I think (when done correctly), most niche's seem to really like open-world PvP. It seems a lot of people really like that for some reason, and I know I do (it's just that it's rarely done successfully for some reason). If a developer could somehow create content like this in their game that appeals to wide variety of audiences, rather than one, or just content that attracts the most people, their game is likely to be more successful. And that's just one design concept. There needs to be content put in place that has great potential to last a long time. MMO's feed on long-lasting subs -- they need people to play the game a long time. Right now I feel like SWTOR's content does not have the longevity MMOs require to be successful for a long time. Unless there is content that is going to make a large number of audiences want to play a long time, the game isn't going to last very long -- only supported by those who have that required content, which I would say are the casual bunch, but even then it's hard to tell if it will. 15 bucks a month for re-rolling characters just doesn't seem to be worth it in my opinion, and I think many would feel the same.

The hero engine is just a complete POS. They should have gone with something better. Since I've tested in beta I've hated it.

No company has an obligation to release a product on different platforms or OS's.

I understand the OP's concerns; knowing a real name is a piece to the puzzle for finding more information. However, the chances of someone going to take the time and try to find your address, and then go as far to hunt you down, is probably just as likely as getting into a plane crash, surviving the first one, and then crashing the next time. Do you ever see on the news or anywhere where someone has been hunted down because someone found their real name on the internet? I don't think so. I do understand the OP's concerns, however I'm taking Bioware and EA's side on this. Giving friend invites to people you don't know so well is your own fault. I wouldn't be bothered with it anyway. What it comes down to is really nit-picking arbitrary things.

I suspected this back in beta. Unfortunately this seems to be true. The design philosophy lately in themepark MMO's is that raids need to be available for everyone. The average MMO player isn't very good, thus, operations in this game are easy. It's an unfortunate reality. It asks the question, do we want more epic, challenging content, or do we want more people to have gear and see the content (when it's immediately available, such as not 2 years after when the new expansion comes out). The choice is the developers. TBH, I'd like to see a balance of the two. Theoretically it makes no sense to balance operations based on the average players skill, well, because that can vary on so many factors. What percentage of people do we want to see and complete operations? Everyone? Only the top 80% of people? It's so ambiguous and confusing that it ends up being pointless and the quality of the game suffers. I think Burning Crusade did a good job of this. The worst players rarely saw raids. The average players saw some of the raids, such as karazhan or gruuls. The best saw almost everything to everything. When I say average, I also mean the average player, and keep in mind the average player is not very "good" at the game.

I would expect Trandoshans and Wookies.

Says the guy who never raided in BC

See above post.

Sounds like a depressed SWG fan.

In PvP or PvE?

Derpenstein.