I blame Darth Maul and Boba Fett. Personally I find that the republic story handles the light/dark choices more smoothly. I had some really weird transitions on my imperial character that didn't make much sense considering my previous choices.

I always though the primary purpose of light/dark was in fact for the story differences. The other stuff had just been side bonuses.

Why would playable droids not make any sense? The trooper's assault droid companion has quite the personality and does his own thinking.. his story is quite entertaining. The only odd part would be how companions would be handled.. but then they could all be droid companions maybe a humanoid mixed on who comes on board to help with repairs. There's quite the variety of droid appearances around the game as well.

For now, yes. I'm still finding plenty to enjoy. Namely: - finishing my companion stories (gaining affection) - trying other classes both for their combat style and story differences - Still need to experience some of the flashpoint content - Still need to try out some characters on the other side for their stories (I've been primarily focused on Republic so far) - I'm going dark side on my second character and am enjoying how different many of the stories feel. Both for actual dark choices and also consistently picking responses that follow the dark theme. But ultimately many changes will need to happen. The game needs more atmosphere in general.. more ambient sounds appropriate to the immediate area.. more interactivity with the general surroundings independent of questing.. more character appearance choices.. more races.. something more to do at end game since it's a brand new mmo yet utilizes the same boring gear progression grind system that has been commonplace for years now. I was hoping the game would bring something new to the table for that aspect. In sort, I'm having fun but the game right now doesn't feel like an RPG and therefore doesn't fill that RPG type craving and may not hold my interest long term.

Um.. LOTRO was released in 2007. The others are correct but none are mmos and mmo graphics never compare to other games of the same time frame.

Personally I'd like to see some non-humanoid body types. Or breed a hutt and a jawa and whatever that spawns. Seriously though I'm not picky. I just want species options that aren't just a human with a different colored head.

Is there any chance of getting at least some basic adjustment options to the default hotkey bars? Specifically I would like the ability to resize them and get at least a 3rd bar option for the bottom center. But of course more UI options is always better.

Well for me personally: Questing - I love the story lines.. significantly better than any other mmorpg I've played and the dialogue scenes just further enhance my feeling of being a part of the story even when the quest objectives are simple/repetitive. Yes, the writing could be better but what are we comparing it to? No other mmorpg even has such story involvement right now. Arguably, LOTRO has some great story feel but only for portions here and there. In SWTOR I find myself part of various stories most of the time. And I certainly never got bored on the way to 50. Replayability - Already working on 2-3 alts at the same time. Some parts here and there are less interesting than the first time but overall I still am having a ton of fun. For one, taking the dark side route on everything (did all light side on my first 50) makes for quite a few fun changes in how stories end up. Especially if I make consistent answer choices to make my character's personality regardless of if there is a dark/light option or not. Crafting - I partially agree in that crafting is too shallow. BUT I've gained endless benefits from armormech. My vanguard has it and it let me easily keep all of my companions geared up pretty well. Plus I was able to make myself some nice purples to use at 50 from schematics I learned from disassembling. I just wish it gave more clues on what items I can learn new schematics from when disassembled and which I can't. Dungeons - Really.. WoW dungeons replayable? Really? I always had to hold back the vomit every time I used LFG because I was tired of them after the first couple of runs but needed to do them for the gear grind. I have enjoyed all of the SWTOR dungeons I've done so far though I don't expect to enjoy doing them repeatedly but that's that same with any mmo. However, I do enjoy the way combat flows a lot more in swtor than in WoW so that has helped for enjoying subsequent dungeon runs. Endgame PvE and PvP - not much detail to comment on but I too don't like treadmills but swtor isn't any better/worse than the others out there. I'm just disappointed that it didn't take a different path than the traditional treadmill grind. As for PvP, I'm about ready to forever ignore PvP unless MMOs stop making pvp specific stats, pvp specific talents, and pvp specific gear progression. PvP is something I do with my existing PvE character. PvP is not something I should have to completely design my character to participate in. They need to create separate tournament style environments for those that enjoy form of PvP and leave normal/world pvp as some you do with your PvE character/gear. How it Feels - once I set the skill queueing thing to 0 seconds, combat has felt much better. it feels great on my shadow. My vanguard has a few issues due to delays on initial damage. My sage is mostly smooth. And it has seemed to get better in time as it feels better now than it did in dec/jan. I do agree that the swtor world(s) need more flavor filler to them, but I still can't find myself favoring WoW. That flavor stuff isn't nearly enough to make up for the lack of depth in the rest of WoW. At least not for me. But at least so far in swtor lacking that stuff hasn't prevented me from having a lot of fun. Community - No you don't /have/ to depend on others, but I've found I enjoy the game a whole heck of a lot more when doing things with other people. I think lack of community is something stemming from the state of the players of these games more than the games themselves. I see zero community in WoW most of the time and it has plenty of people around. So I don't think more people around in swtor will fix the lack of community. Having more non-advancement/ non-progression things to do would certainly help though. With all of that said, I was indeed disappointed that SWTOR didn't take an open world route rather than the more linear design. There's almost no room for exploration in swtor and no point to in the few areas you can freely wander. I had hoped swtor would be a next generation of mmorpg but it didn't release like that. It's still of the same generation as games like Aion/Rift/etc. but with it's "thing" being the dialogue story scenes. But I still have hopes of improvements in time... we'll just have to see how it goes. I should have plenty to keep me busy until the next big patch at least.

