It's B2P, not F2P. Please get that right. F2P games rely on cash shops to support it, offering exclusive and needed items to compete or do content. GW2 is not going this route. I do expect them to milk it with expansions but that's ok and not suprising. As to performance, after watching it being played personally: I can safely say it will handle mass PvP 10x better than TOR ever will. It will break down at certain player amounts for sure, but its breaking point is considerably higher. You know why? They made their own engine and not buy sum 3rd party one from a garage sale. Anyways, I actually expect GW2 to be crap....it's just to good to be true, honestly. But at this point I have lost faith in BW and now have to look else where for 'a new hope'. Yep, three months after release. GG.

Oh you could not be more wrong. Massive W v W v W with a map that dwarfs anything that TOR can offer (or even handle for that matter). Yea sure, there will be no gankfest called PvP in other games where you take out people below your level while they are fighting mobs...in GW2 you will be doing it in zones specifically made for that. 3 teams as well which theoretically will get rid of 'faction imbalance' that exists in every 2 side MMO *cough* TOR. I guess the downside is there will be no raid or die/holy trinity concept which will more than likely not attract those sorts of players. But the PvP community is drooling in anticipation. I know I am. Anyways you know where I got this moniker "Jesus Patch"? I read/heard it from various MMO review/fan sites and the reason why it's being dubbed this is....it will take an act of god to save this game which is 1.2. Or at least that's my interpetation....I didn't make that term up, other people did. It seems highly fitting though.

Actually they had well over a million subs at it's peak. That is respectable for a no name dev coming out of left field. On a whole, I would say they did remarkably well considering. But w/e. Yea, TOR might have more population but we are all in different instances. Rift is a true open world MMO. TOR is the modern day AoC with 50% more loading and worse graphics.

Thy Jesus Patch shalt saveth us all! And so it was written! CAN WE GET AN AMEN!?! In all seriousness, it better come out before the 2 month sub mark b/c you are going to see a mass exodus if it does not. Yes, this will please many of you to no end: players quiting is awsome. Less subs, less money for content and fixes, and less people to play with is good stuff! That is totally benificial and a great business plan in the long run, am I rite?

Not checked there in while but also have toon on that server...PUB side. Last time I was there prime time, it had 20 ppl. Yea, Imp side is awsome....pub side is LOL.

Difference is that 1) it has no sub fee, yet is an MMO 2) Wide open, massive maps and not AoC/TOR style which is a whole lot of loading. 3) A very passionate and open company: they actually play their games, BW seems to only make them and is about the most tight lipped dev out there. 4) When you reach that breaking point, you can quit GW2 and take a break; in TOR you are paying monthly thus feel I have to get every red cent out of it. Rift is far from the perfect game, I will agree. But the thing is....it was made by a newbie developer for a miniscule amount of cash compared to this game, yet they are constantly cranking out patches to fix stuff and add content. All this at max 30 min down time: how can a no name dev do something so right yet mega corp cannot? BW on other hand takes ages to do the same and don't even test their crap. While Rift is not the best, they really impressed me with their dedication; I look forward to their next MMO if they do one. TOR on the other hand has lowered the bar, which is sad. On topic, game is not totally awful and not redeemable...but at the snails pace they are going (ie. it took them 5 months to fix Med therapy LOL), BW/EA may have a wake up call soon when other titles are released in the future. BW released this game at the perfect time: no competition and players tiring of other games like Rift and WoW. So essentially they can get away for having a mediocre MMO with terrible service and terrible bug ridden patches filled with sploits. It's also based on SW which automatically draws fanbois out of the floor boards. p.s. BW should stick to SP games.

