I believe there's an option to continue to run sound in the background even when the game doesn't have the focus.

I am both quoting the above and repeating myself--I asked this same question myself last week, and I'm asking again in concert with my colleague above. At the WPC (Worldwide Partner Conference) last week, Microsoft went on record as saying that Windows 8 will RTM in August, with wide availability by October. That's a few weeks away, gentlemen. What is the roadmap for Windows 8 support?

Depending on who you choose to listen to, Windows 8 is within 3-4 months of official release, possibly less. The current official line is that SWTOR does not currently support Windows 8 Release Preview, and the installer will tell you so explicitly if you even try. Will there be Windows 8 support on release? What else can you tell us about Windows 8 and SWTOR?

Signed, signed, signed. This is a huge problem. I have no "performance" issues in Black Hole but the respawn on the boxes and quest items is absurd. Either fix the respawn rate, change the objectives to no longer be dependent on spawning items, or make it phased or instanced somehow so that only YOU can click the boxes, or that you see them as whole when others see them as destroyed if they destroyed them, and so on.

Signed. And have previously requested this myself. In the meantime, you might consider trying a G13 or similar device. I have mine so that the "M2" state maps the space combat keys, keeping them under the same fingers when I do space combat. But, obviously, this shouldn't be a requirement to play.

I too have 400s in all the skills, and what you say is absolutely true. Armormechs are at a serious advantage when compared to the other two--it simply costs them less than the others. First just on number of materials as you point out, and secondly because archaeology materials are, last I looked, going for twice or more the price of scavenging materials. Therefore your Synthweaving augment kits cost you a lot more than your Armormech ones do. Frankly I think the solution is to give Archaeology a boost here as well by allowing that profession to farm materials from a mob type. This is why the Scavenging materials cost less--they're far easier to get. It's certainly not the only solution though, such as increasing the Armstech/Synth number of kit parts and remainder materials obtained from RE to balance it out.

Problem: you want to collect the lower-level orange schematics that you missed while leveling. You're either a collection addict, or you like the way that the lower-level oranges look, and so forth. This is currently RNG'd. If you want a level 23 orange synthweaving or armormech schematic, you're condemned to running lower-level underworld trading missions until you get it. Theoretically, in a vibrant economy on a non-dead server you'd have some chance of buying it on the GTN as well. Realistically? Neither of those things is happening. I have two 50's with UT and at this point I have run hundreds of level 17-24 missions trying to complete my collection of oranges in that bracket. Neither have I seen them in the GTN. Contrast this to the level 50 schematics. Subjectively, it seems that every time I send my 5 companions out on 49-50 UT, I get at least one schematic. Which is totally worthless, and the GTN is flooded with them. I suspect this is because there's some kind of a roll against 49-50 (2 levels) in the highest bracket, where there's a roll against 17-24 (7 levels) in the other, making it much less likely that you'll hit a schematic. So there's really two problems here--a flood of worthless schematics nobody wants, and torture to try and get the schematics that you do want. This is frustrating. Anything with the RNG is frustrating. I think some RNG has its place but mostly, it's weak as a player-driven mechanic. You, Bioware, obviously see this, as there's been a great many changes that move from total randomness to at least somewhat deterministic. I want to suggest that schematic collection be moved to deterministic from RNG. Here's one specific suggestion. After passing through the level bracket for missions (so for the 17-24 bracket, this rule would apply when your character is 25 and higher), you have the standard chance to hit the schematic itself, but after passing through, you ALSO have a chance to hit a token which can be used to buy a schematic. This would work the way that Treasure Hunting does. Sometimes you get an item, other times you hit tokens that you can turn in for an item. Also, let's pose that you can now Reverse Engineer schematics themselves, and they break down into these tokens. This way there'd be some purpose to the worthless level 50 schematics. Then, finally, there's a schematic vendor on the fleet that is standing right next to the trainer. Got plenty of counter space for this guy; why not. This vendor sells all the orange poop that is currently totally random, and he sells them for these tokens. You could refine this idea as much as you want--the tokens could be just flat-rate tokens, or tokens that apply to specific item levels (17-24 level tokens only buy 17-24 level items); there could be a legacy purchase requirement, and so forth. The standard random blue schematics would remain random, if you're addicted to that concept. World drops and so forth. Same with the high level schematics that drop in Ops. There's still that element of won-the-lottery overall for certain things. I don't see this as a particularly revolutionary change; you're already doing tokenized schematic purchases with the dailies for the high level crystals and so forth. Let's just take the idea a step further. And, really, I think it would be great if there were this kind of tokenized purchase for other schematics at the same vendor--schematics for non-cruddy gear that's at least stat-competitive with dropped gear, just like the artifice crystal schematics are now. With the tokenizing, you have to do some amount of work to get them--but at least it's a known amount of work, and not total randomness.

