SWTOR was presented in a somewhat misleading manner, at least for mmorpg fans. We were expecting an mmo of a Star Wars world. What we got instead is an online KOTOR. The good is that it has a great story driven feel. The bad is that it's very linear and there is no "playground" feel that most people look for in an mmorpg.

Honestly, I want to love this game. And there are things I really enjoy about it. I love the storylines and dialogue based questing. It's excellent the first time through and you can get a solid second time through on the opposite faction. I even got a third fun run by going all dark side on the options which, combined with the different class stuff, gave a different feel to most of the questing. But once you get into the leveling alts grind and space bar mashing through questing, it's not that enjoyable. And by that I mean compared to other games that I've made multiple alts on. The problem? SWTOR is missing the fluff. It's too serious straight through. There's also not enough side stuff. There's no room for exploration. It's a KOTOR game tuned for multiplayer online play, but a far cry away from feeling like an mmorpg. Side note.. WoW has been out a long time. I don't want the same gear/raid progression style of end game. Been there, done that. I had high hopes that swtor would bring with it a new style of endgame that focused more on character development/advancement over gear advancement.

I didn't know whether to expect a sarcastic thread or not. Some animations are good but then we have things like the /sit animation that are absolutely horrid. Someone forgot to motion capture that one because I don't know anyone who moves like that to sit. Jumping animations aren't very good either.

I've definitely noticed a big increase in fps performance since 1.2. But also keep in mind that there's more activity going on and more people around.. especially in the fleet and on tatooine, so it may be impacting performance in those areas. Actually I can't specifically claim an FPS but rather what I mean is everything definitely appears smoother for me. Even distinctly low fps areas appear smoother to me.. less jerky/stuttery. There's definitely room for improvement on handling large numbers of characters in a concentrated area though. Why could I sustain 15+ fps in a major rift battle in Rift with 40-50+ people actively fighting but a group of 20 people clumped together in the fleet doing little to nothing drops me to 5fps when I'm near them.

I don't understand... they included the vaccine thing for those who don't wish to be bothered by this event. And really I only encounter any other people with infection when I'm hanging out at the fleet or doing the rakghoul dailies. It's quite a stretch to call it "negatively" impacting another player. It's not that easy to infect someone else because of the unknown explosion time, they vaccines are readily available, it gives you easily at least 20 minutes to cure yourself if you do get infected, it doesn't damage armor, and you even get 5 DNA samples when you explode. I don't know who (or why) anyone would play an mmorpg and expect to play in their own little bubble immune from everything else going on.

It's an mmorpg. In my opinion, not everything should be equally obtainable.

Up until 1.2, I found them all pretty easy. But you have to make sure to buy all of the upgrades and the special modules. If you can afford it, get the grade 6 off the market (or whatever the step up from the vendor grade 5 is). Also, I find it most effective to control direction with both the keys and the mouse. That way you can somewhat aim in one direction while simultaneously trying to maneuver around asteroids or dodge incoming fire. It took some adjustment but after getting used to it I like it. I also try to be continuously moving around when in areas of large concentrations of fire.. seems to help avoid taking as many hits. Oh.. and I always keep my power converter thing set to full blasters unless my shield is gone and I'm taking too much hull damage. Then I look for a moment that I can switch to shields and stop firing so it regens fast. During that period I shoot only missiles so that it doesn't slow down shield regen. Then immediately switch back to full blasters. With all of that said, the missions seemed to get quite a bit more difficult after 1.2. I don't know what exactly it is but I'm ending them quite low on hull compared to what I did pre-1.2.

Geez people sure complain easily. They even provided easy and cheap access to the vaccine. It takes like 20-30 minutes before you explode. It doesn't do any damage to armor. And you get 5 dna samples out of it which are tradeable. I guess some need to go back to single player games or something. This whole plague thing actually brought a bit of life to this game. Edit: LoL the irony for those who didn't know is that WoW had a similar plague outbreak except much worse and much more prone to griefing. When infected you would turn into a ghoul after a couple of minutes and infect anyone around you including NPCs who would then turn into ghouls and run all over before exploding and inflecting more npcs and players.

The problem for me isn't even the 'end game'. It is that there is little to nothing to do outside of the narrow questing path. That and the class questing only accounts for a minimal portion of leveling so you're stuck repeating the majority of content in order to enjoy the stories. Why isn't there anything to explore or discover.. planetside or in space. Why can't I sit at a lake and fish just for the heck of it. Almost all of the "zone" areas on the planets are heavily restricted with regards to travel paths which prevents much of any exploring. And those that are more open (Hoth and some parts of Tatooine) don't have anything interesting to come across when exploring. About the only side thing to do is hunting for datacrons. If nothing else, I expected cantinas to be entertaining but they all feel pretty lifeless.

It's tough to have one single biggest concern. For me personally I'd say it's the complete lack of flavor/fluff/flair. There's very little to do just for fun and everything feels so completely lifeless if you take even just a two foot step away from the path of questing story lines. And there's a complete lack of exploration opportunity. Overall it feels too much like a game designed to be played through once and done rather than a multiplayer world to exist within. Personally, things like instances and raiding and pvp battlegrounds are not at the top of my list of what keeps me interested in mmorpgs. It's the other stuff done on the side that keep me from getting bored. I'm also very tired of the companion system. I liked it at first but now it feels like a hemorrhoid that won't go away. I'd much rather be able to effectively play without one so I can instead focus more on my character.

Wow, glad I didn't buy them. They make your lightsabers look like flashlights.

I've really been quite curious on what causes it since my load times are long regardless of which PC I am on. SSD doesn't even seem to make a difference. And I've got plenty of Internet bandwidth. Lately it's been hanging around 35-40Mb. I really can't figure out where the bottleneck is. It's like the game intentional loads slowly like there's a speed limit on how fast it will load a new area.

