The Force is strong with this one.

Interesting on the mouseover heal thing. On the second part, I was responding to someone that said that the UI was basically a "hot mess" and was non-functional. I understand we all have wants and needs. I've always felt that the window GUI inside SWTOR ought to have moving windows. I've run across the issues with how the crafting window can't be open while the GTN is open. And I've run into the issue where you can't see the Next button when looking on the auction when the gear preview window is up on top of the auction window. Or that once the gear preview window is up, items in the far left or far right slots in inventory can't be used. But to say that these are "broken" and make the UI unusable is just ridiculous. The UI is obviously functional and the entire game can be played with it without problem, with the exception of what I'm hearing with Ops frames not updating, and the suggested companion stats not updating bug. You weren't the one saying the UI was broken, however. That was another poster. Thanks for the info on mouseover heal though. None of the games I've played used it.

There, admitting that wasn't so hard, was it? Now that we've got the formalities out of the way, let's continue, shall we? I think the general gist is that the game is here for all of the players, to help all of the players and to allow all of the players to have an equal chance at playing and enjoying the game. What you are arguing for, basically, is the right of any player who, for whatever reason, doesn't have a job or daily responsibilities, or might be independently wealthy in the real world, or doesn't have any need to do anything other than sit at a computer and play games all day should be able to sit in the AH all day manipulating prices and buying up the cheap items and then reposting them at higher prices. I think BioWare's response would be, "Errrr, no." This inevitably hurts the player experience for all of the casual players who don't have the ability to sit in the auction house 24 hours a day. I'm pretty sure BioWare built this game (and the Auction House) for them as well. Perhaps you should consider them in your mad dash for credit ecstasy? Indeed, the nerve of some people! How is it "helping the general player base" to have a few people buying up the items that were priced cheaply (which the "general player base" would have otherwise been able to buy at a discount) and then reselling those items at a higher price? Let me help you on this one. The answer is: it isn't helpful to the general player base at all. It's helpful to you, and you'd just like to sleaze it off as "something you're doing for others". And let's be ultimately clear. We're not talking about sanctioning people because they priced something too high. We're not talking about sanctioning someone because they wanted to earn a profit selling a looted or crafted item. In my case, I was talking about people buying up OTHER PEOPLES' AUCTION ITEMS at the prices THEY determined they wanted to sell for and then RESELLING those items at a higher price. And not just on a few items, on lots of items, routinely and regularly, day in and day out. There's a difference between that and just setting high prices on your items. Yes, you could try to argue that the people who put the auctions up originally are getting what they felt they deserved for the price they set. But then you turning around and selling it at a higher price (if you are doing this) undercuts your argument. Ultimately, you're skewing the prices of all of those items higher on the market than where they would otherwise be. Most people call that market manipulation. In the stock world, do it in a particular way and it can get you arrested and thrown in jail. Hopefully BioWare is as vigilant...

These are all just wants, not needs. Just because you want it and it isn't there doesn't mean the UI is broken. That's my point, and I appreciate you assisting me in making it. There is only one thing in your list that could even be seen as REMOTELY justifying the assertion that the UI is "broken", and it is the health status of companions when in parties not updating properly. In actuality, it's just an interface glitch, and I'm pretty sure this is a known bug (and if it isn't, it's your fault) and will be dealt with in one of the upcoming patches. BTW, I run as a healer with my Trooper Commando and never even imagined I needed "mouseover heal". Although thinking about it, are you saying if I use Support Cell and start right-clicking my companions in the battle, it won't shoot them with my healing ray? I'll have to try this and see.

Your response here pretty much seals the deal. It isn't Star Wars: Galactic Trader Tycoon. The AH isn't there for you to see if you can dominate it and monopolize it for your own purposes. It's there to help out the general player base. If you sell products that people want at a legitimate price, then you won't have any problems. If you're gaming the system and buying up items at cheaper prices and then cranking those prices up to suit yourself, then it just means you have no idea of how to turn a profit without playing dirty. And in those instances, with those players, I'm fully in support of the analytics flagging their accounts for questionable behavior. Good on ya, BioWare! Keep the auctions clean and fair.

