What about the games which chose F2P from the beginning? F2P is just a different model and similar to shareware of the old days actually with the difference that the model is expandable and closer to paying for what you want. It requires a completely different design as well as the limited version will have locked features. The full version may still be subscription-based.

I have never had FPS issues on my rig playing RIFT but despite Gamebryo engine being far better and more scalable than HE they designed the world like a single-player game. But apparently they improved it, a friend of mine used to be a fervent RIFT fanatic and his rig using a low-end Nvidia 4x0 GT card did run it at low settings at least. The rifts and invasions getting in the way as even higher levels didn't even bother coming down and cleaning up were distracting as well. But I didn't really like the world's setting in general. So I eventually backed out. However overall it seems the game is relatively stable and in good health even after the security leak disaster.

It would be nice if people backed up their daring claims from time to time. There's many Bioware studios, so it would only affect one if it really came down to that. EDIT: I know G.Walton went other ways but news about it didn't hint at "serious internal problems".

In all fairness functional similarities and overlaps are sort of inevitable in this genre. Actually in all genres.

RIFT is successful, it's exactly where a MMO should be these days in terms of playerbase size and popularity. It should serve as beacon for everyone trying to release a polished MMO these days.

Actually you can't really compare any game on the same basis because games with different line-up of features have different systems - also being designed differently - intertwined. Bioware wanted a game where all these systems (bar Legacy) work instead of a fully fleshed out MMO in every aspect so they could impose quantity while ignoring quality for a while. The result is we have many unpolished subsystems. Also it didn't help that Bioware made fairly over-exaggerated promises and even went as far as giving public lessons on how to make a MMO and then ignoring the most of them. I think most of the current criticisms wouldn't an issue if they were a bit more modest and self-criticial and more thorough with their Q&A testing procedures. But even pride will have a fall. I am quite sure we will eventually see all the features which are perceived - partially rightfully so - as missing. However I am afraid they still didn't notice that even if a comparison between MMO launches would work that simple - and in parts things happening 7 years ago still apply - people are far less eager to develop brand loyalty these days and far less forgiving and in fact less lenient. A "coming in three months" worked perfectly 7 years ago these days it's only working if it adds to the prevalent level of satisfaction. In short: Bioware is racing against thinning levels of patience of a playerbase which could be swayed to abandon ship at whim once a new shiny and overhyped thing appears on the horizon and is within reach now. TL;DR People are less patient today, Bioware over-exaggerated their own capabilities in regards of MMO design despite giving lessons to others. Game launched can't be compared on 1:1 basis at least not when system design of different game show large differences but some criterias still work.

That's phasing not instancing. Phasing is just switching through condition-based object visibilities within the same instance. Whereas instancing is just putting you into a copied instance of the area. You can have phasing in instances. While phasing would indeed solve the issue of having little instanced areas it wouldn't be without flaws though. Phases cannot be reset like instances can. Phases are shared with other people in the same area so you could grief away. Besides the areas would just have to be filled up with filler mobs or left empty (like WoW does in some cases). You can easily invite people who have finished a quest into an area to help you, not necessarily so with phases. Phasing has its places in one-time non-repeatable events like when you want to visualize a changing world otherwise even phasing had its little whines surprisingly similar to instancing. I don't think SW:TOR's engine is cut out for phasing (yet).

If they left the current display as is but when you are hovering over the alignment-meter you could get an indicator showing your effective Gray level as well. Say at level 1 you would start as Gray 0, at 750 LS/750 DS you would be Gray I a.s.o. then you could easily create a third alignment without having to change much.

Coming from WoW I wholeheartedly agree on this. I recently checked my inventory of staves I got in WotLK alone, like 10 Feral staves alone, all gained within about a year, sigh :/ Few common possibilities: 1.) they read it but discarded it as too much hyperbole 2.) they thought they are above common knowledge 3.) they had good intention but eventually got caught in that trap without being aware of it Either way a side issue of this is also has some effects on encounter design, stronger gear demands adequately stronger encounters. Considering mechanical additions this may also lead to some insane power creep. The end: Players with 150,000 health still getting two-shot.

