I think an expansion could work very well IF they tweaked how endgame is so people have a reason to get it..others most could argue that there's no reason to buy an expansion if its the same type of endgame there is right now. It would work to their advantage if in conjunction with the announcement of a paid expansion that they announced a modified F2P system, F2P 2.0. A more lenient system that focuses on giving incentive to people rather than restrictiveness and outright force people to spend for even the most basic of features.

Also 10+ years ago is when the genre was becoming popular. Nowadays the market is so saturated and that is the one of the reason why few will be remembered. People jump from one mmo to another and few make the long term commitment that players used to do in games like EQ, Ultimate online, etc. If WoW was to be released today it is likely that it wouldn't have caught the same amount of success in the current market (remember how the very vanilla WoW was in 2004, now imagine that being released today). This game has definitely had some influence in the genre though. I'm already seeing MMOs take bigger importance in story and voice overs which no one dared to do much about before.

That is not true at all. The game doesn't force you go level in every planet. While you do have to visit the planets for class quests (which is fine), leveling in those planets is optional. I went to Balmorra just to do my brief quests and moved on to Nar Shadda. I could've done the same with Tatooine and gone right ahead to Alderaan after doing the class quest. It's entirely possible that you could skip these planets and use a combination of pvp, space, flashpoints to level up. From what I can remember it's pretty much like WoW does it where you have different options to go about leveling.

I had W7 and moved to W8 and the game is working about the same for me. No crashes, just frame drops here and there.

People who undercut too much. When you're undercutting for over 35% you're not helping yourself or the market for that item. Overtime this practice only lowers the price of said item to a fraction of what it once was (whether the demand or supply have increased it still happens).

Obviously OP isn't asking you to apply this to IRL situations. Feel free to set yourself up for disappointment then. OP's advice is more on the realistic side than the wishful thinking you wish people would have. The wold wouldn't be any better if everyone was walking around with 10 tons of disappointment on their back. It would probably be worse. It's just foolish to expect so much when a game is developing. Resources can become limited, creativity can become limited, and many factors may come into play when trying to develop a game that is trying to appease everyone's massive expectations. Time is very important and often times a developer does not have enough of it to implement the things players are expecting. One of things that is often asked for is open-space exploration and combat with guild ships and group ships. I guess people don't realize but that's something that would take several months and dozens of people to make it a worthwhile reality. Yeah it would be pretty nice to have all that but at the moment other things are taking priority. Not saying you shouldn't ask for things because you definitely should but you should do so at a more realistic level unless being disappointed is what you like. You have to learn to balance expectations and being okay with what you're getting. Ie. have an open mind.

Does anyone consider the fact that most people don't like to tank anyways? This is not just a problem in this game, it's in every game. It goes DPS > Healing > Tank. Tanking is perceived as being not as fun as DPSing or healing.

That's a good point. It seems like the only people who are okay with the prices are those with the deepest pockets (or have little care about spending - ie. lack of self control) and people who argue against price lowering just for the sake of doing it but they don't actually buy anything anyway. The latter just derails conversation and it serves no purpose to point out things like "no one is forcing you to buy" "these are optional" "so don't buy them," we've heard that old rehashed stuff so quit parroting it, people. If a 1200 CC set was to be reduced to 900, 800, 750, even 700 CC, I guarantee you that more people would buy coins. It's much easier to swallow that cost when you can buy it with a $10 coin package. You can't even get a set if you don't put $19.99 on the table first. THAT is what puts off a lot of people.

I know but when leveling I like to get a sense of advancement and using a set for 30 levels doesn't give the same feeling as using different sets as you level. Just trying to give my perspective here since everyone in this discussion seems to be a veteran. What I think is if they wanted new people to spend and stick around they shouldn't price things so only a tiny minority are willing to buy it. Btw I've yet to see a player who was my around my level wearing the cartel modded sets and who didn't look like they had a level 50. These are optional and yeah you can get them from the GTN ..IF they are listed complete, or listed at all. But there are going to be new players who may want them but don't have the million+ credits needed to get them in the GTN. But even at less than a million you can find gear that is almost as good or just as good as the set so why bother then? It makes no sense and it shouldn't be the counter-argument to wanting lower prices. Bioware already gets bad reviews for their current prices and few people are even buying this stuff anyway, so why not make the prices a bit more reasonable? I think it would get more people to spend. It would probably get ME to buy more coins. Right now I'm sitting on 2040 coins that will not touch current set prices. Personally, I could do a max of 750 CC for Investigator set and in the future do another 750 CC for a newer set. If the price was lower than that it would be even better. At 1200 CC i won't do it even once. No way. Wasn't the point of going F2P to get more profit and get more people interested in the game? So why not give people more incentive to buy?