I'd like to see level 50 schematics for wieldables as well. For that matter, I'd like to see level 50 schematics for every item type for every profession, and that don't require exotic materials. Across all professions, there are a mere handful of these. Give the solo crafter who isn't running flashpoints a way to be regularly viable in the market.

Excellent observations and post, bob. Seriously. I'm with you. I love to craft but it's killing me. Also, I'm a soloist as a player, maybe this'll change with 1.3, but you're right, one guy working alone has zero chance (effective) of coming up with anything that there'll be any true market demand for, when better stuff is so easily and deterministically gotten elsewhere either by brute force dailies or group content. Here's the question I want to put to you though, and sincerely--you've stated the problem admirably, but do you have any real suggestions for a solution? Like really, rather than "do better", which is effectively what you're saying. Like game out a real system here. I'd definitely be interested in reading it. For instance, maybe what should happen is that there is no more reverse engineering. Instead of "Reverse Engineering", you have "Disassemble". When you Disassemble, you break the item down into tokens that represent potential stats. So in your example of wanting some gun with alacrity and accuracy, let's say you find or make a pistol with those two attributes. On disassembly, it breaks down into some amount of tokens like "Quickness Crystals" and "Precision Polymers" (the amount of which per disassembly could be deterministic or we could RNG it a little, let's say). Then, there's no reverse engineering. There's forward engineering. There's a whole new activity and UI for you to plug in these tokens into some kind of bench or machine on your ship--maybe it's a kind of mini game that you actually have to demonstrate some sort of, yes, skill in operating it in order to come out with the best results. Let's say this theoretical machine allows you to select "Pistol" and then what happens is dependent on the number of Quickness Crystals and Precision Polymers that you plug into it or not. This plus your twiddling skill results in either a schematic, which is then built with regular materials, or maybe this system just comes up with finished products. Anyway, because you tokenized it the right way and twiddled it correctly, you get a schematic or weapon that's tilted toward what you were looking for. Then it becomes either your twiddling skill or your specialized knowledge of token recipes that gives you proprietary knowledge and makes your products special and different, potentially unique in your community. Anyway, just throwing out ideas, but point being, what this thread needs is more ideas. You did an excellent job pointing out the problem, but wouldn't it be good to suggest doable solutions, is all I'm sayin'.

Agreed--the fix could be as simple as a fifth button on the bar, toggleable like the first two are when you have a Power Converter. Boom done. Also completely agree that the space combat actions and bar keybindings need to be in a separate and remappable category of their own. They should not share with the regular movement keys; they should have their own independent bindings. Also, the space combat bar doesn't show cooldown text. It needs to act like the other bars do, like you'd expect them to do when you have that turned on.

Just put a letter or number in the middle of each triangle: 2 = 2+ Heroic 4 = 4 Heroic R = Repeatable Solo/Daily F = Flashpoint O = Operation Even for the non-colorblind, perception of color varies widely. For a symbol that small, and appearing against different backgrounds, it really needs to be the symbol itself and not its color alone that distinguishes it.

As an altoholic, you have described the situation exactly. Kudos. There was conflicting information on what would be required to unlock Legacy rewards; there were some posts that indicated it would be Legacy level only, others that said either that or for cash, et cetera. I was more than a little dismayed to find instead that a lot of it was Legacy level AND outrageous amounts of cash. The game has been made into being all about cash instead of all about playing whatever you want. I like all your suggestions. I hope they're considered.

FYI: For those of you commenting about the garbage that surrounds all the windows and frames, the artwork that was amusing for the first five minutes but annoying after that and so forth, the term for that and those UI elements is chrome. You want them to change the chrome, give control over the chrome, get rid of the chrome, et cetera. (and yes, please, to all of the above, IMO) My own suggestions have already all been stated in one form or another, but just to pile on: Complete breakout and control over the player frame sub-elements. Complete. Whether the portrait is shown or not, whether the level and class display is shown or not, the width and height of the health and combat resource bars. There should be an option to have the party frame include yourself. As a healer you're looking at the party frame constantly and it's very convenient for your own status to be with the party's. The buff icons are awful. These need control at the same level as the button bars: vertical vs. horizontal, sizing, independent placement and alpha. Debuff and buff need to be split out, as well, and the main target frame's buff/debuff icons should be given the same level of control. Control over the frame that displays combat error messages: Size, placement, alpha. Add a new frame that displays current credit balance. Since with 1.2 this statistic is a central part of the game, and arguably was before that anyway, have a frame or some kind of information bar, like Titan from WoW, that does this. Then you wouldn't have to stick it in the chrome in various windows.