I am sceptical. Because he was vague enough to make sure it doesn't sound like an official statement. Meaning that beginning from the "if" to actually feeling compelled to act upon balance issues immediately alot time of inactivity may pass. I presume that they don't want to enact measure which either don't have the intended and long-lasting effect or they don't want to make it look too obvious.

Did they? I must have played a different version of WoW then. Or I must have imagined my poor 'lock being spawn-camped in Ashenhell by masses of bored Alliance waiting to get a spot in brand-new WSG! I guess you are being facetious

It just seems to me there is a lack of professionalism on Bioware's Q&A and customer communication side. It seems there's a lack of extensive regression testing and lack of understanding of design issues between customer and developer side. Almost certain - in Bioware's case - a great over-amount of blinding pride is playing a role as well. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen that.

1.) interview is a bit dated 2.) there has been no acknowledgement whatsoever; you will never find a MMO company coming out and say: Yes, we do have a faction imbalance and we are going to address that. Because that would end in people holding that company liable over faction balance issues and only choose factions based on incentives.

300 trillion quatloos will be spent on answers.

After playing 5 hours with it yesterday I can honestly say that nothing has been improved by this change. I am still watching Rage bar and time left on cds via tooltip in order to determine the validity of the each button's state. I personally would like it more simple. Abilities not available are greyed out, abilities which are available are lit up, an ability with cooldown should just have neutral grey overlayed gauge. Once said gauge reaches 0s it should check resource as well and only a combination of all: resource, cooldown left, target condition (self, target, enemy, friendly), should determine the button's state.

Considering that the crowd ranges from MMOs not supposed to have a story at all to a heavy freeform roleplaying with full voiceover it is quite clear that MMOs should stop catering to all kinds of audiences. It doesn't work for other genres so I am unsure why it should continue to work for MMOs. In my opinion this game is just a test case, they certainly overdid it in areas but since there was no reference they basically created one of their own. Any game after - and according to doomsayers this game will be dead in a couple of weeks - will at least know what to strive for, what to avoid. PS: I believe GW2 will be a great game but I don't buy into hype and certainly not that it will be the epitome of perfection from the get-go.

Try to get your hands on 4-man heroic areas. Plenty of elite, plenty of champions even, you may even be running from them as well. Tried to solo the The Lanar Question in Alderaan? (if you play Empire that is) I honestly think people underestimate sometimes what they could be capable of. When I am going to an area I check for AREA quests, then try to get the heroics and then I am checking what I can solo. I realize this isn't the ideal way to play the game but I think normal/weak mobs were supposed to be easy. It's no difference in other games really. It's meant to keep things accessible, if they made these numerous kills to do also a difficult thing to do then I am sure people would be burned out before reaching level 10. To seek challenges you always have to take on the things which other people run away from. It won't happen and it won't be realistic to expect it. It is better to make realistic expectations and to go from there and see whether you want to be part of it or not. I don't expect it to be totally redone and even if they did they would annoy quite alot subscribers as well because you can't please everyone. It starts with the simple things: - XP is earned too fast - XP is earned too slowly - more sandbox please - more themepark please Careful not to cite numbers like these without backup really. The official numbers have never been posted but it was more closer to $200m. Also to a common layman these numbers are irrelevant because he doesn't really know about stuff like personnel training, software prototyping, case studies, licensing and all the little extra costs coming together when create software consisting of multiple systems. MMOs are very expensive to make. Once things are running the costs are dropping however.

