I must say I absolutely hate the new system. The flashing across the entire set of hotbars is deeply irritating. I happen to be on Hoth at the moment; between that and the snow my eyes actually are starting to hurt from trying to see what is going on.

We're getting a touch off-topic, but yes, absolutely true, I am saying that. A gang of week-old Rifters can and will be able to point & destroy a battleship. It can be done, it has been done plenty of times; compare with trying a gang of level 1s taking on a level 50 in a traditional design. There is no evasion of damage for higher levels etc. None of that exists. There is no catching up required. A level 5 skill for a month old player is the same level 5 skill regardless. My statement was entirely accurate, that extra skills enable extra unlocks, nothing more. More & different modules in your ship, more accuracy in your guns, etc. None of that changes that once trained, you have the same ability as any other player for the rest of the game in that skill. That is the beauty of their system, when designed for PvP expressly, which is what EVE is about. It is not necessarily the best design for every system, but it's very well designed for what it does. Skill trained != skill in PvP.

Skill in EVE has nothing to do with skills trained. It only provides more capabilities, more unlocks if you will. The clever design about EVE's skill training is that everyone always has the potential to be on par with everyone else, no matter how much they play. Perfect design for PvP.

Well there's a scary coincidence. I was just reading, for the second time in the last few years, your article on 'Why Haven’t They Fixed This Bug?' - good stuff, eerily reminiscent of my day job. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I think your counterpoint is a good one, but possibly put the emphasis too much on copying EVE. I don't think TOR ought to copy EVE any more than it ought to copy WoW. My point about one player's actions impacting those of another was more along the lines of needing some form of mutable world. I recall in TOR beta suggesting that they give us a front line of sorts where space combat & PvP and various other things all feed into this notional 'world impact' - and that's just a ripoff of what GuildWars Factions did. I think there's lots of potential ways to introduce quick & simple carrots that when seen in the cold light of day by themselves might seem fake or trivial, but as part of an integral world will convince people to go do stuff. After all, CCP managed to convince 300k people that mining with a 3 minute cooldown is a critical underpinning of the economy & a vital activity that only occasionally gets visited by Goonswarm, instead of being more boring than watching paint dry. I don't think TOR would do well in picking up the harsh cruel world of EVE any more than the current TOR world PvP which has every sign of being tacked on in the thirty days before launch - but I do think TOR could have elements of activity that change the world in some meaningful way & get people responding to that.

This I find fascinating. Genuinely. Why go back to WoW? It's the exact same experience. Do scripted content. Reach max level. Do more scripted content. Done everything? Nothing left to do that isn't repetition. The only distinction at all to be made at a game design level is that WoW has overall lots more to do (as it bloody well should after seven years) and fewer bugs (ditto). That's it. It's the same treadmill design. Is the issue only that the treadmill is too short in TOR? Again, why go back to WoW? Is it familiarity? That warm Pavlovian feel of the familiar repetition because after years, well, it's all the brain knows? I'm not being critical; I just find it interesting that one grind of theme-park content is so much more favourable than another. What stops WoW from being boring? I'm not going to disagree that in EVE there is this exponential curve instead of a straight line. The big factor that changes in EVE is that other players can make such a difference that your own game experience changes, whether it's prices on the market or someone blowing up half your POSes. That's a major distinction because it has a sandbox; the actual activities remain the same, but you can end up reprioritising them based upon others' actions. That I feel TOR is definitely lacking in some way, even abstract. Note I'm not saying that in any of these cases that treadmill is a bad thing. If a day on the treadmill is an enjoyable experience and you come out of it feeling that your expenditure of time & money on the game was worth it, then that's all that matters - but I guess what I'm saying is that it seems all too easy to miss that the same repetition of activities, the same grind, is just being dressed up in different ways. I could describe the same about, say, World of Tanks progression. Intriguing game discussions.

