No offense, but on what moonland of a server did you play? I played on a lot of different ones in my time and NEVER have I seen one where the Alliance didn't have more people than the horde, thus get longer queues for pvp. But maybe I just got (un-)lucky I think they foresaw the inbalance and therefore implemented huttball. Which is great for me as an Empire's man, but I can see that this is somewhat disheartening for the republic if they don't even get shorter queues for pvp.

I think, however, that many players need to have a red line (or multiple ones) through their game. Otherwise they get lost in the vastness of a game and get bored. That always happens with Elder Scrolls games for me. At first I like them, but once I have discovered enough cities and have a log full of quests I suddenly can't decide which one to do and it gets old... So I think a mix of themepark and sandbox would be great. Does anybody know a good one?

You could have had more options. How to implement? Someway like this: You are at the end of your Dromund Kaas Questline: You choose to kill npc x -> your next quest takes you to balmorra. You choose to spare him and maybe even team up with him -> go to Planet y that has not been implemented yet (Something like the Witcher 2 did) Of course this would have needed more time/money and maybe the whiners would cry why they didn't get to see everything with one runthrough. But for me at least it would enhance replayability greatly.

This is pretty much how I feel about the replayability of this game, too.

try this http://www.torhead.com/ or this: http://db.darthhater.com/ or this http://knotor.com/

I think you're right about diversity causing more work and possibly trouble. But as I understand this game (and maybe I understand it wrong) it is less about the endgame grind you have in other MMOs but more about the levelling process. I think so because of the story driven aspect of the game. Once you hit lvl 50 and finished your class quest the story is basically over. I also understand the argument about people crying about choices/questlines they missed. But these people are maybe not the ones you should cater to (That's my opinion, but that'S maybe a matter of tastes). I would be perfectly ok with having to relevel the same base class (In fact that's exactly what I'm doing now with different AC) to enjoy different outcomes and get different rewards and so on. to sum this up: I think this game wasn't designed around endgame (But again, maybe I'm wrong with this assumption). It was designed around story. So why did they implement so little choice.

I think most players just want to level up to get to the endgame content (For me grinding instances for gear is not really content (Story is, however)) and don't care too much about the story. I think that Bioware somehow made a miscalculation when coming up with the idea for this game. The majority of the players doesn't seem to care about the way to endlvl, but about what happens at lvl 50. For me endgame has always been a repetitive waste of time, but obviously many think differently. And: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, to cite a known character of a rival franchise

The story is the thing that makes you play this game. Personally, I have always felt that the story aspect was to light in other MMOs. Here the story is good. At least the first time around. Then it becomes repetitive, sadly.

Well, given the story aspect of the game and the possibilities they have with their phasing technique I don't think that your point does really make a difference. As I said before, they could (and should in my opinion) have implemented a vast variety of different outcomes (and of course choices on the way) to enhance replayability. Because as it is now it really has zero replayability to me. But maybe that's because I'm a person who really cares about the environment he plays in. In WoW I could choose (for the part below 60 at least (and that's the good part of this game for me and where I spent most of my playtime )) between levelling in a desert, in a jungle, in an irish raised bog and so on. Here I just run through exactly the same zones and just take the left door instead of the right one if I reroll. That's really lame, to say the least. Especially given the vast possibilties they had with their phasing and all....

I must say that I really love the stuff the droid says! He's fun (ok, repetitive, but they all are) and submissive. What more could I ask for?

I don't think that the original poster asked for changes that drastic. But within the phased story areas they could of course have changed the story drastically. As they are only open doors in an otherwise static world they could have implemented as many different paths as they liked. Be it for the main story or even sidequests. There is sooooo much that could have been done to bring more diversity. You could be able to choose between killing an opponent or befriending them which would lead to other quests (or even planets) than the first option. And as this story aspect seems to be the most advertised aspect of the game I really can't understand why they made that thing soooo linear. I mean it really makes absolutely no difference for your story if you kill npc x or spare him. You won't ever see him again. The only thing that happens occasionally is that this npc sends you a letter afterwards to thank you. That's something, but I think that's really lame. Especially given the vast possibilities this aspect of the game could have contained. I can't really stress how dissapointed I am that it's so linear. It's really like reading a book. What normal person reads exactly the same book over and over again? With a few years between maybe, but not continuous. And that's what they obviously want you to do with your subscription. To replay 90% of the same story over and over again just garnished with a little main quest to have fun with. I know that this is the case in most (all?) MMOs around, but I really had hoped for something different this time. Especially as they advertised their oh so good story (don't get me wrong. it's really ok, especially for a computer game, but all this repetition and the lack of real choices (NO, I don't want to take skadge onto my ship....) really hurts my experience) so much. But I must say that this linearity is disheartening even in the first run-through. I don't care much about my story with my main anymore because it's all kill this, kill that and nothing ever has a real impact on my gaming experience. (Other than ds/ls points, which is a really dumb system anyways)