Or they could sell for 750 CC and get people to buy 1500 sets and up with 112.5K points. I'm a new player and I'm nearing level 31 so the Investigator looks way better than what I have and it has better stats too but I wouldn't drop 1200 for a set that I would probably use for ~10 levels. I'm sure I'm not the only player who feels that way. I don't mind buying coins (in fact, I bought 2400 yesterday) but to me the price has to be right. The Investigator complete set isn't being sold on my server but the 3 pieces that are there are going for 180k, 250k and 540k. I don't have a million credits to buy it (and neither do most new players at my level) so that's out of the question. I don't think you'd be encouraging people to buy stuff if you're pricing it that high. Sure they lose initial profits on sets but if sell a set for 750 instead of 1200 that would leave the player 450 coins that they could use for other things. This player would most likely be more satisfied that he/she got more than one thing from his/her coins. It sort of gives the impression they're getting more bang for their bucks and they'd probably be willing to buy coins again. Same goes for everything else in the cartel market. If you want more people to buy you have to price more reasonably.

Yeah they do seem too expensive. I get they want to make money but if armor sets and stuff like that were to cost a bit less I'M SURE more people would buy them. I'm nearing level 31 and have a few coins saved up but I don't think I'd be getting the Investigator armor set at its current price. I like the set but 1200 is too expensive for an armor set, no matter level it's for. I got the Dark Initiate Robe when it was 150 CC and I used it from level 15 to 25. That's only one piece and the Investigator set is 5 pieces so each piece ends up being 240 CC. I guess I could go for the Investigator set if it was ~100-150 CC per piece.

Advertise Preferred status more. It's no monthly fee and by spending at least $5 people get so much more (like the 4 extra character slots you plan on giving). I don't think many outsiders are well aware of Preferred and how so much better than the actual F2P status is.

I was beat to it while I was typing Credit Cap unlocks. There could be a maximum number of unlocks and each unlock would increase the cap by an amount. For example, a maximum of 5 unlocks and each one gives you 1 or 2 million (whatever you feel is reasonable). But price them reasonably (ie. not 2000 coins but more like 350 per unlock, per character and 1000 each or so for account). By increasing the limit, you're allowing players to do much more. You're allowing players the opportunity to purchase unlocks via GTN with their hard earned credits. You'll have a group of players buying unlocks (to profit) and this other group of players who spend a bit on credit cap unlocks and possibly other things. Both sides are spending. It doesn't look like you're nickel-and-diming if you're allowing players the option, the alternative to acquire more with credits. These unlocks would be Bound of course. There's a ton of ideas being thrown around since the beginning of F2P and I recognize how difficult it must be to in your position. It's a tough crowd to please . What I think you guys should do is pick a few ideas of what you think is reasonable and maybe we could dissect them, improve on them and give you feedback. It would probably make your job easier and you'll end up with a more pleased community (I just imagined a 50 page thread with everyone agreeing with you --- pure bliss).

Excellent idea! That actually sounds fair enough. If someone wanted to have the maximum credit cap for account they'd have to spend $49.95, which is not bad when you consider they could potentially buy some other unlocks via the GTN or Cartel Market. I think F2P players would probably be more open to buying the unlocks for Warzones and Operations, as well as other cosmetics and gear. Of course the prices in the GTN for unlocks would go up accordingly, so even if someone was to buy just 1 unlock there's a chance they won't be able to buy everything but they're not as limited. It's sort of like a B2P game or other F2P games. You spend X amount of money (in this case $50) and you get 4 character slots + 5,350,000 credit cap but you also have the ability to purchase some of the other unlocks and boosts through the GTN...so even though you still don't get everything, you have the ability to acquire these unlocks by playing the game. I like this idea a lot and I hope Bioware takes notice of this.

What would be the point of being a subscriber then? If you can have unlimited money there's no more incentive to be a subscriber since you can get everything (or just about everything) from the Cartel Market with credits via the GTN - you could buy unlocks, legacy perks, etc. Even paying for respecs wouldn't be a problem since you can make as much credits as you want to cover those type of costs. Reduced prices and free respecs wouldn't be enough to encourage people to subscribe.

The fact that they've been working on it for a while should tell you it won't come out as late as 2014. Maybe in a future (huge) expansion in the first half of 2013?

Perhaps their data has shown a majority of F2P players have already purchased something or the stats show that they will.. $5 isn't much so I suppose most people will understand the value they're getting for free and be inclined to buy at least a $5 pack.

All I see in these forums is whining, not actual feedback. I honestly can't see any dev (from Bioware or not) sit for hours reading the whine. Post some constructive criticism with none of the "if you don't do X I leave" bs. If people posted true feedback they'll probably be more inclined to communicate. The quickbars change was an answer to whining, not from feedback. I'm sure the devs have better things to do than read whine all day.