I agree. Not everybody uses left/right as turn; I'd venture to guess there are a whole lot of us who map left/right to sidestep, and those of us who do are annoyed that space combat doesn't have this flexibility. I myself was able to work around this problem by programming another M-mode mapping on my Logitech G13 (M1 mode, my directional keys are forward/back/sidestep; M2 mode, directional keys become forward/back/turn for space combat). Bioware, please address this issue.

This was illustrated to me graphically the other night on one of the Ilum/Empire planet-story missions, where you’re in a very long trek killing five Kaleesh elites for their drops on your way to the end of a cave. You use those drops to summon and fight the final Kaleesh General elite. Enroute, you’ll run across “Kaleesh Supplymasters”, Strong-class mobs who have two healing abilities, Med Scan and Kolto SomethingOrOther. Kolto Enema. Whatever it was. At one point near the end you’ll run across two at once (at least two such pairs, if memory serves), and what happened next, playing a tank-spec Powertech with a ranged/healer companion, was absurd. On my Sorcerer a few weeks ago this was no problem—CC’d one and blasted the other. But on a class with no real CC and no way to prevent or stop one mob from healing the other, it became a ridiculous exercise. It was like watching a pack of Medics heal themselves in Starcraft—but without any options to deal with it. Basically, I fought for 5-10 minutes while these two mobs healed each other and Mako healed me. I used every ability and tried every stunt I could think of like LOS or getting one to the end of its tether to Evade so I could only fight one, and so forth. No luck. It was a complete and utter stalemate; nobody's health bars went anywhere. Eventually, I gave up: I set the companion to Passive and ran to the goal point of the instance, then let them kill me. Then rezzed, summoned the boss, killed him and went on my merry way. No other mob in the instance, not even the final one or the elites on the way, had anything remotely similar to that happen. Surely this is not intended to be the way this quest gets solved by players. Now, I’m not suggesting the game be made easier. But I am suggesting that when you have clear incidents like that where you’re making it impossible for a certain solo played class or spec to complete a solo quest in the way it was supposed to be completed, that’s a design flaw. I’m also not suggesting that certain mobs shouldn’t have your class’s number, so to speak. Some definitely should have your number—they’re the rock to your scissors and so forth. That’s a tried and true and enjoyable MMO mechanic and circumstance. But being really hard is different from being impossible, which is what I felt this was. WoW solves this problem by modeling the mob’s actual resource bar, and exposes it to view—more importantly, mob resources aren’t freaking infinite, as appears to be the case here in SWTOR. Eventually, a WoW mob will run out of resource and even if it’s a mob that has your number, it will eventually go down if you’re not incompetent. Obviously, the short-term fix for this specific circumstance is just to reposition the mobs in that quest instance, but I think a responsible designer would take a harder look at this and explore solutions like non-infinite mob resources, or exposing the resources they have and the mechanics they use to replenish them, or ensuring all classes have appropriate neutralizations against infinite resources. I’ve had it happen in other places with my Sorcerer as well, where it went from difficult to obviously ridiculous. It’s not just this one quest, and it’s not frequent, but it definitely exists. Please consider examining it.

Please. Not sure how I can explain it further than the above, but some games allow the override of what audio output device the game-specific audio is going to, and this is a very handy feature. When I want SWTOR to play through headphones, I currently have to shunt all system audio to the headphones, and so forth. It'd be nice if it was like other games where you can choose which audio device to play through, thanks.

