Dirty fighting has the most sustained AoE damage of ANY spec in the game if you know what you're doing. XT Flyby -> Blaster Whip -> Grenade -> Shrap Bomb -> Blaster whip -> Blaster volley -> Grenade -> Blaster volley -> blaster whip -> Blaster Volley (etc) Dirty fighting also takes LESS damage than most melee if you learn to use your Defense Screen more often. Yes, a gap closer would be nice, but if you use your "travel time" Intelligently and to put up debuffs It's fine. (Grenade, shrap bomb, Vital shot, Hemmorhaging blast. The only real downfall of not having a gap closer is that you run the risk of losing upper hand if the timing isnt perfect. If you're trying to do operations as a scrapper, unfortunately, you're doing it wrong.

Those are your opinions from a raiding standpoint, and you are entitled to them. They also have absolutely nothing to do with how popular the game was at the time compared to now, which is measured in active subscriptions and incoming profit. There were more people playing during WotLK. This was specifically because the content was more accessible to more people than it ever had been. There are less players in WoW now than there were in WotLK...and one of the contributing factors to that is the change in raid philosophy (note that the raid philosophy has changed every expansion, with differing results in both player opinion and profits)

Because people keep saying that normal gives the same rewards as hard/nightmare, when in fact, it doesnt. You have your facts backwards. WotLK was when WoW was the most popular, and the most profitable. This means, financially, that WotLK did it right. One of the reasons cataclysm has been a disappointment to most players (and to investers due to financial numbers) is because they went away from the WotLK design. Any player that desires to raid SHOULD be able to see all the content (not necessarily kill the last boss). This is what normal mode is for. From there, you scale up on other difficulties. In all honesty, it's hard to judge the intended difficulty levels of the encounters when there are so many damned bugs (soa, Pylons, and Infernal council routinely bug out...that's more than half of the bosses in the operation). Karraga's does seem to be less littered with bugs, and it was the most recent work, so maybe they're improving...but it would still be nice to have those bugs addressed, and maybe nightmare tuned up a bit.

most of your examples of how force speed can be used can also be made easier by just not sucking. I play a scoundrel dps, which has absolutely NO movement enhancing abilities, and i have no problem dodging the things i need to dodge. Yeah, you can have an Op full of mediocre sorcs and do better than an op full of mediocre players of other classes. Knowing when to use your abilities, whatever they are, is much more relevant than stacking one class because it happens to be overpowered at the moment.

"Fun" is an opinion, and most people i've seen complainig about lack of content just want more shinies/achievements to show off. It's become a 'gotta catch em all' (and then show them off to people that dont have them) thing. People asking to have their egos fed doesnt count as legitimate requests IMO.

Says the guy contributing nothing to the conversation. If you're complaining about there being nothing to do, and you havent actually completed all the content in the game (all operations/flashpoints on all difficulties, finished the valor 100 grind, all the codex entries, just to name a few), then yes, i'm going to point out the obvious things that you CAN do, but are refusing to.

The fight (on 8 man) is designed to be killable with 3 dps on the boss. You can (and a lot of guilds DO) have melee do the clicking on the puzzle. This actually lets you kill less stun droids, and can be done one of 2 ways. A) you can assign mobility cooldowns (force pull, guardian leap, etc) to let your melee dps right after melting his armor, then have people pulled/jump up top back to the puzzle, or B) your button pushers can ignore the boss. This lets the dpsers that ARE on the boss do their damage with consistent stack of 0-3 stacks of his armor on at all times. They will have to deal with some stun droids (to make sure tanks/heals can move when needed), but it is very much doable with melee or ranged on the buttons. Honestly, I love this fight. There are so many ways you can do it and succeed at it that it creates a meta game within the actual tank/dps/healing aspects of the game.

This is exactly the problem. Why does it have to get you something other than the enjoyment of actually finding all the stuff in the game? Carrot on a stick is not the end-all, be-all of MMORPGS.

You're still falling into that trap that there HAS to be a reward for people to find it fun. You're obviously playing for the gear, or for bragging rights, or to show what you can do that someone else. If you're playing for any of those reasons, you're missing the entire point of a game: fun. WoW's raid system turned into what it was because the 'average' player felt like crap because they werent good enough to get the purple pixels. It all turned into a "i am/have better/more than you do" contest. If you dont want to raid, then dont. No one is forcing you. Go explore. host server events. PvP. Roll on the opposite faction and experience their story. Play a complete goody-two-shoes, or a complete dark side character. Try every class that appeals to you....there's tons to do. It's like people are standing in front of a Huge buffet of food, but they only want ONE item that's available, and complain that there's not more of that one item.

Create content for yourselves. Have you unlocked all the codex entries? Races, Maps, locations, organizations, person of note, Epic enemies, Bestiary, Lore objects, Ships, Titles. There's several of each of those on every planet. (not even mentioning datacrons) You can hold 2v2 tournaments in the pvp section of Tattooine. You can run several group of 4 man pvp groups through the warzones, and hope that you get guild vs guild groups (insanely fun!) Dont get me wrong, I do agree that there could be some extra content, but if you havent completed all the nightmare raids, havent gotten to valor rank 100, and havent unlocked the entire codex, you're not "done" with the game. PS: you can't run all 3 every week, because hard and nightmare share the same lockout.

