You're doing it because you enjoy online, social games with large worlds.. yet, like a suprisingly large number of people, you're bored with the basic gear-grind mechanics that are foisted relentlessly atop that framework by the majority of recently released MMOs. Try switching your focus in game, or just.. admit you're looking for something else, really. And seriously, in before 'That's what MMOs are, newb' .. there's nothing inevitable about stats and gear grinding. It's a conscious design decision, done with surprisingly cynical marketing calculus, to get you to play longer and to feel that addictive 'reward' feeling as often as possible - which human beings do, despite the objective meaninglessness of the 'reward'. There are plenty of alternative possibilities. There are even games that work differently, so don't feed me 'inevitable'.

It's an issue that apparently pops up now and then. Better yet, honestly.. find a friend with a knock back skill, like commando. And a sage. The three of you can duel; knock and pull each other up onto the fender of the sand crawler. It's easy from there - takes two minutes instead of half an hour.

I've been asking why they didn't go this route for a while. The raid tier updates don't fit the SWTOR M.O. - and it's pretty clear that there's a massive group of people out there that are tired of it, and really, dearly want something very different.

It's the gear grind/tier structure that's killing me. The very reason I finally lost any motivation at all to play WoW - the carrot/treadmill design, and it's copied verbatim in TOR. If Bioware wanted to capture me long term, they should've done more to emphasize their difference from WoW - their strengths, not copy the most retardedly skinnerian systems from WoW. Some of us aren't slathering rats in a maze, I'm sorry. Hell, they could've done so much to rethink the tired old chestnuts. At this point, I'm thinking if you want to make a multi-million subscriber MMO.. you can't compete with World of Facebookcraft head-on. You have to offer something that few are really willing to risk - a difference that is more than skin deep. I'm just going to say - so much in the game, and a lot of it still unaddressed - though I gotta give props, they are improving - was put in without thought. Some dev's thought process: "So what do we need? What does WoW have? How do they do that, circa 2006? Okay, put that in the design document! Easiest decision ever!' .. and they never bothered to look at that.

It's just that SWTOR's servers, at launch, had an abyssmally low maximum concurrent population. In that respect, WoW's normal servers are roughly equal, now, to swtor's 'megaservers'.

Watch this. You will soon understand why Hk-47 in the original KOTOR game was a fan favorite, and why he's wanted so badly in SWTOR.

Oh, play WoW - Stormwind, busy weekend night. Good luck finding the mail box behind the sea of mammoths and elder dragons.

I dunno. Honestly, I used to really be in love with the subscription model, and I used to fear free to play. Nowadays? I see Blizzard charging through the nose for additional services while failing to provide content updates for over half a year, for $15 bucks a month. I see Bioware releasing games with sub-par feature sets and first-day DLC that literally was cut, bleeding, from the finished product to be sold seperately. The subscription MMOs out there aren't living up to their end of the bargain - we don't just pay for server access; we pay for content updates and functionality and a certain "AAA" sheen of polish. Free to play, cash shop games.. at least you know exactly what you're getting when you fork money out, and you can set your own budget. Combination of the two? Subscription + premium services? Now that's just greedy. I will never, ever, ever, support it with my wallet.

Hey, Vemtaz! Operations are the one exception - they won't drop loot for classes that aren't present. But doing anything else? Random. No death blow factor, no 'who is here or not?' factor.

It's suppose to be truly random, and I think anybody who says it isn't is letting noise from a random process - streaks and coincidences, influence their view.

The Pubic Test Server is down because they're not testing anything. That's it, simple as that. Period. That's all. As the dev said, it's not meant for permanent play. Bit like asking why a prototype jet fighter isn't flying between test flights.

It's certainly an interesting suggestion, making the 'auto-adapt' feature apply downwards too or just removing the light/medium/heavy quality in the first place. I understand the idea of wanting to maintain a cohesive visual look for classes.. but then again, I'm a total anarchist. Let my trooper tank in sand people armor if he wants to, let my consular wear jedi knight-looking robes. Make every item orange-quality! Make every item adaptable, open up total freedom! Down with dentists!

Mm. Use Theran, in his dps mode. Ranged has an easier time avoiding those area-effect damages, and he's got a sweet interrupt ability. And he'll sorta heal you some.

Yea, I'm with the people who're disagreeing with the OP. I understand people're emotionally invested in the game.. but end all, be all, we're all paying for a service and we all get to decide if the service is CURRENTLY worth our cash. Whether it will be or not in future is a different matter, and if Bioware loses people and is unable to get them back because they released a game without even a bleeding /lfg channel.. well, nobody's fault but their own.

I'd probably say Baldur's Gate 2, myself. Mind, at least it's a bioware game.

