I'm positive they appreciate your support. I'd personally think that maybe a good sandwich might beat that. Oh, you were being sarcastic? Okay. If PvP is your focus, this may not be the game for you. Or consider moving to another realm. You can choose to go to another server at your leisure. You can look at server status and figure out which one(s) meet your needs in terms of population. Not quite, but a reasonable effort. You aren't stupid for complaining. But you have the ability to effect a solution on your own; why should BioWare make efforts to change things they don't control (player population) when you can solve the issue yourself with a server transfer? If you're not going to be subscribed, it isn't much of an issue, is it? The game is perfectly enjoyable even in Preferred status.

When accounting for disparities of the nature you're discussing, it's important to remember cultural differences play a hand in things. If Lineage is doing that well after 18 years, there's a solid rationale to be accessed that points towards simple brand loyalty & comfort. World of Warcraft remains subscriber-only after 12 years (it'll turn 12 in November of this year). It is, to date, the ONLY American MMO that's still thriving on a huge level, and remains solely subscription-based. I'm not positive it can keep that up for more than another 2-3 years (tops), but for now, it is. In general, MMOs seem to be a niche product in computer gaming right now. People want SOME sense of community and multiplayer, but an MMO by its nature is a timesink as well as a money sink (particularly if they use microtransactions to shore up subscription numbers). MMOs take a LONG time to die in almost every case (there have been one or two in the past few years which died quick deaths). They often go into solely "maintenance mode" for a year or two before they die, during which no new content is being created for the game, but there's still enough revenue coming in to justify keeping the servers running. Only when there's at least a fiscal quarter's worth of active financial loss will a game studio start thinking about scuttling a game. Right now The Old Republic is the only Star Wars MMO happening. Brand loyalty to not only Star Wars but to BioWare is keeping it afloat. BioWare is known for story-based RPGs, and their metrics have apparently shown them that players in SWTOR are engaging with the story content more than endgame raiding or PvP, which is why all our new content is now about story. THAT'S what people are telling BioWare they'll stick around for, and they're telling BioWare that by logging into the game and engaging with it. If a new Star Wars subscription-only MMO comes along, particularly one that lets players engage with the new consolidated timeline (SWTOR is based off the "Extended Universe", which is no longer canonical since Disney purchased LucasFilm; all of that EU content got shuffled over into an "alternate timeline" set called "Star Wars Legends"), there's a good chance that TOR will finally die out. I haven't heard of anyone working on developing such an MMO, and the fact that BioWare continues to support this game (and develop new content for it) is an indication that their overlords at Electronic Arts aren't seeing the game as a loss: it's still generating revenue, whether from subscriptions (to get the new content) or from Cartel Coin purchases. I think fans are often convinced that the existence of a new MMO automatically means the "death" of whatever MMO(s) were present at the time. The market has repeatedly shown there's room for more than one thriving MMO in the AAA class. SWTOR doesn't seem likely to go anywhere any time soon.

1st - The developers haven't "gone out of their way to force everyone to PvP." It's there if you want to do it, there are rewards if you do it, but you literally aren't missing anything of comparable value if you don't PvP. I don't do it. For one, I suck at PvP. Secondly, I don't enjoy that playstyle. 2nd - PvP realms on MMOs that are glaringly weighted towards PvE content are often smaller in population. World of Warcraft is the best example of this: even at its peak, there were perhaps one or two total PvP realms whose populations compared to the highest-pop PvE realms, and this is on a game whose whole story predication is built on faction warfare! The Old Republic, much like WoW, is obviously a PvE-focused game. 3rd - Many people in MMOs aren't new to the genre. Some of us are quite experienced, in fact, and we recall the days when there weren't dedicated servers for one or the other playstyle. I recall, with more than a little frustration, the days of Ultima Online, where PKers (player killers) were a source of frustration when all I really wanted to do was go out, gather some resources, make some stuff, and sell it. I wasn't interested in fighting other players. That choice, however, wasn't given to me. If I went out in the world, other players could decide that what they wanted for THEIR play experience trumped what I wanted for mine. It's one reason I left UO so early. It's another reason why EverQuest and World of Warcraft did so well: you could enjoy the game without PKing being an issue unless you specifically chose that playstyle by enabling PvP (in EQ) or choosing a PvP realm in WoW (or flagging yourself on a PvE realm by using the /pvp command). Consequently, open-world PvP has left a bad taste in many experienced players' mouths, which results in lower populations on realms where PvP isn't a choice, but the nature of logging in. It would be one thing if, even on a PvP realm, players could see that at a given moment, a player just might not be interested in fighting, but they don't. They see someone who CAN be a target, and decide that they're always a target. So to remove that undesirable element, more people just choose to roll on a PvE realm. Finally - SW:TOR is a story-focused game, which on its own tends to preclude PvP. Republic vs. Empire is a nice conceit, but isn't properly baked into the actual play of the game. It's a story backdrop. For most players of this game, that conflict is only realized when you're coming up against mobs that stand between you and a quest objective, or are on your way to a boss to advance a given class story. I don't see an Empire player as "Someone my Jedi has to take down for the good of the Republic." I do, however, see Darth Malgus or one of his underlings as someone I need to take down for the good of the Jedi Order & the Republic. The faction conflict is baked into the story, but since it's entirely optional in the story-agnostic arena of just playing the game installed on my hard drive, interactions with players who have chosen the "other side" don't feel that way. There are some reasons why the PvP populations seem (and are) lower than the PvE ones.

