Flamethrower (as a PT) and Ravage (as a Jugg) were two of my favorite abilities because they looked and felt powerful to use. I don't play either of those classes anymore, everything else just feels like I'm dancing around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbTyTyizz1s

You might want to keep an eye on The Repopulation. It's supposed to have a crafting system heavily influenced by Star Wars Galaxies, which, for all it's other flaws, had the deepest, most immersive crafting system of any MMO that I've ever seen, even beyond that of EVE Online.

Agreed, this is a big problem for me. I think the game is having to iterate through all of your schematics for some reason, perhaps multiple times, as it seems to be noticeably worse on my characters with more schematics. At the very least, whatever scripts are run when switching characters is now doing more than it should and doing it very inefficiently.

It goes for all of the custom Trimantium gear in armormech as well. They crit with MK-7 augment slots. The orange Shock-Dispersing level 54 schematics likewise crit with MK-7 augment slots, while blue versions of the Farium Shock-Dispersing armor crit with MK-10.

You act as if every other multiplayer game out there has this option. Very few do, and fewer still MMOs. The reason being is that MMOs require people to type other names often, compared to other games. If I see someone in the world, I'm only going to see their character name. How can I send them a message? They haven't typed into chat or anything where I can link directly, nor do I know their hidden character ID. This is why MMOs generally stick with unique names.

They didn't say every possible thing everywhere in the game would be completely 100% unique. An MMO is going to have some sort of timesink. That's simply the way it is. It's good for the game and it's good for the players. If you could blow through the whole game in 40-60 hours like you can most single-player RPGs, then you would be left with absolutely nothing to do until the next content update. Players eat up content like little kids in an ice cream store. The game needs something that can be repeated to provide continuous rewards so that there is something for the players to do. If those rewards are too big, then players get everything they want too quickly and become bored. There will always be something repetitive in MMOs.

Long term buffs are a design to make characters more powerful when grouped. Without the legacy perk, you only have your own buff, but when running around with other people, you are stronger. Sure, there are other ways to accomplish this, such as passive group auras, but buffs are commonly understood and have been around a long time. The out-of-combat heal, while yes it could be automatic, still requires that you remain still and channel for a few moments so that you're not just instantly healed the moment combat ends. This avoids scenarios where, most notably in PvP where combat is not maintained by NPCs, a character could break combat by kiting and just passively heal to full very easily.

First off, no MMO will ever be as popular for WoW. A big part of WoW's success was timing and the fact that it was based on an already incredibly popular franchise. At the time, MMOs were just starting to become well-known and video games in general were becoming played by a larger audience. A generation of people that had grown up with video games were in or coming out of college and just entering the workplace and there were new generations of people starting to play. The stage was set, with a large audience receptive to video games available. The time was perfect for a blockbuster hit. The key factor was a game that would appeal to everyone and Blizzard used their video game line to deliver just that. It continued to become more popular and increase in subscriptions because after the initial hit, it was simply the game to play. The number one key business decision in World of Warcraft was appeal to the masses. However, by now the video game market has grown immensely, and there is a lot of variety in games available. The video game audience simply is no longer aligned to the point where a single hit will attract everyone. Now, to comment on your bullets: 1. Sharding or separation of servers is simply a performance thing. There is no way to support, from either the server-side, or the client-side, a scenario with hundreds and hundreds of people in the same place at the same time. The number of objects that need to be processed and textures to be rendered is simply massive in games these days. Dark Age of Camelot could potentially have a lot of people in the same place on relic raids, but I don't know anyone who had a PC that could run one smoothly. And DAoC even had separate servers themselves. Add on to that all of today's graphics and textures and additional objects and components and it simply isn't feasible for the client to do. You mention EVE online, but even their servers can barely support 2000 people in the same system, much less on the same grid. The recent burning of Jita event put that to the test, and they had to specifically tweak the servers to allow more horsepower to allow it. 2. The trinity is all about game design. You have no idea what you're asking for when you say to make everyone DPS. If everyone is DPS, then the variety of fight mechanics becomes very much limited. You can no longer have mobs that hit super hard because the DPS need to be able to accomodate for that. If some DPS have more healing capability than others, then they will have an easier job of handling themselves, and balance becomes far more difficult. 3. Factions are also about game design and lore. There is nothing inherently bad to having more or less factions, static or dynamic. One way or another, players are going to form their own groups. Having those groups built into the game from the start does not fracture the playerbase any more than not. 4. Leveling is all about putting time into a character and developing them and watching their progress. There's nothing bad about levels; it's simply a measure of a character's relative power. Granted, levels mean less and less in games with a level cap, but continue with equipment progression, but there it is not hurting the playerbase like you're suggesting. An RPG is about developing a character. If all characters enter the game at a point relatively equal to others, then it's no longer an RPG.

It may sound crass, but personally I don't see a problem. In the past, DPS have almost always had the capability to deal more DPS than the tank could compensate for with TPS. To deal with this, the DPS learned how to judge their damage and throttle as necessary. If you're having to throttle to the point where your overall DPS is comparatively low, then it could be a problem, but just the fact that you can't unload with 100% isn't necessarily a problem in-and-of itself.

So you're playing a burst spec and you're front-loading all damage buffs and cooldowns and then complaining about pulling threat?

Unfortunately, this isn't an open RPG where you play the role of a character that you create, but rather one which follows the story of a character that has already been defined in the world. And that character uses blasters.

Advanced Prototype, on the other hand, is just the opposite. Heat management is minimal and I can almost fully use Flame Burst as my filler without concern for heat with the seldom Rapid Shots thrown in. However, AP doesn't have as much mobility or that burst capability to really go into a burn mode when they need to like Pyrotech does. I think they did a good job with the PT DPS trees. The playstyles are very different and have their own feel and benefits to them.

Do you also have a level 40ish+ Inquisitor character on that server?

Sorry bud, you're trying to mislead people with what you're saying about FFXI. While you could technically change your class in FFXI, you still had to level up each class on its own. If you were a level 30 WAR (Warrior) and wanted to play a BLM (Black Mage) instead, then yes, you could go to your Mog House and simply change your class (BLM was available at the start, but many classes had somewhat involved quest chains to unlock them). However, if you had never played BLM before, then you would not be changing to a level 30 BLM, but rather a level 1 BLM. In effect, FFXI was no different than TOR. While you could technically change classes, each different class still had to be leveled independently. Therefore, the only difference from the FFXI system is that you kept the same character (name, race, inventory, etc.) between classes, where on TOR you use a separate one.