Funny thing is that there is another thread right above this talking about how awesome the new gear looks. Further proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Also, I think that there is an issue with the positioning of the smugglers head with the spaceship behind it in the linked picture.

The LFD (er, LFFP) feature that is coming should technically help in that reguard. The only issue is that my experience with such systems has rarely been positive. The people I end up grouping with just kinda go off and do their own thing. I am glad though that the LFD system that will be used in TOR will NOT be cross-sever as it will mean that we will have a slightly better chance at finding players we can continue to group with.

These are only a few example of the new gear coming in 1.2. Remember, you are always free to mix and match the pieces. Plus, with the new crafting system, there is going to be a lot more freedom to customize your character's "look" and still have viable gear. And there will be plenty more new appearance items released in future content updates (such as the in-bound neutral (aka grey) alignment items).

This really comes down to your server community. Quite frankly, the trend amoung MMO players over the past few years has been to drop the "multiplayer" portion of MMO and just solo the game whenever possible. This defeats the entire purpose of the genre which by and large was meant to be a social, shared experience. And I don't think players should be "forced" to group. It should come out of thier own desire to want to team up with their fellow players. Unfortunately, this is an attitude that is being shared by fewer and fewer people these days.

As someone who is here at the guild summit in person, I have to say that this is one of the most positive experiences I have ever had with a game developer. Most, and in some cases for good reason, try to distance themselves from their fans. But here BioWare has "opened" the doors so to speak and is allowing us to take them to task over any topic that we want (within reason of course). I can't think of any other game developer that has been this candid with their fan-base and was so willing to lay out the road-map for the future of their product. This is precisely the way an MMO developer should engage their consumers. Overall, the feeling I get from being here is that BioWare genuinely appreciates their fans, and wants to make sure TOR lives up to our expectations. It might take some time, but the game we all want is coming.

The reason this thread isn't longer is because the people who actually like the game (the majority of players actually) are playing it and not prowling about the forums trying to spread this idiotic "TORtanic" FUD.

No, TOR is not in trouble. If TOR were in trouble, then the entire MMO genre would be in trouble, because the same complaints people are directing at TOR could be applied to every MMO that has come out or will come out in the foreseeable future. There just happens to be a very vocal minority that are dispensing rather divisive opinions on the game, almost as if they WANT the game to fail for some bizzare nihilistic reason. The vast majority of TOR players are enjoying the game and will continue to enjoy it for a long time to come.

More playable races will come. But adding even one additional playable race, especially if it is non-humanoid, takes a tremendous amount of work to accomplish.

Exactly. No MMO can ever be released that contains all the features and content that will satisfy every player. And quite frankly, should they be? I mean, is not the point of an MMO to play a game that grows and evolves over time, in some cases years? Look BioWare's goal was to release an MMO that had a story and traditional RPG elements (like conversations, companions, etc.). Which they did. All those features and bugs that everyone wants will come in time. I think patch 1.2 is a good indication that the Devs are listening and that the game will grow. If you really can't wait a month or two for the changes to be made (maybe even longer for the bigger stuff), nothing is stopping you from un-subscribing and trying TOR again later on down the road. I would also suggest that those of you who are having a hard time finding stuff to do to join a guild and get involved with the community. Maybe help people out with their heroics or FPs or just their basic quests. I mean, if people are going to be sitting around and complain that there is no community and no reason to group up with other palyers and then just keep to themselves anyway, that is not going to solve a thing. I am just hearing the same complaints over and over again and yet I only see a handful of people offering any real solutions.

Well, I think that we have to remember what BW's primary objective was: to create an MMO with a traditional RPG story structure. I think that many of us can agree that they succeeded quite well on that portion of the game. And in order to accomplish that, they needed to focus on this one aspect of the game which they did. With an MMO being what it is, new features and content will be added over time. Now that the game is out, it's time for them to start growing the game and moving beyond their original goals which they have already accomplished. I think that BW has been very receptive to its community, more so then most MMO developers and you will see changes coming out that will push the game in the direction that the players generally want it to go (you will never be able to please everybody, however). I think one example of this community responsiveness is the Guild Summit. I consider myself very fortunate to have been invited to this and you can be assured that my primary focus will be on providing BW with constructive feedback on ways in which the game can be improved. One such way is indeed adding more "sandbox"-y elements. They can do this by starting off with an improved crafting system...and I mean going beyond the enchantments slated for 1.2. I dunno...I guess my experience has been different from many of the people here. I had no reason to rush through all the content, I have been playing since the first day of EGA and I still only have two characters, one at Republic at lvl 32 and an Imperial at lvl 14. Part of the reason I have been going so slow is because I have a large and active guild to run plus I am involved in numerous events from RP, to open-world PvP to Swoop racing even. After seeing so many MMOs come and go, I have decided that I will finally put my foot down and at least give this one more then a few weeks of my attention. I think TOR is worth at least 6 months of my time and money. If after that time I don't think SWTOR is heading in the right direction, I will have lost nothing other then some money and free time. After all, TOR is still just a computer game.