It's when I hear things like this that I think something moves from "valid complaint whether I agree with it or not" to "this is just pointless grousing". It's fine if you want "shorter story missions". Keep in mind 2 things: 1) This is a BioWare game, i.e., a game from a studio whose games are renowned for their story. 2) The focus of SWTOR has always been on story. Raids, etc. were put in at release to have content, and to attract players who were used to raids from WoW and other MMOs. I don't know if you're aware, but every time we log into the game, BioWare is gathering a whole lot of metrics on what we're doing: what classes we're playing, what faction we're in, whether we're in a guild, how fast we're going through content, whether we're using XP boosts, whether we're F2P, Preferred or Subscriber, what we're doing on a given world ("Is this player running content?" "Is this player just standing around using the chat client?" "Is this player going into PvP?"), how much we use our personal ship, how much we use our Stronghold, whether we spend more time in the guild's ship, on and on and on. Those metrics help direct where BioWare puts its limited development resources ("limited" because developers are human beings, who only have so many productive hours in a day, and can only do so much at once). They optimize those resources. They look at what the players who are here are doing, they find statistical trends, and from those trends they make conclusions about what kind of content is going to reach the most people. There's an inference you can draw from this: the kind of new content we're getting is what their metrics are indicating the largest number of regularly active players will engage with, what those players "want". That we're getting a very story-focused set of new content right now with Knights of the Fallen Empire is an indication that the story content was what the largest number of players previously engaged with. That it's coming in monthly installments is a matter of resource management: it's easier to put out small chunks and let players have dribbles of new content than make them wait a LONG time for fully voiced-over, cut-scened full expansions, which BioWare probably doesn't have the resources to do. The raiders may have left, as a player on another thread insists, because of a lack of new raid content, but BioWare is realizing (apparently) that the players left want story, so they're doing what they can to keep those players engaged. It dosen't mean they don't want to (or won't) do new raids for the game: I'm sure that content will come sooner or later. Right now, we're getting story content. If you're unhappy with the population of the game, it could be you're just on the wrong server. Me? I log in and find, on average, around 30 or so people on from my guild until well after prime time. I go to Coruscant and there are around 100 people showing in that region of the game. I'm going through the Jedi Knight storyline right now (just came back to the game last weekend), and it isn't surprising to me that most of the story worlds are low population. It's honestly kind of a breath of fresh air, because it means I'm not competing for quest objectives (which was an issue when the game launched; don't get me started on how many rak-ghouls it took me to finally get enough blood for one quest's objective...). I'm not focused on group content. I'm functionally treating this as "Knights of the Old Republic 3", and it just happens to have some social components, kinda like the chat client in Diablo 3. That's a rough estimation, because there are some MMO features that I like, but I played World of Warcraft for 10 years. I started seriously raiding in Wrath of the Lich King, and had done semi-serious raiding prior to that. Not too long after I hit the new level cap in Warlords of Draenor, what made me not renew my subscription at the time wasn't a problem with how the game was being developed, it was just exhaustion from preparing to enter yet another cycle of "Do Heroics to get blues, do raids to get Epics, wait for a new tier of raids to come out, replace existing Epics with new Epics", when the reality is what I cared most about was the story, and I could find synopses of the story online, and find datamined cut scenes when necessary. Some powerful gear that looked cool was neat, but it just wasn't enough to keep me giving Blizzard $15 a month anymore. I'll be trying out Legion when it launches, but I don't know how much I'll be doing in the game after I reach the new cap on a Demon Hunter; I just don't know if I have it in me to commit to that endless cycle of gear/re-gear/rinse/repeat again. So a story focus like we have in SWTOR is excellent for players like me. I have the good fortunate to be in that demographic of players that (at least for now) BioWare is catering to with this game. If you're not happy with that development direction, that's cool, and entirely valid. Not every game is for every player. I don't like excessive grind and PvP, so I don't play Aion. I don't like playing with spreadsheets as entertainment, so I don't play EVE Online. I like comical sci-fi and exploration, so I play WildStar. I don't like the micromanagement and in-game currency sink of player housing, so I don't worry much about my stronghold in SWTOR, and am going to buy one solely to get the quest out of my log. Do what you find fun, and if the game you WANT to play is no longer doing things you find fun, shoot the devs a note on a feedback form, and uninstall the game. That's the best way you can make your feelings known. Griping that it's "dying" because you're on a low-population server and aren't getting the kind of content you want doesn't serve a purpose.