Won't touch Secret World even if they paid me, it's Funcom: enough said. All D3 has to do is provide the same type of action and lootfest of previous titles with better graphics: that is good enough for me. Still play D2 LoD to this very day....spambot, palibot, cheatfest yet it's still awsome. 10 years off and on play, that's a long time. Each their own. Mmmm loots, me loves loots. Brb, making another hell mode boss kill run in D2. RD soon, I hope. GW2: they are aiming to break the genre and mix up it up. Action combat with emphasis on movement, timing, and well...real skill. Gear won't be huge factor like say in this game when determining PvP out comes, builds and HOW you play will. I will concede that the PvE might very well be lackluster compared to the typical raid/trinity models but it could be cool...however, I don't think the PvE raid fans will enjoy it as much. Rifts zone events were dang fun in example, only problem is after first couple dozen times it's boring. This may or may not work in GW2. I think TOR will still be king in the story delivery but we all know once at 50, that is gone entirely. So I dunno. Anyways, go to all the major sites who got into the press beta event and frankly I could not find one that actually hated the game or had major beefs with it. Most out right loved it and majority of them say things like "innovative" and "why didnt anyone else think of this" type comments, on other side same cannot be said for TOR during it's betas; "if you played WoW, this game will be very familiar!". And so it was. Lastly I got to watch a friend play GW2 and I must say I am really impressed. So it's not all based off vids and pics, granted if you look around there is some really good vids out there show casing the game. Awsome PvP, W v W v W (world pvpers dream come true!), and a huge open world with very few 'instances'. Plus the questing system might revolutionize the genre. And all this, yes....all this for just paying for the box; no subs at all. Regardless if it's a good MMO or not, it's cheap as heck. You can still play X MMO and GW2. Win win. As to which one you will play as your main game, well that will have to wait for now until a RD is announced (soon pls!). Anyrate, I will admit I am still skeptical of GW2: honestly it's just too good to be true. I mean how the heck can they provide such a beautiful and expansive game for essentially free. Boggles my mind! But as said, pay for box then that's it and not 15 bucks a month praying for the Jesus Patch 1.2 to save the day. edit. may think I am BW hater but I really am not. Every single one of their single player games; I enjoyed them immensely. No game dev out there comes close to their story telling, none. I will infact be buying ME3 this week. Thing is, I think BW should stick to SP games (or mplayer light ala ME3 co-op) exclusively instead which is what they are good at. Essentially, every time I log into TOR....the very first thing that comes to my mind is: where did that 200+ mill of development actually go? Wasn't into the engine, that's for sure.

Don't have problem with Sorc DPS, I think it's fine. Problems is they have to much CONTROL with hybrid builds. KDs, stuns, roots, slows, long/insta cast mezes, pulls, insanely awsome mobility. etc. It's just too much. I had thought other games had bad CC, TOR takes the cake. Resolve needs either a) revamp b) chucked in the trash where it belongs and put in dim returns system instead b/c it don't work. ie. sorc bubble pop/kd/root causes ZERO resolve. Explain that one to me. People might say everyone has to learn 2 play....well they did, most re-rolled sorc which could be seen as an indicator. Most players naturally gravitate to the OP class en mass and TOR is no different. You would have to have blinders on to not see that there is more sorc/sages than any other class and not by a small margin either. W/e. When the most popular class complains about Operatives, BW listens and nerfs em. Win win!

Saying class is dead means no one plays it and means the class sucks. Both of which is not the case and quite untrue.

No, see lots of maras and sents. Just seems the BAD players have left it, while the good players decimate with the class. They can easily hit 3-5k a button press while essentially being a tank on top of that. One hardest to kill and arguably is the best melee class for PvP? Try playing a conceal Ops vs one, maras EAT operatives for breakfest. Learn 2 play.

I can list 6 conceals on Harbringer and a couple scrappers who will take me down to 10% in the span of a KD. One of which is in this thread. I trust you play against bad ops and smugglers then. I can kill badly geared conceals though, but equally geared? They'd have to be pretty terrible to not kill a heal ops really easy.

Play on Harbringer too....majority Ops are conceal and subsequently chasing/ganking the few heal ops around ALL GAME LONG. Why? Cus heal ops are free kill to you guys. I asked a top conceal ops why he chases me all game and he pretty much said: cus heal ops are the easiest to lock down and take out. This applies to all DPS cus once they know I am healing, they ALL turn around...forget the objective and pwn my face full duration while totally ignoring any other heal class. Infact it's won games for me, having the whole damn team chase me around like benny hill. That's the only advantage I can see to playing a heal ops. I certainly have crap dps, crap healing, and even worse survivability. Why bother. I have full BM gear yet it's tissue paper. WET tissue paper. Love it when conceal ops think heal ops are fine, of course they are! Who else would you get a guarenteed kill on without em being able to even fight back! Your damage got nerfed, well....SO DID MINE! Along with surge + next patch my only way to stop caps with dot nerf. Not renewing. One less heal ops soon! p.s. Sorc KDs are impossible to avoid. They have two, one of which causes zero resolve and roots you. Plus it can be controlled by simply removing the sheild manually. This can be chained with other mezs and you can literally lock/send people flying endlessly. Sure you can position yourself when 1v1ing, but like to point out that 1v1ing rarely if ever happens in WZs. So you managed to not get sent into the pit on that first sorc....that other sorc behind you will finish the job.

