"I win buttons" -- if you have no idea what macros do, you really shouldn't have an opinion. Score one for ignorance.

I am glad you mentioned Tetris, it is a game everyone knows... and some people become pretty incredible at it because it moves at the speed of thought. This game has a pretty low skill cap at the moment, and animation delay is a serious part of that. High-level play doesn't exist when reaction time doesn't matter, so poor gamers are actually benefiting from the current system... incidentally, is there some other reason you prefer animation delays? I appreciate your advice that I play another game...... but I would still challenge you to give me another game that uses this delay system in a positive way, because I honestly don't see how this 'game mechanic' could possibly be helpful, other than in helping to market the game as 'cinematic'. In addition, I didn't say anything about giving every move the same animation... I assumed it would be easy for you to imagine every ability still looking the way it does now, but with the affect happening at the beginning.

This is a thread about game animations. I have stopped seeing posts about this topic since the recent 'ability delay' fixes went into the game, except with regards to animations taking different amounts of time between factions. The fact that the length of animations is even important is the real problem. The experiment: Put in your copy of Mass Effect 2 and load your save file. Once you are in control, try to see how fast you can make Shepard go from a standing position to a full run. It's a long time. The reason it takes Shepard that long to start and stop moving is the same reason it takes forever to snare someone as a smuggler: we are waiting for an animation to complete so that everything happening in the game *looks* right. The game should *feel* right. Pretty animations delaying input events..... without even talking about that other mmo, I would be interested to hear an example of any game, ever, that has taken this approach (besides BW games), and how it was a good idea. I would think that input responsiveness is one of those things that any gamer or game developer would agree is absolutely key to a fun and rewarding user experience. One poster asked how fun mario games would be if he only jumped a fraction of a second after the button press. About as fun as getting some of this game's jumping-puzzle holocrons, when Bioware insists that seeing your legs bend for a split-second is more important than the jump happening when you say it should. Similarly, as a smuggler, there is no reason you should have to pull out and aim your shotgun before a clutch ability executes. I am a software developer, and I have frankly no patience for people who demand of Bioware features X and Y for this months-old game. And I love Mass Effect and KotOR. But this is a very different kind of issue, in that it was a purposeful design decision that BW seems to be doubling-down on if anything, with no indication on what their real stance is, other than their troubled history, and the admission that yes, obviously factions should be bothered by equally-long animations. I would like to express my opinion, in the spirit of constructive user feedback, that MMOs are games where you kill 10 boars over and over again, so gameplay had better trump aesthetics, and to hear whether anyone agrees: Forget animations! Worry about them after the snare/stun/cc/heal happens!

I have never rolled on a PvE server because I like the challenge posed by this exact sort of thing. But there is pretty obviously something wrong with 8 republics being unable continue their game because 2 imperials STILL think its funny after a few hours. Trying to break up a raid group may not technically be harassment, but it is low, and goes against the spirit of the game, and I am glad this particular BW employee acted ethically by stopping it (after reasonable period, people ARE supposed to PvP).

Yes please. Being able to mouseover and/or select things as you run away from them is more important than it sounds.

On second thought, customizable racing hovercraft COMPLETELY ruined WoW so no

That is... actually an incredibly good idea.

It will always creep me out how some people don't think its a big deal to spend 70 hours leveling an alt just to do something different. Don't think I haven't done it, just think about what 70 hours does outside of this game... There's really no reason not to make respeccing easy when it makes the lives of some players massively better, and somewhat offends the sensibilities of others.

This sense of victimization you anti-arena people have is so bizarre, when what you are doing is trying to kill a feature that a lot of people really like and doesn't affect you in the slightest, vague claims of it 'ruining' WoW notwithstanding. What it really did is make WoW really popular, and the high standard of class balance that resulted is the reason people are so spoiled as to think 8+ unique classes could ever be remotely balanced overall. But please resume your name-calling and qq.

A ton of people saying they want to do arenas vs. a ton of people saying those people shouldn't be allowed to do arenas. How is this even a discussion? Put it in.

Look guys, if you have no idea what macros are you shouldn't post here. If you don't understand them, you don't have to use them, but rest assured, it is completely impossible to make macros play the game for you. There is absolutely no reason to cry about features that make the game more fun for a lot of people and have absolutely no affect on the people who don't want to use them.

You might not understand what dual-spec means. Talking about Rift's goofy class system is a ridiculous straw-man argument. If you only enjoy playing one roll, or if you have enough free time to manage multiple characters, this discussion does not affect you. The crybabies are the people arguing against a feature that saves time for everyone else but them.

Again, I don't understand all this stuff about commitment and "roll identity". Those arguments against respecing altogether, not dual-specing. Respec is already in the game and can be done for next to nothing. Dual specing is to avoid the completely pointless trip you have to make to the fleet to do so.

What else are you supposed to do in your 50 Champion gear? Grind even more warzones? BW: develop most expensive video game in history, but let those blizz guys have all the arena community. I think even the business majors at EA can see the problem with that. Balancing classes is hard, I fully agree. But at least 60% of warzone pvp is 2v2's and 3v3's, and that hard work has to be done anyway. There is no reason to think BW will force you into arenas like WoW did, please stop arguing against opt-in features to this game.

To people telling us to "go back to wow": sigh... could there be a more pathetic argument? To people who are worried that dual-spec will degrade player choice: WHAT in the world are you talking about!? I have leveled from 1 to 40 as a purely dps spec, and I could fly to the fleet RIGHT NOW and spec into sawbones for ZERO credits. Problem building up an alternate gear set like in WoW? No worries, every class has ONE STAT, I'm g2g on cunning. So much for meaningful choices. If you think player choice is the most important thing in an mmo, if you think "hard work" means "free time" and dedication means "grinding for credits so I can respec", then I suggest that YOU go back to whatever hardcore mmo you come from, BW clearly isn't making that type of game.