So, you think players should give EAware extra money to play the MMO portion of the "MMO"RPG they already bought the box for and subscribed to? Someone, quick, get this guy a job at EA! It's one thing to be on a low pop server, and it's another thing entirely to be completely unable to enjoy certain aspects of a game because your server's average population is lower than a typical Counterstrike match. The WoW comparison doesn't apply because even the "dead" servers in WoW typically have enough people to play the game's content. I play WoW on a low-pop, horde dominant server. Despite that, there still manage to be 3 alliance guilds that raid regularly. Horde has around 6 or so. Not to mention that WoW has cross-server battlegrounds, cross-server dungeons, and cross-server raiding. Your server's population in that game is no where near the limitation that it is here in TOR, where if Bill and Frank are offline that means Jim is playing by himself, because the three of them comprise the entire republic playerbase during off-peak hours. How many screenshots are people posting of themselves being alone on their fleet? Go to the WoW boards and see how many screenshots are posted of people alone in Org or Stormwind. Good luck finding a single one.

Right now I'm playing an alt with a friend in an attempt to get him to 50 so I have someone to do dailies with on my main. I think I've been the lone person on Ilum every single time I've been on that planet, with the exception of one afternoon that there were (gasp) 4 people on Ilum.

I played a bit of beta and based on that experience, bought the game on release. The more time I spent with it in my free month, though, it did feel like EAware shipped a beta-quality product. Between the combat delay, the performance issues, the awful and completely non-adjustable UI, the graphics issues (the texture atlas debacle, shadows, shaders) and some class abilities just not working right, it was a giant mess. A fun mess, but still a mess. I dropped my sub before my free month ran out because I didn't want to pay for such a beta-quality product. I got my free week and messed around for a bit. Many of my original gripes have been improved. Combat feels responsive, my textures don't look like dog barf, my Vanguard's mortar volley and full auto don't seem to misfire or clip like they used to, interrupts and kinetic shield work off-GCD like they're supposed to, performance seems to be a bit better. Some old issues are still around (the shadows still destroy performance and visually suck, shading doesn't seem much better) but as a whole the product feels way better now than it did when I last left it. All this being said, I haven't had a chance to experience much of the end-game in PVE or PVP, mainly because my server is now a bloody ghost-town, so that's probably my biggest issue with the game right now: I can't enjoy the max-level content because I play on an empty husk and have absolutely no desire to reroll on a more populated server.

I play on a RP server that was consistently heavy but never full at launch. It isn't as bleak as the poor guy that posted a screenshot of him alone on his fleet, but my server feels like a ghosttown now. Log in at 11pm (eastern, server-time) and the fleet has maybe 30 people on it. Log on at 5pm and it's the same thing. Late at night there are about a dozen people around or less. Any time someone makes a comment about it in chat, random "defenders" pop out of the woodwork to say that it isn't so bad at peak times. "Peak times" is about a one-two-hour window the fleet has about 50-60 people. Any time I'm on Ilum, I'm the only person on Ilum. There's no M in this MMO. Hell, 80% of the time, the central social/launching hub for my faction has fewer people on it than a match of Tribes. It's really sad.

Well this is my last contribution to this thread. I know the fanboys will rejoice at that. Hopefully, eventually EAware will pull its head out and get a good fix for the visuals in this fun but ultimately lackluster game sooner rather than later. I'll keep tabs on the game, I enjoyed it for what it was, overall, but I just can't fund such inept, arrogant development processes. If the game turns around, I'll check it out again. To the people sticking around, maybe you'll someday get lucky and get the game that we all deserve, instead of the unfinished one EAware sold us.

Pff, there's nothing wrong with TOR, it's the best MMO on the market in every possible way, and totally wasn't falsely advertised and released unfinished with many beta features gutted or otherwise missing. You so crazy.

So all the people okay with paying for falsely advertised betas can get some peace and quiet, right?

