People are having unreasonable expectations for MMO's all over the place, not just SWTOR. A new game is not what people appear to be looking for, but rather some sort of second coming of Jesus. No matter where you look, MMO's are being ripped apart even worse than a handful of years ago. Subscriber numbers are dwindling, even for the behemoth amongst MMO's the number has dropped from roughly 12 million to 'just' 10 million right now, and continues falling. And yet, that hard core of gamers responds with surprise and disbelief to publishers deciding to more and more move away from their demands, and much rather place more and more focus towards the casual crowd . BioWare doesn't need to be given a break, they're doing a good job, if you fall within their target audience. If for whatever reason however you feel things are made too easy, there's too much focus on pleasing the masses, you feel displeased with the thought of subscriptions possibly going away within a couple of years... then it doesn't matter whether you voice those opinions in SWTOR, or any other mmo or game in general as far as it matters; chances are big that you simply ought to come to realize that you and your views are ranked very low on the priority list of publishers. tl;dr MMO's and gaming in general are going to change, but not in a way the vocal minority around gaming fora will be in favor off. If you feel you need to give BioWare a break over it, chances are big you'll just end up in disappointment.

1: Jawa 2: Zeltron 3: Selonian

+1, similar as to what multiple other MMO's already offer. Never understood why BioWare didn't directly introduce it along.

It's not too bad, it's mainly just lonely though. It misses a multiplayer element to it.

Well, not if it's in line of the inevitability of Peter Moore. And I agree with him on that. I'm not saying SWTOR is going f2p within the upcoming 3 months, or even next year. But 5 years from now it definitely won't be subscription based only anymore; and any game still relying on such a dated model will fail to thrive against the microtransaction market overwhelming it. Sure it'll piss of the handful of hardcore gamers, but the millions of players who are spending even more now on webgames and facebook games will disagree; and its their money which will ultimately be interesting publishers more.

Two billion? And your point being? In 2011 Apple had roughly 77 billion lying around in cash assets. Samsung had roughly 12 billion lying around in cash assets. Microsoft had roughly 10 billion lying around as well. Money is required in order to be able to make investments and take risks. If such companies wouldn't have these sort of figures at hand, do you think TOR would even have been there? No matter where the true figure for TOR lied, whether that be 50 million, 100 million or over. Who in their right mind would lay down 50 million on a product if they only had 80 million in the bank? It'd be financial suicide in case the project was a miss. This is plain and simple economics truly. If it takes 10 hours ingame to gather 1.5 million in cash; vs 10 hours of working in real life which gives a net result of approximately 180 Eur then quite simply put if you could purchase the item / whatever ingame for less than 180 Eur it'd be a waste of time to farm for it regardless. And farming isn't quite what I entain as gaming. Next to that, as such prices will never be 180 Eur it makes it even more of a no-brainer to just spend the minor sum of money for those little benefits you don't want to go through a multi-hour long grind for. Unlocking a certain race, play-time till 50 on a faction you might not even want to play with? Roughly 150 hours? That's over half a months salary you could make right there in that time. Instead you'd be wasting it, farming? Indeed playing. And playing games should be a form of leisure. It shouldn't become a secondary job forcing you to farm through redundant tasks which don't harm anyone. Sure money shouldn't start giving ingame benefits as it comes to PvE/PvP combat, crafting, or whatever. But in terms of visual appearances whether that be a non-combat pet, character race unlocks or whatever then there's no harm done. Farming is not a recreational activity, it's a job, and a very crappy paid and not to mention dull one whilst we're at it. If that can be bypassed by spending a little extra cash just to get that certain race unlock for example I'm all for it.

And Blizzard's cash shop is the prime example of a cash shop which doesn't hurt anybody, considering as to how it are just vanity items. It's been like that for years, never did it get turned into a pay 2 win situation. As for DLC, keep in mind that game development changed in the course of the years. Development became more expensive as development teams increased in size, the scope of the projects in general increased and the level of standard expected from today's games skyrocketed through the roof. Sure, a 2 million dollar project doesn't really need much additional income anymore after 500k copies are sold. However, times changed. Project costs increased exponentially, whilst sales figures did not. If for every 20 million AAA title they'd be selling 5 million copies, then sure no biggie. But they often tend to struggle selling 3 - 4 million. That entails an entirely different perspective on income for people handling finances. How do you battle this? Well, in the old days of gaming running even to relatively high production costs was achieved by high game pricing. Cartridges going around for the equivalent of about 90 - 100 Eur these days. An alternative is to offer additional content seperately for those willing to put down some extra money. It doesn't matter whether that's DLC in SP games, or cash shops in MMO's. In the end of the day, employees working at BioWare and EA want to be able to feed their families and children as well. That doesn't work if people keep on expecting high budget titles handed out for practically nothing.

