I miss those days. WoW used it for the carrot and the stick. Greens were useable, blues usually better and game from long quests or dungeon rewards. Purples were rare, and *mostly* from rare world drops. But then everyone wanted "purples" because they were "better" then "blues". And really all they did was tweak the game so everyone got purples as exalted rewards and tier-drops, and didn't introduce a new color (beyond the legionaries they've kept rare) as they would have just created a new level of "rares" they'd have to hand out to keep people happy. Within 30 days of Cata release I was in full epics again. Kinda sad when you think about it.

I remember when the only thing to differentiate items was stats and effects. Even EQ didn't have BOP at release that was added later. Everything was tradeable.

The problem with SWTOR isn't that it tells a story. It that it relies on that story. MMORPG subscriptions should be measures in months and years. A few weeks and one renewal doesn't cut it. As a game, SWTOR is great. I probably liked it better then I will ME3, but much like ME3, it told a story. And now that the story is done, so is my enjoyment of the game. I had almost no special moments while leveling. It was the story that kept me entertained. I saved the Universe. TWICE! Unlike games like EQ or WoW where I fell in-love with a world and stuck around for end-game, in SWTOR I loved the story. But that story was isolated to me and didn't do anything to help me enjoy the world. I enjoyed my own personal little green laser walled off areas. I logged into WoW for the first time in eons that other night since I activated a free 7-day trial they had sent me. My gear is now a tier old, my stone drake no longer "cool". No guild membership. But it was interesting. I have cooking, fishing, archeology, alchemy and jewelcrafting all maxed. There was a ton I could do that are great downtime fillers. I made about 500g just fishing for a bit and cooking it. MMO's need stuff to do in the world. Sending my companions out to do stuff was awesome. Cept I never want to see it in the genre again cause it totally takes out the "I'm in a virtual world" feeling. It's ME3-good, not MMO-good. And that to me (besides horrible itemization) is the SWTOR downfall and why it will be a ghost town in a few months like WAR was (and WAR had the same exact issues). It's not a world. It's a game.

Go play ME3 and stop screwing up the genre. I'm a loot whore. The two most popular MMO's of all time have been loot-centric. Go find another genre.

I really stopped logging into F Shark because it's dead. Warzone's dont happen and it's not because of Empire vs Republic imbalances. It's because normally there's not enough people queuing to actually have a WZ take place. When it does it's the same 6 people on each side.

Attunements are a large part of it. But it's also not the end or start of it. T11 was hard till Blizzard let people over-gear it and nerfed it. There's a typical cycle in EQ. Certain Tiers are hard, and people break themselves on it, then new tier comes out and last tier is nerfed and new ways to overgear it are added. By then the hardcore players have moved on, the average raider gets to complete content they couldn't before, and 50% of the population is out collecting vanity pets anyways.

Original Ony in WoW was a complete #@$*(. It was about 2 months before anyone world wide beat it. It was about 4 months before we did server first on our server. Much longer before most even tried. MC? It was like 6 months before anyone in the world cleared it completely. Now, that time wasn't all because of difficulty, but it wasn't easy. And most sure as heck didn't see that content for a loooong time. WoW didn't have a ton of end-game content but it was freaking hard at release. We didn't just rep grind and show up to beat it, we grinded instance after instance and collected specific gear and grinded tradeskills en masse. And bringing her head back to Org was one of the coolest moments I've ever had in a game. The dedication to do that content during the first few months it was out was enormous.

Certain servers did get hit with rollbacks like I mentioned. That can still technically happen after release and well after it. And anything to do with cthun was well after release. AQ was soooo long after release it's closer to TBC then release IIRC. But either way, that was well after release. And I'm not minimizing rollbacks or saying some didn't get screwed by them. But it wasn't most or even a lot(in comparison to the player base).

No, that's not accurate or even close. Were there lag issues? At times. Did people get stuck in looting position? A lot! Every class had a skill tree. Rollbacks did happen, but only to a few select people. There's a big difference between what we expect now and then. Going from an EQ launch (where we were basically down for 4 days), to an AO launch (where everything was broken or buggy) to a DAoC launch that was smooth but severely lacking content, AC2 (no content) but smooth. WoW was at least as smooth as the AC launches, but had far more. It's like, I hated logging because I was stuck looting. But so what? I was dying to log in because we were about to run Scholo or BRD or something. Bugs are bugs. The game world is what matters and WoW's was amazing for the time. At launch.

WoW was both good and fresh at launch. It surpassed in scale any other MMO at launch. Was far more itemized (itemization will make or break or a game). SWTOR has some very fresh features, features that other games will copy. But they forgot to create a world we fall in love with, or give us "OMG" moments or a sense of accomplishment along the way. I think SWTOR is good and fresh. But not in a way that will keep people around for months and years. It really is KotOR with chat and some grouping options.

The leveling is horrid. It's repetitive. It's easy. There are ZERO awesome experiences while leveling. There are no awesome dungeons with phat lewtz you just can't skip and break yourself on. There's zero diversion. It's quest after quest and almost no quest feels epic. The game never teases you with what come next. Once you leave a planet you're gone except to have a stupid trip back just to run your tired legs off for nothing a few times during your class quest. There is zero in this game along the lines of Unrest, Deadmines, Beflallen, RFK, Najena, SM, Guk, Sunken Temple, Sol A, Scholo, Sol B, BRD...... NOTHING. It totally gives a great leveling experience in that you never have to think, decide, or wonder what to do now. It totally misses creating anything close to a virtual world or a sense of adventure or accomplishment. If you love RPG's it's well for the money to buy it and play for a month or two. But it's not even in the realm of an EQ or WoW or several other games that at least attempted to create a world for us to play in.

