WoW highly polished, high quality product? Thank you, I enjoyed having a good laugh. Blizzard's had problems from the beginning, server crashes, having to disable armor rendering in login servers to keep them from imploding, etc. Balancing is something Blizzard still can't get right. Think about it, how many other MMOs have done so many drastic class tweaks as WoW has? Remember when Blizzard said "Cataclysm is our biggest expansion yet" then everyone logged on and went "uh wait this is it?" As far as "murder for WoW's sub numbers" you do know that there are other mmos that have no subs that dwarf WoW? Runescape has 200 MILLION registered users and that's still not even #1 in the world. So please spare us the fanboy-filtered posts mmkay? As for SWTOR, the Star Wars brand will keep the game going ... for a while at least. When the Farce Awakens came out it actually spiked subs and players here, not sure if they all stayed though. Unless someone starts working on a new Star Wars theme MMO, this one isn't going anywhere.

I agree that FE is the best effort Bioware has put forth, but still could be improved. Raising the cap to only 65 I think was a mistake as any 60 who starts FE will hit that cap well before chapter 9. SoR was pretty good with the return (if briefly) to class specific storylines. I would love to see FE feature some class specific missions based off your original game decisions. Example: At the end of Khem's companion storyline you have to choose to save him or Zash, with the other's mind being cast into a Rakata Box. If you picked Khem, Zash's mind is still in that box and she managed to find a body and is back to her scheming ways.

Well sorta... Disney has somewhat backpedaled on the de-canonizing of the Old Republic. Originally they said only movies count, then added movies and the animated TV series are canon too. I guess someone pointed out that Bane was mentioned in the animated series, so they said "ok find Bane counts as well". So if Bane counts then... well it continues to spiral. Personally I think Disney did the de-canonizing because Abrams was too lazy to read up on any lore for the Farce Awakens. I mean, he ignored Trek lore for his two Trek movies, so why should he follow any lore for Ep 7?

The two main issues I have are the horrible new conversation UI come chapter 9 and the nonsensical way companions are popping up. The former has been talked about a lot already so I will not rehash it here. For the latter, I'll use an example with an inquisitor. I get Lana coming to save me, but why is T7 there? He's pro-jedi and let's face it, there are other Empire side companions that could do slicing too. Vette pops to mind first. I understand the whole "I been gone 5 years" thing, but Khem is bonded to me, he would KNOW I'm not dead. So Bioware wants to shuffle up the companions a bit, that's fine. So I'd expect Lana to be the one who located me (intelligence training), then comes with Khem (for muscle) and Vette or even Mako (both can slice). They seem to just be throwing companions in a blender and whoever oozed out is who got thrown in the story.

Actually the wheel can easily support more options. Like in other Bioware games that use it, simply have a "left" option that will open up more "right" choices. I agree 100% with what everyone said here, the new conversation UI is just bad. Who thought this was a good idea to do it this way? You don't change something that has been working well for years drastically like this overnight. I expect not-well-thought-out changes in WoW (is why I left) not here.

I'd pay 2000 coins to get the old conversation UI back. When I tried to play today I thought I was bugged somehow and kept escaping out checking my settings. Who thought this was a good idea to fix something that wasn't broken?

I have to say I'm rather confused why they so drastically changed the conversation UI. I mean, it worked and worked well. It was one of the main features of SWTOR that it had a lot of voice overs, especially for your character. Why did someone feel the need to fix something that wasn't broken? When I logged in today, I escaped out of a conversation a few times thinking I was bugged somehow. If this is the new way to do conversations, a bland text circa 2003's KOTOR, I am seriously considering moving on to another game. My interest in conversations is now nil with this god-awful new UI.

The Bioware choice I was expecting didn't happen here. What I thought would happen is yes, if I let Jaxo die the result is what I expected. What I thought would happen if I let her live didn't. I thought that saving her would infuriate Dorne, especially if a male trooper cheated on her with Jaxo, and she'd leave Havoc Squad. Then Jaxo would replace her as the squad healer, just as a medium armor cunning attribute healer. That would of been perfect as a choice/consequence scenario. Instead you get ... am email from Jaxo saying she has issues now and Dorne promptly forgets your action.

Incorrect. Never read any of them have you? Books that were officially in the EU were certified by Lucas with a little stamp on the back of the book cover. Authors frequently pooled together to make sure everything lined up. That's how you had series written by different authors all tell a cohesive story. Sure there were single shot books out there, often then weren't part of the EU. Regardless my original point still stands. Abrams was lazy, didn't even bother to read up on any lore. It is speculation on my part that Disney de-canonized every non-movie to make Episode 7 more "valid" because of that. It could of been coincidence that shortly after the interview with Abrams that Disney made only the movies canon.

