its the exact opposite for me. but to each their own. in any case - this thread can be safely locked. becasue given that their response was to make selecting advanced class mandatory on character creation? chances of them allowing AC change are, I would say, officially zero.

WoW was never alt friend. it was not as alt unfriendly as Legion, but it was never alt friendly. none of the reputations were account wide. legendaries had to be earned one character at a time. So were attunments back when they existed. people had alts in WoW DESPITE of how alts were treated, not becasue of it. its funny that you say that MoP was alt friendly.... given how rep grind had to be done from scratch on every single character. oh, you mean those buffs to rep gain on alts you could buy? still had to do grind from scratch. still had to earn cloak from scratch. and with WoD - even more so, as the catch up mechanic for legendary ring was very minor for alts specifically. garrizons were character specific. the only things that are genuinely account wide in WoW are mounts and pets. well.. they made flying account wide, but it takes a crapton of effort to earn and is not even available for Legion yet. WoW. was NEVER alt friendly. there's like one achievement that requires.. 2 alts I think? and its just fluff. you were always encouraged to pick a main and stick to them. meanwhile swtor has mechanics in place to encourage you to roll alts. the whole legacy system is based on it. so this expansion is... just sad. SWTOR is NOT WoW. that its trying to be WoW is just... insane. but its not just tyring to be WoW. it tries to be grindier and randomer, while simultaneous providing fraction of a fraction of new content that Legion brought its alt friendlier grind though, at least post one Tamriel. that doesn't feel as much like a grind, since everything genuinely does level Champion system nowadays - account wide system. in Legion (latest expac) artifact weapon IS the only weapon upgrade you can have at max level. however - all other gear STILL drops off content, and unlike CXP - artifact leveling involves zero RNG. merely lots and lots of effort. but as long as you make an effort, you will get all the upgrades you want for it. and incidentaly the whole artifact weapon thing was and IS still controversial topic for WoW . but basically I agree with you, just correcting your assumption about artifact weapon.

I apologize for misunderstanding. from experience, wait and see is something that people here who got lucky adopt becasue hey, it worked out ok for them, so maybe its not so bad. maybe the system is fine and we should just get over it and give it a chance. its bad. its really that bad. in any case, as others have said - putting in the effort is not a problem . requiring insane amounts of effort for random results - is. if I'm going to invest 200 hours into something (which is a very optimistic estimate of how long it would take to reach rank 3 of GC by using most efficient methods available, personal content preferences be damned), my alts had better benefit from it and I better have at least some guarantee that I will get results out of it instead of... more useless greens, etc in fact. CG needs to be legacywide. (thus benefiting alts) and rng MUST be mitigated. I would rather they did away with it completely, but at a minimum, there needs to be mechanic in place where you 1. are guaranteed NOT to get duplicate pieces, especially of set gear 2. each time you do not get a piece, you get a boost to your chance of getting it until if necessary it reaches 100% before resetting. 3. CXP acquisition has GOT to be faster across the board. if they are going to claim that the system was created so that people could play what the want and still get upgrades? then you shouldn't be funneled into specific activities becasue everything else takes hours upon hours just to gain a single level.

no idea. I bought one unlock with credits, just for the hell of it, becasue I could afford it, etc and basically regretted it immediately. that cc unlock cost is insane and kinda shows just how out of touch bioware is when it comes to in game economy

they used to be good. they haven't been good since.. SoR, I think its when the service started going downhill. becasue I remember being pretty happy with customer service around launc hand even during Makeb expac, but lately it was just... awful, whether you talk phone support, or in game tickets. sad :/

oh yeah, the one over which they left the game for, for a time and the irony here is... actual bugs go unfixed for ages. my marka rag-nos robes STILL randomly fly up and twitch in cutscenes, there is something very odd going on with belt flab of balanced combatant as well, regal apparel miniskirt switches between having no leggins like its supposed to and then suddenly acquiring them in cutscenes and been doing that for at least a year now, and that's just the sets I saw in action personaly recently. you'd think that given the reaction to changes in preceptor gear (to fix the bugs) and having to essentially split it into 2 different sets (classic and regular) would teach them not to mess with set looks. but nope. leave actual bugs in game - fix what no one wanted "fixed" in a first place. it doesn't matter if you paid 120 or 240 unlock cost, it doesn't matter if you bought cartel coins to get packs or someone else. real money was exchanged.

