I think Ghostcrawler hit the nail on the head: Despite what I read earlier in the thread, WoW had plenty of exploration, especially in vanilla and BC. SWOTOR literally has no exploration. I made it a point to go out of my way to explore, but every inch of the incredibly small zones is used by quests. Certain planets like Hoth have a huge wasteland of unused space, so I went over there, and much to be expected, the only thing I found was what I was looking for, the robot to kill for a datacron. There is no sense of wonder or achievement or exploration in SWOTOR. Too many times I have logged into both WoW and SWOTOR, and immediately logged back out. I have gear, and my raid/operations, so what do I do now? Level an alt? I don't really want to, I already have one or two alts at 50. PvP? Frankly, I don't have the patience for it and I don't really find it fun. MMO's have a fundamental flaw in that they are tirelessly repetitive. Blizzard answered this with achievements, collecting pets, collecting mounts, and other tidbits of unimportant "fluff". That kept us busy for a while, but really, it wasn't enough and really was just an excuse to play WoW over something else, SWOTOR doesn't even have that. What Bioware could have done with space combat, and the ships themselves, is a huge untapped source of replay value. Giving players smaller fighters that dock on the primary ships. Letting people upgrade and customize both the bigger ships and smaller fighters would add hours upon hours. Put in a mechanic to allow people to collect items to decorate their ships. Another huge untapped resource is companions. Once you hit 50, they're relatively worthless, and only serve to collect my hand me down gear. You do need to 100% appeal to a broad audience. Everything in me wants to say that shouldn't be the case, that I want to play the game that I want, but that's just not reasonable from a business perspective. What needs to be done is to find a better way to integrate everything. WoW and SWOTOR both cater very heavily to the casual player. WoW does this better with more fluff and silly stuff to do. SWOTOR only has alts, and that turns into "Spacebar through everything so I can level" because there is truly nothing new to see while leveling a new class, and the class story has absolutely no effect in the grand scheme of things. The MMO culture, the people who play the games, have changed. The old culture was the stereotypical "nerd in mom's basement" to everything from the Xbox kid to mature working adults. All this is in the anonymous 4Chan/Reddit internet, where anonymous douchebagery runs rampant, and it's the culture that truly ruined MMOs, in my opinion, and that will never be fixed.

Once I got Temple, I never stopped using her. Downtime is equal or less with Temple than with Lokin or Kaliyo, and I made it to 50 with no major problems. I was usually Res'ing Kaliyo or Lokin wasn't healing enough. With Temple I can have her kill weak mobs while I take the strong ones, or kite/mitigate elites while she is free to kill them. She does a LOT of damage if you keep her geared (currently she is in all my hand-me-down Columni and extra Rakata, and can solo players...).

That guy is an idiot. On Iron Citadel people are begging for snipers because of three reasons: 1. They don't have a lightsaber 2. They are ranged DPS that does very good damage 3. They have more utility (specifically an interrupt) than other ranged DPS, not to mention bubbles, slows, stuns, the fact that snipers can CC droids. with no cooldown, and there are droids in nearly every FP/Raid

My guild did KP and EV on hard mode for the first time, the first op as a guild, and did them both in less than 5 hours. We did Nightmare EV, only wiping on the most embarrassing boss possible because of a particular marauder. Never once did I ever need to use Diversion. Never once did I even consider it. If any of you feel legitimately nerfed by this, you're an idiot. Plain and simple. The end-game content in this game is incredibly easy, and unless BioWare does something in their next tier to make it more challenging, this game will have a very, very short life.

Probe is a burst/grinding ability. Snipe, Reactive Ambush, and Series of Shots are your sustained DPS abilities. Shatter Armor should be thrown in there, and keep corrosive dart up. I don't thing energy tanks is required if you can manage your energy well, but it might be nice for PvP and in certain other circumstances, though I supposed it certainly wont hurt.

Except Marauders and Sorcs...

Once you get into the high 30's and 40's, two strong mobs and elite mobs become problematic no matter what companion you have. Your best bet is to pick one you like and stick with it. I seem to do best with Temple. I have to heal after every fight, but I had to do that with Kaliyo and Lokin as well. I can't stand Vector or SCORPIO, so I don't use them.

Ops DPS is melee/short range. Sniper DPS requires cast times, which means you plant yourself, and need to be behind cover. It's a little worse for Marksman snipers who need to constantly be behind cover, because it's a wasted GCD every time you need to move and set up again. It's made a little less painful by the instant snipe, but that's not always the best option. Snipers are not a very mobile class at all, and a lot of boss fights require high mobility. It's a balancing act, for sure. Then again, so is leveling a sniper...

People are so incredibly bad at PVP that's not an accurate measure. Marauders have the highest end-game DPS, then Sorcs, then Snipers. That is based loosely off of who pulls agro more, who is next on threat if the tank dies, and who the tanks are complaining about. Until we have damage meters, though, everything is anecdotal at best.

What do I do while I wait in queue? 1. Wish my queue was only 30 minutes, not 2 hours. 2. Watch inept teenagers/fanbois naively defend BioWare when people complain about the 2 hour queues. 3. Watch ****.