What were your "OMG" moments while leveling? I've had one, and it was beating a world boss around level 16 with about 10 guild members. And even then I got zip for it. No quest rewards or anything. But it was as cool as it got.

No, what' I'm saying is that they should have you enjoy the journey through rewards. In fact, if you're getting regularly rewarded they can actually slow down the journey. That's not blasphemy. The end-game should evolve. Not become a WoW-clone end-game that everyone hits within a few weeks of release in basically every game these days. To use WoW an example BFD, SM, Uld, Scholo, BRD, BRS, ST, etc... All had major hooks for people. It wasn't just crap autogenerated loot. It was hand designed loot of "woah, this kicks butt" for the level you could get it. If you choose to skip it you missed out. EQ had amazing loot (harder to get without instances and some of the risk/reward wasn't great) and many "rares" with amazing drops people hunted like crazy. Both games gave you major accomplishments along the way. And both games had, at release, true raid level bosses that were harder then most games start with today. But it's wasn't horrid, because there was a lot of stuff you could "group" for and "dungeon crawl" for besides those end bosses. And both games the end-games evolved over a long period of time. Today's games just copy WoW end-game and get the players there (to the end-game) right away, and the players don't give a crap about the world because the world itself sucks and gave them nothing memorable on the way to the end-game.

It's like today's games think WoW's popular because of it's massive endgame. They totally forget it took over a year to get there (not to level to 60, for the end game to start maturing past Ony) and that evolved in time. In WoW the journey had HUGE moments of accomplishments. I was way ahead of the curve, something like the 12th level 60 on the original server I played on, and we basically all merged into the top raiding guild on that server and it lasted a few years. And even people like me had MAJOR moments of "awesome" on the way to 60. Huge moments where we killed a boss or I got a piece of loot or whatever. And EQ certainly had that. SWTOR and everything else it seems just puts crap for meaning on the way to level cap, poor end game raiding, and spend all this time trying to give me quests I don't even care to read half the time and content I fly through. And because the journey to 50 (aka the world) is so crap, everyone leaves before it matters. Give me a good world, some endgame dungeons and Vox/Onyxia style bosses that people will break themselves over and over before they beat. And in "that" time then add the content. Games should release with enough content for 90% of the people for at least 4-5 months. And they just don't anymore because they spend so much design time holding our hands for leveling despite the fact we fly through the content.

They could. But Bioware is not the team to do it. And neither is Mythic. They just had to money to create "this". Bioware excels at single player story driven RPG's. Mythic excels at creating MMO's that have ground breaking features and a crappy world. WoW was really an excellent game. And I'd love WoW 2 but it'll never happen. WoW was a complete world that allowed you to sandbox the game if you wanted to. It had dungeons well off the beaten path that were fully itemized from level 15ish to 60. While it had questing up the wazoo for the time, it didn't force people to quest, and in fact many grinded by choice. What the problem I see in today's MMO's is they try to copy WoW's quests and streamline leveling while forgetting the whole "world" part that WoW actually had down pat. Part of playing an MMO to me is learning the lay of the land. EQ did this the best. If you were in Oasis the first time, Lockjaw would get you. Or a sand giant. Even tranquil places like East Commons had griffs. When you first went to Unrest you weren't ready for Unrest. When you first went to Guk you were lost easily. On and on. And EQ had you keep coming back to the same content over and over in a way that actually took a long time to get old. In WoW, didn't everyone run SM a ton? Deadmines? It took a long time to get stale. In both games the loot was worth it, but it usually took you several runs to get all you wanted from an area. And with EQ the journey was the game. In WoW, it was too for at least 6 months for "most" people. It was a huge deal to get certain dungeon items. In SWG, while I'm leveling, who cares about the crap loot I get? I'm not running the same FP 4 or 5 times to get all the loot I could from it. It's all crap. It's not better then what I already got by much, and I'll replace it next planet easily with commendations or vendors. And the loot, while leveling doesn't even do much. They upgrade levels are puny and crap. A good example in WoW was the wingblade. As horde around level 14 you get a red quest for an instance and the rewards are weapons for most classes. One, the wingblade, was a 15.8 dps weapon. At the time you got that your current weapon was around 7 dps. It would literally, almost double your dps if you got it then. But the time you typically can get it (18ish) you're probably around 10dps on your weapon, it's still an upgrade and would last you for around 5 levels. But the point was the game, WoW, showed you a peak at what was to come and I spent a few days trying to get a group together to do the content to get my uber weapon!!!! SWTOR has NONE of that crap. Not even word of mouth crap. In EQ I wanted a mino axe first time I saw one. Journeyman boots. Obtainable around level 25 with a group were UBER and you'd keep them to 50. Hell, I remember saving play after plat for a combine weapon in EQ, took me like 5 levels to save from the time I first saw them till the time I got one. Both games had hooks. Open worlds that let you travel and see if the other side was better. SWTOR has NONE of that. It has all the modern features. It just forgot the world to put them in.