I am going to have to strongly disagree with this. I started a guild the day the pre-launch guild system went live and since that time I have made many, many friends, both within my guild and outside my guild, some of whom have become RL friends after meeting them in person (such as during our Guild meet-up at Disneyland). I agree that the primary reason we play an MMO is for the community. But, over time, this sense of community within MMOs in general has diminished greatly. People no longer seem to want to go out of their way to get involved and make something of it. Part of it is the developers fault for making MMOs that can be played as a single player (and ALL modern MMOs are designed to accommodate single players). So a good portion of the player base tends to want to keep to itself and never shows any interest in actually being a "team player" (even many PvPers prefer to go the lone wolf route). In my humble opinion this just smacks of conceit or laziness. But please don't try and say there is no community if you haven't even taken the effort to join the community yourself and be an active participant. The only way we are going to fix the problem is if people actually care and do something about it.

Look, any game community requires, you know, people willing to participate in said community. It will not form on its own. Most MMOs, including TOR, have many, many ways in which to join up with other players...permitted that you are willing to do so (they are MMOs after all). So, instead of complaining about the lack of people willing to help you, why don't you use the LFG system that is there (and yes, it could use a lot of work, but it is there) or join a guild, or help people out with their quests/heroics, or engage in RP, or...any other myriad ways to join the community and take part in the social aspects of the game. No MMO that wants to have mass appeal (something they all strive for) is going to force a player to have to be grouped with other players in order to actually play the game. Let's facet: many, many people want to play an MMO solo (which, yeah, seems to contradict the very nature of the genre). So all MMO developers are going to make sure that this significant player base is satisfied. It's up to us, the players, those of us that WANT to play the game as it is meant to be played, with other people, to actually go out and create the community and be helpful and engage our fellow players within the game.

And Terra. And Secret World. And PlanetSide2. And....

As they say: what's good for the goose...

We shall see... But most people will beat ME3 within a month (if not sooner) and GW2 will still be a disappointment for the same "we demand everything" MMO crowd that is currently dumping all the hate on TOR. Which probably won't be a bad thing for TOR and this community...

While at the same time gamers keep demanding "release it now". The fact of the matter is, in order to release the sort of game that people "expected' TOR to be would have taken the better part of a decade and would have cost an extreme amount of money (way more then what TOR cost even), all the while the community of gamers would be blasting BW for "taking too long". Still wish I would have saved all those threads from people saying "Why is this game taking so long to make" and "Release it now, fix it later".

This is pretty much the exact same sentiment that I feel. EVERY MMO that has come out in the past 5 years has suffered because a small, but very vocal, minority of MMO "players" have come out with extremely divisive rhetoric that basically causes negative feelings towards the game to ripple through the community which in turns causes people to think twice about subscribing and eventually the game dies due to lack of funding. Back in the "good old days", MMO players understood that an MMO was a continuous work in progress and that it would never be complete. The whole point of paying $15/month was so that you would be playing a game that changed and updated over time (well, also to pay for live GMs in game that would run events, but that unfortunately never really came to pass and is an entirely separate point of contention for ALL MMOs). Now days, people expect that a new MMO is going to contain every feature that every previous MMO has ever incorporated over its entire existence and at the same time be both completely different and yet somehow the same as all the other MMOs that had preceded it. Now, I am not saying that people who don't like TOR or any other MMO don't have a legitimate grievance. Sure, no game is going to appeal to everyone, and while some people will tolerate a game at a certain level, others will not. Fair enough. If you don't like a game, it's your money and no one is forcing you to play it. You are free to leave and go back to playing the kinds of games that you do like to play. However, part of the problem these days is that that "threshold for tolerance" among many gamers has essentially been lowered to nil. If a game does not meet all of their expectations and the devs don't deliver on what the player wants IMMEDIATELY, they scream bloody-murder and denounce the game as trash and the worst thing ever made. In the end, these gamers will never be satisfied and will forever be un-happy. What baffles me with TOR is the pure amount of unbridled HATE that has been heaped towards it since launch. I can't think of any other MMO that has endured this sort of mud-dragging, and that includes games like STO and Champions Online which were far, far inferior to TOR. Anyone who actually tries to stick up for TOR on a forum, blog, or whatever is laughed away and made the object of scorn (kinda like being a Star Wars fan in general). Where was this hate during beta? Or the months and years during the games development? Most of these "unhappy" gamers appear to have accounts made in December of 2011, which to me indicates that they never followed the game or were a part of this community until they actually bought TOR. BioWare's goal with TOR was clear from the moment they announced TOR. They did not want to re-invinte the wheel, but augment it. And those of us who have been following TOR since the very beginning know we got exactly that: a traditional MMO with a traditional RPG storyline. And for most of us, especially us old-school traditional MMORPG players, this is all we wanted out of the launch product. After the game came out, we knew that in the months and years to follow TOR would change and adapt and become much more then just "an MMO with a story". Because that's how an MMO progresses over its life-cyle...or that's how they used to until the vicious cycle of the past few years started to spring up. I guess what I am trying to say is that many people no longer have any patience or the willingness to be a part of a community and help a game grow and become better over time. That does take commitment and a willingness to invest a little bit of time and money (doesn't take much), but I guess those are qualities that are becoming few and far between these days. I am not saying that TOR is the best MMO to ever be released, because the best MMO ever made has never been released, and probably never will be. But it is certainly not the worst MMO and given the same amount of time and attention that certain other MMOs have been afforded by the MMO community, it will be one of the better ones in the genre.