Will point out that when I broke my old record with 517k, I had 21k DMG done and ended match with 4 medals + got ZERO mvps votes. None. But w/e, now I see why you get those sorts of numbers: you run a hybrid spec which has great regen. I use 31/3/7 build b/c I AM TARGETED FIRST ALWAYS and also have min TWO PLAYERS on me all game long for interrupts and stuns (or just frag me). Being a known healer does that, no one peels me...no one guards me....not one votes me MVP. They all go to the SORCS. But w/e, I really don't need your advice and I will tell you why... I am not renewing this * poor excuse for an MMO. And with that, I bid you fair well.

Competition on that server must be pretty low. I have never ever seen a Ops/smug healer get the numbers you are talking about. But I am not omnipitant, so you never know right. But I guess you are the best Ops in the whole world and everythings fine with our class! Yes I am terrible, super bad, yada yada for not getting 500k every game like you do without even trying. You got me brah.

this!

Wow, while lot those changes are great....the ilum daily counting for WZs is pretty awsome. Now there is no reason to go to Ilum at all, woot! Ok guys, we can't get engine to handle anything past 16 players and ends up a slide show for majority of users....so instead, let's make the zone redundant so no one even goes there. Talk about the laziest way to deal with a problem, ever. LOL! edit. thank the gods of the internet whenever GW2 hits, massive W v W v W ftw. Not getting that here and by looks of this patch; never will.

Once you hit cap and not getting valor/daily-weekly counts: die. But that only works for a few kills then it's back to no valor gained. So what happens is everyone groups up, heads to Ilum, and once you hit the no valor gained mark: everyone bails. Sure its probably wise to have a cap due to possible exploiting but in the end it stops PvP rather than promoting it. Would like to see a different solution, increase in kill cap, and or lower the timer a bit. edit. leaving zone, relogging, and or queing a WZ then coming back also works but if you are on a populated server like mine during 4 am farmfest....you will end up being put in Ilum (2) instead where there is no fighting at all. As said, only way is to purposefulley go and die to temporarily get around this for a fw kills: who here can say that's good game design? I think its super bad, personally.

Finally did it, after 2 months or so of PvPin....I got over 500k heals! It was voidstar, 3/4 of the players were also healers (poor dps dudes /point/laugh), I was not targeted ONCE so I could free cast all game....every single ounce of energy was devoted to healing. 517k! I know newb sorcs who can get 500k w/o even tryin, lawl. Anyone sayin they are consitantly are getting over 500k healin on sawbones/medicine are a) using a PvE heal spec b) never ever targeted c) playing against scrubs with a premade d) lieing. I believe the latter is the case. Good players all know to either lock me out and or blow me up first, not like I can prevent that very well and everyone knows that. edit. when rated WZs come about, Ops healers no matter how good will not be desired at all. I expect BH/Trooper healers will be in the most demand since once geared: they are near impossible to kill, put two together + guard and they are invincible.

If you started pre-release and still don't have a 50 even if casual, I don't know what say. I know people who only play maybe 6-8 hours a week who have lvl 50s. Do you log on for 15 mins and do half a quest or something? Any rate, I have a long attention span generally when it comes to games; all that matters is if the game is engaging enough to keep me occupied. WoW did it for 7+ years. Rift did it for 7 months. Just to name a few out of the dozens I have played over the past 20 years. Lets get to the point. Ilum is fail, possibly worst open world PvP 'lake' I seen. Not only does it lag, it's all about kill trading to get a daily/weekly done; there is absolutely nothing competive or interesting about it. What if there was resource nodes in it or even faction wide buffs depending on control? If there was such things, Ilum would actually serve a purpose and thus people would go there outside of quests. No can't have that. W/e. not like this engine/server structure can even support mass PvP at all. Mmmm slide show PvP, so much fun. So in the end all you have for PvP is 3 WZs which is actually only one since it's 90% Huttball for me. It's also limited to 8 v 8, which yet again proves that by design this is the cap for performance: go past that and it starts to chug, even on the best of systems. Yes, we have a MMO that is only capable of having console type match numbers. Where did that 200m actually go? I think they got majorly ripped off, imo. Anyways, we will never see AV type venue, it would be unplayable. Proof? Ilum. W/e, I agree: play a lot like me and most would get bored. But in other MMOs, I played just as much infact maybe more and kept me going for years. Here? 2 months. Cool! Anyways, I made mistake in a) buying CE b) buying 4 time cards; you are stuck with me on the forums for almost a year even if I will be playing other titles. Have to get my moneys worth somehow, right? Don't get it in game, that's for sure.