Primary reason? Texture resolution. MMO at level cap are usually all about the gear grind -- getting those nice pieces of equipment, managing appearance sets, making your character look awesome. With this atlas crap we have, most stuff looks like dogbarf anyway. Hard to get excited about a character that looks like pixellated vomit. Secondary reason? Ability Delay. Mashing cooldowns and off-GCD abilities over and over just to make them fire isn't fun. Tertiary reason? Rep/Imp ability imbalance. I want to like my shadow more than my assassin, but Project sucks compared to Shock, despite the abilities being mirrors of each other. Many mirror classes have examples of this, where the ability does the same damage, with the same cast time, with the same cooldown, with the same resource cost, with the same talents backing it, but due to glitches or animations, the Empire version almost always handles/reacts better than the Repub version. There's no legitimate reason for this. None.

Don't forget the texture resolution!

1) Buy WoW's or Rift's engine. 2) Rewrite TOR from scratch. 3) ???

5 characters

Check out World of Warcraft, Rift, or pretty much any other modern MMO on the market. Thinking TOR would have basic MMO features at late 2011 launch is just silly.

I'm looking forward to the next month! Rift is free this weekend so I can see what that game's up to. STO is kind of fun to play (and totally not a hotkey MMO) and is now sort of free (one character is free). And then if Rift turns out to only be ho-hum and I want to play a game with high resolution textures, no ability delay, great performance, and a highly customizable user-interface, I can always play WoW. I'll definitely have 15$ extra next month to throw at something because I sure as hell won't be paying EAware to play their beta.

You're right, it's not exactly like WoW. Combat mechanics, graphics options and 'fidelity' (art style aside), character handling and responsiveness, client performance, etc in WoW are all far superior to The Blurry Republic. So, yeah, TOR isn't exactly like WoW. In fact, it's inferior in nearly every conceivable way, except for voice acting. And this isn't because TOR tried to do anything new or innovative, it's just a cheap F2P-calibur WoW knockoff with some excellent-ish voice acting layered on top.

Okay, I know 1.1 just brought a load of new and undesirable flaws to the game (ability cooldown visibility, LOLIlum, baby's first Anti-Aliasing, etc) but we really can't let this issue fall from the front page. I've only got today left before my account dies. Rift is having a free weekend starting tomorrow, too. Perfect timing. And STO just went free and is actually kind of fun. It doesn't have the RP experience that TOR has, but it does have a whole bevy of graphics options, including full AA support and textures that look like they were made within the last year, instead of earlier than 2004.

LOL, No.

The Blurry Republic looks like garbage, yet costs the same (or more!) than many, many other competing products... products The Blurry Republic's advertisements look comparable to.

Do I have to post the WoW texture comparison again? You can hate on WoW's art style all you want, but current texture work in WoW, just like every other MMO, destroys TOR. The Blurry Republic, visually, is the absolute bottom of the barrel for nearly every, if not every, Pay-to-Play (and a decent amount of F2P these days) game.

