Love: The class stories. Hate: The fact that all new story content is delivered in the form of raids, which I don't do. Hope for: Continuation of class stories, even though I'm not holding my breath as they've pretty much confirmed that it's all CM, raids, and more CM from here on out.

Sith Inquisitor

Between this game and Mass Effect 3 I'm starting to think BioWare forgot about this little thing called the Dramatic Arc. It seems like we're already on the "falling action" toward the resolution (the Republic wins in the end, which we all know to be the case). We've either skipped the climax, or it took place just in one class's story (the Emperor's death). Either way, for the other 7 classes, there's no drama, and it's frankly going to start to get kind of boring. There's a reason Episode V was basically the Rebels getting their butts kicked. Again, nobody watching Star Wars for the first time honestly thought that there was even a slight chance the Alliance would get crushed and the Empire would reign supreme for all eternity. Obviously the good guys would win in the end. But if the original trilogy was basically just "Rebels blow up the Death Star and proceed from triumph to triumph until Luke kills the Emperor", it wouldn't have been nearly as popular as it was.

The market for the "classic grindy" MMO is just about completely saturated. WoW controls probably around 80-90% of it. I can't think of another company in any other industry that dominates their market like that. Apple, Nike, and Toyota don't even come close. It's huge news if WoW dips below 10 million subs, but WoW's closest competitors are constantly hovering around a couple hundred thousand. The masses always say they're sick of WoW, but their frankly lying. There are and have been alternatives, but they always go back to WoW. So obviously WoW has it down pretty good. Key Point: WoW dominates a nearly-saturated market with an exceptionally high-quality product. Now we also have TOR. TOR's "value proposition" is the story-driven experience that masks the grinding. It's widely (but not universally) agreed that TOR does this very well. It's also widely agreed that it doesn't do the "classic grindy" MMO stuff well at all. Now if we're going from the premise that TOR needs to pick one thing or the other to focus on, which of these should they choose? TOR is not going to destroy WoW. That ship has sailed, crashed into an iceberg and gone down with all hands. If TOR tries to fight WoW on the "classic grindy" turf (which is what raids and the like are), it will get facerolled into oblivion because WoW already does that very well and TOR doesn't. If TOR is going to double-down on something, it should be the thing it does well. Releasing a new raid every month is only going to sate the "classic grindy" crowd for a week at most before reminding them how mediocre TOR's raids are in general. But this seems to be the direction TOR is heading in. They have barely released any story-driven content since the game launched (and no, raids with a cutscene before and maybe in the middle don't count). Mission terminals are looking like the quest hubs of the future. They are jettisoning their value proposition to try and beat WoW at what WoW does best. It's like if Creative Assembly stopped making Total War games because they saw Gears of War and now they want to focus on their crappy third-person action games. Companies should stick to what they're good at and play to their strengths to survive.

Neither Scourge nor Skadge have anything on Ashara. Just your average Jedi, hangin' out with her Dark Council buddy. And occasionally helping him murder Jedi. But she'll never betray her teachings, no siree. She either has Stockholm Syndrome or is legitimately, clinically insane.

Vette. It's kind of annoying that she's lightside, but DS Jaesa is a straight-up mentally damaged sociopath.

What I don't get is the jump in logic from this statement to "They should de-emphasize voice acting/story in the future (i.e. the ONE thing the game knocked out of the park)". Without the voice acting this really is just a reskinned WoW.

My Sith Inquisitor to some Imperial commander on Tatooine moaning about his problems: "I'm quite certain I didn't say 'please, expendable worm, tell me about your life'."

There is no warrior version, no idea why they show that on a Marauder on the website.

The black hole mask works with hoods, and it actually looks pretty decent if you can turn it black/dark grey by matching the color.

Honestly I get the completely opposite impression. All these arguments about the Devs favoring the Empire revolve around dumb little cosmetic stuff and a warehouse full of CE figures they couldn't move. But look at the actual meat of the game, the story: Compared to that, I don't see how some cash shop fodder means the Devs favor the Imps.

This just really sticks in my craw. So will you argue that a Merc or Ops DPS who doesn't help heal (i.e., "use their class abilities to the fullest extent") is being carried?

You still haven't said why it makes sense for the one guy in the group who isn't targeting the boss if he's doing his job to be responsible for interrupting. The tank and DPS have at least 3 interrupt abilities between them, and if they can't handle that they need to L2P, end of story. EDIT: Yeah, a healer could use target of target to see when he needs to interrupt, just like a DPS operative could be responsible for purging debuffs. But the point is those ways are just totally inefficient.

Healers should not have to interrupt. You've got three other players actually targeting the boss. If those three are so un-coordinated that all of their interrupt abilities are on cooldown at the same time...that group has bigger problems than a healer who just wants to concentrate on healing.

I think if you looked at a Venn diagram of "painfully shy people" and "people who play a Star Wars game for hours at a time", you'd actually see quite a bit of overlap.

Awww, is the multimillion dollar multinational corporation getting cyberbullied? Poor babies. Tone down the criticism everyone, remember corporations are people too, and like all people they have feelings that can get hurt.

Generally, I only "need" something when it's usable by the class I'm currently playing and better than what I have equipped. If it's not, "greed" away. That's why the option's there. Bringing talk of alts into the mix is kind of iffy because of course everyone can just lie about those.

Not only that, it's actually more Palpatine-ish than the Inquisitor storyline.

I never miss an opportunity to hate on Ashara "I know I'm slaughtering Republic troops alongside my Dark Council member Sith buddy but I'm totally a Jedi you guys, seriously" Zavros.

Well most of the legacy stuff in 1.2 that costs money is stuff that nobody really needs. I can honestly say I have never had a moment when I'm on my ship and I'm thinking "God I need to get to a mailbox RIGHT NOW!! It can't wait till I go out the door and see one at the spaceport!" The 1.3 system really bothers me, though. Specifically how everything is character-specific.

Everyone demanding character transfers ASAP should remember that we got into this mess because BW listened to everyone at launch screaming that we needed MORE servers or the game was doooomed.

Ashara Zavros, and it's not even close. Why the hell is she even a companion? If she isn't dark side, why does she stick around? A light-sided Jedi just hangin' out with a Dark Council member. That happens all the time, right? Wasn't Osama bin Laden buddies with some guy from Brooklyn? Bet they had a grand old time debating philosophy and stuff. Seriously, it makes no sense, none. Of course that's a larger problem with the SI story in general. Honestly the SW, while supposedly the 'meathead', gets involved in a lot more politics/manipulation than the SI.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. A Jedi just hanging out with a Dark Council member to debate philosophy? Epic story fail.

I'll second the opinions wishing for more political intrigue and less blatant "fetching". Playing through the other stories and a few FPs though, I'm starting to pick up an annoying trend: Republic characters fight the Empire, and Imperial characters ALSO fight the Empire. I would've much preferred that instead of Thanaton, the main antagonist be some Jedi Master.

I guess I'm OK with not being able to kill him (for practical considerations), but I do wish you were given more opportunity to treat him like garbage for the rest of the game. Make it clear to him he's not your ally officer, he's now a slave. Maybe fit him with Vette's old shock collar. But as it is, it's like "GRAAR FORCE CHOKE...ah I can't stay mad at you."