longest name and title I ever saw in an MMO on Helm of Graush: Crimsonheart Shadowstrider, Rider of the Maelstrom Dude's name stretched across half the screen from 30M away.

That it's OK to release a buggy, glitchy, low-performance, modestly content-complete MMO into todays market? FWIW, I didn't even leave SW:TOR for its issues. I left because my guild/friends list went empty.

The argument that SW:TOR is better than WoW when WoW was 3-months old doesn't hold water. SW:TOR isn't competing against 2004 WoW, or 2006 LOTRO, etc. It's competing against thier 2012 versions, and all the features/polish these games have TODAY. You can't make a WoW-clone game that doesn't have at least all the same features and gamer comforts at minimum and expect success.

As someone who unsubscribed two weeks ago with a few days left to post on these forums, I'd say you would find the exit survey very interesting on this point. IMO, the exit survey all but made it perfectly clear they intend to take this thing F2P-cash shop model as soon as they're able.

I've unsubbed. My guild of 50+ on launch day sees fewer than 5 on during primetime every evening now. My number 1 gripe is the lazy enrage timers creating stupidly rigid group composition requirements. It's not fun to login and see that you don't get to play with your friends tonight because you can't fill the needed role. That's my /unsub reason.

Folks in this thread think Keen is a WoW fanboy? Um... it's pretty well established in the blogosphere that Keen's a DAOC fanboy. He's complained about WoW plenty in the past. I think his comment about repetiitvely running Scholomance being tolerable in comparison to running SWTOR dungeons isn't meant to lift up WoW's dungeon... but more to take a stab at how horribly bad SWTOR dungeons are. I'd tend to agree. Have we seen dungeons with this rigid of a group makeup in recent MMOs? I know if there's any one thing causing the dramatic drop in participation in my guild, it's the dungeons requiring exact and specific group makeups to complete (90% due to the lazy enrage timer mechanics). It's more or less killing SW:TOR from my perspective. I can log in 2-3 times a week, and I love the challenging content... but it doesn't do me any good if all I can do is log in and twiddle my thumbs because the guild needs a DPS tonight, and I'm geared/specced for tanking. It's gonna take me weeks to swap my gear over at my playtime pace. That's an unsubscribe situation.

You know how you know that Ilum is bad? Lotro does it better with the Ettenmoors.

Folks who think it's all about character progression aren't getting it. GW2 is creating the best epeen metagame since EvE's 0.0 space. The simple fact that a server will be at the top of the server rank list every 2 weeks guarantees awesome. That server will be in a 1v2 scenario until they're knocked off the top of the list. I can already see the message board gloating by top PvP guilds now. This is the lifeblood of a PvP game. It's not gear progression. Simply helping your guild and/or server do awesome things in the WvWvW is going to be good enough for the vast majority of players. There'll be an actually community in the game... for better or worse. If your guild rolls on a server with goonswarm, and they annoy you, you re-roll on another server to kick thier butt instead. The whole thing will ebb and flow gracefully every two weeks. And lastly, the server that balls up into a zerg is going to lose. When you're taking one objective, the other servers are taking 3 of yours. The simple fact there aren't any locking mechanics like WAR will guarantee that players spread out more into smaller groups for a more dynamic PvP experience. I can see all this without even having played yet. The design decisions they're making guarantee these things. Now it's just all about how well they execute the design.

One of the Belsavis Heroic Dailies at level 50 gives companion weapons as a reward. You run the daily once for each of your companions and you'll end up with a decent endgame weapon for them.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but if you complete the bonus quest attached to the Darkness on Ilum Heroic 2+, you get 2 more daily commendations.

I like the new UI cooldown animations just fine except for one thing. I primarily play a Vanguard Trooper, and the High Impact Bolt ability is normally greyed out until you select a debilitated target. Previously, the greyed out HiB would light up like other normal use skills behind the GCD animation, so I knew it'd be available when the global cooldown completed. The new animations don't allow for any feedback on it's availability until after the animation completes. Obviously, this slows reaction time while waiting to see if it's available or not. The Blitz skill suffers from the same issue with the current animation. I suppose all such situation based skills on other classes have the same problem.

I like the idea of anything not in your group = red. The reward chests are a lacking reward though. Why not make it where as long as your in outlaws den without leaving, every kill is worth progressively more merc commendations, and the same valor benefit as a kill on ilum. If you're killed, your cimmendation rewards reset. Make the first kill worth 5 commendations, and then +1 for each consecutive kill till your dead. So second kill is worth 6. Third worth 7, etc. Basically, its king of the hill, the longer your group survives, the more lucrative it becomes. I think something like this would make outlaws den a whole lot more interesting than the current sparse chest farm it is now.

So when this turns Ilum into Warhammer City Sieges with something like 40v40 being the cap... How long until the Empire players realize that this change, in combination with the player kill requirements for the dailies, means the Republic gears up faster in the 1-2 active Ilums, while most of the Empire's players sit around in the other 6 empty Ilums frantically clicking the change instance button until they get a lucky spot in instance 1 or 2? Forum lolz should be entertaining for a day or two after that.

My question is does it stack? It appears to do so, as you can see two Vanguard static field debuffs on a target when you get two vanguards attacking the same thing. Dunno if that does actually mean it's stacking.

pretty sure you're mistaken. there's never been any ship upgrades on a vendor since the game went live. The grade 2, grade 4, and purple end-game ship upgrades are all that I've seen craftable, and they're all from schematics you acquire via missions or the GTN. tbh, they're pretty easy to get ahold of, the GTN on my server stays stocked with a good and shifting variety of all tiers of the schematics at all times, and usually pretty cheap too.

Ship upgrades are mission schematic drops (slicing I think?). You can find the schematics on the GTN.

Narrow zone with all objectives laid out in a straight line. Am I off-base here? I suppose it's roughly twice as wide maybe... but still the same zone layout idea. I'll admit, I was pretty excited to go out and see what Ilum was all about... and was thoroughly underwhelmed. The west-side open warfare area is smaller than the ettenmoors in Lotro. There's no "roaming" PvP that will happen here. Maybe over on the east-side on PvP servers, but best I can tell that area is pretty much a regular zone like all the other planets, and it's relatively quite small. Why couldn't we get a Hoth, with guild claimable objectives, giving the same Valor buffs to the faction that Ilum will be doing after it's updated?

I find when im in a guild premade, we win most of the time. When i solo queue, i lose most of the time. I'd say the numbers are about right. As republic, we lose most voidstars, win modt civil wars, huttball seems about half and half.

Defense will also reduce your opportunities for shield-based procs too. Something to keep in mind that could affect your playstyle.

Star Fox 64 even had some full flight areas too. I like the space missions. I think it would have been cool if they could have done more/do more in the future with them... but it's a fine minigame that is rewarding for experience points and cash.