Well, unless you merge all servers into a single server, a cross-server tool will always be more efficient than a single server one.

That would be hard, since there are is valid reasoning to support what he said.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the subject being discussed.

Whether or not it will happen is still to be seen. The reason this post keeps showing up is because we're very far from a consensus when it comes to the subject. And you realize that it was a moderator that remade the thread when the last one got too big, right?

No, my point is that if we start limiting the functionality of one particular tool because it could, potentially, from time to time, be used by a limited subset of the players to harass other players, we might as well go after pretty much all of the tools in the game.

What about the inspect feature? Are you going to start crusading for it's removal next?

Of course I would. Because I believe that limiting the functionality of a tool is not the right solution in order to prevent potential misuse of said tool.

There are only two thing here that are beyond arguing. First, that the margin of error does not account for bias. That is a fact, and one you can easily verify by reading any introductory text on statistics. Second, the poll is biased. The participants are self-selected. That alone means that people with a strong opinion on the subject, towards one end or the other of the subject under polling, are much more likely to have answered. That alone is enough to prove the poll is biased.

Actually, the margin of error accounts for sampling error in a random poll. It has nothing to do with bias error. A 5% margin of error at 95% confidence level means that if you were to repeat the same poll 100 times with random samples, 95 times out of 100 the result would fall within a +/-5% interval centered around the true result. Selection bias, namely by the creators of a given poll, is not the only kind of bias. First of all, the only person that said that was you. Second, even if I was not pro-public logging, as you say it, I'd still be pointing out that we can not draw any conclusions from this poll.

No, that's not even remotely close to what we're arguing. What we're saying is that for the poll to be valid, for the margins of error to mean something, and for us to be able to draw any conclusions, we'd have to poll a random sample that is also representative of the distribution of the different play-styles in the population. Your failure to understand that just shows that it is in fact you that knows nothing about polling techniques.

I added the bolded part. If the sample is known to be biased or, as for this poll, we have no idea if the sample is biased or not, the results of the poll are meaningless.

No, since we have no idea on how biased the sample is we can make no assumptions on what the margin of error really is. Just to give you an extreme example, I'd bet you anything you want that if we were to poll the subject of stricter gun control laws next to a NRA rally we'd see results that are even more of a landslide win for one of the sides than the ones we have for this poll. It still wouldn't mean that the sample is unbiased and that the results reflect the opinion of the entire population.

The margin of error is a function of population size, sample size and confidence level you want from your poll results. All you said is correct, but you forgot to mention that your sample needs to be unbiased for the analysis to work. And we have no indication that the people who frequent the forums and chose to answer the poll are an unbiased sample of the game's population when it comes to the issue being discussed.

You implement something similar to what GW2 will be doing with their server "visit" system. We should be moving away from server barriers, not clinging to old limitations that only ever existed due to technology not being quite there yet.

It is if you want to have real-time analysis of the data.

1. Addon API 2. Fully functional combat log 3. Cross-server group finder

I voted yes to the standard combat log. There's absolutely no valid reason for an MMO not to have one. Heck, I'd vote yes to real-time in-game parsing capabilities as well.

Destroying the need for guilds might actually be a good thing. Then maybe we could move away from the current end-game raiding model that gave rise to the need for guilds. And it would create a much larger cross-server community, which should be the way the genre should be moving forward, if the appropriate tools (cross-server chat, cross-server friend lists, possibility to group for open-world content with phasing technology) are implemented too. Face it, the days of completely disconnected 'shards' are (or will be very soon) over. And the only reason they ever appeared were technical limitations, not some desire to foster smaller, more 'meaningful', communities.

I'm sorry, but a tool that does not fulfill it's intended function can not be called 'solid'. The fact is, you are less likely to get a group if you rely on the LFG interface rather than the LFG chat. Heck, I'd bet you're more likely to get a group if you just stand by the instance portal and say 'invite' every time you see another player pass by. The purpose of the LFG tool is, as the name says, to help you find a group. If it doesn't do that, for whatever reason, then the tool is a failure. It doesn't matter that your tool is the most beautifully designed piece of software ever to run on a computer (which by the way is very far from the truth in the case of the LFG tool we have), if your users don't use it then the tool simply does not work. And the tragic thing is, we all already knew what the most efficient way to organize groups was. Cross-server, automated queuing system. We all saw the evolution of the LFG system in WoW, and we all knew that the only version that significantly increased the number of groups being former was the cross-server one. From my point of view, the cross-server tool had zero impact on the community in WoW. Did I see more obnoxious people, ninja looters and players who didn't say a word during the entire instance run? Sure I did! But the only reason for that was that I was getting considerably more groups than before, not because people turned into idiots the second they opened the LFG interface. More, the purpose of a LFG tool is not to build community, it is to get you into groups. Building a community is your responsibility, not the tool's.

You have a fantastic, well thought out and undeniable argument there, OP. Especially when you compare the success of SWG and WoW. Oh wait ...

I get the setting argument, I really do, especially since that's why I'm here too. But I would really to know why the currently available sandbox MMOs are not "good enough to play" and which ones have you tried?

I think the real question here should be: Why are the people that enjoy and want a sandbox MMO here playing SW:TOR, a game which was clearly going to fall into the theme park category from the moment it was announced, instead of one of the sandbox MMOs currently available? I personally don't like the sandbox design, and think it's fundamentally flawed, but you don't see me on the EVE, PotBS, Xsyon, Darkfall, Dawntide, ArcheAge, Fallen Earth, Mortal Online, UO forums praising the qualities of WoW.

Pretty much this. If nothing else, the NGE should stand as a lesson that you can't polish a turd. Just leave it as it is, and let the few people that enjoy it keep on doing it.

Because they had the money to make a AAA quality MMO. It wouldn't make any sense to spend the amount of money they did on SW:TOR in order to produce a game that follows a model that has been proven time and again not to attract enough players and therefore not able to generate enough revenue. If you want a SWG2, at least in terms of game mechanics if not in setting, stop searching in the wrong places and start looking into smaller budget games made by indie game studios. They exist.

You're wrong. The initial work of developing and documenting the addon framework (API) is exactly the same in both cases. The only difference is in the decision process of which functions to expose to the modding community, and even that part of the work has already been done. And maintaining, supporting and updating an API is a much simpler process than doing the same for a set of UI options (which by their very nature include and are much more complex than the API), and that on top of that are guaranteed not to please everyone.