Behold the great hypocrisy of internet children! Really guys? Everyone complains that the servers are dying and dead and the most popular server people are whining about queues? Its like complaining about how hard it is to find parking for the World Series, that you'd much prefer that you were going to see some crappy minor league team from Michigan. NOBODY IS EVER HAPPY! I roll my eyes in the Fatman's general direction.

Everyone mocks EVE on these boards but with a few hundred thousand subs they turn over many millions a year in revenue. The problem we have is how we're measuring success. Everyone since the great WOW multi million sub thing has said it must be this good or its a failure. Well, no, it just won't make as much money. SWTOR is a bit unique in that it spent more than just about any game to try and do it and so theyr'e in a bigger hole than most MMOs for making up their losses on production. But fact is that the game will run with probably at least a million subs for a few years AT LEAST. Eventually the production costs will be made up for and they'll turn a profit. MMOs are long term investments. Will it shatter the WOW level? I doubt it. Honestly I'm not sure any MMO will ever. Just cause one did it doesn't mean the rest will have to. There's a set market share generally for MMO players and there's a lot more competition now than ever before. Old MMOs are still running, ones frmo 5 years ago, 2 years ago, new ones now, F2P ones and sub ones. There's just so much product out there that that one great big product isn't likely to show up again or not for a while. WOW will decline, the multitude of new MMOs will pick up all its old members, and you'll have probably dozens of healthy MMOs with hundreds of thousands of subs or something. WOW was a monopoly, they don't happen very often. SWTOR was trying to be the next WOW, it didn't really do it. oh well, now they have too many servers for too few people. They'll probably merge some or try and drive up subs or give transfers. Eventually it'll even out and we'll have a healthy average player base. You know this will make money it just won't be that monolithic major game that everyone assumed it should be or tried to be. No either ors, just qualifications to the original plan and impression of the game. Not a WOW killer but not dead. Maybe thats too grey for you either or people.

They basically said that they're not going to do it cross server, only in server. Now how much we can trust what they say at guild summits is debatable. However they did seem to be pretty opinionated on the notion that cross server destroys communities.

I suspect that a cash shop isn't something you want to incorporate to an active subscription game. It seems much more like a free to play feature since in F2P they make up for the lack of a sub with these micro transactions. So if TOR ever goes F2P I'm sure it'll show up. However until then I don't see it happening. Not to mention it would probably panic all the naysayers and create a lot of bad press. CE owners would probably flame the forums and then blow their brains out. Unlikely in my opinion since it just doesn't make sense with how they're running the game right now.

I could theorize that there are so many companion gift missions to keep farming Underworld metals down since they sell by far for the most it seems on the GTN. Everything they do in this game vis a vis economy is meant to balance credit income. To keep a balanced economy you have to keep a certain flow of credits in versus out. If UT got even more metal missions I assume it could skew the value of taking UT to the point that other crew skills would be less valuable as it is. Thats just a theory of course but the guild summit helped me understand how much they look into the economy and so far they seem to be happy with the balance of how people acquire money. So, if you're making a killing already off your UT mats then be happy they aren't going to nerf you if anything.

Quite a few more people have beaten GTA games than have reached 100% completion. When story is the main component it really makes it hard to not say "Well... now what?".

Thats my whole point. Hardcore is such a broad meaning, yet people often use the dismissive definition to argue against what could be legitimate complaints about the difficulty. Also I deliberately avoided calling people casual and instead focused on what they defined specifically as their vision of how they want to play the game.

I wholeheartedly reject the notion that a hardcore gamer is someone who rushes to finish something. I'm pretty hardcore about my gaming and I if anything enjoy a nice long progression where I savour my achievements and enjoy the arc. Many people who self classified or are so called by others as being hardcore consider the story a meaningless feature that just gets in the way of them finishing the content. Rushing to finish. Pushing to dismantle the entire game into a cynical block of logical puzzles that you must defeat isn't the only way to be hardcore. This attitude about hardcore means that anytime somebody with even a reasonable sense of dissatisfaction with how easy it is to blow through content in TOR gets labelled as somebody who should get some sleep. There is a point when you don't have to be a hardcore monster to think something is too easy. The problem is that many many many people seem to think that this game should only be accessible if you can effectively, as someone earlier in the thread said, switch their brain off and play it in place of watching TV. I don't think I'm crazy for sayin that that is a pretty restrictive way for most of us to play if we actually like to keep our brains switched on most of the time.