99% of the time, turning off Sprint makes the jumping significantly easier. Personally I like that not all of the datacrons are super easy to get. I like having at least a bit of challenge and would find it extremely disappointing if they were all simple to pick up.

Why are so few of these posts mentioning their class and companion? I find the ease of killing those class quest bosses varies greatly on which class you are, which advanced class you picked, and which companion you are trying to us. For instance, everything was downright easymode all the way through on my vanguard with the healer companion (and armormech so she was pretty well kept up on gear). Most of the time I only had to half pay attention to ability choices. BUT things weren't nearly as simple for my consular. I've still defeated everything so far but have had a few close calls and it's not nearly as forgiving as the vanguard+healer combo. My sage is still in the lower levels so I don't know how that will change in time. My shadow is in the mid 30s and it's seeming to get easier as I level. Also, be sure to look around the environment for things you can use to your advantage. Sometimes there are things you can use like healing tanks and things to go boom and stun or hurt the class boss.

I just picked out 11 things that came to mind. This certain doesn't cover everything. 1. Better character creation options.. at the very least better hair options and a height and girth set of body sliders. 2. Add ambient sounds. It feels so awkward not hearing background noise in the majority of areas whether it be a cantina or the winds of a desert or a bug infested swamp or whatever. Most importantly, it's anti-immersive. 3. For all that is holy in this world could you please focus on an endgame system that isn't just about gear gear gear and then gear? I'd like to see a lot more focus on character advancement at endgame.. both in terms of storylines and specialization/capabilities. The majority of MMOs out there have already done the gear treadmill thing, so why not a different approach? Gear needs to play a role but in an MMO I'd prefer character choices and customization as being a priority over gear. 4. Tweak tanking some.. increase threat generation (or decrease dps/heal threat generation), add some way to better identify when you lose aggro on something, and improve click targeting so that it doesn't keep targeting only the mob right in front of me. 5. Smooth out travel in general.. all aspects. It often seems to take an awful lot of steps. 6. Ship instancing... make it so that your hanger instance includes the ship's interior. What I mean is that you walk up and onto the ship. 7. Find a way to smooth out the transition to/from your ship and space travel so that it feels a bit more immersive. Let me play with more buttons and things on the ship, too. And allow at least some small amount of ship customization. 8. Some limited method of "summoning" group members to your location or you to theirs. Not to be abused but to at least be available once in a while to help get things moving quickly when time's an issue.. 9. More and better armor design variety. 10. Flavor stuff in general. Make the world feel alive. and most importantly.. 11. Tauntaun mounts.. now, please. thanks. Reaching hoth and not being able to get a tauntaun mount was among the biggest disappointments I've had in game.