Here’s an interesting thing to consider. James Ohlen was recently quoted on the kind of metrics he looks at weekly, which you’d expect him to do, and the kind of instrumentation and reporting that you’d expect software like this to have. Ohlen can see the entire game population’s numbers in terms of level balance, how many are playing what, how many alts they have, et cetera. Now, none of us mere mortal consumers have access to those metrics. But if we did, there’d be some correlative indicators available. Start with a base number: # of players who have achieved level 50 with two characters on the same faction. (at first I wrote “more than one character on the same faction”, then realized it would probably throw the 14% number I’m about to get to, but you’ll see where I’m going in a minute—the math would be a little harder but you could still get to the indicative number.) Of those players, what is the percentage that have achieved level 50 with both Advanced Classes? Now, if the people who argue that Advanced Classes are actually the same as classes, and are fully independent classes in every way that matters, that number would be something like 14%, would it not? 14% because they’d have 7 other classes to choose from for their alt, and if the AC’s really are full-on classes and are equal as has been argued, and the intent is for the game to have an even distribution of those classes, then there’s about a 1 in 7, or 14% chance, that they are going to pick a class that just happens to be the other AC from the one they already have. Yes, there’s a lot of unstated assumptions there, chiefly that all else is equal and so forth, which of course it isn’t, so spare me the nitpickery. But as an overly broad statement you’d basically expect it to be that. For any nitpickery, all that means is that you have to do more sophisticated math to arrive at the number. The point is that this number exists. I’m deliberately keeping it simple to explain it. If that number really is about 14%, that means that the anti-respec camp is essentially right. That would clearly show that the lack of content is not preventing people from rolling alts of the same base class and taking them all the way, simple as that. You show me that number is around 14%, and I’m willing to concede you the victory, anti-respec camp. No joke. You were shown to be right and I was shown to be wrong, I will absolutely admit that right here publicly and you will not hear from me again. Except on other topics and only when I’m totally bored at work. However, if that number is significantly lower (and it would be my guess that it is), that might lead one to believe that leveling the 2nd AC is not nearly as appealing as the anti-respec camp would seem to state that it should be. Which is the chief argument motivating the pro-respec camp, the trolling bloviations of others to the contrary, of course. A low number might also lead you to suspect that your class design was conceptually busted at a base level, if indeed you had even distribution as a design goal. I’d be seriously interested in hearing what those numbers really are. I just thought it was interesting to think about because a lot of what we do here is totally speculative. What’s really going on with the business is mostly a black box to us. But somebody, somewhere, actually CAN produce numbers that support one point or the other, and as such it would be a lot more objective than just what people say, even when they’re saying what caused them to quit or will quit over. I’ve been thinking about posting this one to see if the devs will find the courage to hit it on a Q&A.