All I know is I play on Harbringer, the unofficial Oceanic server: when the aussie one opens up, Harbringer will die. A heavy server will go to light over night, mark my words. This will have a domino effect, server pop dies then everyone else will bail, move to a populated NA server, or just unsub. Frankly, while 1-49 TOR is the best I have seen in an MMO, generally. However on the 2nd+ play through its not so fun. I have leveled 4x 50s now and I just can't be bothered no more since leveling is now predictable, hyper linear, and an out right snoozefest. So I focus on one char, but I have hit a brick wall....I log on for 2 PvP dailies and that's it, day done. I would join a guild but hey....most them are LEAVING for Aussie server, so why bother? But w/e, I was in a guild....they all quit and or went back to other games...I am the last one left here out of 20+ who originally hopped on board. This game still has many play it, and I can't argue that point. But what IS happening is that the pops are slowly but surely declining. It's easily seen. When other multi player titles release, it will drop even more. And when GW2 enters the ring....good night TOR. Now waiting on 1.2, which will be the deciding factor for me. If it is lack luster like all the other patches, well....one less player soon.

Right now....for many classes, due to heavy dim returns higher expertise you get: the best PvP gear is actually a mix of PvP and Rakata. Double set bonus + more output with a marginal decrease in survivability. So already PvEers can have an advantage if they want. I dunno, I expect them to nerf expertise and make PvP gear super easy to get; last changes with increased tokens and next patch is just the beginning. More to come in 1.2, I bet. They want to make sure everyone can get awsome PvP gear real fast with low amount of effort. I can respect that, keeps the PvEers happy right? But w/e, whenever GW2 is released....I will bet my hat most PvP fans will be movin over there if it delivers (/cross fingers). So good times ahead for casuals and PvEers, welfare epics for all!

Because making people have to raid to PvP was stupid and made it hyper lame in other games until such mechanics where created (cough resil). Ok you are HC raider, so automatically you are also the best PvPer since you have way better gear. Lame. But w/e. I figure it's like this: you could create a robust PvP system that is more focused on skill, rather than gear and then seperate PvE <-> PvP mechanics entirely with whole different skill/rules sets OR you can go the easy route and simply add one stat instead. Plus it also adds another hampster wheel so people have to play more, thus pay more. Tell me; which is cheaper, faster, and makes you more ca$h? Hello expertise! Enjoy!

Wait, there's more WZs than just Huttball? Impossible!

Can play BF3 on this rig with everything cranked with solid 60+ FPS, even in close quarter spamfest maps like Operation Metro yet with similar numbers, in an MMO supposedly made for mass amounts of players makes my comp roll over and die. Explain? But w/e. Take the Pepsi challenge: check out the W v W v W beta vids that are lurking about for GW2 and marvel at how much better it runs in mass PvP. And it looks better to boot. Yes, I expect it too will lag at times when things get super zergy, but I expect it will perform much better than TOR. Meh. I ask the people that are fine with how this game runs in comparison to others: why is this acceptable? Why do you not want to see improvements if possible. Do you like slide show mass PvP?

Get great FPS in WZs, no problem. Its when there is more than 40 ppl fighting, it really starts to bog down. Now I dunno about everything but WoW and Rfit on that list, while they did lag at times... but it is nothing like the poor FPS I get in Ilum. Seriously, in vanilla WoW I was fighting up to ten hours a day in Org/ TM- SS scrums with min 3 raids going at it...120 people, usually double that + non combatants on busy nights. Case in point, AV, massive battles with next to no lag what so ever. Rift during zone events where 100+ show up, sure there was some chop but still nothing like TOR and it even has waaay better graphics. I even drop everything to lowest setting with no improvements, we are talking all the goodies on low/off and 800 x 600. My comp handles other MMOs and multiplayer games that have way better graphics really well, just not TOR? This engine just seems incapable of handling the load, maybe it's even server side too I dunno. Just have to consider that this engine is basically TEN years old. I have this feelin they went shopping for an engine and went to the bargin bin instead of making a whole new one from scratch to save cash? Small scale PvP its fine. Solo, instances, OPs, etc its fine. When there is 40+ dukin it out in Ilum: not fine! But I digress, I doubt we will see major improvements, Hero engine is not suited for MMOs...? Seems that way.