While I loved SWG and DAoC and MUDs back in the day, there has always been grinding, power-leveling, twinking, etc. I remember twinking in DAoC BGs as soon as they were released, making all MC gear with full enchants, procs, and pots. I remember, once the path to Jedi was figured out at least, setting something on my keyboard to keep my character on SWG from logging out while a looping macro continuously used stims and buffs to level doctor overnight. I remember MUDs implementing functions that would monitor player activity to make sure that people weren't botting/macroing. If you don't know what a MUD is, you only need to understand that they were basically the precursor to MMOs. This stuff has always been around because people have always been around. People haven't changed, there are just more of them now.

An operative is an intelligence agent. I'm not sure why you're focusing on that because it's contrary to your argument. A sniper isn't necessarily military at all, also being employed by police forces and covert agencies. Regardless, a sniper, military or not, would never wear body armor.

Saber Ward is the real kicker for Juggernaut. According to the stats on the character sheet, it's additive with their current defenses, so it's far more than just 50% avoidance for a full 12 seconds. Bounty Hunter doesn't have anything comparative.

Powertech is a melee class.

What you're missing is that 2-3 is a LONG time for an MMO. That's basically a full lifespan. And you're also missing that the numbers being thrown around, such as 250k, was a huge amount of players, far above the average at the time. Of course it's going to stabilize. It sounds like you're trying to compare it to WoW, yet you don't realize that WoW is an anomaly. If you claim that any game without WoW's success is a failure, then you're a fool. DAoC was a very successful game and pioneered the underlying concepts of faction-based PvP that all MMOs still use today.

I don't see you gaining much in AP compared to the loss of 9% damage to Rocket Punch and Rail Shot along with 30% bonus critical damage to Rail Shot and losing Thermal Detonator altogether.

JtL wasn't that great. It was never balanced. Multi-player ships could be destroyed in a single pass from a fighter because the damage was so high. The gear from the level-up missions was so overpowered that it got removed as mission rewards, but never removed from the people that already had it. Space mining was not nearly as interesting as ground mining because there was no variance in the materials, so it was just a matter of flying out there to mine some stuff and flying back, no sampling and comparative testing. I would have loved a revamped X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, but I never expected it. The space-on-rails is fun for what it is, a mini-game, and it has potential for future development if they want to pursue it, such as boss sequences, or group missions with a different sequence for each party member, or group sequences with everyone on a separate part of a capital ship, and so on.

I've only made two characters so far (one 46 and one 41), I've been ok with the progression. On my first character, I got so much experience doing all of the quests on Balmorra that I completely skipped Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine, with the exception of my class quests, and went straight to Alderaan. However, on my second character, I only did the main quest on Balmorra, then completed Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine, then did just the main quest again on Alderaan and Taris. I only did the main quest on Quesh on both of them before going on to do all of Hoth. On my next character, I might spend more time on the lower planets and try to skip Alderaan again, then spend some time doing all of the quests on Quesh and skip most of Hoth. I might do a little more space this time to fill in any gaps. That has been my experience so far. There is so much exp to get in the game that you can skip certain parts of the content so that each playthrough doesn't have to be exactly the same.

It runs fine for me, and I've only had minor issues with "ability delay" even before this patch, with the most noticeable being calling the speeder. I'm running a pretty good system (i7 930, dual ATI 5870 1gb, intel 510 SSD over sata 3, 24gb of 1600mhz ddr3). So, basically, your assumption is wrong.

You say that as if WoW originally innovated everything it did. False. In fact, I can't really think of anything truly innovative that WoW did. I would say perhaps instanced dungeons, but Dark Age of Camelot released its Catacombs expansion which also used instanced dungeons only two weeks after WoW released, so they were both in development at the same time.

Just because an ability is used instantly doesn't mean the damage is applied instantly. Instant simply means no cast time, can't be interrupted, and able to be used while moving. I'm not sure what the problem is here.

Groups are intended to be pulled together. What you're asking for would just directly reduce the difficulty and complexity of an encounter.

That describes The Phantom Menace, yes, but Attack of the Clones wasn't nearly as bad (just the love story part got annoying quick) and Revenge of the Sith was downright good.

It was the same before the patch. She takes a base level of affection from most anything until after 2kish and you talk to her.

You're getting pretty much everything mixed up. The tooltip explicitly states that it deals energy damage. There are four types of attacks: melee, ranged, tech, and force. Melee and ranged attacks must be checked against the target's defense, which means it can be avoided or shielded. Tech and force attacks are not checked against the target's defense at all, so they will always land. The type of attack has no bearing on the target's mitigation, only the avoidance/shielding. An attack can deal one of four types of damage: kinetic, energy, internal, elemental. Kinetic and energy damage are mitigated by the target's armor rating while internal and elemental damage have their own specific damage reduction (generally much lower). Since IGC is a proc and not its own ability, it will always be applied given the conditions are met (after a rocket punch or random chance on rapid shots or unload hit), which means that the ability its procs from must land first. The damage type, energy, is then applied against the target's armor. I don't know how much armor NPCs have. It would be better if the people concerned that this may be a bug were to test it on other players rather than guessing from the numbers that it doesn't seem to work. Find an equal level player and record the damage number and compare that to the calculated value based on their damage reduction.

Velocity would certainly kill someone when it reaches points where friction with the air would melt their armor or shear off limbs or the air pressure would become too low to breathe or would simply be too fast to avoid collision with changes in terrain. The actual velocity itself would not kill directly, no, but there are a lot of other factors introduced by the velocity, especially in atmospheric conditions.

The vast majority of servers in SWG were anywhere from 5:1 to 10:1 in favor of the Rebel scum.

That's it. From the stickied Primer: Resistance: Elemental/Internal DR As mentioned earlier in this thread, Elemental/Internal DR does NOT factor in Armor. So after subtracting Armor and adding passive Elemental/Internal bonuses we get the following: SI: (Sith Defiance 2%) + (Charge Mastery 9%) = 11% SW: (Stance 6%) + (Dark Blood 4%) = 10% BH: (Stance 5%) + (Ion Shield 2%) + (Power Armor 2%) = 9%

Actually Powertechs do get bonuses to internal/elemental at slightly less than the other tanks, but only 1% less than Juggernauts and 2% less than Assassins. We get it from two talents that reduce all damage, so it doesn't explicitly state internal/elemental.

I think you mean a simplistic aggro management system vs. a more traditional one that requires some thought on the part of the player.

Who says it's a signature skill? Just because it's at the top of the tree? That means nothing. Shield Tech signature skill is Jet Charge, if anything.

Type 4, cyborg, one eye implant, slicked back hair. Looks like a total BAMF in combat standing there shooting flamethrowers and grappling people. Sure he has a little extra meat on him, but he doesn't need to move when he's got the tech to back up whatever he says.

Mark as many mobs as you have available CCs, then mark mobs for focus targets and make sure to announce these to the group. Use CC on the highest health targets (longest to kill) that are hard to position, which means ranged elites as melee mobs are easier to control. Mark any strongs for DPS targets and don't bother tanking them if you're taking a lot of damage; the two DPS in the group should be able to kill a strong before taking much damage. Focus on building threat on the remaining elites. Focus DPS on targets from least HP to most; have the DPS kill any standards first, then strongs, then elites. As the mob difficulty class increases, its HP increases far more than its damage, so you will take less damage overall by killing the weakest first.

I think you're thinking vanilla, as BC was not especially unfriendly with the rise of fury warriors and enhancement shamans. Vanilla had the 360 degrees cleaves, BC just had stuff you had to avoid.