In fairness lines like “I want a refund for this POS game.” Are few and far between and even then are normally a result of legitimate grievances. As for expectations vs reason. I don’t think my expectations, or those of most people are unrealistic, especially given the development time and budget of the game. I didn’t expect widely reported bugs from beta to still be present in the release client, I expect a world that doesn’t feel completely sterile, I expect some form of “downtime” activates and as a result a game that foster a social aspect. Had BW released a more well-rounded game out of the box, I don’t think we’d have such a massive population issue now.

I’ve see next to no trolling on this forum since returning to the game. The vast majority of the “complaining” is about legitimate issues and the more noise people make the better chance that BW will wake up and smell the under-population. The most disruptive influence in these forums at the moment is the mass of fanboys who will defend the game and BW to the hilt, the ones who jump on any legitimate criticism as whining or complaining. A lot of people (including myself) are not happy with the current state of the game. The rational is not trolling, it’s “This game has potential, I currently think it’s under-delivering and doesn’t justify the monthly charge. However I’m hoping it’ll improve and I want to make some noise to let the devs know that a lot of us aren’t happy.” Personally I’m quite frustrated with the game, I can see so much potential in there but rightly or wrongly I get the impression that the devs are a little delusional and think everything is fine. They should be looking at the *active* server population and asking themselves why so many people have stopped playing so soon.

Exactly, clearly making his post fundamentally subjective. The whole issue of, as you put it “screaming at BW to fix everything right now” is what gets to me. I think that this is a very dismissive way of dealing with people who are raising legitimate points. Of course people want issues addressing ASAP, we aren’t beta testers and we aren’t playing for free, we are paying customers. Also don’t forget that the game has been out now for nearly half a year. The funny thing is that a lot of people back in January were saying “if BW don’t get more features added quickly then the servers will be like ghost towns in 6 months time.” A lot of other people then rallied to BWs defence much like some people in this thread have done. BW and the fanboys should have listened back then. There are currently issues with the game, the most obvious being server population resulting from a multitudes of issues. People are giving feedback in these forums and that is a good thing. Yes some people are becoming frustrated, this frustration is exacerbated by BW/EAs unwillingness to acknowledge that there are problems. BW are giving the impression that they don’t really understand how to keep subscribers and have bitten off more than they can chew with SWTOR. Remember the bottom line is, the people “complaining” are the people who enjoy the game but want it to meet its full potential. Also BW are a professional company and don’t need people to stick up for them in the forums, they need honest feedback.

Well said. Some people on this forum do tend to act like BW are doing us some sort of favour. They seem to forget that we’re not friends with BW and BW aren’t friends with us. We’re paying them for a service. Currently server population is having a major negative impact on many peoples enjoyment of the game. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of people to expect some form of *well publish* time frame and an explanation of the steps BW are planning to take to rectify this problem. That way we can make an informed choice as to cancel our subs or stick with it.

Can you point to where this has been said, I’ve seen quite a few people mention it but I can’t find anything official and I really want to know if it’s just migration or full mergers. I think the issue is less the amount of content and more the variety of content. This is very little variety at the moment. Levelling alts juts to experience more content is not a mark of a good MMO.

Sorry to go off topic but if you see Mass Effect cheap, I’d recommend giving it a try at least. It’s not as stats heavy as a lot of people (including myself to some degree) would like but the story and character choice/development is incredibly good. If you like the way SWTOR hands conversations you’ll love the way ME does.

I’m suggesting that claiming you are intelligent and have an understanding of the industry then touting that as the bedrock for a statement is probably not the best way to reinforce your argument. Also claiming to be completely objective shows a lack of self-awareness, particularly as objectivity is generally an unemotional standpoint where as trust is an emotional concept. As I said in my post, trust is not a good word to use. Granted I’m being a bit picky here. The bottom line is that genuinely claiming to be intelligent is not a sign of intelligence (it’s a sign of narcissism,) producing a well-supported argument would have been a better course of action and much less dismissive of the OP.

You’re self-professed as intelligent, possessing an insight into game development and yet still objective? Odd. I consider myself to be quite intelligent (thought I may be alone in that) and I have some understanding of game development and the behaviour of game publishers. I’m clearly not objective as my viewpoint is coloured by my knowledge of game development, publishers and my first-hand experience with the game. My subjective viewpoint is that BW released a game that was not fit to be classed as a professional retail product. They have failed to deliver and subsequently support a polished game and as a result have seen a massive drop in subscriptions. As to whether I “trust” BW, I’m not sure trust is the right word. I’ve lost confidence in them as a developer, both due to SWTOR and the end of Mass Effect 3. It comes down to this. If they released another MMO in a couple of years would I be there from day 1. The simple answer is not a chance in hell.

