I agree with you on the story - somewhere between 30s and the last few legs (where it got interesting again), I sort of got lost in all the story overload of every single quest and side quest. And it was a bit long and convoluted to follow. (I was thinking maybe the ends of acts and beginnings of new ones need to be pointed out with more fanfare so you know where your big mile markers are). On the grind thing however, I wish there was some Korean grind in this thing along the way. Something that slows me down a bit so I don't get to the end of the tied-to-the-rails ride at 50 and get dumped into...a dead Ilum. There's some sort of pacing problem or something in the second half of the game. I don't know if its because every little thing - no matter how trivial - is voice acted and it gets to be too much, or because too many planets feel like stages filled with un-moving props. IMO, what little grind (aka timesink) I sense in this game seems to me really only to hit at 50 and only because there is not much else to do.

As it realtes to me, you're absolutely right. Without my guild chat, I'd be gone. I've also felt that a universal chat (or even level banded universal) - rather than world by world - would be useful, particularly as people on planets and people on fleets might be looking for the same flashpoint. Unforunately, my guild seems to be slowly shrinking having gone from around 60 people on most of the time, to 40-50 after the first big drop. Now we're down to 20 to 25 on most times. Still very active but I'm not encouraged at the direction its heading. Over 350 different characters in the guild and we have a two toon per account limit and we're down to 25 online.

I'm in the same boat as OP and I am not a rusher and I have a full time job that keeps me out of the house from 8am to 6 or 7pm five days per week. I am always one of the last people in my guild/legion to hit max level. I have to say I was amazed (and concerned) with how quickly I leveled through this game. I stopped doing alot of quests because I was overleveling my class story. And, in a way, a good class story is a double-edged sword - if you're drawn into the narrative, of course you want to see what happens next so why would you slow down? I really think a tiny bit of grind during the leveling process wouldn't be a terrible thing - I'm not saying Korean MMO level grind - but something to sink time into along the way. Otherwise you find yourself at 50 having nothing at all to do but grind, grind, grind and wait for more content to come out. Maybe a bit of a design flaw in the way the mapped out character progression? Dunno, just my opinion - I've never, ever run through a game's content so quickly and I didn't really think I was trying to.

My opinion is that story has both good and bad outcomes. The class quests - to me - are enjoyable and give me at least four run throughs (I don't think I'll ever bring myself to play the other faction...they disgust me lol). The way BioWare has written and presented the class stories is different enough from the competition that I can't help but notice it and see that as a plus. Honestly, without the class story, I probably would have decamped to my grindy Korean MMO long ago. That said, I wonder if it was overdone, or at least poorly implemented. On both of my first two run throughs, there were long sections in the middle where it was sort of story overload. Everything being fully cutscened made the class quest less important to me somehow. I found myself hitting the spacebar more often than I'd like to admit. At one point on my IA, I realized I had completely lost track of what the heck my class story was about. I keep wondering if it would have been better if only the class, flashpoints and maybe heroics were cutscened and voice acted. I don't need another Empire namby pamby verbally telling me to go kill x of y for him because he's too lazy to do it. That's where, in my opinion, the bad outcome results: perhaps the money spent on fully acting out those side quest stories could have been spent employing different people to improve game mechanics or on adding bit more sandbox content to keep people busy when they hit 50 or...god forbid...designing PVP that comes somewhere close to functioning. In the end, I don't dislike the story, I just wonder if its the old "too much of a good thing" problem. I've hit 50 on two characters - the first time class quest and side quests, the second class quests and PVP mostly and both times, upon hitting 50, I sighed and thought "now what?". Not sure if I'm up for a third run or not yet to be truthful.

Same here, I noticed them missing and its kind of frustrating. At 50 you can sometimes be a bit, I dunno, bored...so its a good time to go achievement hunting. Please let us have those pop ups!

This is pretty sad LOL. They patched the patch notes. ROFL.

You're on to something there. I noticed that as well. Coming over from Aion it struck me as odd that the character's chest didn't heave from breathing or that the toons didn't move or gesture a bit while idle. It does all have a sort of plastic feeling to it in a way.

Its OK, I think you can find a Pong emulator somewhere to keep you enthralled.

Couldn't agree more. I've met lots of very cool people in game. Yes, i've met a few people who I wish I hadn't but those are the minority.

Good post OP - I'm in the same boat. There are lots of good things but the sum is, somehow, less than its parts. I half wonder if we're all not falling victim to some psychological trick where we know this is (technically) a MMO but because it is much, much more single-player RPG driven and chat is, um, mostly dead...we sit here feeling like something is wrong. Seriously, I've been having these weird feelings like I'm in some post-apocalypse setting and I'm one of a handful of survivors. I know that sounds weird but I can't think of a better way to describe it. Sort of "28 Days Later" without the horror or something.