As the developer of Minecraft would tell you, budget is rarely the issue in creating a good game, especially today in a world of indie developers & circumvention of the big publishers (other than mass marketing). The real problem is that in most cases, the game is actually pretty terrible, or appeals to only a given mindset, or just doesn't belong as an MMO. It's a rare combination that gets it all right. The issue has never been that sandbox MMOs aren't profitable. CCP have been demonstrating that they are for seven years. What they aren't is massive bread winners. They aren't going to take home millions of subscribers; they often aren't viable as subs-based in the first place. If the majority of your game's activity is content creation, then what is the multiplayer aspect that justifies an MMO? It's either combined content creation (most of us call that work) or content destruction (i.e. PvP, blowing up what others have built, and so on). The rare MMO-like aspects of Minecraft pretty much fall into these areas. You'd never make Farmville or Angry Birds as an MMO. If you're not careful, that leaves a legion of PvE players who are actually of the type who enjoy story & crafted content who look at your game and say 'well, I don't want to spend days building stuff and/or scripting stuff' or perhaps 'I don't want to do that and then have some jerk come along and blow up all my hard work'. Hence Minecraft's success. Notch never tried to make it as an MMO. He just made a simulator that people can use in a lot of different ways, mostly offline. Take what is hopefully going to be a successful AAA MMO, GW2. There is very little content creation in GW2, but what they've done instead is say 'here is some dynamic content that can change according to what you do'. How well it works, we've yet to see, but I think that is the future of MMOs. Not theme-park. Not sandbox. Rather a blend that keeps the treadmill going in a way that satisfies both camps; you get to make an impact on the world, but it's down carefully laid railroad tracks. It gives the breathing room to add more rail to the railroad. There really isn't enough proof yet to say that it's a viable model, but it has potential.

Apples & oranges. The skill design in EVE is there for a reason. There are no classes and thus the skills must by definition be unachievable. If they were not, long term players could become wonderful at everything and have no need to enlist the assistance of others. It is in effect mutable classes. It promotes the multiplayer component of the game in the same way. Thus it is perfectly reasonable design to max out a given class when you are artificially limiting what that class can do. EVE's design is arguably superior, but then one must have the intestinal fortitude to skill train & be patient. It's a tradeoff, and one that puts off players, but CCP accepted a low total subscriber base & factored that into their business plans.

A lot of the deep seated issues with MMOs these days stem from them trying to be all things to all people. They fail to say 'we're making a car, please take your desire for a flatbed truck to that truck dealership over there'. If any game were perfect, we'd never play anything else. By definition, one person's perfect will not match another's. This yields multiple games, multiple options. One key thing customers of MMOs should stop doing is latching onto the latest game and go 'oh but it must have X, it must have Y'. No, it doesn't need to. What it needs is a consistent well implemented vision that the developers stick to. Take EVE as a great example. CCP have mostly stuck to their guns in creating a harsh ruthless world. Tacking on features at the last minute to satisfy some group of players at whom your product was never aimed is a great way to end up pulling your product in too many different directions. There is a real balancing act here. The other significant issue is that innovation is generally received badly. Witness the outcry in various games by a generation that have played WoW and its ilk for so long that they genuinely cannot operate in a different environment. There are real Pavlovian conditions at work here. Game developers ignore that conditioning at their peril, whether we like it or not. That doesn't mean don't innovate, but it means innovate within a space that is going to be accessible to the majority of your target audience, even if that means sacrificing some innovation for familiarity. As for the whole theme-park vs sandbox thing; it's a moot point in my view. Both ultimately run out of content. The distinction is that one is visible at the end of the current storyline, and the other is when you've achieved total boredom because you've done everything, or managed to bend/break the game's sandbox by doing something the designers did not expect (see The Elder Scrolls and practically any use of money, alchemy, enchanting, and so on - the sandbox becomes dull because you've beaten the system and have become invincible). In both cases, the attraction remains skin-deep. Sandbox equally does not translate to a simulator (which is what, for example, Minecraft is). Simulators have a very different target audience; they are pure world creation and often have little or no real gameplay. The joy is not in experiencing content, but building it. That is an incredibly subjective & dangerous area for an MMO to go into. For example; I cannot think of a single sandbox MMO where you genuinely create content. The only MMO in fact at all that I can think of is STO 's Foundry. Everything else, the content is still developer-created. The remaining task is about dressing up grind of some form into an acceptable package that people will invest time over (see EVE null-sec, the entire basis of World of Tanks, and pretty much any open-world PvP objective ever written). The argument that says 'players create the content' has missed that there is no content. The correct phrase is 'players convince themselves it's worth the time to do X'. That's not wrong, but it's important to understand the carrots & sticks in this design; to understand what drives people. In most cases that drive is so varied that you cannot make a game that appeals to all drives.