aka - I got mine, to hell with anyone else. you got lucky. you are in a minority. me, i haven't gotten a single useful schematic (I don't consider schematics for non moddable 230 armor to be useful, personaly, and even though I got doubles off), mostly just orange shells and greens, few gifts. and I was lucky enough to get an offhand and a single tier piece. but there are far too many people out there, who haven't even gotten that much. and the clincher is - the "do what content you want" is a crock of bull unless you don't care about leveling GC. because the disparity between different types of content is enormous.

same. when they put out that announcement trailer - the original one "no one... touch.. anything..." I was so excited. I must have watched that video at least a dozen times, probably more. and then the game itself came out and I don't know... also there was a falloutlike mmo out there, Fallen Earth. tried it. meh. there's also this ? http://www.fonline-reloaded.net/ no idea if its any good, I just found it on google.

not everyone has the old bonus. and they can no longer get it either! but hey, lets keep defending a system where after that much grinding and this was a LOT of dedicated grinding to get to this GC level... you still have not been able to genuinely upgrade your gear.

open area = competition, respawn and kill time not nearly as fast as resetting trash in an op where they actualy give more xp then 20 (forgot exactly how much, but I distinctly remember champs give 30xp per in a tactical flashpoint, so it would be even more in an operation) even prior to the nerf of gold mobs - people didn't farm them in open areas, they farmed them in instanced heroics, just didn't complete the quest itself, zoned out, reset, zoned back in.

why. WHY do you think they nerfed gold mobs to give 1 xp over 10 xp they originally used to? becasue heroic mob farming is EXACTLY what people did.

oh. wildstar! I can't beleive I forgot Wildstar as sc-fi mmo suggestions go probably cause I uninstalled it over a month ago, pretty much done with it. has damn good housing system if you are willing to invest a lot of time and money into getting anything beyond basic decorations.

living in a different state. still renting. dreaming of trying a few things, but not financially/space-wise able yet (thought certainly on the way) vs now moved, bought a house (been saving for down-payment all this time), finally doing those things I wanted to do for years, but couldn't more so due to lack of space then anything, but financials have certainly gotten better since then as well.

1. the difference in time spent - adds up. 2. not nearly as fast as trash farm. people are choosing to grind because of how bioware set this system up. so yeah, we are complaining. because choosing not to grind, puts you at a disadvantage. and honestly.. finishing a flashpoint that takes a while becasue this is what you enjoy doing - flashpoints sometimes with other people, so you run it with a bunch of people, it takes a bit of time because of how mobs are scaled vs solo version and at the end... you bar moves up maybe a third... and this is early into rank ONE crates. and maybe just maybe you want to eventually run harder ops, but your group is about average so you NEED the help of gear, except gearing doing things you like - takes forever.. and... so you start making compromises and then you sit back and think. what the hell am I doing? this is NOT fun. but THAT is the game BIOWARE has left us with. and those things don't even work all that well, because they don't work on 1 (or 2) xp mobs, they don't work on disintegration... they do work on champion mobs though, so they litteraly push you even stronger towards stuff like KP trash grinds, because especially at their cartel coin price - its the most efficient use of them. best bang for your buck if you will

3 hour vs 15 minute to half an hour tops to 70. which one is shorter. the only CXP acquisition through that interface that compares to KP trash farm? is pvp. provided you are on a server where it pops constantly. everything else is far FAR slower. rng is a problem. unequal acquisition of CXP is also a problem compounded by the fact that even with fastest methods it can still feel excruciatingly slow, thanks to RNG. which is why people feel compelled to speed it up by any means possible.

