Quite frankly, I'm not a fan of the trinity. (tank, heal, damage) When I heal I feel obsessive, like I'm playing whack a mole or Tetris, just trying to plug leaks. And when I tank I feel compulsive, and like a control freak. And have to double check everything I do. It doesn't translate into fun for me. Damage roles are much freer to play the game the way they like. They don't actually have to follow any particular set of rules short of shoot stuff, preferably and usually the tank's target. That frees up a lot of attention to do other things, and for me, results in relaxation and enjoyment. Guild Wars 2 claims not to have the trinity, e.g. tank, heal and damage. But what they have instead at high level is control, support and damage. That sounds strangely euphamistic like "tank heal and damage" to me. I hope it isn't, and I hope other games follow suit. The holy trinity is an outdated MMO concept.

Some hate questing. Some hate PVP. And flashpoints are damned hard to come across at level 10-49 even on high population servers. And it takes a while to get to level 50. Most players are casual, afterall.

Because it would give XP, credits, companion affection, some extra commendations, and most of all hopefully be fun. Like I said, at level 10-49 it's hard to find groups. At level 50 it's much easier. So this would *mostly* be a feature for sub-max players. BioWare have said that most players quit around level 35. Or how about alternatively, these instances could also be full players social instances that did not require trinity play, e.g. tank & healer, and could be played with companions taking the place of players. In other words, simpler instances, merely for levelling up in a social way. Oh, and using the LFG was just an example. Using a console like the galaxy map for space combat would be another.

Basically what this all boils down to is that the MMORPG subscription market as a whole is in a steep decline. People have a lot more options now than they did before, and the economic crisis is taking it's toll on people's disposable income. A lot of people are simply not willing, or do not wish, to pay subscriptions. There are more and more "F2P" options out there, and their quality is inreasingly steeply. It's time for SWTOR to evolve with the times, and go F2P, with a blended in-game economy, and microtransactions, but NOT P2W (aka. pay to win).

ATVI(and formerly Blizzard)'s quarterly financial reports actually describe it in some detail. Chinese players in 2010 constituted more than 60% of WoW players. A lot of subscribers have quit since then, while the chinese market has stabilized and perhaps grown slightly. But Chinese players are forbidden by law from susbcribing to an MMO, and are also forbidden from playing more than 3 hours a day. They pay NetEase 6 cents an hour. NetEase pays Blizzard 1 cent per hour. So that's a maximum of 3 american cents a day times 7 million. But then again it's unlikely that all the Chinese play 3 hours a day. More likely they log on once in a while. So the total revenue of WoW in China is pitiful. The reason WoW's profit margin is holding solid is because of stuff like Annual Pass and microtransactions, which have proven extremely profittable. Almost as profittable as the subscriptions themselves. Also, the number of "subscribers" is indeed state at 10.2, but these are actually accounts. But because 7 of those 10 million have no subscription, it's up to Blizzard to define what a "subscriber" is. Might be that millions of these don't even log in once a month. 1.2 million annual passes were actually sold. Not 1.6. And only 5 million people ever bought Cataclysm, with the majority of them having quit the game. ACTUAL number of WoW subscribers, best guess, including free level 20 accounts, and WoW Census logins, is about 3 million maximum. That's figuring conservatively.

It might not be game-wise or technically feasable to micro-manage all your companions, but they could come along as mission specialists in their respective fields, and provide various sorts of backup. Like some of the class quests you mentioned. It might also give added incentive for people to gear their companions, so that class quests where they have to use one of them don't jump up on them... and their companions are naked or in level 7 gear.

That was pretty much one of the quests that made me crave more similar content. That quest was freaking epic, and I was actually shouting at my screen. Possibly the best quest in the entire game. Now imagine if you could do that on a daily basis. Perhaps even using your entire squad of companions.

It's just that having a trinity type game mechanical approach in a game where the wide majority of talent specs are dps and servers don't support a lot of concurrent players is an insanely bad idea. The LFG is a huge boon to the level 50 crowd when coupled with server transfers. But it doesn't do much for the sub-50s. Alternatives to levelling are currently: -Questing (I dont know about you but by the time I'm done questing a planet, I pretty much never want to set my foot there ever again) -PVP (if you enjoy being a whipping boy and having a 0:50 statistic) -Space combat (a railshooter not everybody enjoys, though I do, and that you can only do once a day) If SWTOR is going to survive and thrive, then the majority of people who are quitting around level 35 need something more to do to get the process speeding along to level 50.

The "success" of World of Warcraft is somewhat overstated. While incredibly successful financially, at most it had 6-7 million subscribers at the height of The Burning Crusade. Today it has less than 3 million subscribers. By far the vast majority are Chinese netcafè visitors who are already on a F2P program. Hardly anything to boast about - unless you're Blizzard's marketing department trying to impress upon people how massive your game is. WoW was tremendously financially successful because it was the right game at the right time. Launching an equally successful MMO today is an impossible task when you have to compete in terms of content with a game that is almost 15 years in development. EA tried doing this by throwing money at SWTOR, and this game has a massive world as well, but it takes years to polish a proper MMO not to mention to craft an ever progressive endgame. Minigames and wardrobes aren't nearly as important. So I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with the article. Where SWTOR went wrong is focusing too much on the game world, and not enough on fundemental game experience, e.g. meat and potatoes of daily play.

Planet quests are dull once you've completed them once. People don't want to play the same gather X, kill Y quests again and again. They want more dynamic encounters, like flashpoints. But queues are often long, and it's hard to find the right mix of people. Particularely below maximum level. Alas solo or even duo dungeons which do not require the trinity, in the spirit of The Esseles and Black Talon.