WoW caters to the masses. But if I wanted to start up a great hamburger joint in town, I don't think I'd want to be looking at McDonald's for my primary inspiration. I suppose It just depends on whether you want to sell a great product or just sell a crap ton of your product.

Okay... but now remove the assumption that everyone enjoys or is primarily looking for gear progression and raiding. What is there to do once at level cap? The whole focus on instances to get gear for harder instances to get gear for raids to get gear for harder raids has already been done to death in existing mmos. I expected swtor to bring something new to the table. Plus, it's lacking any side fun stuff or further character development and stories. Heck.. I'd be happy if it just had a decent crafting system with more depth and player involvement. I loved the story stuff on my first character and I've been enjoying going through the stories on some alts. I like how many quests have an entirely different feel when you pick dark side options vs light side. And I loved collecting all of the datacrons. But in general swtor doesn't seem to fill the mmorpg craving and instead feels more like a cooperative mode of a single player game.

I love the quest stories and such, but as soon as you step outside of them the game feels lifeless. - Not enough things to interact with outside of things that exist as quest objectives. - No room to explore and no incentive to even if there were. The closest I came to exploration was the wide open Dune area where I was wandering around and found a skull to click on then got smooshed by the world boss. - No character flavor. I think we're a bit too early for the clone wars yet everywhere I look I see clones. It could possibly because even though a species may have 20 hair styles, 19 of them are typically horrid. The same with the face options. - Little to nothing that exists just for fun. and one big disappointment for me... it feels like we're going backwards in time with regards to character creation and development. What happened to the complex character systems of games like UO and Asheron's Call where you had a wide variety of choices to make that ultimately determined what your character's focus and strengths/weaknesses are? I kinda liked how Tabula Rasa worked as well. This isn't just a comment on SWTOR but most if not all mmorpgs over the past handful of years. Normally things advance over time but the mmorpg seems to be devolving to me.

There is no one class that answers all of those definitions. It also depends on what you mean by "easiest". Personally I first leveled a Vanguard to 50, tank spec the whole way primarily with the healer companion. Then I did some tinkering with two consulars.. one a sage up to about 18. Then my shadow that I just got to 50 on, tank spec the whole way and with the healer companion once I got him. I have to say that the shadow was significantly easier, faster, and more fun. I seemed to do a whole heck of a lot more damage than my vanguard did without really taking much more incoming damage (at least once I started getting the tanking talents and gear). The ability to stealth, CC, and "vanish" came in handy frequently. Also, the shadow felt a lot more engaging in combat.. more responsive which to me was more enjoyable. The vanguard felt very delayed and slower. I didn't run into any trouble killing anything on my vanguard while leveling.. it was just much slower than my shadow and combat overall was less exciting. But.. I had more cooldowns, buff/debuff timers, and buttons in general to watch on my shadow compared to the vanguard. That to some may make it not as "easy" but wasn't the case for me. But your last question is totally different... which class would most easily get you into groups/ops? A healer.. any healer. There seems to be a huge shortage of healers of all types compared to anything else.

Don't forget about the mods. Sometimes one or more of the mods could be an upgrade even if you can't use the armor type itself. While that doesn't justify needing it over a primary user of that armor type, it certainly deserves more than fighting over greed for it. They need to add some sort of bonus to rolls for anyone who should be getting priority roll on it. That way there's room for others to fit in between them and everyone else who's rolling greed.

I don't know how it did, but it did. People stopped communicating to form groups and everything just became this lifeless automated system. But it is a necessary evil because otherwise you are too dependent on the current level of activity on your own sever at any given moment.

It said I already voted even though I never did, but the nearly 80% No vote mirrors my opinion on it. I like being able to see what happened to me and how my own dps is doing but I don't care about seeing everyone else's. Communication between players can allow sharing of that information if necessary.

I keep seeing numbers anywhere from $60 million to $100 million for Skyrim but I don't know where you found the official development cost numbers for all of those. I haven't been able to find any official sources yet. I would not be surprised if swtor has a whole lot more voice acting than any of those when you factor in the length of gameplay in swtor along with the multiple classes and two factions. And looking at the list of actors, SWTOR has like 5 times the number of voice actors than what Skyrim had. SWTOR literally has over 250 voice actors if not closer to 300. Skyrim had around 50-70 voice actors. Even with how many actors they used, I'm disappointed at how voices are purely class based and we didn't have any options for our character's voice. I understand why but still.. And I do think the game was rushed to release, leaving many things in unfinished or unpolished states. However, for me personally I have two characters I've leveled to 50 on without any of the bugs interfering with the enjoyment of the game. For me the issues are more about the design (of lack of) for many aspects of the game more so than bugs. Like why are they so few decent character creation options and why does almost all of the equipment look the same (for a given armor type).

I have to completely agree. But it goes beyond appearance for me. I'd like to see more customization throughout the leveling process and end game. I wish things like dark/light choices had an impact on strengths/weaknesses and abilities (including "grey side" path as well). One thing that I always enjoyed about Aion is that I never ran into anyone that looked anything at all like my character. In swtor, I run into people that look similar all the time.

Unless I am mistaken, isn't the lore of the colors really only around which crystals they had access to and not a morality thing?

More importantly, can't even ride a tauntaun.

borrow AoC's melee combat system, please. I could see having a whole ton of fun with the multi-directional attack options and combinations. Much better than a small selection of attacks that pretty much always look the same. One can dream, anyway.

That change was announced quite a while back, well before SWTOR was out. At the time they didn't have the nitty gritty details or specific release date, but the basic idea of shifting to that type of pvp stat setup was there. Now whether they got the idea from someone seeing swtor beta info or what, who knows.