I'm a disabled veteran with a full time job and other obligations. This game isn't my life, it's what I (want to) do for fun. I go out and do things on the weekends. When I get off of work, I'd like to sit down and enjoy a game that I paid $80 for, and will likely give another $15 a month in the future. I consider this an investment in entertainment, an investment that is not providing returns. Remember when HP's CEO said they were cancelling their PC products? HP's investors replaced the CEO with another one, because they wanted their investment to provide acceptable returns. It's simple logic. However, I am likely explaining it to a bunch of teenagers/college students on winter break with no comprehension of how things work in the real world.

Look man, I appreciate what you are saying, I really do. But the simple fact is I paid $80 for a product that I cannot use, that does not function as advertised. I'd really rather not complain, and I've put up with the queues thus far under the same mindset you are. But I do not want to come home after a day of work, and wait 3+ hours to play a game that I paid money for. Beta tests, stress tests, and the early access were all there for BioWare to judge what to expect and how they need to configure their systems. They failed, miserably. It's obvious that a small number of servers got the large majority of pre-launch guilds, and those are the ones with huge queues of people who are forced to sit in them if they want to play their established characters, with friends. It's unacceptable.

BioWare, I demand that you immediately raise server population caps, or transfer me and my entire guild off of Iron Citadel. We did not choose to play on this server, you, BioWare, did. I put a significant amount of time into my character already, enough that creating a new character on another server and starting from scratch is unreasonable and an absolutely unacceptable solution. I was disconnected, I do not know why. I was on Ventrilo, and was carrying a conversation, and I magically disconnected. I immediately re-selected the server, and was placed in a queue of 1072. After 15 minutes, I have moved 100 places. At this rate I will be in queue for nearly two and a half hours. The real kicker is that I have a 8-5 job, and when I come home, I sit in queue for an hour already, now I need to wait another two and a half hours? Waiting for three and a half hours in one day, after I got off work, to play is unacceptable in every way. With a full time job, other obligations, and during this time of year, I cannot afford to waste my time waiting to play your game. I truly enjoy this game, and I would hate to not play it because of your inability to control your game, but I am not seeing much of an option if this keeps up any longer. You took $80 of my money. You put me, my friends, and my guild on Iron Citadel. You, BioWare, need to fix this immediately, and reasonably compensate all people effected by your inability to even deploy guilds, your inability to estimate player populations and configure your hardware and software appropriately, your inability to react fast enough to fix the issue, and your absolutely insulting fix of "Roll on another server". This current situation is absolutely unacceptable, and you need to remedy it immediately.

BioWare, I demand that you immediately raise server population caps, or transfer me and my entire guild off of Iron Citadel. We did not choose to play on this server, you, BioWare, did. I put a significant amount of time into my character already, enough that creating a new character on another server and starting from scratch is unreasonable and an absolutely unacceptable solution. I was disconnected, I do not know why. I was on Ventrilo, and was carrying a conversation, and I magically disconnected. I immediately re-selected the server, and was placed in a queue of 1072. After 15 minutes, I have moved 100 places. At this rate I will be in queue for nearly two and a half hours. The real kicker is that I have a 8-5 job, and when I come home, I sit in queue for an hour already, now I need to wait another two and a half hours? Waiting for three and a half hours in one day, after I got off work, to play is unacceptable in every way. With a full time job, other obligations, and during this time of year, I cannot afford to waste my time waiting to play your game. I truly enjoy this game, and I would hate to not play it because of your inability to control your game, but I am not seeing much of an option if this keeps up any longer. You took $80 of my money. You put me, my friends, and my guild on Iron Citadel. You, BioWare, need to fix this immediately, and reasonably compensate all people effected by your inability to even deploy guilds, your inability to estimate player populations and configure your hardware and software appropriately, your inability to react fast enough to fix the issue, and your absolutely insulting fix of "Roll on another server". This current situation is absolutely unacceptable, and you need to remedy it immediately.

BioWare, I demand that you immediately raise server population caps, or transfer me and my entire guild off of Iron Citadel. We did not choose to play on this server, you, BioWare, did. I put a significant amount of time into my character already, enough that creating a new character on another server and starting from scratch is unreasonable and an absolutely unacceptable solution. I was disconnected, I do not know why. I was on Ventrilo, and was carrying a conversation, and I magically disconnected. I immediately re-selected the server, and was placed in a queue of 1072. After 15 minutes, I have moved 100 places. At this rate I will be in queue for nearly two and a half hours. The real kicker is that I have a 8-5 job, and when I come home, I sit in queue for an hour already, now I need to wait another two and a half hours? Waiting for three and a half hours in one day, after I got off work, to play is unacceptable in every way. With a full time job, other obligations, and during this time of year, I cannot afford to waste my time waiting to play your game. I truly enjoy this game, and I would hate to not play it because of your inability to control your game, but I am not seeing much of an option if this keeps up any longer. You took $80 of my money. You put me, my friends, and my guild on Iron Citadel. You, BioWare, need to fix this immediately, and reasonably compensate all people effected by your inability to even deploy guilds, your inability to estimate player populations and configure your hardware and software appropriately, your inability to react fast enough to fix the issue, and your absolutely insulting fix of "Roll on another server". This current situation is absolutely unacceptable, and you need to remedy it immediately.