that could work. they would still need to figure out advance classes that would fit into story archetypes, but it could work.

it takes something like half an hour to level from 65 to 70 on Bestia's trash (not an exaggeration and judging by posts above me even less then half an hour - I haven't done Bestia faring since before Kotet and then only on a single character I wanted to do ops with with another guild. it didn't pan out, but I digress). far FAR faster than leveling the regular way, which means leveling via Bestia gets people to 70 and CXP faster. moreover some people would like to get back to progressing through content they were progressing through at lvl 65 but didn't have a chance to finish - faster after being set back to essentially zero. last but not least, do NOT dismiss the fleet chat, its often very much representative of state of the game as a whole. that and when I see my guildies suggesting and and think.. this is what we have come to. from wanting to progress through harder boss fights, to grinding trash, because its the only thing that will get us to attempting those bosses again - faster. are people chasing that gear carrot? yes. because that's what bioware set them on a path to. becasue this is what this game as come down to. do NOT blame the players for merely using the system that bioware pushed on us

maybe becasue I'm playing casually and don't really pvp? but I literally don't feel compelled to force champion point gain, especially above 160. yes, those passives are pretty great, but nothing I've done so far, and that includes trials made it impossible for me to play at lower champ levels. I also found that most things just level on their own while I'm playing normally. the only time I did anything that could be considered grinding was during the halloween event when I was trying to collect all the hollowjack rewards. maybe its the difference between PC and xbox communities.. I don't know. I play on PC. though.. 2 out of 3 of my guilds and the ones I actualy found on my own, was through official forums https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/categories/en-pc-mac-na (there is an xbox version as well, seems to be pretty active from a glance) third one is a trading guild that I got random whisper to join and figured, oh what the heck. have yet to regret it so far. ESO does require a lot of patience and time investment. the difference that I'm seeing between ESO today and SWTOR today is that I feel far more rewarded for just about anything I do in ESO, while in SWTOR I feel discouraged because my progress right now is actualy far FAR slower than it is in ESO.

hey, to each their own. tastes will be tastes but honestly and part of it is probably my age, but also just overall preferences, i find Nolan North or Timothy Omundson without the beard (Aric Jorgen) or Mark Bazeley (sith warrior) far more attractive than Troy. Troy is just really not my type in most ways. its not that he's unattractive, its just .. I don't find him all that hot? is all. /hides from flying tomoatoes

they actualy don't need to? they can just keep adding new story, new group content, etc. rewards don't need to be more powerful, therein lies power creep. ask Blizzard with WoW, who both keeps adding new classes AND new levels and so far had to do stat squish.. I believe twice? becasue power creep has gotten ridiculous. meanwhile GW2 and ESO haven't raised level cap in.. ever. they did add new systems to work towards (mastery and Champion respectively), but at the same time level cap stays the same. and its nice. for a game that's supposed to be so story driven as SWTOR is... not adding anymore to level cap can actualy be beneficial. among other things - it will free up more resources for better story and other content, since they don't have to keep coming up with new ranks of things, reshuffling abilities etc. that said... that leads me to the problem with introducing new class to SWTOR in a first place. unlike just about every other MMO out there? SWTOR classes are tied to specific stories and specific companions. so they would need to figure out how to integrate new class into existing world story (which is a LOT of work). of course given current new push to singular story, they could just go with that but then... when do they start the story for new class. at Kotfe? in that case why the heck would Marr contact this unknown person who is going to be at the ship, why would Lana be interested in rescuing them, what have they done to justify this much confidence in them? seeing the issue yet? that said. this game will stay around for a few years, whether there is a 6.0 or not. why? becasue Star wars license is expensive, so they are going to milk it to the last drop, and it doesn't expire for a few years yet.