This is intentional. If you have 8 people and want to gear up, you raid. If you dont have 8 people, and want to gear up, you pvp or you do hard mode flashpoints. This isnt necessarily a bad design (wow did the same thing, but decided that the 5 mans should be lesser loot). I dont have a problem with this really...I think they should have tiered it differently, maybe make tionese drop from the hard mode flashpoints/normal Operations, columni from hard mode operations, and rakata from nightmare. (but that would have presented another problem with how easy the champion gear is to get) People havent adjusted to the fact that this is a much more casual MMO than they're used to. Gearing up is easy and doesnt take very long...I almost believe that the developers want it to be at a point where in SWTOR, you dont raid or run hard modes for the gear, but because you actually WANT to do them. If it's not fun, just dont do it. People aren't used to this approach in an MMORPG. How do you not have 2-3 people up top? I'm assuming you went in with 8 or 16. Now if you're saying, you dont have 2-3 people that are good at the puzzle (which, FYI, is a 3rd grade level logic puzzle), then the problem isnt the game, it's your players. This is a perfect example of where you can 'get better' at a boss, and yet, for some reason, you use this as an example of not being able to get better. If people suck at the puzzle, honestly, they probably shouldnt have drivers licenses. (slight attempt at humor, but the puzzle is NOT difficult).

If you're gaming for 'phat lootz', which is implied by your 'short of two bosses but didn't see the point as there is no reward for the added frustration' statement, or for 'internet points' (aka achievements), the problem is your players' mindset, not the game. What ever happened to playing a game for the fun/social aspect (you know, bsing with your guildmates on vent/mumble while doing something fun as a group), or gaming for the challenge (those 2 bosses you havent killed because you "can't be bothered" On top of that, your personal experience does not mean everyone is experiencing the same thing. My raiding guild has recruited i believe 6 new people (level 50s) in the past week, not to mention another 5-6 'friends/family' of current members. Seems your guild has fallen into the modern MMORPG trap, where all they care about is being able to brag about their achievements to people who, for some reason or another, dont have them. Sadly, that mindset is all too prevelant these days. Play the game for fun, instead of thinking that Bioware 'owes' you a certain type of experience. *Edit* On a side note, if you find the group PvE to be lacking, you REALLY should consider talking your guild into doing either organized warzones, or heading to Ilum as a guild...I generally dont really enjoy zergfest pvp, but doing something different (and more challenging, because your guild doesnt do it often) can be a lot of fun. People that came into this game expecting it to be 'better' than WoW at everything were delusional to start with, honestly.

If the thread is locked, it will probably be due to useless posts like yours that criticize everything, offer no suggestions, AND bad mouth the game developers for no other reason than 'you felt like it'. If you're not going to talk on topic, ****.

1. This is not a space fighter game. 2. This is not a sandbox game. 3. I actually agree with this one. Having more than 2 factions opens up SO many possibilities, and help alleviate many population imbalance problems. That being said, i'm not sure what they'd do for a 3rd faction...mercenaries, maybe the Hutts? 4. You're basically saying you just want to exist in a simple yes/no mode. Why you would want to limit yourself like this is on one hand really interesting, and on the other hand, really silly. 5. Unless you bought the game without doing any research in the past 2 years, I dont see what your problem is. We all knew what companions would be, what they could and couldnt do, and so on. (That damn ship droid has GOT to **** though). Only thing I dont like about companions really is that the tank ones are too squishy. Yeah there are some i dont like very much (skadge on my LS bounty hunter, Corso on my DS Smuggler, Lord Scourge on my LS JK), but as they say, in order for some to be liked, some have to be disliked. *side note* it would have been VERY interesting, in my mind, if they would have slotted maybe 8 companions for each class, and then make you choose which 6 joined you...but then people would complain about not being able to 'catch 'em all'. 6. I agree with this in theory, but i can understand a new MMO not allowing them...most MMO's dont allow them when they first come out. On the other hand, if we had a macro system, target of target, mouseover capability, and a buff/debuff/proc watching system, i wouldnt really care about addons/mods. 7. Eh, this is a personal choice thing, I dont really mind either way. You can use your signature to designate your characters if you want (notice the plural...yeah you could choose which character, but it's really not necessary in the grand scheme of things, because it's your forum name, not your in-game name). 8. This is a 50/50 thing. They wanted choices to matter. If you dont have requirements in some way or another, then choices (meaning light/dark dialogue choices) dont matter. *side note* Try levelling a new character with diplomacy, slicing, and one gathering profession (you can use this to hoard mats), and then change them when you're max level. Having access to diplomacy means you can take whatever dialogue options you want, and still be max light/dark side. Slicing is a good moneymaker, and you can hoard mats for your end-game professions (take bioanalysis if you plan on going boichem, for example). Then when you get 50, and max light/dark side, drop slicing (and diplomacy if you're not taking biochem) and get the professions that you want. It's extremely easy to level them once you have all your companions. 9. They're working on it. *side note* I hope they keep straight deathmatches out of the rated section. Deathmatch style play (aka arena) is what usually throws game balance to the wind. Rated team play for objective based games (nodes, flags, captures, etc) is amazingly fun, and less dependant on individual class balance than it is on teamwork. 10. This is not a space flight simulator.

Yeah, adding an entire dungeon and 5 raid boss (all within the first month of release) definitively shows that this is NOT an MMORPG. Forum whiner #83530535735353532732 spotted.