No.. there's a bug that can causes rapidly spawning clones. As in a new clone spawns every 3 or 4 seconds for a certain class. The last time in for me it was when it tried cloning the gunslinger on every attempt we tried, but I've heard it can happen with other classes as well.

Put simply, they are in the far north and far southwest. or look here: http://www.hb-eu.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=213&t=8362

It's impossible for an MMO to be complete upon release. They never are. It's a balancing act of what to have on release: how much leveling content, how much endgame content, how much "flavor stuff", how much focus put on bug fixes, stability focus, etc. To me, SWTOR did a fair job on balancing all of that. Games like WoW and EQ2 simply didn't have much existing competition when they released. Sure there were games like UO and EQ1 but their populations were tiny in comparison to what WoW became even early on. So far with SWTOR I've yet to run into anything that has prevented me from enjoying the game. I can barely even log into WoW anymore because it seems so mind-numbingly dull in comparison. And for now I'm still too busy trying to finish up planets and bonus series' to see all of the stories.. and still working on companion affection so I can see those stories as well. I've barely had time to look at endgame much yet. Heck I'll probably be focusing on an alt first before progressing much on my main... just to see how all of the dialogue differs taking the dark side route and try out a different class play style. Don't get me wrong.. swtor has tons of issues. But as long as I'm enjoying the heck out of the game, I really can't consider any of them that major at this point. Well.. except for the fact that we can't ride tauntauns. That's a pretty significant design failure.

I'm up to 49 on my main and partly into corellia. So far I've not run into any game breaking issues for me and have been having a blast. Maybe I've just been numb to new game issues after having played so many various games in beta and/or initial release to where I expect the worst then happily enjoy myself if it turns out smoother than that. Every single game I've played on release has had pretty horrible optimization (or lack thereof) issues especially on newer hardware. Some, like EQ2, would barely even function on average specs at the time of release.. everything had to be set way low. But all of the games got better and more efficient in time. And having so much MMO experience, I know never to expect the latest levels of graphics. MMOs just don't work like that. I do wish that many things in SWTOR were different (more class customization, more depth to space combat and space travel, open world feel, etc.) but I'm having a lot of fun with the game and the stories. I also think that the number of people playing the game is larger than I expected at this point so the amount of complaining on the forums isn't all that high of a portion of the overall player base. In addition, typically those enjoying the game are too busy playing it to post on the forums. That's not to say that there aren't valid issues, but all games have them and all games have had people who run into major issues preventing them from enjoying the game. The only complaint I have is that they should completely dumb the support droid theme. Customer service should feel as human as possible and droids feel too cold and nonliving.

Personally I'd save myself $700+ or so by going with a GTX 560ti and waiting for the cheaper socket 2011 i7 coming out in February. It's basically a 4 core instead of the 6 core versions out now, but still would allow use of the very nice looking 2011 socket based motherboards. Then I'd dump a bit of the saved cash on a decent 256GB SSD

I don't mind them being on the Fleet but they desperately need a quicker way to get back to the planet you were on when you took the shuttle to the fleet. If a shuttle can get me to the fleet, a shuttle should be able to get me back to the surface. As for flashpoints while leveling, the key is in playing with friends and guilds. Then within those groups get together with people who have similar enough leveling paces. There's a very wide range of levels within which a particular flashpoint is beneficial. Isn't there also the LFG type flagging or something? I really haven't looked at it much so I don't know if anyone uses it.