I'm sorry, were you promised some position as the Final Arbiter of Pricing on the GTN? Can you show us your credentials?

It might help if I knew what TF2 is. But maybe you just like the game more? EDIT: Team Fortress 2 I'm guessing? The game mechanics might just mean you are better suited to that game than SWTOR. Looking at the site, I can't say that TF2 interests me at all. If your friends are playing it and it's a fun game to you and you enjoy it, I don't think there's anything wrong. Some people just like some games better than others. Not a thing wrong with it.

If people are buying the cheap items on the auction and upping the price, I would hope they are eventually targeted and sanctioned. I highly doubt that's what the GTN is there for. Price fixing and price gouging is (or should be) a no-no.

So what is it, exactly that makes the interface non-functional or closed and limited? The interface has worked fine for me since Day One. The only actual interface bug I was aware of was the issue with cooldowns swapping to the wrong keys when going into and out of the cover bar. What are these arguably glaring and intolerable affronts to UI bliss that you are dealing with, pray tell?

These are awesome suggestions and I am loving them all. One thing I can add (if it wasn't added in the several pages worth I haven't read yet) is that when you select your advanced class, you get a gear bag. For some reason when I originally received this, I thought it was a special totem that had to basically sit in the inventory for you to be able to run the game. Stupid, but that's how I treated it. I finally saw someone in chat say the other day, "Hey remember to open that bag you get when you choose your AC", and I thought to myself holy cow. I had just chosen Jedi Sentinel, and when I opened the bag, voila, a second offhand lightsaber to use. I went back to my L31 Trooper and still had that stupid bag sitting in there. Opened it up and found a starter assault cannon that I'd never used. OPEN YOUR AC BAG!! lol

False on both accounts. Your definition of "Beta" isn't one that's used by the development community anymore. The existence of bugs in the code that haven't been fixed does not equal Beta. The absence of tools that people want does not equal Beta. Just because one game doesn't have all of the functionality of other games that are proprietary and have been out for many years does not equal Beta. What makes it not ready for release? Your say-so? What part of the game have you not been able to explore or finish due to some game-breaking bug? I do not like your conclusions because they are not supported by your premises, either expressed or implied.

Much of what's there I'm not criticizing at all. My criticism was mostly based on the "FIX WITHIN 30 DAYS OR GAME FAILS" comment in the OP's post. It spins the list a bit in terms of a "Wish List" (which is great, and I've seen several and I'm sure the Devs follow those) to an ultimatum or ransom letter. The other thing of course was the use of "resuscitate" on a game that I'm having a ball with playing. OP addressed that one directly, but still, can we dial back the drama? Game's been out 15 days. Just because you can post on a forum doesn't make you a qualified game reviewer or industry games analyst. I think a combat log would be great, and is probably one of the easier fixes in the system since there are already obvious triggers going around spurting out various hit numbers and damages taken. The question is if they have them all properly tagged to the type of weapon and attack ability. If not, that becomes a daunting task. If they have tagged them, then it's probably a moderately simple upgrade, and will probably show up soon unless the devs feel it has some particular method of breaking the game in some other way. Mods and add-ons I'm not so sure about. It all depends on how the system was set up but frankly the UI is fine for my purposes and I've never found myself "fighting the UI". I'm not sure what the hell people are trying to do that they have a problem with the UI, with the exception of people playing the game on larger screens who want to zoom the elements. But hey, experiences vary. The thing about mods is this... it means breaking the developer trust with the end-user. As it is, BioWare controls the code. When you download patches and program elements, you get it from THEM. How many mods and add-ons get loaded with keystroke loggers and other security malware? Is there even a place where this is tracked for these other games? Granted, some other games companies have decided the trade-off is worth it. I'm not sure that means BioWare MUST be forced into the same value decision. And one thing I have never seen from ANYONE demanding mods and add-ons in any of these dozens of posts is an understanding of this concept, or even a desire to avoid it coming to pass.

