Looks great. Will the draw distance of said foliage be increased, so we don't end up with a wierd halo of grass growing around our characters?

Aion may have 'tanked' in the west, but in the East it was a massive success, stealing many of Lineage & Lineage 2's players. You say it didn't even come close to a mil yet it topped 1 million WESTERN sales back in 2009. In the East sales were far higher, and it had over a million players in the first week, before it even came out in America or Europe. You dispute my facts yet clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Yes, Aion is in (fairly rapid) decline, but it still has an enourmous Eastern following.

Hi Tim, nice article - I'd like to point out a few things though that you haven't taken into account with your initial piece (apologies if this has been covered elsewhere in this thread) The charts you are going from only take into account subscribers, and that includes for FTP games. Games such as RuneScape and Aion have much higher actual player numbers than those listed when you include free players - (RuneScape approx 2.5 mil, Aion 4.5 mil) so saying SWTOR is the 2nd most popular game in the MMO market is pretty disingenuous. I'd also highlight that the numbers on MMO data are generally pulled from official reports - investor reports etc - which tend to be over-inflated, especially at the start of an MMO's lifecycle, using techniques such as including accounts that have lapsed for less than a fortnight, accounts which are still active in terms of paid subscription, but the player has stopped playing etc. Obviously a lot of this is down to the inavailability of the data - MMOdata is a good way of tracking what companies are saying about their own numbers, but little else. One thing I'd like to see an investigation of, is how many people can there be on a single server. I've heard numbers ranging from 15k to 30k players, with a concurrent limit of about 5k. (I think anyone that has played SWTOR will agree that even 2.5k players online at once is a massive stretch, this would be about 500 on the fleet, 100 on every planet and 500 playing operations.... higher than I've ever seen it by a long way). So even if we take the stretch limit of 30k... spread over SWTOR's 20 global servers would only hit 600k players. And that assumes that every server is full, including RP servers. Which we know isn't the case. Yeah, it's difficult to know exactly how many people are playing SWTOR. I applaud you for trying. But look at the facts. Ignore the EA investor's reports, since they are simply there to keep investors happy until F2P happens and the numbers will jump anyway, hiding the subterfuge. No, the facts available to us show a very different story. And that story is around 200k active players.

Arsenal (PVE) 1. How do you think your Mercenary spec is perceived by other classes? Low-end DPS, compared to other Marauders, Snipers, Jugs and Sorcs. I play in a top-end PVE guild, and our meters show that Merc is lower DPS than these classes. Combined with lack of interrupt, the slow build on our armour debuff and lack of mobility, we are definitely a less desirable DPS class than most DPS builds. Our added utility, in heals and better survivability aren't required in organized operations, and as such are discounted as positives. We are seen as an easy class to master due to our simple rotation ('tracer spam' still being prevalent and required for our rotation) but a poor class overall due to our sub-standard DPS. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? I do feel somewhat underpowered compared to other DPS classes in operations. I work my *** off just to feature at all on the DPS rankings, and can never overtake a marauder or sniper if they are being played half-sensibly. I like having the utility of heals and heavy armour, but can see why it really doesn't benefit the operation. I don't feel that our rotation itself is simple or dull, but the abilities themselves are. I just feel like I'm filling a ranged DPS slot in an operation which would be better filled by a sniper at the moment. They do more base DPS. They have increased range. Their debuff is much faster to cast, and as such can be cast on multiple targets. They have a shield which can protect other operation members as well as themselves. Their AOE although slower, is much more powerful, to the point where it is viable in single-target rotation. They can interrupt. Overall Merc is a fun DPS class to play, but is tuned too weak at the moment. I don't bother with PvP at all. We're too easy to deal with by almost every class. Our utility is pretty sub-standard in PvP and our 'turret' style attacks mean we're easy targets.

4/10. Worst one I've played, but not by a huge amount. Entertaining in places, but generally very samey with a poor ending.

Fact is, the numerous abilities that got the 5% buff are all part of a dps sniper's rotation. Yes, I know it isn't going to be a flat 5% buff, I was exaggerating marginally. Regardless, it is a significant increase. As to your other points, I am referring only to PvE endgame. I'm not reffering to levelling content or anything, or PvP, so having a meleeer on them isn't really a relevant point. I thought I made this fairly clear. I addressed the survivability aspect in my original post. Yes, I know this is a 'whine', but I feel it justified. There are only 3 truly relevant classes for end-game pure DPS, Arsenal Merc being the weakest of the three, but still relevant. I guess this sniper buff just seems like a bit of a slap in the face, considering that they are already higher DPS and especially after the slew of nerfs we've received.

So, after the 1.2 nerf, the following heatseeker missle nerf (fix) and recent sniper buff, BH merc is looking less relevant as a viable DPS class. I'm in a top raiding guild, and we've done plenty of raiiding with combat logs up, and Aresenal Mercs sat firmly in 3rd place on the DPS list, after Marauders and snipers. NOW however, Snipers have had a buff in the DPS department by a whopping 5% across the board, which almost puts them up there with Marauder DPS. There seems less reason than ever to bring an Arsenal Merc - Snipers were already out-DPSing us anyway, and now it's just a joke. I really think that the ranged DPS classes should have more comparable DPS. I know Mercs have extra utility such as better survivability and a couple of inefficient heals, but in a high-end PvE situation, these should not be any real benefit. When picking a raid, would you pick the DPS class that does 10% more or 10% less DPS? regardless of inherent survivability of a class, you're going to pick the higher DPS. I know that enrage timers aren't all that tight in HM EC, but come NMM we'll need every bit of DPS we can muster.

This is a great post, I've been interested in this having only completed HM in 8 man on the live servers, we'll be doing 16-man next reset. Fely's feedback seems more informed than Pure's; Pure mentioning things such as DD can be soaked in 8man makes me think he probably has only done story mode Anyone else cleared both on HM? anyways, great post, thanks!