Said CEO may have made a true statement that the game will be profitable at 500,000 subscribers. The ongoing costs of the game may be less than the revenue generated by those 500,000. However... any good CEO leaves enough wiggle room in such statements to drive a supertanker through. For example, did he say "...profitable and by that I mean covering ongoing costs and recouping our investment?", no. We don't know yet, none of us do, time will tell. Personally, I hope SWTOR is profitable so people will want to continue investing in the genre and pushing the envelope.

Sorry, I'm not saying it is or isn't 85%. I was just taking issue with a poster who claimed facts were in a quarterly filing that hadn't happened.

EA hasn't closed a quarter that includes subscriptions to retain. At best that 85% number is a projection from...I don't know what. They aren't reporting their latest quarter results until Feb 1 so how could they have reported 85% retention unless they are looking for a nasty old fine from the SEC?

100,000 seems a bit low but I suppose it'll boil down to how many CE versions they sold. $40 to $50 per box for the regular doesn't end up being that much money. If all 2 million copies were regular, figure $100,000,000 in sales; if all 2 million were CE that's more like $300,000,000. Truthfully, none of us have any idea what BW is having to spend on an ongoing basis to keep the servers going and pay all of its salaries but $1.5M per month (100,000 x $15) just feels low. The average salary plus fringe benefits (health care mostly) where I work [might not be at all a good point of reference but its all I have] is about $110,000. At $1.5M a month, that's 160 employees and no server or operating expenses (advertising much?). Eh, who knows, none of us do.

What's wrong with 100% positive feedback? Haven't you heard of North Korea? See how wonderful that place turned out?... Er, wait...

Yup, that's the thing I'm concerned about, they've only got until a bit before GW2 comes out at maximum to get people excited enough not to go. If not, the only hope to be a huge pop game would be GW2 fails and SWTOR has added lots of new content and maybe a tiny bit more customization and sandbox in the meantime. I really have to believe the PVP crowd is going to at least go give GW2 a try for a month or two minimum. More and more I'm wondering if SWTOR didn't make it too easy to level - I have never, ever in any MMO max leveled a character this quickly. If GW2 is closer to typical MMO leveling speed, people will be out of SWTOR a bit longer than people trying SWTOR are/were out of their old MMO.

I think I agree with every single thing you've said. Especially about the crafting (pointless much?) and customization. I hit 50 a bit ago and I'm doing the same thing....staring at my screen trying to think of something that I want to do.

I'm convinced that instancing contributes to this feeling as well. My guild chat is going almost constantly. I can't imagine that my guildmates are the only people who chat. Its the same reason I find it difficult to get flashpoints if I'm questing on a planet - most of the people looking are in the chat channel on the fleet. Maybe I'm wrong but it just seems that since there is no galactic/universal channel, we only get localized slices of what would otherwise be a busier chat experience.

That's my guess for a large part of it anyway. I notice it particularly with flashpoints. I'd be up for doing flashpoints but if I'm on Voss, I never see anyone looking for one because most of those people are on the fleet and our channels are segregated.

LOL I feel your pain, same thing here except the 100,000 credit Dark Side version. And the sell back is only 10% of the cost! I kind of wish that - similar to the GTN - there was a "are you sure" for items over a certain value. Oh well.

Now that's (finally) a developer response I can get behind.

I certainly appreciate him taking the time to write something. Personally, I wish it had been a little less "we're figuring out what to do about those 'exploiters'" and a little more "yeah, we didn't do this patch so well, we know it sucked for you and here's what we've learned and how we plan to apply that". But that would almost be a real apology which I'm feeling like BioWare doesn't do (maybe EA just forbids that sort of thing).

You people flip out if someone complains about the game and now you're annoyed if someone says something good? I am going to use my NASA mainframe (aka Commodore 64) to figure this dichotomy out and get back to everyone.

Hadn't thought about it before but you're right on about AoC. I think some of that might have to do with flags that flap in the very noticeable wind and much more ambient background noise. I don't recall a hugely different number of NPCs but I remember the sounds of AoC. The other thing is AoC is not nearly as tidy. Obviously the setting is part of it but there are plants growing out of cracks, where foundations meet the ground, etc. It doesn't have the garden looking feel of ToR.

So he or she wants day and night cycles? Why on earth does that upset you so much? I really can't figure out anymore which is worse. The "this game is the worst thing ever conceived" crowd or the "it is the Immaculate Perfection" gang.