This is an issue I ran into early-on. I created a trooper during beta as a Body Type 3 with dark brown skin and tight curly hair and was struck by the way the voice sounded. What I can tell you is that after a few missions and the cut scenes, the difference really melts away. I've become used to it, but my initial push was for a deep booming voice to match the Body 3 appearance even more than the skin color. This just gets even worse when you start out as the trooper and are immediately introduced to Gearbox, a guy with the deep booming voice that you were originally looking for. To answer your question, no I don't think there is a voice like the one you're seeking. Myself I was looking for something that was reminiscent of Michael Clarke Duncan (whom I absolutely love in everything he does) or maybe a Ving Rhames, or Keith David or even Anthony Ray Parker (Dozer from The Matrix). But I (think) I understand what you're asking for. It isn't accent so much as the timber and resonating quality of the voice. We're not looking for someone speaking ebonics. We just wanted a voice option that had a little more depth in the tone voice. Or at least I was.

What's funny is that posters keep quoting this other game that I am never, ever going to play. I don't care if they paid me to play it. WOW is great for people who like orcs and trolls and elves. No thank you. You may keep your lush, juicy apple. I came here seeking oranges. I flat-out deny the assertion that the only way SWTOR can be successful is if they lure the players away from WOW.

I wouldn't say that's true. I'm sure some of the developers do probably scour through the forums from time to time looking for good ideas. They aren't idiots. But there's a difference between blue sky and reality. The problem with most of these threads is that they are completely disconnected in terms of what they're asking for and what that creates in terms of real budgetary and development schedule issues. I'm sure there are a whole slew of items which the developers would love to sit down and start coding, and might have even started on already. But in the end, you wind up with a task list handed down by your boss or taskmaster and you either work on what's on the list or you work on your resumé. Yes, they had really long beta periods with lots of feedback. But much of that work was spent fixing the game-breaking issues. I highly doubt the developers sat around and had "sleeping parties" in the office since Beta was released and they didn't have to do anything. They were just as busy, perhaps MORE SO than they had been already, but as the beta goes on and as more and more feedback comes in, more and more bugs need to be addressed and fixed. No one who has ever undertaken complex software development will ever understand this, unfortunately. You have to almost see it to believe it. The other disconnect is what the game managers and community managers see, and what we as the end-user players see. They work under the guise of all of the specific, tasty real-time data that none of us have access to. We might see ten dozen threads show up asking for add-ons, but they might have thousands of requests on the back end for something different. If YOU are the development manager and YOU have the task of setting up which functions your team will be addressing, how are you going to determine the highest best use of resources? You're going to look at the actual data. And that's the stuff we can't see. It's the stuff the OP can't see, and others asking for macros and add-ons and whatnot. If it really is being asked for by a majority of the players, or even a sizable amount, I'd have to imagine that there'd be plans for implementing these things within a reasonable time frame. If it's being asked for by a minority of players, even minority of players at the very top of the game (the L50s), then it might not make good economic sense to address those issues. Without the real data in-hand, it's hard for us to make those value judgments, unless we're just operating from pure ego and what WE want. But if we presume that the development managers are competent, and do have that data in-hand, then we can start to make some suppositions as to what the actual data says. If there isn't a lot of talk about upcoming changes to systems being asked for major changes, it could be that the changes are hush-hush for proprietary reasons or it could be that there just isn't a sizable player need for it. In other cases, such as UI customization and space content, warzone content and others, they have already openly discussed upcoming changes. The ones most unhappy with this, of course, will be the small vocal minority who is asking for customized functionality that has been deemed unwise to develop at the current time. My heart goes out to them...

Well I'm not sure what makes me a "Fanboy" exactly, but whatev. So what if macros have been around since EQ1? How is that at all relevant to the discussion, unless your insinuation is that once one new feature that a few people like takes place in one game it must therefore occur in all other games throughout eternity? Games have been around for decades without macros. Didn't hurt any of them that I'm aware of. Can you name a few? And if threat and damage meters have no effect on the game, why do you need them so badly? Maybe I'm just not as much of a "hardcore gamer" as you folks, but from my perspective this all sounds like a bunch of seriously unique development that will be utilized by about 1% of the player base. The crowd screaming for add-ons and macros and other such 3rd party applications are most likely not the bread and butter target demographic of the game. I know that may be shocking, and it might even hurt, but time will tell. Can you provide any numbers as to a percentage of the player base that want these types of addi-ons and macros?

