Faulty logic. Every Mac OS game could be "bootcamped" (i.e. "runs under Windows"), and most of them months before the Mac OS version came out. Yet companies make them again and again, including BioWare, EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Activision, etc. etc. I could only guess why people buy Mac OS games, but they do, and enough to turn a tidy profit. BioWare repeatedly ports games to Mac, and recently called Mac users a "large and important audience" for their games, when they said they want to release SWTOR for Mac. They know it's not a Windows vs Mac market. It's a Windows *plus* Mac market.

Macs are an important and large audience for BioWare games, so I hope it will come sooner (before Summer) rather than later. I think the only resource concern is to avoid porting some part of the game more than once (because they're still rapidly changing the Windows client), but even that's not as big a concern if they're porting using a Cider wrapper (which I expect they are). Making a Mac version should no more detract from work on the Windows client than moderating the forums, or working on Mass Effect 3. Perhaps the biggest impact of working on a Mac port is finding bugs in the Windows client. If it's critical, you'll want it fixed. If not, it'll go into the bug report queue with all the rest.

SWTOR is currently buggy and incomplete, but at least through level 30 is not inferior. It's been only a minor inconvenience so far, but probably gets worse as levels increase. BioWare apparently wanted more time to finish, but didn't have a choice. (EA's stock probably really would have plummeted had SWTOR missed Christmas, instead of from $19.50 to $18 this past week.) I listed 3 things that no other MMOs have, which come straight from KotOR & ME. I prefer Eastern MMOs so I definitely noticed the short, mass slaughter fights and the "questing on rails" aspect as two of the many things they patterned after Western MMOs. So some things are the same, some things are different. The game as a whole is not identical to any other MMO. Overall, SWTOR is a great game for KotOR/ME fans, and a good one for MMO players that don't zip through 50 levels before wondering where the game went. And it definitely will improve over time, not only as they finish and fix stuff, but also add new stuff as well. I can easily see myself playing through spring. I'll reassess the situation about whether to stay subscribed around then.

BioWare made the game they wanted to make, not doing everything exactly like some other MMO did. Some of these new features stumbled or fell flat, causing some players to call them "questionable". Other features may have instead flattened the competition (other MMOs where NPCs don't speak in well-acted voice, I don't get a decision tree or to converse with NPCs, and we don't get a companion character to fulfil a complementary party role, to name a few). Long-time players of MMOs become experts at how their favorite MMO does things. Another comes along and they're no longer experts, no longer as efficient. The frustration comes out as hostility towards the things that don't work exactly as they have done in the past. Then it only takes a few posts on forums to build a sort of "Mob rage". I expect that those who subscribed are more willing to try new things, accept them as different rather than inferior, and learn to enjoy a new style of MMO gameplay.

As announced, it's per-server, but they way they describe it as a reward to players who roll multiple characters, it really should apply to all characters of an account. Given the amount of negative feedback, both pre- and post-launch, and not only from Roleplayers, I hope BioWare makes some changes, so that it can reward all players, not just those who stick to a single server and play style (RP, PvP, etc.).

The chart shows only the past year. The "History" fields at the bottom are already filled out for the past 10 years. Just hit "Refresh" to see that this drop is not the worst thing that has ever happened to EA. It's also clearly visible that the stock price has been riding high for the past year, and its current value is even higher than this time last year. Stock prices are very susceptible to uncertainty, not actual results. So one analyst spreads FUD and it affects stock. Even if investors said "EA will sell a bajillion!!!" and people invested on that, then when the "bad news" that EA only sold 4 million (I'm making this up), which is many times BioWare's and EA's expectations, the stock would likely also drop. I'm not an apologist for BioWare/EA, but I have to caution against those who see one acorn fall and start yelling "The sky is falling!!"... especially if they, for whatever reason, want it to fall.

You saw this thread. My point proven. (Psych 101: Opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Hating/anger is still caring.) Yeah, perhaps they really meant "founding subscriber" or something. Oh well, I'll ding it, just like I'll ding my Goobbue mount (different MMO).

I'd say "if you canceled, you really won't care about an in-game item or title." But of course you're still posting, so you still care.

I think it's a nice idea, though it's odd that a "founder" title will apply to so many people. (Millions!) It looks like someone can still buy the game up to 8 weeks from now and still qualify as a "Founder" by immediately buying and redeeming a Game Time Code. Some of us were on the forums in 2008, played in closed beta (not me), preordered, played in beta weekends, played in early game access, and were playing the first week if not the first day. I'm not complaining, but they do seem to be stretching the term "founder". Are the phone reps they hired yesterday BioWare Founders, too? On the other hand, after playing Thanksgiving Weekend Beta and seeing so much unfinished and buggy, I guestimated that it could take until March to get the game to launch quality state. Maybe "Founder" is their way of saying "thanks for paying for the final beta"?