Where did you get that $500 million figure lol? IIRC the budget was $150 million + marketing (a 20 story poster in the middle of NYC or SWTOR images in times square running for days isn't cheap). They probably broke even months ago. For reference, GTA 4 was $100 million and WoW $90 or so million and this game was released 7 years later than that so the figure isn't as world breaking as everyone makes it out to be when you consider the ton of voice acting. Even Max Payne 3's budget exceeded over $100 million. I don't think EA lost a penny here. The game just didn't ten-fold its budget but profit was probably made but not as much as they wanted so it went F2P. I don't think they would still continue it if they weren't making a penny... In February of this year it was reported the game had sold over 2 million and had 1.7 million subscribers. That was at the game's prime but that's $120 million from game sales + ~$25 million, assuming those subscribers had already used the free month and pay for a second one. But to answer your topic...I think it depends how many new people have sub for the first time, how many resubbed and how much is being spent on the cartel market. It is possible that they might if the numbers have been good...and I hope they are and continue to be so hopefully we see a second life and features that would make this game better.

To be honest, you have no right to be little anyone based on the way they spend their own money. Besides, you don't even know if he/she already donates (having the money to get 90 cartels I'd assume he/she probably does). Question is, do YOU feel ashamed every time you buy a game or spend money on entertainment? It's pretty much the same --- spending money on something to get entertainment out of it. The amount of entertainment is subjective, meaning you may not care for the throne but someone would really love it. It's funny that you feel you are above this person when you are a consumer yourself, and like this person, you probably contribute just as much if not more (Idk how you spend your money IRL) to the situation that surrounds people in third world countries. The way you comment on this whole situation (about donating and such), it sounds to me you just do it for the self-gratification you get out of donating and to belittle people who don't "donate". You're posting on a video game forum talking down on people so I doubt you're in Africa helping out the needy. I also doubt you're working on water purification projects to save the children who die of dehydration. Don't pretend to care when you really don't.

To me this review (if you can call it that) is nothing but click-bait. A rant by a disappointed player who from the beginning probably had expectations that were bigger than the game's budget. That's his fault, not the game's. I'm not being a fan boy about it but at this point you should've already learned not to expect too much of new MMOs. Edit: Just look at how WAR, TERA, Perfect World have fared. I've even seen a lot of players being disappointed at GW2, the game that was incredibly hyped about how different it was and in the end it did very little but at least it was a step in the right direction.

SWTOR is yet another victim of high expectations mixed with beliefs that the game should last you more than a year like it did with your first MMO. Where's TERA? Secret World? Those games used to be so hyped for bringing new things to the table like new combat (TERA) and look where they ended up. They did mediocre at best. Expectations were incredibly high (much like for this game back in 2009-2010) and didn't do as were expected. Truth be told, once you burn through an MMO you're less likely to play a similar one for a long time. The games that try to be different are flopping left and right or going F2P and the only one's that staying above the water is GW2 which has mostly attracted the old GW1 crowd and I've already seen the new people quit after a mere 2 months or so. It did not do enough of what some people expected. Compared to years ago (I'm talking 5+), people are making less and less of a commitment to MMOs. Only the most dedicated are sticking for longer. Buy your MMO, play it for 1-3 months and move on - that's the current market.

I agree with your space combat suggestion. I started playing when F2P began and as soon as I did my first space mission I was left wondering why a thing such as open-space combat doesn't exist. It would definitely add an entire new way of playing end game. Another thing that would be fun is open space along with a group. One player could be piloting while others handle the weaponry and do repairs as necessary (with tools that you're able to craft or find in PvE, PvP or doing space missions). It would take grouping to new heights where your survival depends how well your crew coordinates during battles against other group of players. It wouldn't discourage doing other things because you would still depend on other areas like PvE, PvP, questing, crafting to get necessary upgrades, tools, customizations and so on. It sounds complicated and would take a long time I guess but even just making open space for a single player would fun. Space combat has a lot of potential but it would probably take too many resources to implement . If the game keeps growing and growing it might be a possibility but Idk.

Great change! I subbed a day after joining F2P and this is a fantastic game, I hope you guys keep your word on listening to feedback so this game grows and attracts more people to try it and buy stuff from the Cartel Market . As for me, the only thing keeping me from buying coins is there isn't much incentive in the market (though I'm only level 21) so maybe putting out a few more cosmetics and the like would be nice...more variety of items basically. Certainly hope it's not for free or cheap because then what'd be the point of subscribing if we'd be getting almost everything free?

Try disabling Bloom. If that doesn't do it, go to the task manager and right click on the two swtor.exe process and Set Priority to "High" or "Above Normal." I have a HD 7850 and I was getting <30 FPS in all settings (maxed and lowest) but after setting the priority to high my FPS improved dramatically.