I think what SWTOR might be overlooking is that there is a complete focus on "balance". The every class is able to beat another view. The every good class is countered by a mirror "evil" class with different LOOKING abilities. There SHOULD be a reason to be the class or alignment you choose to be. While I understand you want to make sure things don't get out of control in areas like an economy the idea that every raid or every flashpoint must have x y and z is making them stale beyond it's first experience. Adding to that the fact that you must do every raid or flashpoint multiple times in order to get everyone geared also gets tiresome. Whether you agree with it or not, limiting solo play to inferior gear always leaves the largest gamer market out of the loop so to speak. I like the idea of commendations. That said, when you finally get the commendations the equipment you can buy isn't as good as what you're going to receive as quest rewards in the next level area. Casual gamers want to kick *** too. For a casual gamer it's almost impossible to get involved with raiding unless you find a guild. There are 5 things I feel that are making SWTOR feel like an adventure game - 1. - There is NO personal tie to your character. Yay i leveled up today I get 2 new attacks and i can equip this piece of armor with stats that are a LITTLE better than the one's I already have. 2. - The options for personalizing your character are limited to gear. When you aren't directly in control of your characters development and specialization what's the point. If you can't make the choice on whether your character focused on becoming more agile, or more intelligent, or stronger there isn't a reason to pay attention to the character. When there aren't any choices to make your character unique (maybe not to the universe, but to yourself) you're not really invested in it. 3. - Regardless of those "in the know" people ARE different and as such they want their characters to be different. Seeing the same chest piece on 12 other people with three different options of personalizing your own quickly gets old. 4. - I think maybe things are far too linear and incremental to such a degree that you lose the feeling that you are excelling or getting better at anything. 5. - A complete lack of actual world interaction from designers and developers and a complete lack of socially designed areas and interaction methods specifically placed to benefit having people around each other regardless of level. There NEEDS to be a changing environment. There NEEDS to be developer interaction with the players and the community IN the game. There NEEDS to be an element to the game that is unpredictable and fluid. Why isn't there a sudden attack on the republic fleet by empire forces ? Why isn't there a situation that gives you the feeling of overlooking a field of enemies and knowing you're going to get into a fight ? These are the kinds of things that make people say "Wow I wonder what's going to happen today" I need to get in the game. Gearing should not be the only mechanic that makes guilding or raiding "fun (required)". Raids should be geared almost entirely to benefit guild expansion or perks, group enhancement rewards, status in the world, etc. and not just gearing everyone up for the next one. It quickly gets to be more of a chore running the same encounter 30 times to get everyone in the guild all their different pieces of gear rather than an experience. While they need to provide greater rewards, those rewards need to actually be DIFFERENT rather than just more awesomeness in a chest piece. As a casual player I would love to raid. Unfortunately there wont be many times a casual gamer gets invited to a raid for two maybe three reasons. 1. - No guild wants to lose loot I.E. needed gear for a guildie to make raiding easier 2. - Raids are so linear-ally designed that you need things to be just about perfect in timing and reaction which only comes from being in a knit group 3. - casual gamers aren't geared to begin with. It really is my hope that this game succeeds and grows quickly. Please skip with the post from the guy who "explains" why bugs aren't fixed as fast as content like hats are added. While it may be easier/faster to add content than to fix bugs, bugs should be the priority by all teams. While it's nice to add a hat. It would mean more to the community (read customer) to have issues dealing with hats addressed (like making them more variable/personalized OR able to be hidden on companions). While it may be hard to do, there is no reason that we don't have an ETA on being able to search the market for items we want to sell to see what prices are already out there. There is no reason they can't expand the UI slots we already have so we can actually place all the abilities we have in the easily accessible are of the screen. There is no reason that the stupid little padlock for the those ui slots is where it is located so we can accidentally unlock it while we're watching a pvp fight and lose an ability. We know they are busy. We know they are under a great deal of stress. That doesn't explain why we get patch notes with 12 bugs fixed (dealing with balance issues not performance/immersion/usability). Although i see some bugs I think the larger overall problem aren't "bugs" as in bad code or errors. I haven't run into many game breaking problems (crashes, having to restart, etc.) It seems to be many,many issues in mechanics that an experienced mmo player isn't used to dealing with these days. I want SWTOR to GROW. I want SWTOR to make me feel like I need to play tomorrow to see where things are headed. I want SWTOR to explain to us how they are working toward implementing what the community wants and needs rather than releasing information on future updates that don't really tell us anything beyond "we are moving away from the conflict between rep and imp and more toward outside forces being introduced as a tug of war type story arc". The best thing after the character story is PVP. PVP is as popular as it is because it's rep vs. imp (in most situations) not because some different robot or alien has shown up as a "greater evil" that sidetracks off the basis of Star Wars.