That might be true for any other MMO. But in this particular one with all their phasing they could have implemented real choices. It would have been more work, but it would have worked. For instance: You could have a choice between killing and sparing an opponent. If you killed him the class quest would continue at point x, if you spared him at point y. So you could have brought more replayability to this game. Of course this would have cost way more money as they would need at least double the amount of Voiceovers if the game only had one such choice which affected the way the game unfolded. But in a game that's all about the levelling and story process (At least that's how I interpret their approach given their advertising for this aspect of the game and how that all suddenly ends at lvl 50) one would have thought they'd implement more real choices and diversity in the levelling process. I mean right now the only incentive to playing an alt (besides the "I want to have a lvl 50 of class xy, which is the main incentive in most MMOs) is to see a new class quest unfold. But there are so many sidequest and planetary quest (Which are normally cool the first time( storywise), but once you know the outcome (And that's allways the same (To me it doesn't really matter to kill or not kill a character that doesn't reappear whatsoever)) they are as boring as the typical "I don't read the text"-WoW quest) I don't want to do again, I can't really bring myself to it. My highest alt right now is lvl 26 and I only log in to pvp and can't even bring myself to do the mainquest anymore, because I still have to run through the same old areas. I'm really dissapointed with the replayability aspect of this game. There should be way more planets and areas to play in when you reroll. I sincerely hope they will make their game better in this aspect, because otherwise the whole money spent on voiceacting will have been in vain. At least in my peer group I know of nobody who endures the same **** again. With the second toon everything besides the main quest is spacebared through. I wonder if they really thought that 10% of the story changing would be enough to keep a player, who enjoys that aspect of the game, replaying it. For me at least (And I'm really not the type of player that usually spends a lot of time at endgame, but rerolls rather) that's not the case and levelling an alt feels as much (or even more, because in WoW you had at least the choice of area for the sub-60 part) a chore as in a game like WoW.

The option to play only the class quests and still advance at the same pace as normal. These side quests are just boring the second time around. Or: Add alternate planets to level on, but that's more of a feature for an addon or content patch I guess

I don't care too much for Star Wars lore. The movies were well made, but the story was always rather meh. But as I've tried out nearly every MMO since WoW I think I would still have tried this one too. Plus I'm here for the Bioware part of the game = the story. Of which I'm not too impressed, sadly. They have done better in their time.

Are you completely devoid of any emotion? Because that's what I find weird about most of the jedi choices. Nothing bad about being all good like the dalai lama, but even he laughs and seems to be a person with emotions. Not so the jedi. They're just weirdos on valium, in my opinion. But Star Wars in general is not known for having characters with any depth (At least the movies are that way. Don't know about other lore since I found every Star Wars themed book I tried to read extremely boring). They all just live in a 2-dimensional black and white world. The only one that seems to have more than one character trait is Anakin Skywalker.

What was shown in the trailer was that you could make your bars bigger (I don't mean adding more slots, just bigger like in zooming in). Who needs that? I'm ok with the size. I just want 1 or 2 more hotbars at the bottom AND the 2 on the left and right side. I don't understand why they didn't just ship with the option to fill the whole screen with hotbars and then everybody would be able to choose how many they want.

Well, isn't that the whole problem with the gear-centric perspective most MMOs since (and before?) WoW have adopted? I, personally don't find it fun to do the same thing over and over again until I'm geared up. I'd rather do something different every time I log in. I think it's time someone comes up with a decent endgame concept, that doesn't evolve around chores like daily quest grind and instance grind.