It seems some are confused or concerned how a Legacy Bank would work. It would work just like any account bank does in other games. Free accounts don't get to use one. Period. Preferred accounts would get no ability to transfer items, they could still be mailed for the postage fee however. They could also get a limit on how much they can withdraw. At any storage area, you can then deposit X credits to Legacy Bank. However, you can only withdraw Y credits per week (or day). So if someone dumped 10 million credits in it and then lapsed to preferred, the millions would still be there just they could only withdraw 250k per week (or whatever). Bioware could also add cartel market items to temporarily increase the withdraw limit. Again, this shouldn't be hard to do as many other MMOs do something similar.

The simple solution would be if you're a Free Account, you don't get to store credits in a Legacy Bank. If you are Preferred, you get a limit on how much you can store and how much you can withdraw. Preferred could also get an option that escrow credits can go automatically into the Legacy Bank, for when/if they subscribe later. Simple.

Well Disney, in one fell swoop, de-canonized every book, game and anything else that is not one of the six movies. So, SWTOR is as far as Disney is concerned non-canon so Bioware can pretty much do whatever they want now. Which I think sucks personally. Disney threw away 30+ years of Expanded Universe lore from books and such plus all of the Old Republic lore all because JJ Abrams was too lazy to pick up a book and read one. He was quoted as saying he never read any EU books nor was he paying attention to any lore in them. Not long after, Disney officially stated only the six movies are official lore.

What I actually was hoping for, given Bioware's previous choice/consequences in other games, that IF I saved Jaxo she would join my crew, but Dorne would leave. Think about it, you did two ops with Jaxo and (possibly) the optional mission. For ladies, you had a Girls Night Out and for the guys you, uh, had a Guy Night In so to speak. So a male trooper who "romanced" her would be more inclined to not let her die. Dorne, being a by-the-book soldier, would object to saving one person over 300 (Jaxo knew the risks). Add to this if Dorne finds out you slept with Jaxo, she'd be doubly ticked and ask for a transfer. Then Jaxo comes in as your new healer, same abilities just uses med/cunning gear. At least that's what I would of thought. Instead we get a small emotional choice that has no effect either way. She dies Dorne approves and you go on your merry way. She lives, she writes you a letter saying she has "issues" with you saving her over 300 other people (they all die) and Dorne disapproves. A great opportunity for a significant player choice wasted on Bioware's part.

I suppose 1 solution would be to have the vote go ahead but there's a short delay timer. After X minutes, another window pops up and says "do you still wish to kick Player A"? This would prevent any rage votes and allow for exceptions to be made (such as an AFK player). No vote kick system will be perfect though, especially in a game with such a small group size like SWTOR.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Halloween The holiday of Halloween—spelled Hallowe'en—originally appeared in the story Chief Chirpa Kidnapped, published in 1988 as part of the Ewoks Annual from Marvel Comics. So there is previous lore for Halloween in Star Wars. I'm sure Bioware could find, or come up with, reasons for other holiday themed events. That is if they cared, more likely they'll be hard at work releasing more Cartel Packs and videos telling us how Awesome! said packs are.

If this is a test, it's a poor one. Simple fact is not everyone enjoys pvp. Some may just do 1-2 warzones a day just to complete the daily mission. I know I stopped warzoning when I hit the cap as with no xp gain I had no interest. So if they are doing this as a test for future pve space combat, they are limiting themselves to a small sampling of people who aren't the ones that would be doing pve space combat.

First off I doubt the CN was really to blame for the cancellation. If they wouldn't work with Disney, or vice versa, I'm sure another network would of taken over. Remember Buffy? It switched networks while it's spinoff Angel stayed. That's why Angel made so few references to Buffy, they didn't want to give the competition any recognition. As for TCW being canon, I think the early point was how it retcons some things that weren't mentioned in the movies. What worries me is that the SW franchise as a whole is on a precipice now. The prequels didn't do SW any favors and with JJ "I plagerize other movies" Abrams now writing Ep7 I'm doubtful that the franchise will go back to it's pre-prequel days. Bioware itself doesn't care about lore either, as shown by an Ewok companion available... even though we're not going to discover their existence for 3000 yrs.

Well the main issue with the ME3 ending wasn't that it "sucked", though in my opinion it was well below my expectations, but how Bioware knowingly misled us about the features of the game. They said it would have 16 different endings, based on my choices. False My choices were irrelevant. They said the finale would be a culmination of all my choices in the trilogy. False My choices were irrelevant. Casey Hudson (ME lead) specifically said the game would NOT have a Choose A, B, C ending. False The original ending was choose green, blue, or red explosions. Mac Waters (ME lead writer) specfically said those that saved the Rachni Queen would see a different ending. False Saving the queen had no effect on ending. I do believe that the fallout from ME3 spilled over into SWTOR. I do not think it was a coincidence that 1 month after ME3's release, SWTOR subs took a nose dive. The "gamer rage" took over and many (probably) cancelled their sub to protest the ending.