Question: What is the plan/aim around loot & crafting going forward? Context: Right now most loot is immediately sold to vendor, and crafters are struggling to make anything worthwhile other than key desirable items e.g. crystals. The entire game seems to revolve around mods, but only some crafting professions produce mods. End-game items don't involve mods which seems to defeat the point of crafting. Most orange items don't form a complete set as one progresses through the game. In combination, this makes the entire system look badly thought through & designed. What do you actually intend? Is loot intended to be the best possible result or crafting? This is even ignoring questions over PvP drops that have PvE impact, operations drops vs rest of the game, and so on.

All good suggestions often made. I don't think a combat log is that contentious really. It's what follows on in the arena of addons & macros that seems to be the minor exchange of nuclear weapons. We have at least seen concept videos from Bioware on UI customisation, so they are listening. Nice to see someone being constructive.

Yet remarkably there are a large number of people who came from WoW and vehemently say 'I don't want to go back, I want this something different'. Thus, this naive individual viewpoint neither represents the entire community, or does a good job of reconciling those differences. Starting by saying everyone else is stupid for disagreeing with you is not the best way to build bridges.

This is the real problem. Downtime is ok if you make it clear why and what you're doing. Players can usually rally behind developers if they show they've thought problems through. Arrogantly proclaiming 'we're doing this, tough' and not even bothering to empathise with your playerbase is not the best approach to pick.

This. Good developers pursue a vision that works. If they allow themselves to be pulled in every direction trying to satisfy every group of players, they will end up achieving no satisfaction at all (see world PvP). Games are not supposed to appeal to everyone. That's why we have more than one.

You fail to take into account the considerable competition that exists for both time & the entertainment available in that time. If enough people say 'yeah, not bothering playing TOR on a weekend with all this maintenance' or 'why log in now after maintenance, the place will be dead' then the actual player population & player experience is affected. That can cause a cycle if you are not careful, where people find they are just happier playing other games; people who needed just one more excuse to unsub might just do that. Gamers are a fickle bunch. In short, annoying your customers when you want them to be playing your game, not someone else's, is considered, generally speaking, a bad move.

Yet more evidence that whilst they may be onto a reasonable if not good game, the actual customer service & customer experience provided by EA/Bioware is still absolutely rubbish. I'd opine that one would have to be a complete idiot in the literal classical sense to not see that this move would really irritate EU players. Why pick that? Why choose to potentially annoy half the playerbase? Why aim for a time that is guaranteed to cause problems if the update screws up & runs over (which it did). And for what? The ability to be disconnected slightly less from the game that we all just got disconnected from for several hours... Ironic. It's not so much the direct loss of time; it's the massive 'up yours, we're doing it at the time we prefer' that it entails. Still, this is from the same company whose PR guys said, regarding Mass Effect 3 & Origin, 'if you don't like it, don't buy the game'. I swear Bioware has never actually met a customer since EA took over; it's the only explanation for how little they understand customers & their reactions (reasonable or not).

Suits me. It could be made a little less awkward, just have it as a combo in the options somewhere, but frankly, having the option is the important thing. They can make it pretty later.

This would rather upset any potential economy out of those actually investing in artifice. It would also render the investment a bit pointless. Artifice is essentially already the process you describe. It's also a pretty slippery slope to 'I want a lightsaber hilt without artifice' or 'I want a given armour set without armor crafting' etc.

Great idea. Lots of reasons why one might want to add/remove scars, change a hairstyle, alter lipstick etc. I can't really see a downside.

I wish people would stop conflating mods & macros together. They are quite different things. I simply don't see the need for macros. I've read the arguments for & against, and I just can't see how it does anything other than trivialise the game. If the UI and/or skill design requires macros, it's hard not to call that broken in the first place. If all we mean is the ability to, say, have 1 trigger a given skill and another when the first is on cooldown, then add the UI and/or addons to do that. I've seen enough macro abuse (I found it hilarious that the first question I saw about macros in-game was how to set up a guild recruiting spam) that I think the time is better invested in making macros unnecessary. Mods, now those have potential, if appropriately used. The minor nuclear war that is discussing what is appropriate use has been well covered already. Just my opinion.