Sometimes it's good to compare games to other games in a similar genre (MMOs in this case), sometimes it isn't. In this case, it isn't. SWTOR was a "viable competitor" for World of Warcraft in the subscription-only market for under a year. Part of this was the weird power WoW has to just perpetually draw people back in for no discernible reason, even when no radical alterations to WoW's core gameplay have occurred (the last major, game-changing feature they implemented in WoW was the Raid Finder difficulty at the end of Cataclysm). Many people don't want to pay for more than one subscription game a month. The other part was a relatively shallow endgame, not because WoW's is "better", just because there's more of it. No MMO will ever catch up to the sheer amount of raids WoW has, and it'll be impressive if a design studio can come close to challenging the lead in experience Blizzard has in MMO design. WoW is 12 years old now. That it can STILL remain subscription-only without Blizzard Entertainment's overlords at Activision-Blizzard telling them they have to go F2P is an accomplishment all on its own. This game could not survive solely on micro-transactions from the Cartel Market. I don't know if those would even cover the cost of server maintenance, much less development of new content on a monthly basis (something even WoW hasn't managed). It's blazing a new path in maintaining a fully playable F2P game with enough incentives to make some want to subscribe, whether that's expansion content, the extra levels, or just frustration with the quality-of-life that comes with being a Free to Play customer (and it's frustrating; I was Preferred when I returned this past weekend due to having been an initial subscriber at release, and I immediately set about spending accumulated Cartel Coins on more inventory, a mount other than the STAP I had, and a couple other things). The days of sub-only MMOs are on the way out. It's increasingly just not a long-term profitable model since games like SWTOR are showing you can have AAA quality without ongoing subscription fees, instead supplementing in-game currency you gain by just playing for free, or by using only occasional expenditures. This is one of many reasons why this game is likely to continue for a few years yet. When it invariably DOES shut down, well... nothing lasts forever, and Disney won't miss out on revenue from a Star Wars game: we'll have another if SWTOR ever shuts down.

The problem is your assertion that letting it remain where it's at now will "let it die". The way you word your proposition, it requires someone to accept your premise (that it'll die as it is) before they can address your argument. Homey don't play dat. By scaling the content, it remains relevant for a population that's largely at the level cap and eagerly devouring each new bit of content that Knights of the Fallen Empire gives them. They want new content, and story content at that. To have things to do that aren't faceroll, they're able to continue with existing content that's adjusted to their level. This is not a bad thing. It keeps the existing people around. You seem to believe it's what's driven people off, when the actual reasons are likely as varied as players are themselves. You make a lot of suppositions and emphatic statements in your posts, but what you're really coming down to is this: "Let us faceroll earlier content to get stuff we want from it, and give us new raid content at the level cap." That's not a bad idea... except the player base doesn't seem oriented along those lines right now (or it wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude that BioWare would be creating new content of that kind; they're creating the kind of content their metrics are showing them the majority of players want), and since development resources are limited, they have to choose where those resources can have the greatest impact, and right now it isn't on level capped raiding. So they enter a middle ground where the existing endgame raids scale up. The folks who want harder content get it. The ones who don't get Story Mode. Far more people win than with what you propose based on the current apparent focus of the players.

I have a suspicion that has a lot more to do with the gems I have in my lightsabers than anything else. I may try to get my hands on a couple of similar sabers with default gems and see what mobs on OM are like. I hadn't initially planned on putting in powerful gems; I wanted a different color for my sabers (which were both yellow/gold), and a very generous offer from a guildmate was made, but there were some high stats which came with them. I didn't have the 100k+ it takes to buy color gems on my realm's GTN (I was honestly STAGGERED at what things cost on my GTN).