BioWare customer service sent me here. This bothered me as well. The light/dark reward seemed backwards. I'm not military, but I've been a part of many teams in my days. Deserting almost always leads to some amount of personal darkness. They would think of their team members and how leaving makes weaker the team, the mission and the cause. Or more practically: on some level, every soldier wants to go home to a warm bath and cookies (and spouse and kids). As for D&D, a lawful neutral respects rules, such as military conscription. A chaotic neutral would be required to tell the soldiers to do what they want, not what they agreed to earlier. Actually, a lot of Taris seems very "Cartoon Network" morality (i.e. 12-year-old understanding of the world) to me. But of course the game doesn't bear close scrutiny. I mean, my mission as a Jedi has been "kill anything and everything in your way by the thousands", not quite Jedi Code.

Happened to us as well (a duo) a week or so ago. My char got infected but my duo partner didn't. t don't think he hit "reset", but we eventually gave up and travelled to another area (to the quest destination) assuming the game bug was that it didn't mark both of us infected when it should have. He couldn't complete the quest, so we returned to the quest area and he was infected shortly thereafter.

A developer just posted elsewhere, "the vast majority of our players" are in the level 20s. That said, as an early-20s on both Taris and Balmorra, I'm starting to notice unfinished content, and reproducible gameplay-affecting bugs that they must have known about but didn't have time to fix. I can imagine it will only get worse at higher levels.

This has not happened to me (yet?), but I also consider it a serious bug (perhaps technically, design flaw). If I don't intentionally flag for PvP, I shouldn't be allowed deal damage to another player, whether via AoE or even single-target. The potential for abuse of the current system is one-sided, and it sounds like it could already be happening. As others have said, it is unreasonable for the developers to expect PvE players to look around 360° for sneaky or even stealthed other players every time before firing off an AoE ability.

I agree with a lot of what the OP says. Games these days tend to be "dumbed down" or "easy mode". Perhaps part of the reason is that many of us "old timer" gamers now have jobs and offspring, and can't devote 4+ hours/weekday and 24+ hours/weekend. As far as seeing other players, it is less interesting an encounter. Mobs are almost all soloable (definitely companion duo-able) and, like you said, areas are designed for a particular set of quests (i.e. there are no crossroads). Once those quests are done, the game shuffles players off to other areas or planets. But to cut to the general conclusion, games nowadays are "mass market". They are designed for little to no thinking required, and overwhelmingly easy effort and frequent rewards. Actual challenge takes time and concentration, and a good game can intensely frustrate a player until an obstacle is overcome. That's a negative experience that only a niche portion of the mass market will tolerate. And from another angle, there are a ton of games and game companies. Making games easy and short means customers need to buy more frequently to stay occupied. A good game that takes months cuts into their profits. Perhaps not necessarily applicable to MMOs, but it seems to be the current trend. Another one is higher-priced PC games now that customers are used to $60 (£40) console game prices (which, I believe, are higher to cover a royalty to the console maker).

This review score seems about what I would give it. Trouble is, the game is so huge that dozens of aspects could get their own review score. PvP, story, replayability, technical merits, zone design, pew pew (space combat), heck even a platform game aspect. On top of that, the game was launched unfinished and unpolished. With such a high score, the reviewer must have ignored some of those blemishes, assuming they would be fixed within months of launch. Way back when, like around Empire Strikes Back, I read a newspaper article giving Star Wars a luke-warm review, saying it fell short of the Star Trek franchise (which at that point was only the original series). That seems laughably short-sighted now, but it reminds me of forum posters who vociferously condemn the game for not being enough like what they're used to, rather than let SWTOR be, and become, its own game.

I hope I'm not the first to break this news to you, but everything is truly doomed to implode. As far as SWTOR, barring something as epic as nation-wide (USA) natural disaster, the game should be around 6 months from now, far longer than most other games keep people's interest, and hopefully for years and years to come. If every other game you've bought and stopped playing wasn't pointless, then neither is SWTOR.

If you get stuck behind a blade of grass, hit /bug and give them a good description of what happened. Ability delay: they've already addressed it, thanks to people voicing their dissatisfaction with what they perceived as a problem. WoW and others have years, nearly a decade, of polish, bug fixes, tweaks, expansions, etc. No new MMO can launch with all that even 2 year old MMOs have (imho). I'm enjoying the game, solo and in groups, too much to let some glitches end my fun. I think what you're doing is expecting perfection in a version 1.0 (or 0.995). That's an unreasonable expectation.