I found a lot of the decisions to be quite dumb. Not just the evil ones. Especially as all have absolutely no result on your further story. That's a bit lame in my opinion. But I have to agree that the evil choices are much worse than the light side choices, which seem logical most of the time. At least on the imperial side. If you play a jedi most of the light sided choices are really weird. Typical jedi style I guess, but really weird for a human being to act that way.

Yes, but... I'm not sure if instances/raids and pvp warzones are enough "endgame" content in 2012. It just feels old to farm instances over and over again to get gear to farm other instances over and over again. I somehow had hoped they would have come up with more or other concepts than just that. More story at the least. Also the story is really nice the first time around. I loved the VO and the plots were mostly ok. But I think when it comes to twinking this game is a bit lacking. The only thing new you get is the class quest which is around 10%? of the game. The rest is EXACTLY the same. I would have loved to replay this game often but now I'm already bored the second time around. Bioware should have added various alternative levelling zones. (For the class quests this could have worked like chapter 2 of the witcher 2). I think a lot of money has been spent on replayability with the voiceacting and the different class quests but then they somehow forgot to make it so that the majority of the game doesn't have to be repeated to do so.

Depends on what my friends do. Some have already quit because of bugs, class imbalance, lack of quality of life features like Dual-spec/LFG Tool. I have not experienced a lot of endgame content and am still leveling a few toons, but that gets stale quickly, because it's too linear to encourage mulitple toons. But if enough of my rl friends stick around for a couple of months to try out the operations and stuff that will be added then I think I'd play at least untill summer. Otherwise I'll decide from month to month, if there are enough friends around to group with. But for now I think I'll stay at least untill March which is when I will have capped the classes I want to play.

I think you really can't blame bioware for not producing content quickly enough. For a new MMO I think they have more than the standard of endgame content: 2 raids, 10? Hardmode flashpoints (They already have added a new one barely a month into the game), 3 warzones, 1 open pvp planet (which of course doesn't work properly) That is, if you think that repeatedly running instances until you have set x and then advance to repeatedly running raids to get set y, is content. I don't, but many seem to do, otherwise WoW wouldn't be so popular. The only way hardcore gamers could ever be pleased would be, if they made every new flashpoint/operation so ridiculously hard that only the top 1% of the playerbase could ever beat it. That was the way WoW-Vanilla worked. I can still remember that on my server there were only 5-10 (if it even were that many) horde guilds that had cleared bwl, I think 2-3 that had cleared AQ 40 and only 1 that had cleared naxxramas prior to tbc. The elite had a hard game that was competitive, but the vast majority had only t0 or t1 gear plus the blue pvp items you could get without ridiculous grind. That was why blizzard reconsidered and made the endgame more accessible. And SWTOR, thank god, has followed suit. I don't know about the difficulty of the operations, but the hard mode flashpoints seem to have an ok difficulty. Nothing that's too hard for people who know what they do, but certainly difficult enough to not being facerolled through it. Of course that will only be true as long as you're geared accordingly. Once you outgear the content it becomes a cakewalk. At least it was that way in WoW. But how should they keep you happy and playing for a longer time? by artificially expanding the time it needs to get gear set x? Via lockouts? I don't think that would make the customers happy. Is the time to gain an itemset too short? I don't know. But would the gaming experience be better if you had to grind the same stuff for a year in comparison to a month? I think the latter is better. Do such things like searching for datacrons (I mean who really searches for them anyways? I bet most of those who already have all, looked the locations up, am I right?) really count as content? for me that's just tedious, like farming flashpoints and operations as a whole. But that seems to be the catch with these sorts of games. Many people seem to be able to overlook the fact that they are repeating the same content (fyi flashpoints=content; items =/= content (at least in my opinion)) over and over again.