I remember very cleary at the Guild Summit that I dont know who, maybe Damien or somebody, said that they can't give details but there's some secret project to do with space combat. Maybe they aren't adding anything to it right now because they're doing a complete overhaul. They also very emphatically stated that they have had lots of designs and ideas for mini games like Pazaak, Swoop racing, etc, its just that those are on list for when they get the essential done. I was pretty cynical before I watched all those summit videos on youtube. After that however I have a lot more faith in their long term plans. The short term however is going to eat up their attention with getting the basics polished.

You know for a non major MMO that isn't even worthy of any consideration apparently, people sure seem to talk about it alot. As for how I define hardcore, I look at it from a personal point of view as someone who likes to extract a more complex and deep experience. Obviously there can be many definitions for hardcore and many will apply their own either personal or in many cases pejorative definition, but for my money I put it as follows: I want a game where I don't feel like I'm on an easy automatic track to success. I don't want to feel like I can just switch my brain off and achieve. That feels hollow to me. I want to feel like if I invest some intellectual power into how I approach the game then I will receive a proportionate equivalence in reward. This to me shouldn't also necessarily equate to hours spent, but that definitely helps to make you better when developing any skill. I also don't equate hardcore to simply being a better twitch gamer. I don't think MW3 is a good hardcore game because I feel like its design is inherently shallow and in many respects panders to more aggressive and simple minded tactics. My definition isn't easy to nail down, but I know that I am a very rare kind of hardcore because I mostly play games that exist in the realism modding community. I play Project Reality for BF2, I play ACE and ACRE mods for Arma2, I played full stop realism settings with community mods for Silent Hunter 3, I play full realism settings in online IL-2 Sturnovik. What do these games offer me? A game where being smarter than your opponent almost always beats a faster twitch and pure hours spent. If those hours are spent being intelligent then you're likely better, but being smart goes a long way in and of itself. These games don't necessarily equal hard hard, they're not nightmare hard most of the time, they're just complicated and involve a big amount of intellectual investment. They are also conducive to very very good teamwork. I play in tournaments in some of these games where you have 60 or even over 100 players working together. You don't find that in any mainstream casual game. That is a pretty rare kind of gamer. They exist to my mind in varying degrees, some more mainstream than others, some more interested in the niche of the niche than others. As far as MMOs go these guys are often into Sandbox over Themepark. I know that most games don't appeal to me. Every now and then I play against my style by going for something mainstream like TOR. I hope that there's enough intellectual meat for me to sink my teeth into. I loved KOTOR even if it wasn't insanely difficult, so I don't think difficulty is in and of itself a requirement for my kind of hardcore. Sadly I feel that casual gamers basically make endangered or even extinct my kind of game, hence why guys like me permeate the mod community. I tried TOR, I may stick with it, we'll see. To me all I need to enjoy a game is an intellectual puzzle. Sadly this is something that doesn't enter most games. I feel like it was far more common back in the late 90s when gaming was an incomprehensible niche to the mainstream. Anyway, I love the OP's positive message, and I roll my eyes at all the nob heads who desperately try to drag him into the mud and mock his sentiment. We the hardcore, whatever kind of hardcore we are, obviously have to struggle to love this game. Many of us will and have failed. We're here, we're sorry we bothered all you happy casuals, but maybe, just maybe, you'll see us find a way to love the game with you. I just hope that the average gamer can learn to not throw so much crap at hardcore gamers. Its too easy to be on the side of the majority, especially when you're part of it.

The biggest problem with server merges is all the people that would lose a Legacy name without any choice in the matter. At least with transfers you could try and transfer and they could make it so that you get told that your legacy name is already taken and so look for one that hasn't taken your name. The emphasis on the Legacy system does make this problem a lot harder to handle than for any other MMO. I'm interested just in seeing how Bioware handles it as they move forward with handling the server issues.