Because not everybody has the time for doing those dailies to such an extent in order to gain 5 million under a week, due to being occupied with work 10+ hours a day and frequent weekend shifts along with it. MMO's should steer away from forcing people into the grinding nature the genre started out with. It has been done on many aspects, however these sort of unlock requirements fall dead on into the category again. Microtransactions can combat that. Many of those unlocks don't hurt a single soul, for example the racial unlocks for different classes. If I want to roll a sith jedi knight, who cares if I leveled a sith to 50, laid down 1.500.000 credits or paid 5$ for unlocking it? Does it give an unfair advantage to being a sith jedi knight? No, it does not. Is it something exclusive available only to those willing to use micro-transactions? No, it's not. It's a harmless transaction, which is beneficial to both BioWare/EA as well as the consumer.

Still waiting on mine, guess they're doing it in batches .

Or the ability to extend it for those with the hardware capable of rendering it anyway. Playing with 100+ fps is great, but feels a waste if when running through a field you keep seeing grass waving into existence because of the limited draw distance.

Standing and waiting for the Orokeet egg to pop, trying to beat the others to getting the egg and hoping you're the lucky one, is all fine and dandy by me. Brings in a bit of competition into the waiting game. However, what happens instead on the server I'm on is; a group of people is waiting for the spawn, standing there for hours on end, till suddenly this farmer logs in, egg pops within a minute, and although we all click it the farmer manages to get it first regardless. Then he simply logs ports off again, heads off to sell it and isn't to be seen for hours. From that point, it's been a rince and repeat for quite some while now. There's simply no fun in competing with a griefer like that, it turns a competition into frustration. I suggest making a change into the loot system for the egg, being either of the following: - Randomize spawn timers, anything ranging from like 2 ~ 6 hours. Ensuring that people can no longer just log in dead on time, in order to warp out within a minute just to sell it and repeat their behavior. All players interested, will actually have to join in on the wait. - Use phasing techniques, require at least an hour of dedication before you enter the egg spawn state and will be able to see the egg if its there. Call it meditation or whatever you'd like. However, if someone wants to sell the items but is willing to wait just like the rest it's fair game imo. - Last, but preferably least as I'm not quite in favor of BoP items. Make the egg BoP, and disable anybody who has already achieved an egg from being able to pick up another. Till any of those changes are made, I hope all GM's will continue regarding this sort of behavior as the one I spoke to; namely exploitive behavior. And for it being exploitive behavior, I hope said behavior will be rewarded with temporary bans.

In reply to the original post. As someone who only has the time to play a limited number of hours a week there is sufficient endgame content to keep going from patch to patch. There is so much still to be done, I hardly even get around to giving alts any attention. Sure BioWare's story focus have given them some leeway when it comes to buying themselves some additional time. However, it's not the casual players they need to be buying time from. It's the player who plays 10 hours a day and clears patch content within a matter of weeks for whom they are needing to offer something extra in order to maintain them as subscribers.

Footprints would make a good addition as it would no longer make it feel like we're floating over the surface, but actually touch down on the ground beneath us.

It's not really Star Wars-y, don't think we'll see it added. Additionally, asides from bringing an increased rating it's not going to bring that much extra. It's fun for a while, but eventually you stop noticing its presence anyway.

My vote for at least 16 slots as well, would love to play all faction/class combinations and with 8 per server that just doesn't work out. Please increase the character limit so we don't have to switch out towards a different server .

You sure you're not just having a legacy buff kicking in along? Or did you not unlock the endurance buff?

I too would be in great favor of cross-server legacy bonus. In the long term this allows to continue on playing more classes, without losing your legacy perks as there's only room to 8 character slots on a single server.

As apparently this is the official thread about the issue, let's comment here as well. Killed the boss twice after the patch now, yet my codex count remains on 8/9 and the game failed to give me the title. The issue is most obviously still bugged and the patch has had no effect.

Quoting myself from the other closed thread: This is my UI: http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/346/35087080.png The bottom part is as clean as I could get it. Wish they'd just allow us to fill in coordinate numbers or have the hotbars snap to eachother clean. Also the toggle within the mainbar would be awesome if it could be disabled from view, it overlaps my minimap slightly as it is right now.

This is my UI: http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/346/35087080.png The bottom part is as clean as I could get it. Wish they'd just allow us to fill in coordinate numbers or have the hotbars snap to eachother clean. Also the toggle within the mainbar would be awesome if it could be disabled from view, it overlaps my minimap slightly as it is right now.

It's a dead shame really that the graphics quality in TOR is so low, in particular for the armor. One of the primary reasons for many players to participate in dungeon crawls, raids, etc next to just getting the best pieces stats wise, is getting the sets which look cool for social occasions. But as everything looks like as if we're suddenly wearing -10/-10 glasses nothing looks more than a blur anyway.

And it's different right now... how? Most people don't say anything further than the first whisper 'invite'. So the only difference the current system comes with is going back five years to a time in which forming a group meant wasting even more time sitting doing nothing rather than playing the game.

All for this as well. heck, the quick port thing is all about a ship picking you up, let us directly hop into our ship as well.

Hoping they'll add a LFD sooner than later. Standing in town shouting LFM for 15 mins whilst doing nothing, just to have a run and split up as many people have no interest in social interaction is just a source of annoyance. Just give LFD so at least we can keep on playing, and let encountering people sho like to interact become a plus.

5,000 silver, 50 gold. Plenty of additional cash still to get then. Regardless, older games worked perfectly with calling 500,000 500k or 0,5kk / 0,5m.