Well yes, but class quests are not repeatable, and not all that involved (i.e. fairly simply structurally), and are not available at all times. This would be a means of levelling up besides those other methods.

So hear me out before you call me a nut. I realize the idea is a daunting at first. But many games are doing this, e.g. RIFT has 'chronicles' and WoW has 'scenarios', The Secret World literally has solo instances as part of a class quest but also repeatable. Level 10-50: These would be things you could "queue" for solo using the LFG, or perhaps accessed via. your ship for levelling up your character in an alternate way. For people who are bored, lonely (e.g. low pop server), queues never popping up, playing in the middle of the night, or who simply want to play by themselves for a bit but have finished quest content on the planets. In difficulty they would be *slightly* easier than Black Talon and Esseles (soloable for most classes before level 15), and slightly more challenging than your average class quest. At level 50 these solo instances would have sub-par loot. Say green only, or a blue or two, obviously not meant to replace endgame play but buff up solo play and offer players that have completed quest content and are unable to find groups in a timely fashion an alternative and fun way to level, maybe with some daily quests that reward commendations. I feel very confident a lot of people would like this once they got into it. Afterall most time spent in an MMO is spent playing solo. EDIT: Okay, this was meant to go in the suggestion box, I find the new forum structure a bit confusing. Sorry about that.

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm also very wary of accidental misspellings and sending stuff to someone else's characters. I always double check names and such I have dotted down in an excel file. It would be so much easier if the game at least gave you a list of characters you yourself had on the server marked with a special color, as opposed to say friends & guild members.

Many of us are in the same boat. Especially day 1-2-3 Early Access players. We only had a small choice of servers. And now all those servers transfer to other day one servers. I am unable to play half my characters (imperials) because they are now on a dead server transferring into the very same server I have all my republic on.

I have to say I really disliked learning about additional race unlocks several months after the game was released. By that time I had already created my characters. 8 imperial & 8 republic. So more slots would be welcome. We also need a multiple choice of destination servers for transfers. But doubling the slots would fix most of this.

Not only do we need more character slots, but we need more destination servers. Most of the Early Access servers went up together in the first two days, and all of them now transfer into two which are also early access servers. The end result being a lot of early access players with more than eight characters being unable to transfer their remaining characters - in my case all 8 of my empire characters - onto a populated server. Indeed my empire server now is completely dead, while my republic server is thriving. All because they are both early access day one servers, and one transfers into the other

Is there a particular reason why so many people in here are so jaded, cynical and hostile? We're just talking theoreticals here. And I did say "OR AN ACCOUNT TAG". But I guess you stopp reading after "OMG he said something I don't agree with". Check your hostile and elitist attitudes, please.

I so much agree with this. Group finder is nice, but it does lock you into one character for instances, unless someone advertises in a chat you're in. In the days since the LFG was released I have oh-so-wished how I could queue alts at the same time. I think you should be able to queue every character you have on the server you are currently playing, and then the game can relog you automatically and ship you into the instance, and just tell the other members "Relogging character".

On one hand I don't understand why all games don't adopt the system where as you friend, message and interact with the account name or an account tag, and then they can name their characters whatever they like for RP purposes, and for the world to see. That said, the only reason people have overlapping character names is because their names are not original. As proven by the fact that they are happened upon by more than one person. And when in the history of forever have you ever been in a place where no two people share a first or a last name? But in a more pragmatic and realistic approach to SWTOR's existing system: I can see how it would be irritating to share both first and last name with another person since you're supposed to be a unique snowflake and a hero character, but I see no reason why two people couldn't have the same first name, for example. So how about releasing the lock on first names, and using legacy name to friend & whisper.

Problem description: We need multiple choice destination servers, because during early access there were very few servers to choose from and those servers now ALL end up together through the transfer system, which is very bad for anyone with more than 8 characters. The destination servers that end up in servers like Red Eclipse and Nightmare Lands were all part of the first batch of servers that went up during "early access". During the first days of early access, there were very few servers to choose from. A lot of people put their characters on these servers, thus meaning many or most of their characters are unable to transfer because all of their origin servers end up in what is already one of their destination servers. e.g. I have 8 republic on Nightmare Lands, 2 on Peragus Mining Facility, 8 imperials on Hidden Beks, and 2 on The Red Eclipse. (all 20 possible ability specs including pvp characters). However Peragus and Hidden Beks both transfer to Nightmare Lands. Those characters now exist on empty servers, and the destination server is full. Solution: Offer more destination servers, preferably multiple choice, of servers that did not "go up together". Thank you for reading

I said the event REMINDS me of the pre-WOTLK zombie event. Not that it's a copy. It is, in fact, very different in nature indeed, except for the fact that you become a defacto zombie and can infect people. Sheesh there's no pleasing some people. One minute it's too much like Warcraft and the next it's not enough. Isn't there something to be said for games developers inspiring one another? WoW is basically DAOC+Lineage+EQ, afterall, and it was a great game. I enjoyed it for like 7 years. Now I enjoy something different. Change is good. And so is evolution.

It does seem some people will complain over every little thing. I do think the fleet station should be an infection-free zone though. Too much other stuff going on there.

Can anyone confirm that the Sand People Shaman after you read the murals, is bugged, and always spawns at level 50? I tried many times, with the same result.

This brings me back to the zombie infestation before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King... good times

I know someone who quit in february who just got the email.