I will admit upfront that I never understood the problem to begin with. "Pay to win" is a misnommer. If it was an advantage you get *over* people in PVP, now I would agree it is P2W , and ragequit would be justified. But in space mission ? In PVE ? You do not win because you got a +41 whatever crystal before everybody else, there is no "winner" in PVE or Space mission, there is only maybe that you spent less time than the next guy to reach end content. So when you see somebody "P2W!eleventy!" raging because somebody with money will spend less time grinding than the one without in space mission or PVE, ask them what leaderboard , or what scoreboard, they are looking at which shows winner , how many people "win", and what is their prize. Now PVP is an altogether different story, and i would expect no advantage given by any items, otherwise it would really be pay to win with really a winner and loser. Overall as a old "whale" with more money than time, I am pretty satisfied with the direction SWTOR is taking, which is why I resubbed a few days ago.

Oh good grief. I think I'll start playing next week at best...

Thanks all, I'll probably restart from zero and take it slow. Incidentally does anyone know how many GB I will have to download after installing the game ? The patcher says now "main game assets 93 : 1Gb to download"....

After a long pause (from january) I am resubbing to SWTOR. Reason for that is : after going around the concurrence , I still prefer SWTOR for the story , the only MMO I like for the combat is actually DDO. I plan to play both in parallel to avoid the MMO fatigue which hit me hard for SWTOR. I am still 4 Gb download away from entering the game. Nearly as excited as I was back when it started. I see a lot has changed since then . Now what would you recommend to me.... Start from zero after such a long pause ? Or re use my old chars ? Also for subscriber what does the cash shop add ? Are there interresting option ? What do you think ?

There was recentely a FPS which connected hundred of people at the same time on the same map. it was a proof of concept and probably not extendable to MMo, still it shows it is doable. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/31/online-fps-world-record-999-on-a-server/

It is a combination of negative selection bias (people will not remember the 50 PUG which went well, but will remember the one which went belly up) and a combination of the fact that you can need on EQ which is not your class. Also of note : in rift, you cannot need as a mage on a plate stuff. The button is simply disabled. That totally curb the ninja behavior.

To the op, I think you misunderstand the enrage mechanic. it is not there to add more "dps" to heal. it is there to limit the encounter and thus have a sort of DPS timer, where if you are below that DPS (and thus have not the correct gear) you wipe. if you prefer , imagine a clock countdown with a set number for the encounter which tick and start after the first hit on the boss, and once it reaches zero, a pop up says "you lose!" and you all wipe no matter the health (practically implementation can vary with boss hitting more often , and harder , like 150% damage or even 225%, not sure for SWTOR). making the damage healable or tankable would defeat the mechanic of enrage.

Lot of AOE ?

No, it means there is a balance to get : * reward must not get too much effort as to feel to grindy or difficult * reward must not be too easy as to be dismissed it isn't a linear relationship, it has a "maximum" somewhere in the middle. So the respondent was right. Your kip about giving away stuff is a strawman and does not help your case.

Being in a guild is touted as the solution. Well it isn't. I was in a guild, and it did not help grouping. For one there was not enough people at the correct level, were not on the same planet , guild had 20 members about, most of them early 20 late 10. What you mean is that if there is a BIG guild it help. Maybe, but that is already a much stricter qualification than "being in a guild". As for finding friends, it is an egg and chicken problem. How do you find friend ? by interacting with people. With stuff so instanced to begin with, that is very difficult. The huge majority don't bother to group for normal quest. I found only a few people wanting to interact most other were level-level-level. Coincidentally.... Those are the one I am in a guild with. No, friend and guild are a poor solution to the grouping problem for instance or flashpoint. Cross server LFG is the nuke option to that problem. I have wondered for a long time if there is an intermediate solution.... But due to the heavily instanced nature of TOR I don#t think there are many.

I love to read absolutism statement like this . I have to wonder how you came to the conclusion that "none of us work in the field". Did you somehow ask the NSA to send the resume of all 1.7 Million subber to you , checked all of them, and really, none of us work in the field ? just asking, because you seem awfully informed *insert snarky giggle*.

I am not able to speak properly (health reason). So what now ? Invite a friend at home to speak for me in the Mic ?

MMO player are not a hive mind. To a few rare exception, it is not the same player which ask for different contradictory things (groups , easier solo play etc...). With 1.7 M people, you can distribute them in various sub group, which will want different and even contradictory things.

Increasingly some player use the beta as a demo , as playtime instead of hunting for bug. It is in the interrest of MMO to have a big number to be able to stress a bit their server , but no too many as to lose potential player out of the beta. So no they would not get 1.7M player in beta. That said i concur they should have made their beta or even alpha (add additional feature) longer. That would probably have been the case if not for the pointy haired boss wanting to see some ROI.