But even the belief that these things could all be implemented within 30 days (even if they had the full 30 days) just flies in the face of development. It's absolutely impossible. Maybe you're right, and the world just doesn't deserve a game like this. Will be a sad day if that's the case. We'll see what happens either way.

Great article. Thank you for posting. As epic as those battles were with Vader and Luke, I'll have to give the title of best work to the Montoya/Roberts duel in The Princess Bride.

I love the "MUST IMPLEMENT ALL OF THIS" within 30 days or else the MMO fails. Gotta love the drama. Some of these don't sound so bad, but a some of it (especially all the add-on apps) sounds like enabled griping. Too many people I think want too many little things to make everything as simple as possible. Can someone make me a "Play The Game" button that I can just repeatedly spam and it will play the entire game for me? How did video gaming ever make it all those decades without add-on programs and macro ability? The world will never know...

I agree with the OP's assessments. Love the game!

You mean you can't shoot to the top of the crafting system in 12 days' time? My goodness. It's possible that the developers thought ahead as to how the market would be with purples everywhere, and made changes to the system to prevent this. Have you received any other purples through crafting and recrafting? So far I've obtained one of them out of all of the crafted items. Perhaps this is a good reminder that blues aren't that bad at all... and purples are exquisite pieces of kit, and everyone doesn't have them. Finally, would you care to share how much you'd make back and how quickly once you actually DO get your purple warrior implant? Is it out of reach now or are you still standing to make a profit if it works?

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm only to level 31 on my trooper but so far the stories have been engaging and well-written and it has never felt like a grind.

I can understand the pain on this. But I can also vouch that it's eventually possible to get them all, it just takes some effort. I nearly drove myself crazy on those stupid pipes. Then when I got all the way to the datacron, I ran into the full mission log bug, but hadn't figured that out yet. So I went to grab the shiny datacron and YOU MUST COMPLETE MISSIONS BEFORE YOU CAN DO THIS! I had no idea it was the missions thing, but later when I figured it out, and deleted a few, then I ran back over to that datacron AGAIN and finally got the boost. I had a particularly torturous experience with them on Nar Shaddaa, is what I'm saying, and every minute of it was delicious. Don't change a thing.

I read all of the OP's post, as I'm still in the habit of reading things that are longer than a few lines and don't use large type and bullet points and helpful pop-up pictures. That being said, some of us did avoid the call of WOW. I didn't mind the elves and dwarves and such when I was young and playing D&D, but just never found it that interesting after I found cyberpunk and sci-fi gaming. If it doesn't have implants and augments, I'm not much for it. Otherwise, great post, and good thoughts!

If you want wide open worlds that are able to be explored in full, try Entropia Universe. Not only does the first planet Calypso have two giant continents, Eudoria and Amethera, but now there are 3 other planets, Rocktropia, Next Island and Arkadia, as well as two space stations, F.O.M.A. and Crystal Palace. Oh, and the game is completely open sandbox. There are no quests that even compare to what SWTOR has, and it'll cost you about $3.00/hour to play at minimum. Enjoy! You can reach me on Tatooine. The great thing I think is that as you're using the speeder bike transit to get from point to point in Tatooine, you can tell that there is actually modeled geometry on the way from one part to another. Even though you can't run between them (yet) it seems like the planets are built so that they can be opened up and expanded in terms of their size and scope. Planets crawling with cities like Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa might be a little trickier, but even then, there is a 3D geometry to the world that you pass through going from one part to the other. That isn't just some bitmapped video you're watching. It appears to be real 3D geometry that makes up the planet surface. I think there's a lot of room for expandability... but they will obviously need some time. 10 days out from launch is a lot to expect.