The areas might be the same but overall for the sake of cohesion and context it makes much sense. Other games split starter areas between factions and thus have even less of them, others might not split at all or super-split. There are advantages and disadvantages to all models and I think SW:TOR didn't pick the worst of them. I agree. There is at least hope they will include more races and better customization later. I have always been a linear player in MMORPGs but I can see why someone wants to break the monotony. I personally see this rather a limitation by their story system rather than their overall intent of wanting to limit you. It is a Bioware-typical phenomenon actually. Story limits freedoms. They are just not cut out for even tiny bit of sandboxing. I think given the quantity of VO'd quests they probably preferred quality over quantity and filled the gaps via bonus objectives. I can't subjectively tell what I like more, the christmas-tree-like WoW quest system which has been cut down a little in last expansion or the one in SW:TOR involving killing metric kilotons of mobs. When I think of game content I am thinking Ops, PVP and FPs. But you are basically saying the world isn't feeling alive because of the lack of critters, wind and weather? You can't? I personally feel the lack of colouring on the map is what makes people losing grip on where they actually are? By landscape I can actually now identify on most planets where I am on the planet in relation to other places. It really boils down to the sci-fi'esque blue-shaded map which serves its purpose for immersion, in practical sense it's however adding to confusion. Quite some of them, indicated by VO, seem to have been there since beginning. Otherwise I believe their purpose serves a similar one as in other MMORPGs: to break up the monotony of soloing and allow for some grouping as opposed to constantly requiring groups. Unfortunately they are not exactly optional as skipping them can wreck your XP curve later on, would have been better if they were similar to public quests/rifts. I mean I am not complaining for now, 2-mans can be solo'd for most part, 4-mans only by tanks and healers who kept tabs on companion gearing. But I'd prefer a more dynamic system as well (which is what I posted in the suggestion box on Saturday). Frankly, I am not bothered that much by it. In other games like WoW people tended to grief, camp and gank people on their class quests. It also allowed trivializing content by having higher levels interfering. It's a trade-off I guess, the alternative would be worse. As a traditional hotkey-based MMO it was inevitable that you'll have to press alot of buttons eventually. The auto-attack aspect was most likely aimed at PVP/group-PVE. As for it being easy, try your hand on harder stuff, the difference between not using Retaliation and using it can be having 1200 health more or less. I found the playstyle then breaks up the routine quite fast. I think despite them needing some time to address issues they won't have to wait a year to do that or even close down the game. I mean Bioware addresses issues relatively faster than Blue does. Not qualitatively better but at least they seem to not want players having to wait a long time. It was inevitable that it won't be perfect, I got into beta as sceptical person but whilst I am not entirely sold out on their long-term plans yet I can honestly state I have played worse and lived it. I am however patient so I will give them some time. Care to quote the source of the 300 million figure (EA Louse doesn't count)?

Holy Mother of all Godwins... My real life view has nothing got to with my game perspectives. People who cannot relate roleplaying with anything probably try to seek reason in real life/historic references. It's also less about being plain evil much more about antagonizing themes. I can play both type of characters in a game but it in this game playing the supposedly evil side is for now more attractive to me. I am playing a Sentinel and a Trooper, but I am not particularly happy with them, the Sentinel because of the many sleep-inducing dialogues and the Trooper because of its rather clunky gameplay. I'll gladly continue playing the Trooper if they fixed the class. *edit: quoted poster removed his controversial Godwin'ing post

Err, your initial argument was that "MMOs shouldn't be about story to begin with" the voice-acting part was secondary to that. Either you make up your mind about whether you feel voice-acting or story is your main gripe or give up defending the first one. Either way both were initial selling points. You signed up for that without informing yourself about it, holding it against Bioware it is like going into a pub and being annoyed about the lack of French cuisine. You will find many hardcore players disagreeing with you one way or another. They gave you the option to space-bar through it, use it.

Even if you could look at it I doubt you'd see at first glance how it is "unoptimized". I don't know your credentials in regards to software engineering but I do have decades of experience myself yet I wouldn't yell at a company to optimize their code because "I know how bad their code is". The least thing a software company wanting to stay in business will do is optimizing and revising their own existing codebase.

It was the main selling point of this one, anyone buying it should honestly have been prepared for it. Also this is a MMORPG, maybe it's just me but I sort of knew that when I am buying a Bioware game I am also buying their version of understanding of a RPG. Just because other MMOs did it differently it doesn't mean it sets the tone, even praised/hyped GW2 will obviously be centred about story.

I am pretty sure they are constantly trying to optimize their code, why wouldn't they? But I have my doubts that the OP knows what code optimization looks like. That is unless he can give us a practical example.

The idea is to look at progress in a fantasy game with a different bias. Technological progress doesn't happen there following realistic paradigms and doctrines, it either happens or doesn't happen. If it does happen then only to serve the story. Hence why you can have things like 10,000 year old starships when in reality the material would have aged so many time that it would effectively not be the same starship anymore counting 500+ overhauls. It would have been mothballed out of economic reasons.

Why? I think that's the only reply I can think of right now aside from giving the advice of if it's too slow then do a space mission or two every time you enter a new planet.