So I just recently returned to the game. I didn't realize things were so streamlined that you were functionally expected to JUST do the class story and no side missions. I was 13th level by the time I left Tython. I was 18th level by the time I got to Ord Mantell, and noticed I was leveled back down to 12th. Admitting I'm carrying around a couple of powerful color gems in my sabers, which add to most things dying in 1 to 2 hits, it still 'feels" almost too easy. When I was level- and gear-appropriate during the Prologue, I had to use most of my abilities. Now a quick double-saber whack to generate some Focus, take out packs of mobs, and dash on (if I don't mount up). There's something to be said for the ability to toggle this feature off. It would let people who want to dash through the game do so, and let others who want a level-appropriate experience also have that. I can't see any real harm in making this a toggle-able option, save the possible amount of work it may take devs to implement a feature like that.

Acknowledging that different people want different things from a game, I just look at it this way: I log in after I get home from work. There are usually between 20-30 people from my guild online. Coruscant has nearly 100 people present, as low as 40 at about 11:00pm last night. While it isn't "hundreds", I think it's just enough people to feel like there are things happening on the realm (I'm on Begeren Colony). While I understand that for some people, an MMO is "all about the endgame", The Old Republic is ultimately a story-action game. BioWare tracks tons of metrics through the game client, and those metrics are obviously (to me, at least) telling them that the content people are most consistently engaging with is story content, which is why Knights of the Fallen Empire is so focused on story instead of new raid content. This isn't particularly surprising to me, to be honest. Since World of Warcraft launched in late 2004 and introduced the wide world (and not just dedicated "gamers") to group-oriented endgame content (which isn't to say it wasn't around beforehand, because it was), there's been a constant balancing act between difficulty, accessibility, and managing the inevitable heartache and griefing (intentional or otherwise) that comes with introducing virtual strangers to the same space where they have to work together to accomplish something. Then when new tiers of content are introduced, all that previous work is largely for naught; the gear all gets replaced. It's a continuous hamster wheel. I've been out of WoW since before the first major content patch for Warlords of Draenor hit, and the only reason I'm thinking about coming back when Legion launches is I'm really curious about the Demon Hunter. I'll play it, I'll go through the leveling content, and if there isn't enough there to keep me interested in SPITE of the raid content (which I already know is going to be yet another revolving door of learn the raid/farm the raid/get a new raid), then my sub won't last there (though I'm sure that if nothing else changes to keep me there longer, Blizzard will be happy to get another $15 a month from me for 2-3 months). As far as TOR being "dead", it isn't. MMOs, in reality, take a LONG time to die (the only notable exceptions in recent history were EverQuest 2 and Matrix Online; hell, I think the original EverQuest is still going, and somehow Rift is still going). An MMO is not "dead" until the servers are shut down, and EA will keep funding these servers as long as doing so doesn't result in consistent quarterly revenue loss. And that quarterly thing is meaningful: it means that we're going to get at least three months' notice before the game shuts down (if it ever does). Star Wars Galaxies went for an awfully long time despite not being a very good game. EVE Online continues to go. Despite losing over half its subscriber base in a relatively short span of time, WoW continues and remains subscription-only (though I personally predict that'll change in the next year or two). Since we're in a new cycle of movies and licensed content, The Old Republic (despite not even being canonical anymore!) isn't going anywhere any time soon.

It's possible that some in this thread may have a difficult time understanding what you're actually asking for, because the way you write is difficult to parse. I'm assuming English isn't your first language? I still don't know what you're asking for. You... want old content rehashed for level 65 difficulty so people can experience how difficult it was back when 50 was the level cap, and you want it to drop items commensurate with end-game difficulty? Is that what you're asking for? Help us out here, man.

Are you running on a RAIDed multi-drive setup? For some reason after I initially reinstalled the game this past weekend, Windows just stopped recognizing my other drive. Consequently, I had an icon on my desktop for SWTOR, but the shortcut didn't lead anywhere as far as Windows was concerned. I had to do a full shut down/restart (instead of just choosing "Restart" from the Start menu), and everything was up and running again.