No, my claim is not false. Every class in WoW has content which only they experience. As I said, and you didn’t apparently understand, the WoW class-specific content set is small and has diminished since release, but it most definitely still exists. I am, “in fact”, about to prove it. Every single class in WoW has class-specific quests; there are even profession-specific quests. If you’ve ever seen the yellow ! appear over the head of the class trainer, you were being offered a class-specific quest. Any time that you opened your quest log and saw on the left a node that said your class name, like “Druid”, with quests underneath it, those were the class-specific quests. Every class had them. Whether it was the Druid going to Moonglade, the Warrior forging his first rare blade, the Rogue getting poisons, the Warlock acquiring the Voidwalker, the Paladin learning to resurrect, the Mage learning a new Polymorph variant…and so on and so forth (the worst were the epic mount quests for those classes that had them. They were cool quests, but after my 10th assist to players who needed them, I was kind of done). They got rid of a lot of this, but some class-specific content still exists in the leveling process, post-Cataclysm. All classes still have class specific content; it is undeniably still true and you are undeniably still wrong; even if it were all currently gone, it was there, and that’s enough to invalidate your point, not that it needed much help. I mean, please feel free to continue to deny it; reality does not appear to present much of an obstacle for you. It’s kind of admirable, in a demented sort of a way. Still don’t believe me? Go to wowhead.com. On the main menu bar, drop down from Database-->Classes-->[Any class]. On the resulting page, click the Quests tab. You have now drilled down to the class-specific quest content. Here’s a direct link for you to Mage specific class content: http://www.wowhead.com/class=8#quests Not belief, not an opinion. Objectively true, proof provided, MajikMyst pwnd, check and mate, game set and match, thank you for playing, have a nice day. You used the phrase “in fact” twice in your reality-denying summation. I’m not sure you understand what a fact actually is. A troll generally wouldn’t admit to being wrong; thus I don’t expect you to. I believe I can predict your probable response: “That’s not what I meant! Those are so trivial they don’t count! They’re not the story! They aren’t a story! And classes aren’t defined by stories or content anyway!” or some variant on that, except double-punctuated and misspelled. Followed by even more poorly written gyrations, completely irrelevant spew, and redefinitions of the issue under discussion. Seriously, your underlying thinking is as poor as the spelling and grammar you’re using to communicate it. It’s funny how those two things go hand-in-hand so much of the time. Where you’re misrepresenting, either deliberately or because you’re unable to process anything higher than a mild level of complexity: You appear to have invented, completely on your own, a requirement that unique class content must somehow mean ALL and ONLY the content that the class experiences, and that to have unique class content is also tied to the way that the game is organized. You also imply that any unique class content anywhere has to be in the form of a story, and are apparently arguing a further nonexistent point that classes are defined by stories, and so on. None of those are true. None of them are what I said. And none of them apply to SWTOR. Again, (and I tried to give you an out in my last reply to you): these zig-zagging misrepresentations are straw men. They also make you look dumb and dishonest without my even having to respond to them. When the anti-respec camp has friends like you, it hardly needs enemies. People aren’t responding to you because you’re conclusively proving your points—people aren’t responding to you because you’re not actually responding to them: Your modus operandi is mostly to fabricate one side of a debate by cherry-picking some parts and completely misrepresenting others, and then you write multiple posts responding to these fictions you appear to have created in your mind. Ad nauseum. I’d like to gently suggest that you go have these arguments with yourself, entirely on your own, without subjecting the rest of us to it. You are contributing nothing. To recap, the only rebuttal that you’ve been able to make to my last responses was a fantastical misrepresentation. I then disproved it. The rest of my responses you conveniently ignored, presumably because it wouldn’t support this right-all-the-time persona you’re trying to push at every opportunity. Please stop wasting my bandwidth with kindergarten-level processing, MajikMyst. You’re either way out of your depth here--kiddie pool that this discussion is--or you’re deliberately trolling. You’re making ridiculous and nonsensical arguments and ignoring legitimate responses, just to be able to keep spewing about it. Do you think that nobody else sees that? I’m inclined to believe that you’re simply intentionally trolling for attention. One hardly even needs to respond; each successive post is like the publication of a pathology. A few posts back I noted that I’d observed that the defenders of no-respec seem to me to more regularly employ bad argumentative tactics. You’re far and away the worst offender.

This, and your summation of the initial WoW leveling situation, I couldn’t agree more with. This has been my journey of thought as well, and why I’m now here weighting the pro-AC respec camp under the belief that it might be good for the game. Hopefully that has come through in my previous writings. I may have been…impolitic about it. I can easily imagine a structure that would support this kind of nonlinear leveling in SWTOR, but there’s no getting around having to put in a ****ton of new content. Like parallel-level planets, such that you could go from level 10-20 on either planet as you wished. Or completely separated maps on the same planet, and you can only get from one to the other via taxi. The quest hubs in each map would then be self-contained, requiring no crossover into the other map to complete, and each map would have a through-line quest like the current maps each do, which is optional for you to do or not. So you can pick from map A and map B through your journey from 10-20, and so forth, ignoring the through-line quest on that map or not. All of that is really no different than WoW’s having of parallel-level zones that you could pick and choose from, as you pointed out.

Corellian, I’m afraid you’re erring here. The definition of MMORPG is a consensus one--it’s not the literal translation of what the acronym stands for, which is what you’re trying to make fit. An MMO features a persistent online world. It doesn’t instantiate per group or play session; it continues to run whether players are there or not. In a Diablo group, that instance of the playspace exists only while the group playing it does. Same thing with football, Call of Duty, or any other game that multiple people can play online. See, these types of games are “Massive” not because of the total number of people playing the game itself. These games are Massive because a large amount of players are in the same instantiated and running copy of it which persists beyond their participation in it, you follow? If you keep that definition in mind you’ll correctly separate the nature of games like Diablo from games like SWTOR.