I simply posted because I was looking for insight like many of you have provided. I'm not a lore expert on TOR. I like the original game and have always enjoyed bioware's work. Add to that a Star Wars MMO and I was thoroughly into the idea. Through all the information releases, the videos, the images, and the emphasis in it's development on the sith returning and there being a WAR, I was expecting a war. I did follow the "story arcs" but I was seriously hoping that somewhere it would end up that we were a part of the action in the universe and not just some interspersed characters which will ultimately have no impact whatsoever on where the game goes from here. Victim of the hype i guess (which is absolutely my fault). I saw the intro video and was like excellent I get to fight. I get into the game and I feel "that was a cool story but what did it actually do". Now as I said originally I don't see the development heading in an escalating direction. Personally I see a direction where the devs are saying "ok, we will introduce things that both sides have to deal with but are separate of the idea of empire vs. republic" I.E. "Uh oh, there's an ancient alien race that is threatening both the empire and the republic so they have to fight to same end" eventually leading into ok in this case you need to team up with a sith however much you don't like it because some "greater" evil is here for you to fight. My inference to the evil not being quite evil comes from being a sith and making morally good choice. They should all be BAD choices of varying degrees not well I'll save this person to get lightside points. If that's the case, then you should have been a Jedi. Just saying. I don't think there are many people who post to qq. I personally did it to get people's opinions on the game direction.

I think what some game companies might be overlooking is that all "modern" MMO's are being developed with a complete focus on "balance". The every class is able to beat another view. The every good class is countered by a mirror "evil" class with different LOOKING abilities. There SHOULD be a reason to be the class or alignment you choose to be. While you want to make sure things don't get out of control in areas like an economy the idea that every raid or every flashpoint must have x y and z to complete will inevitably make every raid and every flashpoint stale beyond it's first experience. Adding to that the fact that you must do every raid or flashpoint multiple times in order to get everyone geared also gets tiresome. The greatest thing lost in modern mmo's was the sandbox idea which started the genre. Whether you agree with it or not, limiting solo play to inferior gear always leaves the largest gamer market out of the loop so to speak. Casual gamers want to kick *** too. For a casual gamer it's almost impossible to get involved with raiding unless you find a guild. When the sandbox idea was first launched there were limited encounters where the raid was situational (a mob would actually act differently based on the composition of the group rather than JUST who was doing the most damage) There are 5 problems with modern mmo's that simply make them an adventure game - 1. - There is NO personal tie to your character. Yay i leveled up today I get 2 new attacks and i can equip this piece of armor with stats that are a LITTLE better than the one's I already have. 2. - The options for personalizing your character are limited to gear. When you aren't directly in control of your characters development and specialization what's the point. If you can't make the choice on whether your character focused on becoming more agile, or more intelligent, or stronger there isn't a reason to pay attention to the character. When there are no skills in an mmo you lose another layer of what makes your character unique (maybe not to the universe, but to you). Why can't a commando use a sniper rifle ? Why can't a jedi use a blaster ? 3. - Regardless of those "in the know" people ARE different and as such they want their characters to be different. Seeing the same chest piece on 12 other people with three different options of personalizing your own quickly gets old. 4. - Every modern mmo is designed to be linear and incremental to such a degree that you lose the feeling that you are excelling or getting better at anything. 5. - A complete lack of actual world interaction from designers and developers and a complete lack of socially designed areas and interaction methods specifically placed to benefit having people around each other regardless of level. There NEEDS to be a changing environment. There NEEDS to be developer interaction with the players and the community IN the game. There NEEDS to be an element to the game that is unpredictable and fluid. Why isn't there a sudden attack on the republic fleet by empire forces ? Why isn't there a situation that gives you the feeling of overlooking a field of enemies and knowing you're going to get into a fight ? These are the kinds of things that make people say "Wow I wonder what's going to happen today" I need to get in the game. Gearing should not be the only mechanic that makes guilding or raiding "fun (required)". Raids should be geared almost entirely to benefit guild expansion or perks, group enhancement rewards, status in the world, etc. and not just gearing everyone up for the next one. It quickly gets to be more of a chore running the same encounter 30 times to get everyone in the guild all their different pieces of gear rather than an experience. While they need to provide greater rewards, those rewards need to actually be DIFFERENT rather than just more awesomeness in a chest piece. As a casual player I would love to raid. Unfortunately there wont be many times a casual gamer gets invited to a raid for two maybe three reasons. 1. - No guild wants to lose loot I.E. needed gear for a guildie to make raiding easier 2. - Raids are so linear-ally designed that you need things to be just about perfect in timing and reaction which only comes from being in a knit group 3. - casual gamers aren't geared to begin with. When developers get back to the simple fact that everyone wants to be a hero and be epic in their own right then you'll see another mmo on the scale of WoW or the original EQ.