Well TBH to the original poster, the seeds of Bioware's demise began once they sold out to EA. Say what you will about them, but they didn't win Worse Company In America just due to gamer rage alone. EA has a long history of buying up gaming companies to get the rights to their games, then not doing much with them. They own Origin (Ultima) and how many Ultima rpgs have we seen since? None. They own Bullfrog (Populous, Dungeon Keeper) and how many of those games have we seen? None. I could go on, but I've made my point. Did we really think EA would do something different with Bioware? Remember, Bioware said that Mass Effect was always intended to be a trilogy. That is until their EA masters decided otherwise. EA spams out Madden games that aren't any better than they were last year. The one time they had competition (ESPN football by 2k), they didn't try to innovate and make a better game, they just wrote the NFL a check to give them sole rights to NFL games. Bioware was great because they cared about their games and the players that played them. EA doesn't it's just "how can we make a buck today" and the rest of us be d**ned.

If this new patch, *cough*, 'cuse me expansion had pve and pvp elements, I'd probably care more. Perhaps I'm not reading the right forums or blogs, but I haven't really seen a huge demand for space pvp? Of course, when the heads of Bioware quit, the SWTOR head gets fired and EA cuts staff, you can't really expect a lot of quality content. You can tell they are just trying to get their money back on this huge investment with how much time they spend on making cartel packs & advertising How Awesome the New Packs Are! I gave up shortly after the F2P conversion and came back little over a month ago. I can't say I'm much impressed. The time card let me get subscriber benefits, including RotHC. However, when I finished Makeb's storyline in one sitting shows just how little effort they are putting into things now. When my card runs out I'll head out again, give them another year and see if they can get anything right... or just keep releasing more cartel packs I'm not going to buy.

I think we are not syncing our discussion well. I'll put it another way. Drop them in a 2v2 arena, Sidious loses against either one, some Lightning isn't going to cut it against skilled Force users as shown when Mace Windu nearly beat Sidious, only failing due to Anakin's interference. Revan would give the Emperor a good fight and might pull out the win. The Emperor has immense dark side power, but Revan was able to draw upon both Light and Dark, something that could make a difference. Now if it was they will fight at some point in the future, then Sidious would probably come out on top followed by Revan and the Emperor. Sidious is very patient, putting plans in motion that won't bear fruit for decades if need be. He has no qualms spending money, killing people or starting revolts (separatist movement) to achieve his goals. Sidious would arrange for the Emperor's Voice to be killed at one place, only to have himself in place to confront the temporarily weakened Emperor. The Emperor himself doesn't seem to be any great strategist, more of a "bulldoze ahead with raw power" kind of guy. He's immortal so if you're causing him grief and he can't just outright kill you, he'll just wait til you die of old age and continue. As we saw in the Knight storyline, confronting him face-to-face is not a good idea, even Revan succumed the first time (tho he resisted the 2nd).

My point was that the 50 and 20 wouldn't be using their own ships, but instead be given these "new" starfighters. I understand they are probably doing this for balance reasons, everyone starting off on the same foot so to speak. I would of preferred if we could of used our own ships and Bioware just use some kind of buff like they do in warzones to keep the lowbies competative. You spend all those comms or credits upgrading your ship, then Bioware says "sorry wrong ship you need to use This One now".

Well as the final mission of the planetary storyline it should give a better reward than a random crappy green. At least should be a class specific blue, or better yet, a class specific orange. You condemn trillions of people in future generations to death for an item you vendored for about 2k credits....

Horribly disappointing reward for this choice. It's the final mission of a planetary storyline, so at the very least should be a blue item useable by your class. Instead you get some random green reward that (probably) ends up as vendor fodder. Seriously? This mission obviously fell through the QA cracks in beta, but to have it still not fixed by now shows how lazy Bioware is. It's not like this is something hard to do, just change the reward to be something blue or (better yet) orange for your class.

The Emperor can't just willy-nilly possess anyone he wants, dominate sure but that's not the same thing. There seems to be some requirement that they have to be his "child" or his designated Voice. In the Knight storyline he merely dominated people at the 1st meeting and at the end he didn't possess Knight after he/she "killed" him. In the Warrior storyline it is hinted that after the Knight "kills" him, he is weakened and building strength until he can acquire a new Voice. You need to read the novel Revan, as the game's Revan is much weaker than he was in KOTOR or that novel. Had Scourge not betrayed Revan, the Emperor would of been (probably) been killed by Revan. Now whether or not this was the True Emperor or just another Voice, the story didn't elaborate. Revan basically had the skills/powers of both a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord, hence why he speaks of finding balance. As for Sidious, he's a master planner. We saw that he put things motion decades before they bore fruit, showing he's patient. Revan is a master strategist from his success in the Mandalorian Wars. The Emperor, really doesn't plan much he just does what he wants when he wants it. He too is patient, but not because he's waiting for some master plan to come to fruition, more likely due to his immortality.