The only real solution is to separate the effect on a player to the effect on a mob. So you can leave one unchanged while changing the other. The problem is that it increases the dev cost tremendously. So instead they use the same for both, then use some trick to re-balance, then it doesn't work, then they create a FOTM, then... Well you know the drill.

Nobody said that, don#t make up a strawman. We were discussing whether PVEer or PVPer are minority or not. they are. Whether that means their complaint should be less heard or more heard is anotehr matter. Anyway confusing a business (a MMO) with a government is not really making sense as the priority and duty toward the minority are not the same. In fact a private entity can decide to completely disregard and stamp ou a minority if it make a business sense. Note that I am not saying the case here as ignoring 40% of your customer would be stupid, but it is a balance between how many you lose, and how much it would cost to keep them.

Oh please. Look up launch statistic : from all MMO offering PVE and PVP server the PVP server are always lower in number and population. This is not the first game where this happens, and PVPer are always trying to coopt other population in their group. Heck the grandpa of this discussion were the MUD and later UO where player were *forced* to be into PVP. The bottom line is that most people on MMO do not like open world PVP, but do not mind sport-like PVP. Denying that by coopting as "PVPer" people which are actually PVEer at heart won#t change that fact. There is a good reason why for 1 MUD which had PKing , you could find 10 MUD/MUSH/MUX which had a PK flag. There is a good reason why PVP server are always a minorty to PVE server, and there was a good reason trammel was added to UO. There are a few game which thrive on open world PVP, like EVE, or Guildwar, and survive.

Doing PVP is not the same as being a PVP player on a PVP server. I am the typical PVE carebear so many decry, but I did warzone for fun. I only count , as most people do, people being on a PVP server, as being PVP player. If you are on a PVE server and do warzone you are NOT a PVP player.

40% whereas the other group is 60% is by all mathematical definition I know a minority. They are less than half the other (PVE) more than half.

They are. At launch the population was 60% PVE vs 40% PVP server filled.

I had as many bad experience with PUGing with jerks, as I had with cross server LFG. The fact is that there is the same proportion of jerk on all server, and nearly all of them do not care about this elusive "reputation" or "community". In fact having played before the LFG tools in WOW the community was as good before and after (note that I am not saying it was a good community....). I think a lot of people are having pink colored glasses when they say LFG tool killed community. What it changed is that some jack booted jerk in some guild lost some or all their power to force decision onto other player. It killed a whole slew of little kappo in guild tabbar thinking what they said was the supreme word.

There is an easy explanation on why they went that way. Money. 1.2 is too soon to have super mega duper new animation/voices/model. So what is the cheapest way to get around having an enormous amount of "new" content for the player to try ? Game resource re-using. The easiest way to do this, is to create new ability with the same animation as older one, or give classes an ability it did not have. Wookie would require lot of dev resource in form of graphics, model and voice. So that is something you *might* see maybe in 1.5 or something late. Frankly I am not surprised that it turned out to be that way. I am OTOH quite surprised that seasonned MMO player would think it would have been the other way. On my side I will avoid judging 1.2 until i see a lot of player feedback on it.

True, in a way the best MMO I know of where doing the same quest with another class make for a completely different experience is DDO. But I think DDO reach that goal by having non related combat skill and alternate path in low level quest optionals, thus making the experience different. In some of the low level quest the difference I had between a thief based class and a cleric absed class was striking. Still no MMO to date has found a way to make it "not repetitive", there is stilla degreee of repetition involved, only some MMO are better at hiding it. I found SWTOR to be better at hiding it than some of their concurrence. @OP, a trick you might want to use when making alt in SWTOR, is to alternate the side on which you make the alt : imp/rep/imp/rep, thus making the repetitive quest have more time in between giving them chance to be "forgotten" by your brain .

Do i like this MMO ? I would answer with a YES with some qualification : I think some infrastructure part are lacking (like GTN, UI etc....) some may even be changed soon with 1.1.5 or 1.2. Some other part I am also unsatisfied with, I would like to see on rail space fight expanded. But on the whole i am quite satisfied. I still decided to unsub, and resub in a few month, maybe 6 , 9, because I would rather have a "finished" product with all the small problem removed and enjoy it toroughly, rather than enjoy it a bit because of the aforementioned problem.

The old model, the ahrdcore were used to, was group were required. Welcome to the new MMO model where group are optional, and you can *solo* a MMO up to last level. See, by doing this they reach up to a more massive market. those who with to group still can, whereas the massive amount of casual player won't be forced to. And this is how the 100K subs of yesteryear "successful MMO" get eclipsed by multi million subs MMO : the multi million subs MMo simply more and more drop the hard core for casual, and since casual don't seem to care much on epeen.... I don't need to draw you a picture.