How many on Repub Fleet at primetime and approx how many per other planets as well?

LOL thats funny. I suppose Palpatine was a Jedi for the 20 minutes he was in possession of Luke's Green saber in Episode 6? The colours are symbols. If you're a jedi who turns to sith you obviously aren't going to pause mid scene, declare you've come to an emotional decision about where your loyalties lie, and then open up your sabre so that you can change the crystal so that for the transitional battle in your alignment shift from good to evil nobody is confused. Your logic is the kind of facile nonsense that people use when they want to split hairs and ignore blatantly obvious facts. Good guys use Blue and Green, bad guys use Red. Thats how its always been and thats the symbolic divide. This kind of symbolism has always been important in Star Wars, which is basically a sci fi parable about good and evil. People who want free form use of colours and themes for both sides should just say it, instead of claiming that everything which is actually consistent with the world of Star Wars is "Narrow Minded".

Jeeze. That is really tempting... really.

I heard them say at the Guild Summit that they're going to phase out the reusable ones.

The problem is always the same isn't it? "That's ridiculous, that takes too much [money, time, experience, effort]." and then... "There's nothing to do in this game! I ran through the content in a week!" You see the dilemma developers face? I for one like a tough road to getting stuff. Makes it seem much cooler when you finally get it. BTW, anybody who's broke? Try high level crafting and selling on the GTN. The same developer who said 84% have less than 1 mil also said that their numbers show that th ebiggest earners are making a killing from selling high level crafting items. Nothing comes easy, but there are plenty of ways to make cash if you dont' want to play Huttball all day long.

Thats all I'm really asking for. Fact is that watching the entire scene and being asked to believe that he was playing possom or was truly wtfbbqpwn epic just doesn't add up. It doesn't FEEL true. This is something that goes deeper than conscious thinking. Its part of the unconscious being allowed to suspend its disbelief. If it looks like it could be true then we can accept it when we're told or presented it as a fact. All I saw was a weak Sith getting lucky on #1 and #2 and getting his butt kicked by Mace. I didn't feel like he could have whooped Mace at any moment. I also don't buy the whole "He planned Annakin showing up" stuff. In RotJ he was standing right next to Vader and couldn't tell that Vader was about to turn on him. RIGHT NEXT TO HIM! But somehow years earlier he could just go on hope that Annakin would show up? Okay, maybe he could have dictated the flow of the duel with Mace to kick his butt, but I still firmly believe in the idea of ultimate power can't overcome all disadvantages. Basically I see it as Palpy allowed himself to be put in a bad position to make it so that Annakin would kill Mace or wound him in some kind of trick to make the Jedi look evil. The problem is that Mace is good enough that if he has someone even as powerful as Palpy on the mat he could probably waste him. Did Palpy intend to turn his own face into shrivelled scars? Seems a bit unlikely to me. It looked like a properly desperate act. Sith or not, why would anybody want to look like that? Only thing that served was to explain why the Emperor looks like he does in the original movies, and thats where I come to my main issues of believability in the whole new trilogy, not just this scene or this movie. I feel like so much of it was written to tie in with all these little facts we know from the original movies that I can't accept it was organic to the story. It just feels like "Oh this would be neat, and it'll make all the fans go 'ooooooh THATS how it happened'". That stuff makes me roll my eyes, and by the time they recentre the scene has moved on to annoy me again with another separate '***' moment. Thats a big part of why I have so much trouble buying into the entire new trilogy. I wanted so badly to love it. I watched all these bad movies over and over even feeling unhappy with them trying to capture that feeling. It never came. I can't get over this stuff. And btw, yes I read, I love EU novels. I just can't use the novelization of Ep 3. to make me enjoy this any bit more.

My suggestion is to get a better connection or move to a country that doesn't use toasters as modems.

There will be no cross server LFGs as far as the developers have said so far. They agree with those who say it destroys communities. When they make an LFG tool it'll be in server.