I too think that something is missing regarding the ambience in this game. Maybe it's their decision to make two exact copies of space stations the main hubs of the game? Coruscant and DK would have been way better hubs in my opinion. Maybe it's also the lack of vivid flora and fauna on the planets. Many of the background npcs are not even targetable btw. It's like they are painted to the wall. They don't move enough too. And they should have added way more voice to these background npcs. Every outpost is manned by only a couple of soldiers. The worlds don't feel like they are truly at war. They need way more manpower, wounded soldiers, skirmishes taking place etc. to make this world more lively. You just run around in mediocre suroundings, doing (for the most part) mediocre quests that have absolutely no variation to kill/inspect quests. And a lot of the stories are also extremely lacking. Some of the planets look really good designwise, but all seem to lack some soul. especially those that should be more populous. I don't mind not seeing a soul on tatooine or hoth, but on other planets that's different.

But how is that different here? 99% of the lvl 50 players are standing in the fleet spamming LFG, doing warzones, waiting etc. The zones are only not deserted now, because the game is still young and new people start playing or new alts are being made. Once the game matures and the majority of the playerbase is at lvl 50 all the zones except the ones with lvl 50 dailies will be mostly deserted except for the occasional twinker. On the contrary: I think that a lfd tool enhances the usage of other zones, because you actually are able to look for a group while you are out in the world doing whatever else you like. With the system we have now everybody who wants to do a flashpoint has to be on the fleet and wait there idle until his group is full. And because you are kicked out of the group, when you join a warzone (something that didn't happen in WoW for example) you can really do nothing except maybe trading while you're forming a group. I'm not much of a socialiser in such games. That's just not the part I like about MMOs. I play MMOs to be able to kill real opponents in pvp or team up with others against ****** bosses or to kill real opponents . I have a small pool of real life friends I normally do this group content with. But as this pool is fairly small (and, sadly, some have already quit due to the lack of a properly working lfg-tool (among other reasons) )we often don't have enough people in the required level range or of the required spec etc. to form a group. It's better here because you need one person less than in WoW, but it still is a pain to find a group spamming lfg and asking the acquaintances you've made while leveling or instancing. So for me and my friends a dungeonfinder á la WoW would be a perfect enhancement to our grouping experience. We'd just group up together, join a queue and look for that 1-2 tank/healer/dd that are still missing. As I'm on a relatively populated server a cross-server tool wouldn't be required for me, but I have also read that there are a lot of quite deserted servers out there that would greatly benefit from cross-server grouping. I'm also aware that the playing experience of those, who really like MMOs for their socialising part and for getting to know random strangers during their grouping experiences might deteriorate with a cross server dungeonfinder might . But I also think that these players are in the minority nowadays and that the majority of the players just want to log on and kill stuff. At least that's my experience. I've been in plenty of flashpoints in SwTor now and I don't find them more or less socialising than WoW instances I joined via dungeonfinder. If anybody talks anything, it's mostly something like: "wait a second, phone rings./got to pee/what's the strat for this boss?" Other than "hi" and "bye" nothing is talked during the whole instance, unless something (usually something bad, due to someone not having enough time or not knowing the strategy) happens. That's exactly the same thing I've encountered while grouping via the dungeon-finder in WoW. So, for me there really is no difference between the two games in that aspect other than in SWTOR you have to work harder to form a group, which I don't think to be a good thing. I understand those of you who miss the "good old times" of their first MMOs when everything was different and you were, supposedly, younger. But I also think that now another generation of players has taken over the MMO-market (I call it the diablo-generation ) and these players like to group with their clan/rl-friends and when these are not available they want an easy and quick way to get into group-content and endlessly repeat the same instances until they have the gear they desire. They normally play a lot of video games parallel and therefore everything has to go quickly because there might be another game of HON, COD, etc. scheduled. I don't say that every player is so, but in my peer group most players play that way. And when you have to wait for an hour to play and literally can't do anything while waiting that's not fun, I think most will agree on this. And I think if Bioware wants to stay/become strong in this market they need to cater to these types of players that have a shorter attention span than earlier generations of MMO-players and may or may not be spoiled by WoW. Because if they don't they will lose paying customers in the long run. They might lose some others if they implement cross server lfd-tools, but I think these might not be as many. Vocal maybe, but I'm almost 100% sure they are a dwindling minority. Be that sad, or not.

Thank god!

Omg. So you are this person....I mean if you bother so much about winning/losing a warzone then go make a premade and win 95% of the time. Quitting a warzone because you're losing is just a statement of how rotten our society is.