I noticed that this looks terrible right away. I noticed that nearly all robes (especially from the front) look terrible. Nobody had to tell me they looked like dogbarf -- I've played many MMOs, and many games in general, and I know when a game looks like butt. TOR looks like butt, or something that comes out of a butt. And more power to them. This thread isn't about people happy with the game, it's people expecting delivery on what we were advertised, and it's people that feel like a game with the budget and price tag that TOR carries should be graphically competitive with the competition on the market in the same genre, rather than looking like something from at least half a dozen years ago. Lying, blind, or you just don't play PC games. Sorry, but true. Don't release a game missing the entire high-end set of graphics options, maybe? Shadows, Shaders, Reflections, and Textures are all abysmal and way below genre standard in 2012. If you can't look like the competition, maybe you aren't ready for launch? Not to mention all the non-graphics related issues (mirrored abilities between Rep and Imp are grossly imbalanced, ability delay, UI, etc) that just hammers home that we all bought a beta. I'm glad you have blind faith in EAware to fix this. Based on all official communication from EAware, our current optionset is "working as intended", they had no interest in making the graphics not suck until the forum community called EAware out on how bad their game looks, and even then we got a weasel-word promise of "improved fidelity" and that it would be a long-term goal. So, basically, what EAware has said is exactly the opposite of what you said. Were you dreaming your version up, where EAware cares and was committed to giving us real, tangible promises, or do you have heretofore unposted inside intel? A lot of people are doing that -- they're going to stop playing over this and other issues that should not have been anywhere near this game on launch. Some, like me, will check back from time to time to see if the game is worth a price tag. Others may never come back. Initial impression is a huge deal for a MMO, and EAware shot itself in the foot. No, the right time for EAware's suits was a couple days before Christmas. The right time for SWTOR is when combat mechanics work, there isn't ridiculous imbalance between Rep and Imp (I'm not talking perfect-harmony balance, but when both classes have a channeled ability that does X damage over Y seconds and Rep has animation issues that cause the damage to get clipped and and yet Imp works much better, there's a major problem), and the game looks like it's actually worth retail price + a monthly subscription fee. The Blurry Republic is still a beta-state game. You can pretend it isn't if you like, and despite being beta the game can be enjoyable, I won't deny that. But acting like this game is worth the money being asked for it just shows naivete or extraordinary tolerance for grossly unfinished products.

Thanks, I edited my post to give his full name proper credit, and fixed the quote so it was exact.

Well I guess I'll get to see blurry textures with in-game AA for a day or two before my sub goes poof. Someone else mentioned this, poster named Swanheart, but this needs to be in the 1.1 notes:

PC gamers expect more from their games, especially visually. Especially when the content was in beta and it was indicated that the removal was only temporary. Especially when all marketing materials show a quality of visuals that are 100% impossible for the player to attempt to replicate. Especially when every other major competitor in the genre has graphics that beat The Blurry Republic black and blue, and then date its mom. That's cool that it doesn't bother you. Different strokes, different folks. When some of us pay for a shiny-looking Y, we aren't happy when that Y turns out to be grossly inferior to X, W, V, U, and a whole mess of other letters, despite being newer and still costing the same price. Graphics are only the tip of this analogy -- there are numerous posts and threads on other game-hindering issues regarding content, balance (a lot of republic abilities suck compared to their empire counterparts for no obvious reason), and mechanics such as character responsiveness and ability delay. The Blurry Republic is a fun game, it just isn't a good game by many genre standards. This particular thread is about graphics, so that's what you'll find people talking about here.

I guess I don't 'miss' auto attack but I wish the filler was more integral to the rotation, and not 'just' filler. Everyone's filler should have an effect that increases your resource. It works this way for Knight/Warrior, but nobody else. I often find myself making split-second decisions on my shadow to pop my filler when, if I would have waited just a half-second, I could have used a better skill with an extra bit of force. Having obvious pauses in combat doesn't make for very fluid fighting, but locking up a full GCD on a turd ability sometimes screws you over. If the filler actually gave you force/ammo or reduced heat, etc as opposed to "pause to let it recharge" then it would feel slightly more tactical, and more beneficial to use instead of just being "filler".

A couple friends and I have some really low level trooper/smugglers that we play together. They're all body type 3 or 4 dudes. Bulk, Vanderhuge, and Blast. If only we could find a 4th person to be Hardcheese

Saw a Captainmalreynolds, or something very close to that. Was a smuggler. The game hands you the captain title, on a platter, pretty much as soon as your character exists. So he was Captain Captainmalreynolds. He could have been Captain Mal or Captain Reynolds or, if he absolutely had to, Captain Mal-Reynolds. But, no. Captain Captainmalreynolds or bust. Most downright disgusting name I've seen was Bloodknut Theflatulent. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was Captmalrenlds. It was sufficiently butchered to fit in the name size limit.