I'm dropping my 3 month sub after looking at the path of future content and my disappointment seeing more effort on obscure non Star Wars content than on game mechanics and operation. I was SOOOOOO dying to get ahold of the game and get back into a Star wars environment mmo. (Massively Multiplayer) not massively small group based compartmentalized adventure game. Am I alone in saying I would rather have a continued storyline about the wars between the empire and republic then on rakghoul updates and introductions of rogue robot civilizations in the story of Star Wars ? (HINT: the name of the franchise is star WARS). Why on Tython there still isn't a global flashpoint chat is beyond me. Who wants to sit in an area for an hour looking for people who are at the same level AND the same point in their story lines? Why are we still debating the problems with server populations being too skewed one direction or another why is it still a "future" update that we'll get cross server warzone populating ? I think the evidence on graphics based combat timing being a bad idea are in and proven. It's nice that my toon does a complete circle with his lightsaber but if I can be stunned in the middle of that animation then why can't i adjust myself and change my attack ? The further I move into the different storylines of alts the more I'm just tired of being blocked from areas of a planet or looking at the same cliff stopping me from getting to the outpost or town just over there on the mini-map. Using terrain as a timesink is just an irritating idea. Seriously what would fans say if they decided to take Mass Effect 3 and say hey look it's a race of space dragons who have shown up to conquer the universe. Please get back on track and expand the stories of the basis of the game. Good vs. Evil. (not that even playing an evil toon gives you a sense of being evil in the universe) I don't imagine that the emperor would be forgiving or accepting of sith who decided to be "good". PLEASE get this back on track to being a great MMO instead of a Star Wars skinned WoW where every planet is just a larger version of a certain wookie planet in an old mmo.

That's some information I think alot of people should be notified of. If it's always been in there why isn't it stated or even mentioned ?

I was just in a PVP with the three turrets and I see an Imp take the speeder bike right to the west turret WTH is this about ?

It's time to rethink the "sharding" of servers and areas. I have been trying to get a group for Cademimu and the Mandalorians for a couple of days now and it seems everyone is looking for healers right now. That's all fine and dandy but how in the *&^* is it that there are not enough people to ask in a full server ? If they can't handle the "graphics" requirements for a high population area then it's their problem they need to turn it down. If it's not a graphics problem I have a hard time beleiving that they can't handle a couple of hundred people in an area at a time. Why are "shards" not being combined as often as they are being created ? People don't like to play an MMO where they have to WORK to find people to play with, or around. Low SEEMING populations are just as detrimental as crowded areas, it's time to rebalance the numbers when splitting. Thank you ! P.S. Love the game, enjoying most of it, am disappointed by little things like this

Is there a way to return to Tython at higher levels ?