Now I can understand the idea of a station, maybe. But the part where you have to take an elevator to a lower level in order to run down a barren corridor absent any NPCs or any interactivity whatsoever other than to enter your ship is just nonsense. It could only be a time sink. The only other possibility is that its something designed for the sake of someone's sense of plausibility or global design for these things and wasn't edited cause it was a waste of time. It does seem weird, I mean, it can't be too much but certainty takes SOME effort to model a useless corridor that serves no purpose. I'd rather I had a chair i could sit in day 1.

In an MMO? Yes, yes I do. Thats because we all know we're paying for a long term product. Buying an MMO is an investment. Anybody who thinks they keep developing for kicks or posterity must not understand how it works. If this were a single player game, even an online game like BF3, no I wouldn't. In a subscription based game however, yes I do. I care if they're spending their money to keep me interested or if I get a feeling that they're just taking my money upfront and not continuing development. Any other game who cares, but here it matters. Its obvious they're spending it to try and catch up to make up for EA forcing early release. The question is if they can keep pace with expectations.

Oh don't be such a naive nob head. You're exactly the kind of fool that allows corporations to behave like troglodytes and still make a profit. Your power as a consumer is in your purchasing power. They can't exist if we don't give them money. If we're not satisfied what they do with our money that we give them then we vote by denying them the money. If enough people vote with their money by not buying from them then they have to pay attention. There is a veritable relationship between customer and corporation. Why else do you think they spend so much friggin money on marketing and public relations? So don't be so silly and act like we have no interest in seeing what they do with our money. An MMO is not a product you purchase without expectation that the developer will maintain its value to you long term. If you bought a car brand your whole life and then they said they weren't offering you long term servicing from them then you'd say "no thanks" and pick a car company that actually did and thats why companies have to be reactive and preventative in pleasing their customers. MMOs are like this too, more than any other type of game. So while I'm not going to get onboard with trashing BW when someone wants to ask silly questions like "What is our money buying?" I AM going to say that there is an actual reason to watch what they're going to offer to us long term as customers of their brand. Seriously people, why can't anybody have a rational middle ground point of view?

I remember reading around the time of release how the 35% LucasArts slice was going to change the minimum subscriber base necessary to make a profit after operational costs. I think the estimation was that it would take about 200k subscribers to break even in most MMOs, while thanks to Lucas Arts this one would require 400k cause of the amount they were taking off the top. You also have to take into account how long it'll take them to repay their initial cost of development. They probably won't see a profit in the first year.

I agree with adding interactive things for sure, but housing is not for lonely people, especially if you're an RPer. Considering the fact that 90% of the coolest rooms and areas in TOR are blocked off from RPers thanks to instancing, having a personal space, that has value to your character and can be customized to feel like more than just the one crappy broom closet that doesn't have a big red wall on it that says "FUUUUUUU RPers!", is actually a pretty cool idea. A huge part of an MMO for many people is the ability to feel like you have a unique place in it. This is particularly important in such a linear instanced story based MMO. What we need is firstly for this to be optional, as in you dont NEED it. Secondly it could be a part of Legacy, meaning you can unlock progressively larger apartments or more customization features as you move through Legacy levels giving us something to do when we get tired of Ops and FPs. Also, you should have different planets with different apartments. So you get a Nar Shadda apartment so you have a hip penthouse with a killer view off a balcony, lots of neon and stuff. On Coruscant you get something similar but now you're in the clouds, maybe you have a view of the Senate tower, you have traffic flying by. Tatooine you can have maybe apartments built into a cliff face or something, or part of some underground conclave. Hoth you could have a little hole in the wall like inside the Rebel base or in a Cave. The point is that the hermits could live on the lonely planets, the social butterflies could live in the cities, and the guys who don't care could just not have one. Variety makes an MMO appealing. Its not just about saying "This is whats important, and only this matters, and anybody who likes anything else shouldn't play this game". Thats not a formula for inclusive experiences. Also, whomever said that housing has no place in Star Wars must not have seen the new Trilogy. Practically every other scene involved some ridiculously dressed Natalie Portman sitting down at a table for tea, crumpets, and a conversation on the future of the Republic.

Its incredible how much information I got out of watching the Guild Summit. When someone asked a question about dual specs the reply from a Dev was... "Multi-Specs. Coming after 1.2"