Personally I have a few various thoughts while sitting on the fence: 1. I don't like the idea of "level as dps then switch to tank/heal at cap". I'd much rather that all specs be viable for leveling than to have dual spec for that purpose. Although so far I'm not so certain that all specs aren't currently viable. I haven't played enough variety of classes/specs to know for certain. But overall a game should be designed so that people don't need to spec any certain way to do well soloing/leveling. And with the companions in swtor (assuming you keep them properly geared), I think the game does pretty well as is for most classes. 2. One situation I do agree with is leveling as one thing because that's what you wanted to be then reaching level cap and finding out that either you didn't like that spec or your guild needs a different spec. But for this case the existing respec option works fine as is. 3. A separate spec for PvP. This does make sense, but I think all MMOs need to approach it as a PvP-only spec.. only available for PvP stuff (for non-PvP servers anyway). 4. I do understand the desire to have a wider ability to fit roles on a regular basis. It's nice to be adaptable. And I did like the multiple souls in Rift. But I wish SWTOR had much more horizontal depth in the "talents" or more trees. 5. I absolutely hate the idea of needing to be perfectly spec'd for any given particular situation. That's extremely anti-RPG feel. And regardless of what people like to say.. whether everyone ends up being expected to participate in perfectionist spec'ing when dual specs are implemented. Any form of RPG should allow plenty of row for alternative tactics for the diverse variety of potential group compositions. So I guess I'm still on the fence, except I'd definitely agree with a special additional pvp spec slot.

I have to wonder how WoW even survived it's release after seeing a lot of the comments in the forums of any new mmorpg over the past few years. The early year or two of WoW were not smooth. Heck, I used to dread even patch day during the "class patch" era because it inevitably would both cause queue waits and multiple server crashes during the first few days after the patch. My hope is that for SW there is a whole lot more population than I realize so the number of complaints and such are a very very tiny portion of the whole. WoW really needs to have some solid competition to help get mmorpgs out of the slump they've been in for the past few years. So many potential good ones have come and pretty much gone because they couldn't match up to the size of WoW. Several I personally liked a lot more than WoW but does me no good if there are no servers or people to play with. Personally I've not run into any game breaking issues in SW yet.. keeping my fingers crossed.

At least for my first character through, I'm not feeling any grind at all. I'm up to lvl 42 now. If anything it feels like I'm outleveling my quests too quickly. I was 40 before even getting to Hoth. For me, all of the dialogue stuff helps prevent a grindy feel because it makes it feel more like I'm part of a story and actually doing something for a reason even if it is just similar tasks. I'm hoping my alt will be fun as well since it's a different class/story and I'll be going full dark side as opposed to full light on my main. That's already proving to give very different dialogue experiences so even most of the identical quests don't feel quite the same.

I enjoyed all of the movies, personally. I really don't quite understand the acting comments as ruining the newer ones. If Anakin was horribly acted then he must have passed it on because I find Luke to be horribly acted throughout most of the original movies. Yet it didn't ruin those movies for me.

I'm noticing the lower level areas being more and more crowded, personally. For that matter, I'm even running into more people lately in areas like Balmorra as well. Maybe it depends on the server.

This isn't comparable to WoW since WoW did not have advanced class selection. For WoW to be compared, it would be like if you initially picked a scout class then at level 10 had to choose between Hunter and Rogue. It would be helpful if this game had a bit more in game information on the choice when or before you get it though. But there are only two options per class and you should have a pretty good idea if you'll like the AC choice by the late teens. Rerolling from that point isn't the end of the world. You should only have to do it once since for any future characters you would have learned from your experience and will do more research on the AC options for a class to be sure.

One of the things I love about playing swtor is that after installing it on a PC, I have only like 30 seconds worth of configuration to do before playing since there are no addons to be concerned with. The only real issue I'm finding is that click targeting needs to work better (too easily keeps targeting the mob right in front of me.. think the click window for mobs is way to large or something, there needs to be a target of target, and some abilities need to feel more responsive. For instance, the "break out of cc" ability seems to take a moment to take effect.. making it initially tough to know whether it actually worked or not. As for the first two things, that's to make tanking a bit smoother. The target clicking thing is really annoying and many areas aren't big enough for zooming out to be a reasonable option around it. Tab targeting is fine sometimes, but sometimes I want to specifically target certain targets.

That explains why my escape pod has been unavailable.