Oh dear god yes please. I like Khem, I really do, but I do twitch about bringing him onto any world because he is so often in the way. The biggest issue with companions generally is that in their eagerness to keep up with you they often walk straight into the middle of the screen. I've lost count of the number of times I've gone to click on, well, anything and the companion runs up into the middle of the screen and I just click on them.

Remove world PvP on PvE servers. Problem solved. I speak as a long-time player of PvP. Griefing isn't PvP. PvP is about the best traditions of using one's skill & intelligence to defeat an equal or superior foe, not ganking helpless players who aren't interested and probably half your level. Open PvP belongs on PvP servers. If you genuinely believe in PvP, that's where you play it anyway. Plenty of safezones about on the various planets. I didn't need to mess with flagging in EVE low-sec (although they had some flagging concepts certainly, they didn't change the ability to shoot someone, only who shoots back). I had to rely on being any good at combat, scouting, and knowing when to run like hell. Granted, this is an extreme response, and I doubt would ever actually happen (and I'd entirely endorse free server transfers if it really did) but I just don't see the point of flagging on a PvE server when there's a perfectly good PvP server available. If anything it helps boost PvP populations. Alternatively, let PvE players who want to enjoy the game do so and at least fix the AoE flagging, same as other games before have done so. There's a PvP ruleset, go use it.

It's not really PvP when a 32 fights a 50 is it? In much the same way it's not really a battle if one side is equipped with modern weapons and the other side has sharpened fruit. I can really see the 'gf' or 'gg' after that one, eh? However, I'm not enormously surprised that there are those who have to have totally one-sided impossible-to-lose fights in order to feel better about themselves. A shame that such people bring the playstyle into disrepute. Those that actually play PvP to its full potential are on the PvP servers... Then again I've always thought open PvP on a PvE server (and thus flagging generally) when you have actual PvP servers available is catering to the wrong crowd. Warzones etc. not included. Just not needed; it causes far more problems for no gain. Picking & choosing one's opponents used to be about intelligence & skill, not hiding behind silly AoE tricks.

It's pretty normal. Throw together anonymity, huge population of people, various floating segments of given playstyles who believe that their chosen playstyle is the only valid one ever, a lot of entitlement, a lot of cynicism, a lot of 'I hated every MMO yet but this one must be good right?', and massive intolerance for others' opinions, shake well, and you get the forums. Also, you're wrong.

With the greatest of respect, I don't actually believe TOR was ever or may ever be designed properly with open world PvP in mind. The very nature of the level mechanics work against it in this regard. If you're out in the big wide world and you're level 1 and encounter a level 50, the game actively ensures that said level 50 will evade & deflect every hit you attempt, so that even a zerg of 100 level 1s would still achieve pretty much nothing. Contrast this with games designed for PvP such as EVE where a dozen Rifters can rip apart even the most expensive & well equipped battleship (I'm ignoring capital ships) and there are no levels quite explicitly because the game is about PvP. Worse, messing with that mechanism is not a trivial thing. PvP in LOTRO: special areas for high levels. PvP in GW: special areas for max level (all 20 of them). Even WoW's version these days you can mostly fly off or find safezones. Everything is designed about avoiding PvP, rather than engaging in it. Open world PvP can be done. It has to be designed into the game, though, not crowbarred in.

There are a significant number of players who are playing the game as a couple. Maybe I've always been a bit of a roleplayer, but I always tend to refer to people as their in-game gender. I avoid 'mate, bro, dude' as terms of address anyway, but even if I didn't, I would not feel comfortable making a gender assumption in the male direction any more than I would in the female direction. My fiancee has no issue with me rolling a female character, either. Indeed she'd rather I do that if she feels the male alternative looks terrible. I'll admit I've sometimes felt the need to justify that decision to myself anyway, but particularly in a game like TOR with so many cutscenes, it does help to have a character you can enjoy, and equally you get a different perspective & story elements/reactions when playing as a female. As a completionist in RPGs I've often had one or more of my playthroughs be as a female. Equally sometimes little things sell it. I've played Mass Effect & TOR's Trooper as a female character because I absolutely love Jennifer Hale's voice acting. To each their own, I think.