Rich Vogel came over from SWG. He was the guy behind the NGE which put the last nail into SWG's coffin. And the poor fools at EA made him executive producer for Swtor. The guy is completely clueless and stuck in design philosphies from the Meridian59/Ultima Online time, but the industry think he's some kind of mmo god because he worked on these old-school titles, while the only reason he still gets jobs in the mmo genre is because of his old contacts. Now he's off to Bethesda to ruin the next mmo. And I don't even want to talk about Jeff Hickman's history with Daoc and War.

+1: here in Austria and I think also in Switzerland and Germany Monday will be a holiday.

Yes it's kinda incredible how naive they were. I can already imagine Ohlen's "deer in the headlights" stare when he saw the server stats after one month. But that's what you get when you hire a team of leftovers from failed mmos like WAR and SWG. They ignored all the lessons from the post-WoW era.

This monday is a national holiday in many countries and people have off. It would be awesome if you could include monday and let us enjoy a long weekend of double xp.

I already retired my sniper, at least until I can server transfer him. Skills: 1. A single shot. 2. A shot from cover. 3. A charged up shot. 4. Several shots. 5. A sniper shot. ..... It gets boring after a while. Also the same can be said about other classes and their skill trees. The future belongs to action combat systems like in GW2 and Neverwinter, where you have fewer hotbars and skills but where the individual skills can be customized heavily and matter more.

First world problems...

He's mad because he had no friends to group with or because he heard about the "exploit" too late and didn't get his share. It's always the same about the e-honor crowd. "Oh my, someone is levelling faster than me, this cannot stand".

They scrapped it because there would be countless of threads made by stupid kids whining about losing their companions (when they actually kill them off themselves).

Op is probably the kind of kid who goes "Teacher, teacher, Jimmy said a bad word...". Let the people powerlevel if they want to, if does not affect you or your gameplay in any way.

Still no word about server transfers...

Already put a similar idea into their suggestion box earlier today. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=612243

The best way to end this debate forever would be to have legacy xp boosts for every level 50 character you have. So someone with several 50ies will have an easy time creating a new alt with the same backstory, while a newbie would still have to play the game the way it was meant to be played.

I think the OP also dislikes fluffy kittens and ice cream.

I haven't played the game in quite a while but the double xp weekend made me come back. I have 2 level 50 Empire characters (and a few 10-30 alts) and after seeing every planet I just could not stomach playing through the same content just to see another storyline. And this is where double xp comes in. I finally had fun again, levelling felt like a breeze and I could look forward to the episodes of my character's storyline which now didn't feel so far apart. My suggestion would be to grant a legacy xp boost for every level 50 character you have on your account. Maybe something like 10-20% of extra xp for every 50. I think that taking the grind out of the game would encourage players to have more alts, enjoy the class stories and maybe even replay their characters and pick different decisions. The double xp weekends made me enjoy the game again. A legacy xp boost would make me stay beyond that.

Check the front page.

That's because it is not Bioware. Bioware Austin is actually EA Austin and consists of refugees from Warhammer and Daoc, for example Jeff Hickman. Except for some visits by the doctors this studio is entirely EA founded with the Bioware name slapped on it. This is common knowledge, Bioware was dead the moment they sold out to EA.

I couldn't care less about such titles in mmos. Bring me 10 000 Hutt hats to get a line of text. Give me something substantial: epic skills with huge timers, fancy armor sets, pets, vehicles, missions, buffs, comsumables, anything but a line of text.

I just cancelled because of that and wrote them an angry email. Will resub again when they fix it. I don't want to grind money so that I can raid.

The real question is if Abrams understands the difference between one SF franchise and another. I liked the Star Trek remake to some extent, but if he uses the same style and pacing (lots of running along corridors and shouting) the SW remake might suck. Star Wars was always about the pacing - action scenes but also character development and stuff like jedi philosophy. Star Trek had none of that, it was a themepark ride with little depth.

No wonder the code is crap. They fired everyone in spring when the subscriber numbers dropped and a good coder will find better payment and a long term contract in the business sector than in gaming. All they have left now are the unskilled contractors who are busy recycling cut content from beta and putting it into the cartel market to make a quick buck.

Server Transfers - promised since April/May 2012.

They are rather catering to the handful of weirdos who want Swtor to be their sex-simulator, where they can dream about Twilek chicks making out while writing their embarassing fan-fiction. They are going to put a ton of hours into re-writing the romance options just so that people have a conversation like: *No *Maybe * (Make out) ...screen goes dark. I think the whole reason behind this is greed. Some soulless marketing suit at EA probably thinks that they make more money by nailing players to their servers, so that they need to re-roll if they ever want to get all classes consolidated. Regarding incompetence: Bioware-Austin is for the most part an EA clone which had the Bioware tag slapped on to trick customers. Except for the 2 doctors (who have quit Bioware months ago) the majority of the studio consists of refugees from SOE-Austin and Mythic Entertainment (remember the mess that SWG and Warhammer were). Jeff Hickman started as the head of customers service during the Dark Age of Camelot days and somehow gets to call himself a producer now, probably by being the cheapest option for EA and being a good yes-man. I seriously hope that none of the people behind this game ever make an mmo again. Unfortunately Rich Vogel (who was responsible for the NGE in SWG which broke the game's back) and who was executive producer for Swtor already found new employment with Battlecry Studios (a sub-division of Bethesda), remind me not to buy their games. To sum it up: the rejects and failures of past mmo projects somehow managed to become the lead designers for the biggest budget mmo in gaming history and then brought all their old buddies onboard. Those who were not affiliated with this core group only got temporary contracts and the results show the lack of character, the lack of talent and their contempt for their own playerbase as well as for the Kotor and Star Wars franchise.

You will have to invest several times the price of a monthly sub before you get anything good. It's a gambling scheme to get people addicted to spend money on their crappy game.

Was that in Hickman's article ? Please point me to the source. They have been promising paid server transfers since April/May when the servers started dying. I was patient, despite their delaying-tactics and lies like "Soon", "high priority"...etc...but this is probably too much. *** is wrong with this company and it's people ?

10$ is nothing. The question is rather if by spring 2013 anyone will still be around playing this game.