This really is an appalling outlook for a MMO developer to have. The challenge should be how can they keep people interested and deliver good value for money. At some point BW are going to have to face that harsh truth that SWTOR in its current state is not even close to being the best MMO out there. It is not currently looking like it’s going to be a very successful MMO and people have done and will continue to vote with their wallets.

Patience is one thing, patiently waiting while paying a monthly sub, that’s something else amd something that will cost both BW and the SWTOR community in the long run. Sitting quietly, forking over money every month is the absolute worst thing and MMO community can do. People rising what they consider to be legitimate issues is how the Devs get an idea of how to improve the game, this is not “QQing” it’s providing customer feedback.

The problem for me is that there seems to be very few issues that the devs will acknowledge as problems, and that there seems no urgency to fix the one problem they have acknowledged. Saying that they’ll do a server merge in early summer (I only have the word of a another forum poster for that) doesn’t really cut it when they’ll still be charging my credit card every month until then. I was playing from early access in December. I got bored due to lack of features and took a break. I’ve come back 5 months later to find that very little has changed. There’s only so long that BW can rely on the goodwill of its customer base. People still use “give them time” argument. I’m aware that new content doesn’t come over night but I sort of expected that they had a bunch of nearly finished content that didn’t make it out of the door at release. But here we are at the end of May with very little in the way of new content and still having to put up with basic graphics bugs. The game didn’t feel like an MMO at launch and it certainly doesn’t now so few other people are playing it. The game still has a lot of potential but nearly half a year from launch, in an already competitive market BW need to get their finger out and get the game fulfilling some of its potential.

For me fishing cones under the “Discover a Fully Featured MMO!” line. I’m enjoying SWTOR a lot but it’s not what I’d describe as a fully featured MMO, one featuring missing is downtime/social activities.

Basically you are saying that fishing in MMOs isn’t enjoyable. I think what you mean to say is that you personally don’t find fishing enjoyable. As for making it semi mandatory you are basing your suspicion on zero information. If you think about it, neither of your points are objective reasons not to add a new feature to the game.

Personally I think it'd be a great idea and I know I'm not the only one. A lot of people are very against the concept but I don't understand why. I can understand them not being interested but to be against it being implemented makes little sense.

Fair enough but looking back at a lot of your posts in this thread you have to admit that you are being more than a little over the top on the positive spin. My evaluation of the game is that it’s currently fun. However it was released with far too many bugs (including ones that were highlighted during beta) and that it needs to develop in many areas ASAP is it’s gonna successfully make it get past the first few months without losing a large proportion of possible subscribers. Don’t get me wrong, I want it to do well. At the moment it’s an acorn I’d rather see it grow into a great Oak than a withering sapling. But BW needs to take on board community opinion and all these “STWOR is the best thing ever” threads are not helping.

I’m not disputing that there are trolls who get irritated that other people like the game. I just don’t think the fan boys are any better, and god knows they’re feeding the trolls.

Yah, it’ll be great after it’s optimised. Shame they need to optimise a commercially released game.

Mine has settings for high low and medium. However I've done extensive testing and I can only get the client to display low and very low.

Having fun no. I’m having fun. Acting like issues don’t exist is another matter.

You’re not playing with high res textures, they don’t work. It’s one of the bugs.

Read up on the subject before posting. Poor and sporadic freamrates are a known issue. On my rig it runs anywhere from 20 FPS to 110+ FPS, not dependent on current on-screen graphical complexity or player density. Is that because I’m trying to run it on a “toaster?” As for being relatively bug free. Relative to what, an Ant colony?

<cough> troll</cough>

Modification of the config file causes insanely poor performance on some hardware in certain parts of the game. I tried it back on Dromund Kaas. Work fine in most places, only negligible reduction in FPS (unless I was getting that standard sporadically bad frame rates) then I walked into a small instance and my FPS dropped to single figures. Same in the space port.

Firstly I don’t think anyone is saying that WoW has better graphics. If they are the simples response is. The graphics in SWTOR are better than WoW. Now the next point the graphics are not “amazing” in SWTOR they are moderately good. The reason for this is that MMOs need cater to a wider array of H/W as many MMO players are not gamers and will not have invested in a high end PC. I’m not criticising the game for its graphics, just pointing out that they are nothing special. There are however currently two issues with the graphics. The first one being the “high” quality textures simply don’t work. You set to high you see the medium resolution quality. The other is sporadic performance, not just poor performance, sporadic. I get anywhere between 110 FPS and 15. Player density isn’t the issue, nor is the complexity of the current graphics being rendered.

Fanboy != to Fan Fan: Someone who enjoys the game, can see its faults and understand that other people may have different expectations and opinions to their own. Fanboy: Someone who has an abnormal emotional investment in the game and/or BW will blindly (normally rudely) defend against any criticism and oppose any ideas for improvement