I'm talking about redesigned champion system that replaced the veteran ranks more recently (or was it that they rolled vet ranks into champion system? well basicaly while veteran system still existed). I started playing again before that happened and when you could still try to bump up your veteran ranks to get a strong added jump on current champion points... which I didn't do, but don't really regret it. and personaly I enjoy the combat, with all the moving around and dodging, to the point where I keep trying to roll dodge in swtor out of bad... with disastrous results its something that first bothered me as well, but to be honest, I only really wanted early mats for crafting gear for alts and the way they changed the gear drops/quest rewards - I wouldn't really need to, and by the time they get to 50, I'll just make them champion gear since that particular system is accountwide. and plus, because I'm obsessed with crafting writs, I keep getting boxes of old mats as rewards anyways, so I'm thinking that it may be time to start selling. what I do like is that before I had hard time with crafting writes due to it being more challenging to find mats of my current highest level of crafting. now? I just grab them as I go. so.. yeah, this is why new system works so much better for me personaly than old one I'm not sure if they are still selling those? no idea. right now I'm gaining champ ranks doing literally anything. and I do mean it literally. a far as I know its supposed to slow down a bit once I hit 160 - which is the high point of best gear (which if I would stop messing around I would hit in less then a week, I'm just having too much fun messing around), but those early points go ridiculously fast. we are talking I gain like 2/3 of a bar just by turning in 6 crafting writs.

did I miss voice actor fawning? cause I have a voice actor problem (though and this is totally a personal preference, but.. I don't think Troy Baker is THAT hot, he's.. ok I guess. Travis Willingham on the other hand... very nice looking man, Laura Bailey is a lucky woman ) aaaaanyways. at least as grindy as artifact leveling is (and its one of the main reasons I STILL don't own legion), its still better by far than CG, because its not rng based whether you get to level your weapon or not. its put in the time - and you know EXACTLY what you are getting out of it.. unlike boxes where you can get that upgrade you need in one hour.. or one month.. or never.

honestly? I'm not sure how to asnwer that? there are differences in set up, but as someone whose biggest issue with Skyrim was potato looking people (without mods) /shrug. I.. think storytelling as a bit more cohesive in ESO. but its very much a personal opinion. and I gotcha. I haven't pre-ordered Andromeda yet, but I'm reasonably sure I will. mostly waiting to see if greenmangaming might get it in for pre-orders and offer 20% off like they do sometimes. otherwise, I'll just grab it off origin few days before release (kinda prefer digital actualy, and its not like they are going to run out of digital copies on origin)

well buy to play, since you still need to buy the game, you just don't need to subscribe. and well if its the story specifically (I mean I enjoyed the side quests and stuff with Skyrim as well) but basically ESO does have a LOT of story that guides you along if you so wish (I haven't finished Altmeri dominion story yet, but its quite fascinating to me just very expansive and I keep getting distracted by shinies, but I also enjoyed the little vignettes you find along the way - think those smallish side quests you get down on planets). it just also gives you an option to just go of and do whatever and its a perfectly viable way to play unfortunately you JUST missed the free weekend, but you can find the base game pretty cheaply. green man has it for $23, someone here I think bought it for half that? found a new copy on amazon for 18.50. there are options if you wish to pursue them. while your character is silent, npc's are all voiced and at least partly animated.

like reply above mine said? you start with a lot of disadvantages if you start with a token. you are far FAR better off if you level from lvl 1. you get to make all your own choices, get acess to titles etc. lvl 65 token is mainly for people who want to have a character at max level quicker. the one thing your lvl 65 token character gets is close to maxed (or maxed possibly, not sure) crew skills. which ones you get is predetermined by class - you don't get to pick, and you still need to buy ALL of the schematics. so... starting with no credits is not awesome. (gear you start with has semi unique looks, but its just about on par with regular quest rewards in terms of stats)