It is my view that every class should have its own unique content, yes. And if you’re going to build a game which emphasizes the “4th pillar” as its major selling point, then yes, you’d better deliver the vaunted 4th pillars on all the classes. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to call that a rhetorical question, as well as nonsensical, but the answer is obviously not. Neither would any other form of shared content. I believe that you are either being willingly obtuse, or that you're actually unable to understand things that are possible to not be 100% one way or another. You appear to be representing me as saying that every class should have only their own unique and non-overlapping content. Which I of course didn’t say, which would be a straw man if you were to present it as being my point of view. Which you're not. Right? In World of Warcraft every class has its own set of quests, as you well know, having flexed your WoW bona fides repeatedly and at length in this very thread. The content set is not extensive (read: pathetically small), and it’s a design they’ve moved even farther away from since release, eliminating most of what little was originally there, but every class in World of Warcraft has unique content which only that class experiences. It’s yet another reason why you can’t validly compare SWTOR Advanced Classes to WoW classes. Mass Effect provides an excellent example of nonlinear story structure. The first two more so than the third. They’re all structured around a narrative that’s like assembling pieces in a puzzle, bookended by linear sequences. When in the nonlinear segments, you can do the pieces in virtually any order; once you’ve completed all of them you then pass through a linear episode. In the third one they’ve gone with a more linear structure where you’re only deciding “when” rather than also “in what order” that you experience the available content. But the nonlinear sidequests have an influence on the linear parts that you see. I can well imagine a similar structure that might be workable here. It just wasn’t done. I don't really fault them for that, it's far easier to say than do, but I'd have been fine with 16 linear stories instead of just 8 shared. In other media, try Memento for an example of another way to present a nonlinear narrative. You are of course displayed the frames of the actual film in a linear order, but the narrative you’re presented is not presented in a linear order. Your personal assemblage, of what you think is the correct linear order is, results in different reconstructions and understandings of the narrative from other viewers. Nonlinearity is again the end result. The design decisions made have everything to do with the frequency of threads praising or complaining about them. This is such an obvious point I am in disbelief that I have to explain it. You can call the entity who makes those decisions “developers” or “designers” or whatever you like. In my professional life “developer” means a guy like me, who specifically writes code that makes it go, and aren’t necessarily the same thing as designers and project decision-makers. I used the word “designers” specifically to convey that nuance. The problem is the recycling of 100% of the content from 1-50, and having to go through it in the same linear order. As has been stated here by multiple posters in multiple forms. I seriously question whether or not you’re actually reading the things other people write, or are just cherry-picking, or what it is that you do that could lead to such wild misunderstandings. I think the real issue is that you think that everyone else in the world has to be thinking what you think they’re thinking. News flash: They’re not.

May I field that one? First, let’s state that “good” and “bad” are wildly subjective terms. You have people who are perfectly willing to call a 10-million-subscriber game bad and a failure, for instance. It raises the question of “by what standard” or “just what exactly do you mean by bad”. If I may I’d like to offer the following definition: “Good” is something that retains subscribers to the game, or encourages new ones. “Bad” is the opposite: something that turns people off of the game, and discourages them from renewing their subscription. That’s pretty broad, maybe even too broad or too vague, but let’s run with that for a minute. After all, the success or failure of the game is whether or not people continue to play it. If people don’t play it, that’s it for SWTOR, consigned to history like countless others. The reason why an appropriate AC respec mechanism would be good for the game is that it would help with the colossal problem of lack of content. This is stated over and over and over again in this thread and others like it. For every post that you may point to that supposedly has some person stating that they “just wanna” switch over and play the other AC, I can give you five that specifically state the reason as being the lack of content in the leveling process. This game is extremely linear from 1-50 and there is very little freedom to make it a different experience on additional playthroughs. If they allowed AC respec, it would be a cheap way to put a fresh coat of paint on the existing content, thus offering an incentive to people who are unhappy with the lack of content to continue playing. That’s why it would be good for the game. Because it encourages subscriber retention. Personally, I think that if the designers had provided a non-linear leveling process and provided unique content per Advanced Class, the frequency of requests or threads like this one would be way down. I myself wasn’t in favor of AC respec until I experienced the reality of the game firsthand. I now have 2 level 50s and 6 level 10s…one of every Advanced Class, all Imperial. But I tell you truly, those 10s are unlikely to level any further. The leveling content is just too repetitive and linear to endure any further, and the two stories I've seen to completion are not compelling enough to be forced to experience them a second time. The various decision and alignment choices you can make along the way to try and make it different are color and flavor at best. Mass Effect this absolutely is not. Simply put, that’s not fun. It’s boring. Bored people don’t renew their subscriptions. That is bad.

