While I don't think side quests are mandatory, you will have to do a lot of something else to catch up e.g. space missions and warzones. In order not to be overlevelled, I'm only doing side quests on every second planet, and then doing space missions and warzones to fill the gap. When I level an alt, I'll then (in theory) be able to do side quests on all the planets I missed out, and not repeat huge amounts of content. I don't think the progression is very well worked out, because I see people complaining about being underlevelled or overlevelled all the time on the forums, and I find it a bit of a pain to manage myself.

Actually you can just call back the same companion, so long as you are not in combat mode.

This thread receives my personal stamp of approval.

I've got all 4 bars out, but it's annoying to start putting keybound skills on the side bars because I don't have room at the bottom. Howver, the problem isn't space... it's redundant skills - I have quite a few abilities that do almost the exact same thing, yet I can't get rid of the duplicates because they are on different cool downs and there are times when I need them. And I'm still only level 34. You could probably condense all my current skills to about 12 separate abilites, and still give me exactly the same tactical options as I currently have with 23. Stupid design.

I have both Republic and Empire characters, and so far I have much preferred the Sith storylines and quests to the Republic ones.

As players, we're not in a position to declare whether it's the engine or the dev's implementation of it that is the problem. I played an MMO that used Unreal, and it was terrible - horrible lag, players warping all over etc. But TERA, on the exact same engine, performs flawlessly. If that's the case for Unreal, it could well be the case for the Hero engine, and there is no way for us as players to know either way.

I agree with your points, but I do think a Legacy system of some sort makes sense for the game as a whole. You can choose to show it as a title e.g. "The So-and-so Legacy" It's halfway between a surname, and player handle (at least for that server). The problem is that it doesn't work well as a player handle either - people can't add it to their friends list, they can't see your other characters. Who is really going to remember or care about your Legacy name? Re your suggestions - I think any changes need to take into account the actual purpose of Legacy names, which is not to be a surname. You can use it as a surname, but it has another purpose entirely. I would suggest these changes instead: A setting which allows other players to add your legacy to their friends list (for the same faction anyway) but can be disabled via Preferences if you would prefer other players not to be able to do this The ability to hide or display legacy names should be per character, not set for all characters. Introduce the panel to chose the legacy differently. Mine came up randomly at the end of a quest turn in and I kept hiding it before I realised what it was because I was doing other stuff and it was getting in the way of my UI. See below for suggestions 1) Instead of being able to enter your legacy name in the first popup, you have Choose Now and Choose Later buttons. 2) If you Choose Later there is a prominent flashing icon somewhere at the side of the UI that you can click on to open the legacy choosing window. 3) If you Choose Now you get a window which explains, very clearly, what your legacy name is, that it can't be changed, and that it applies to all characters. Not until you have clicked past this do you get to enter your legacy name.

If you want world pvp you have to take it to the other side, although this only works if you are on a well populated server. Wait until it's prime time for that server, and you see the planet population at a decent level, then go round the other faction's areas and see what you can find. I've had about 4 wpvp encounters so far, and my highest level character missed out most of Tatooine and is currently on Alderaan.

So you spent most of your time in other games grinding for points of one kind or another? (sorry that sounded derogatory but not intended that away, just no other way to say it ). Anyway, based on those other games, what needs to be impletmented into SWTOR to provide the end-game you're looking for? What sort of factions? What sort of achievements?

I also don't enjoy raiding very much. I will never want to complete a group instance more than once or twice, and the thought of repeating raids night after night is pretty...ugh. I also hate the holy trinity. However, I am going to try and explain what I think people do enjoy about raiding. It's more like a set of perfectly executed dance steps. On the hardest setting, each player has to play to their maximum ability whether it be healing, tanking or dps. They have to complete all the steps to defeating the boss in exactly the right sequence and exactly the right time, and quite a lot of practice and effort goes into achieving a flawless victory. Raiding seems to offer the kind of controlled play that PvP doesn't, being far more chaotic and unpredictable. Now, from what I hear in WoW, there is only one way to defeat a boss. Whereas I think in raiding there ought to be flexibility. By being creative in how they approach a raid, players should be able to discover different ways to kill the boss. Maybe this is one way that BW can differentiate their PvE end-game from WoW's (in a minor way) and provide a bit of flexibility and opportunity for creativity that the majority of raiding seems to lack. I say this as someone who doesn't raid, and hasn't played WoW I would like to see better goals for pvp than just a boring point-grind for gear. Something that provides bragging rights as much as actual in-combat benefits, e.g. guild ships, territory control, plaques to the most effective guilds displayed in fleet. But I think they need to get a handle on population balance first, or ideally find ways to mitigate the effectiveness of zergs e.g. control points which can be defended at chokepoints, underdog bonuses, etc.

Well, I think there are innacuracies in the article. People don't resub to a game in order to wait for an expansion... they wait for the expansion and then resub to try it out. Also, subscriber base doesn't equal profitability, necessarily. Having said that, I'd ilke to see more innovation in MMOs, and less WoW-clones, so if WoW fails in the process I'm totally fine with that

Everyone always ends up arguing about the definition of sandbox, but mostly people think of it as freedom of playstyle rather than freedom to explore a level. MMOs defined as sandbox are often set up to be virtual societies as much as games, where players perform roles such as crafter, industralist, courier, trader, dictator, bandit, pirate, soldier, spy, thief etc. Whereas in SWTOR every player is a combatant. However, whether it's a themepark or sandbox, I agree that being able to jump around and explore places is important, and I agree with the points in your OP. I think if they put a bit more life into spaceports it would actually feel more alive, and I wouldn't mind running hundreds of miles to get to my ship. There are snippets of dialogue around, but they need more.

Hey, where's my email? I want one!

Don't Read the Forums

I would imagine that the majority of people playing this game have not played SWG. So, most people will log into SWTOR and it will feel sufficiently "Star Warsy" to them, because they don't have any basis for comparison. I never really played it myself, but most of the really epic things that SWG had are too sandboxy for SWTOR. Which is a shame.