Alas, I just tried. Nobody on such a channel.

I was playing a few days ago, and I realized a few things - one, the game is far more lively-feeling when there's music playing, and two - there's so little of it. It basically brings me to the realization that there's actually very little SOUND in this game. You can be driving your hoverbike over Tattooine and hear, for long minutes on end, nothing but the hum of the bike. Where's the sound of wind and sand? Where's the mournful call of the dewbacks? Similarly, Alderaan - I oughta at least hear birds chirping. See herds of little critters wandering about. It's almost as if the world maps were put together.. and the details guys forgot to work them over, or didn't have time to.

Yea, seriously, if you do try - be polite. The poor people on the other side of the phone had nothing to do with the things you have issue with. They're working at very low pay in a high-stress sorta way.

Please do. I mean, the 1.3 group finder will be lovely, I'm sure, but we don't have a release date on that yet. I mean, I don't even care if you think it'll be full of vulgar jokes - sure, okay, it will be. Especially on the populated servers. But at the very least, it will be far more functional than what we have now. Seriously, ain't it time to start tossing orthodoxies out the door?

Well, I thought about saying 'failed', but I actually used the word 'floundering' - and I think that could be an acceptable word for what's happening. They aren't rising, and we don't know where the floor is going to be. They won't drown, but we had such higher ambitions than staying afloat. It's fun - until the story ends, and then it becomes the same gear grind we've experienced so many times before. Look, I'm not disputing you that $15 bucks a month is peanuts, I have a job - but in this market? Who charges that? WoW, Rift.. does EVE? Got no clue. Not many, anyway. In this market, a $15 subscription is putting yourself top tier. Hey, I'm still playing the game .. but when the developer started talking about campaign gear +1/+2 tiers, I started having flashbacks to my old Naxx raiding days .. and yea, I can see I won't stay with this that long. Now, if this game were willing to go whole hog into being it's own thing, releasing serialized story updates instead of raids.. mm.. minigames, vanity pets, and wookie chess?. Yea. I'd stick with that.

A sparcity of content at higher levels - y'know, like only having two raids at launch - would have been totally forgiveable and understandable, at least to me . But seriously, how can you release a game centered on grouping up to tackle content without a way to find people looking for groups? Like, not even an LFG channel? Let alone a browser window that functionally could let you see people on other planets?

I'm not a big fan of drawing these big systemic conclusions off an individual case, and yet I'm kinda terrified that's exactly what the money and the suits will do - because the money and the suits have always failed to understand, at the heart, what makes gamers tick. SWTOR didn't fail because MMOs are dead. SWTOR is floundering because it failed to be a good MMO. Great RPG, not a good MMO. You might as well have looked at the failure of Waterworld and concluded that the big-budget action movie was a dying genre - you'd be far, far wrong, though. What do gamers want, you ask? How about a fun game? Give me the grandest epic hollywood-style movie on my computer, and jeez - it won't last long for me if the gameplay is awkward or unsatisfying. We're also pretty discriminating, nowadays - with the sheer number of options on the market, a game has to be pretty damned great out of the box to justify putting it in the rarified $15/mo territory.

You know, this kind of post .. regardless of whether or not I'm happy with the game (happy with some, mad at other bits) .. always grinds my gears. Paying customers have the right to set their own expectations of what is value for money. And guess what? If a company doesn't meet that.. not paying further is actually the correct thing to do. It's not disloyal, it's not reactionary, it's not mean. You pay me ten bucks for a sandwhich and I give you what you think is a bad one? Well, okay. Don't come to buy sandwhiches from me any more; go somewhere else. Simple as that. And customers do have a right to give feedback.

Indeed. These legacy perks are most beneficial to alts - but by the time you get the cash to actually acquire (some of) them, you've probably got several 30+ characters anyway. I have no problem with the idea of the 'endgame' type perks - crit crafting benefits, etc, being a bit expensive. But.. c'mon. The more alt-friendly stuff? The only way to afford them is to grind dailies .. dailies which provide little tangible benefit other than sheer cold credits after a couple days at 50. Watch. The +exp bonuses coming in 1.3 will cost millions to unlock. Nobody with any character below level 40 will realistically get them.

There's a reason people say that Walmart kills local businesses. Coffee, eh, coffee shops know how to differentiate themselves sufficiently, but it's still harder in the presence of a behemoth than it would be without. But you're absolutely right - in order to succeed and grow, at this point, you have to find a niche. SWTOR is trying with the story VO, but we're already seeing a departure from that in the prevalence of mission terminal missions in the new dailies being released. Seriously, they should be releasing new chapters by now. The game should be a serial movie-like experience, not a gear grind trying to compete with the walmart of gear grinds.