Gosh, you leave for a few days and look what you miss. A whole bunch more of the same. One might "derive" that, but that would be as incorrect as the rest of your misrepresentations. The post to which you refer was a general observation, which puts it in the class of opinion. However, it's an observation that's not without the potential for evidence. I could go through and analyze the content of every post on this topic for rhetorical fallacies and willful misinterpretations just like I'm doing to yours, then offer as evidence those numbers. I'm perfectly content to let it stand as pure opinion and let the readers of the threads be the judge, however. Of course, where that goes into pure conjecture is what happens in the future for the side which tends to be less logically coherent and intellectually honest. I'd think that its nature as conjecture was self-evident, but I explain it because you are appearing to have difficulty grasping rhetorical nuances. I agree entirely. And overgeneralizing is something I find the anti-AC-change camp doing quite a bit. In this specific instance, you're treating the generalized opinion as fact and attempting to work that angle, which is another error and misrepresentation on your part. I believe I read you calling for mature discussion in this thread. Well, this is your opportunity. Shoddy rhetorical tactics aren't mature discussion. You want to continue to use them, then you can expect me to take you to school--just as I would expect the same in return. Your immediate reponse to this appears to be to retreat rather than defend or man up and apologize, essentially committing the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going la-la-la, I'm not listening. I conclude from this that your request for mature discussion was insincere. Or that you honestly believe one thing is another, which would fit the pattern of the rest of your statements. I have another assertion to offer: That you did in fact read the entire post, just like you're reading the entirety of this one, and will find yourself powerless to refrain from responding to it. At this point I'm responding to your legion of misrepresentations and bad rhetoric, which is not the topic of the thread, that's entirely true. My strategy with this is to get back to an actual discussion, but that's not going to happen until you're honestly debating, so I'm addressing that first. I expect that in response you'll bluster for cover, and then cut and run, per the standard troll playbook--please do prove me wrong. Attacking the people rather than their arguments is not a straw man. A straw man is when Party 1 advances argument A. Party 2 then says that Party 1 was advancing argument B, and/or proceeds to work against argument B rather than against argument A that Party 1 actually advanced. Attacking people rather than their arguments is called ad hominem, from the Latin for "to the man". You may already know all this, but I explain because you don't seem to be demonstrating any grasp of it. You are consistently confusing one thing for another. And, of course, I was doing neither thing. I was opining on the characteristics of the arguments, not the people. And so when someone accuses someone else of doing something rhetorically that they're actually not...well, guess what you're doing. Again. If you don't actually know what terms like straw man and ad hominem actually mean, you will encounter difficulty in attempting to make them work for you. I'd submit that you're unlikely to learn it in context from reading the Internet. An excellent overall reference is "Thinking from A to Z", by Nigel Warburton. It's definitely worth a read.

You have entirely made my point for me. I believe in the months that I've lurked here I believe I've read and understood your entire arsenal on the matter. You have no idea for how long I've been paying attention, or to what. So that's your first unfounded assertion, plus a shade of ad hominem for good measure. I was also careful to qualify my statements--your clues to this would be found in the qualifying words "generally", "usually", and "the more". Yet you present my position as absolute, that the ENTIRE side of the discussion is logically inept. Which wasn't my statement, so you've set up a straw man there. You have no actual knowledge of my sample size, yet you're asserting that you do. That's your second unfounded assertion (as an aside, I don't believe this forum as a whole is even a valid sampling of the opinions of the 2 million players, so anyone here making statements about what the majority player base thinks are at best laughable). Also, sample sizes aren't bad logic; they're contributors to invalidity in statistical analysis. Statistical analysis and logic are entirely different things, thus you're misrepresenting that as well. Maybe you shouldn't consider my post intellectually honest; entirely up to you. But given what you've written above, in which you're demonstrably committing either a misrepresentation or a fallacy with almost every sentence written, I'm perfectly happy to let the audience be the judge. If you'd like to engage in some mature discussion, I'm willing to engage on that basis, but you would first have to write some. This particular post wasn't it, as I have shown. Gonna take you to school next, MagikMyst. Unfortunately I have a couple of tickets to Lewis Black and must split, followed by other actual nonSWTOR activities this weekend. Might be a couple of days before I'm next able to post.

Generally when evaluating who's out to lunch on a particular issue, I look at who appears to be more intellectually dishonest or clueless. This applies just about everywhere. When one side is misrepresenting the other's arguments, using bad argumentative tactics such as oversimplification, slippery-sloping, appeals to authority, and the like, it's usually a clue as to who's either on the wrong side of history or simply the wrong side of the argument. I'm finding the pro-AC-respec camp to be the more intellectually honest here. The amount of straw men being set up by the other side could consume the entire hay-producing capacity of the Midwestern United States.