So you're saying they should have delayed launch again? Those were the only choices.

My guess is that it was like this: BioWare had tons of bug reports (and of course unfinished graphics engine, features, etc.) BioWare said "on schedule for maybe March 2012" EA said "before christmas, end of discussion" BioWare chose "survive launch" over "fix a few more bugs" They survived launch. I'm still playing. They're fixing bugs I reported on Thanksgiving Weekend Beta (my only one). I guessed some would take 2-3 months to fix.

There's an interesting phenomenon in which the initial rush of people on opening weekend (for movies) love it so much that they tell friends, and go see it again. The result is the number of tickets sold actually increases each weekend for many weekends, rather than slowly decline as the hype subsides. This game could do the same. Some of my friends were waiting to hear how the game launch went, and now say they will be joining soon. Even ones who haven't played MMOs before. Plus in a few months BioWare hopes to add another platform, which could bring in even more friends. It would be great if SWTOR subscribers could actually grow monthly for many months. Not that nobody is quitting, but that new people starting would more than offset the ones leaving. And the ones who left decide to come back as expansions are released, and friends still playing and reporting fixes and features added, etc.

Absolutely agree. Yet again last night, a friend had created a new character/class while waiting for me, and neither knew each other was on, so I left. Does BioWare seriously think that it's my Jedi Consular that wants to be friends with Friend A's Smuggler? and I have no say in it? These are *characters*, BioWare. They're not really real people. The real people are on the other side of the keyboard, paying you, monthly. Please listen to us, and not what you imagine a make-believe Sith Inquisitor might think of a make-believe Jedi Knight. And if you're worried about petulant 9-year-olds, or cut-throat PvPers (who more often than not seem to act like that), make it opt-in, opt-out, /ignore, /blacklist, hide online status, etc. Last night's example was even same-faction, though the friends list should be account-to-account, ignoring faction, and preferably span servers. (Whispers needn't cross servers, though I hope in-game mail or some form of in-game comm could. Certainly "your friend is online" messages and friends list should be cross-server.)

Knee-jerk reaction much? Greg Zeschuk said: "We want to get this launch under our belt and everything stabilized and happy, and then we'll look at other platforms." Also, porting a game from Windows to Mac OS is not "writing a whole new game", nor even stopping work on fixes and new content. It's about bringing in Mac porting experts to create the Mac client, using existing assets. This effort is a move to increase profits and grow their customer base. BioWare isn't new to porting to Mac OS. They know it makes business sense or they wouldn't do it over and over again. Also, their statements are quite a lot more reassuring than previous vague answers. When the author complained that he couldn't play on his new MacBook, Zeschuk replied, "I'd say, 'not yet.'" "We've done a lot of Mac ports before of our games. We haven't announced any details yet for The Old Republic, but we know that's an important and large audience. That's definitely one of the things we're looking at next."

Haters don't understand. Releasing a Mac OS client: is something BioWare wants to do, reaches many customers who can't or won't run Windows on their Mac, will add hundreds of thousands of new customers, benefits multi-computer households, such as with a gaming PC and Mac laptop for travel, is not anti-Windows.

Massively just posted an article from an interview with the founders of BioWare, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. Massively: "I'm unable to play The Old Republic on my less than two-year-old MacBook." Zeschuk: "I'd say 'not yet,'" (Yes, he knows about Boot Camp (which also requires repartitioning, and purchasing Windows, and, and...), but he also knows there's plenty of profit in Mac OS game players who don't or won't "Boot Camp".) They said: "We've done a lot of Mac ports before of our games. We haven't announced any details yet for The Old Republic, but we know that's an important and large audience. And we want to serve that audience." "That's definitely one of the things we're looking at next. We want to get this launch under our belt and everything stabilized and happy, and then we'll look at other platforms, and that's obviously one of the first ones."

Resuscitate?! It's not dead, Jim. The OP's list of demands comes off sounding like he's more interested in playing some other game. "Copy these features so I don't have to do anything different than I'm used to." He didn't even say "please". I expect BioWare will eventually add many requested features, but in the meantime, many of us are very happy with the game, warts and all. I like the fact that it has its own look and feel. I'm playing KotOR MMO, as both solo and MMO style with a group of friends. I know it still has tons of bugs, some major. But it's an MMO at launch. Week 3, even. If MMOs were meant to be played for a month or two, BioWare made the wrong choice to release when they did. I think they released maybe 3 months too early, but they were definitely approaching the point where testing could do little more, and the game needed to move on to full-scale operation.