Ah...someone else you gets it. An MMO is a contract between the player and the developer. We pay a monthly subscription fee in order to fund continuous development of the game. As gamers, our obligation is to participate in the community and help the developers make us a better game. As time goes on, the game will get better and will incorporate more and more of the feature and content that the community, the players of the game, are asking for. This is why I say that if you are going to play an MMO you should at least commit to it for 6 months. If 6 months have pass and the developers haven't fulfilled their end of the bargain and haven't delivered a product that you can enjoy, then you should no longer feel obligated to hold up your end of the bargain and just quit.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2417047#edit2417047

I do agree that crafting in TOR could use some major improvements. It is going to be one of the major topics I will be brining up at the Guild Summit. Fortunately, BW is aware of this, and is already taking steps to significantly adjust crafting and make it more viable.

Ha...I wish there was an archive of the old forums so I could link all the threads over the past few years from gamers complaining that TOR was taking TOO long to develop and that they would rather have BW release a partial product and improve it over time post-lauch since it is an MMO after all. If I could, the number of links would run off the page. Apparently, BioWare can never win....

Your are an exception. I personally could never play EQ2 at this stage because it is too dated (and it is yet another game yet in the High Fantasy genre, which is another personally hang-up for me). Look, I am not saying that TOR is the end-all, be-all of MMOs, far from it. And quite frankly, many people will find that it is not the game for them. Just like WoW ended up not being the game for me. They may be similar games, but they appeal (or don't appeal) to people in different ways. What I am saying, is that I do think TOR is an MMO worth supporting. For those of us who play MMOs as a hobby, a passionate hobby, but still just a hobby, we are getting a bit sick of the fair-weather, fly-by-night gamer crowd coming in and stepping all over our games and just contributing to the problems instead of working with the rest of us to fix them.

This is pretty close to my whole sentiment on the situation. The thing is, I have been involved in the launch of just about every major subscription based MMO for the past 10 years. In recent years, I have noticed this shift where, even though a technically well made MMO is released, players will just bash it to oblivion because it does not fulfill all of their expectations. I mean, Rift is a prime example. Sure, it may be a WoW clone, but it is a significant improvement over what WoW had to offer. And, once again, I feel the same way with TOR. It might not be a revolution of the traditional MMO, but it is at least an evolution. And quite frankly, I don't think I would want an MMO that is radically different then what has come before because it makes it easier to pick up and understand the basics and focus more on what makes the game different. So, after seeing so many MMOs over the past few years unfairly abandoned by the MMO community before they even had a chance to shine, I really just want to put my foot down and make a stand and say "Hey, look, if you want a MMO to get better and include all those missing features/content that you complain about, why not support the game and provide constructive feedback to the devs instead of just giving up so easily?"

Yeah, unfortunately, most gamers find PvP focused games to have nasty communities that lack sportsmanship and generally don't encourage new players or label people who point out the inadequacies in the community as "Carebears". For most of us, PvP is a fun diversion, but we don't want it to be the center of attention lest the player base turn into a dystopian experiment in Hobbian society.

This is a consequence of mass amounts of players complaining that Operations didn't drop ENOUGH loot during raids (er, Operations).