We're getting new content. It just doesn't appear it's new content that you want. That's fine. Not everything is for everyone. New PvP content would be wasted on me, for example. If "raiders left", they left. There still seem to be enough players engaging in raids from what I've noticed. Maybe it's a problem with your realm? Or maybe we're talking about two different things. I already mentioned that if there were more players asking for/involved with raiding to begin with instead of those clamoring for more story-based content, that's where BioWare would be putting their efforts, because it would keep players around, both to subscribe and to spend money in the Cartel Market. That the content they're putting out focuses more on story than on raids should tell you something, not about BioWare's concern for the game and its health, but about where the players are showing through their play metrics where they want to spend their time in the game. Was that in question? I don't recall challenging the amount of raid content that exists or existed in the past. No one said "they" don't like story (and who do you mean by "they"?). But the fact that our new content is based on story instead of providing a new set of endgame raids should tell you that with limited resources, more of those resources are being put on story-based content than endgame raiding because that's where BioWare's metrics are showing the players want to be. The game seems to be doing about as well as a F2P game can be. WildStar would kill for the numbers this game is pulling in. We're getting new content, on a monthly basis. Why do you care how other players get their gear? What is it you want here? Do you want to be able to go into older content with 1 or 2 people and just clear it the way the unscaled older content in WoW acts? Or do you want things to be very hard so people have to form a full raid to get their gear? I'm not sure you know what you're asking for or arguing about at this point.

Creating any new content takes time, and whether people believe otherwise or not, development resources are limited. BioWare is tracking EVERYTHING we do in the game client (just like any other company running an MMO). They have meetings whose whole purpose is to analyze metrics from that input, whether large-scale trends or granular per-player behaviors. With limited development resources, it's just solid business to put those resources where they can do the most good, i.e., where the most players are going to benefit. Which subsection of those players get that content is decided by their analytics showing what most of their active players are doing. If the bulk of the player base were involved in endgame raids, that's where the dev focus would be. Story content would take a hit in focus. But this is a BioWare game. When SWTOR launched, one of the selling points was the creation of "story" as one of the pillars of the game, something they considered lacking from the MMOs that came before. BioWare's games are famous for involved story. Knights of the Fallen Empire's tagline is "Continuous Storyline. Choices that matter.". This is a story-focused expansion, because that's what BioWare's analytics are telling them the players want. Development takes time. New Flashpoints & Ops are likely in the offing. BioWare likely isn't saying anything because there isn't anything to say yet. KOTFE isn't done yet. That's their development focus right now. Raiders, by their nature, can be a tough group to satisfy. They want content they can work a long time to master, but not that's around so long that there aren't new challenges. That's been the challenge WoW has faced for years now. No one wanted a repeat of the Deathwing fight being the only content for over a year, until that's what we got again with Siege of Orgrimmar. This game has endgame raiding, but the focus is story. The rest is going to have to come when they can get around to it.

I'm not certain at this point that we're ever likely to see a cash-to-game-currency sub model like WoW uses. As was earlier noted in this thread, TOR has gone full F2P. The Cartel Market is for granular unlocking of desired features (in case someone doesn't want to unlock them all by subbing) and for cosmetic enhancements. Moving to the WoW Token system just doesn't make much sense. World of Warcraft remains a subscription-only game, and likely will for at least the next couple of years (minimum). If BioWare can take one solace from the "MMO Wars" of the early 2000s, it's this: they were the one game that came closest to "competing" with WoW. Playing in an MMO based on a licensed property is an exercise in conceit. I'm playing a Jedi Sentinel to immerse myself in the conceit of being a Jedi Knight who wrecks things with lightsabers. History has amply demonstrated that people love the Star Wars universe (even if what we're doing in TOR is no longer canon, since the entire Expanded Universe got shuffled off into an alternate timeline called "Legends" once Disney bought LucasFilm), and they welcome opportunities to play in that sandbox. So long as the conceit can be maintained, whether you want to be a Jedi, Sith, bounty hunter or smuggler (or trooper, if that's your thing), TOR will continue. They were smart in realizing that the true selling point of BioWare games is, and always has been, story. That's why Knights of the Fallen Empire has such a major focus on story. If they can keep the story engaging, people will keep subbing to finish out that story. If they follow it up with more story, people will stay. Once full development of new story content stops, they're going to see people departing. I'm hedging my bets by purchasing the 2-month sub, which doesn't start a recurring charge on my card. If, 60 days down the line, I decide I just don't want to play anymore, I don't have to log into the game and remove my card or shut down my sub, it just automatically transitions me to Preferred status. I'll keep paying as long as the game remains engaging for me. So will many others.

This isn't a "casuals vs. hardcore" argument. Those forums are over on the Azeroth site. I still feel like, at least the way you're expressing your view, you're having a difficult time understanding that there are people who approach the game differently, and with different objectives, than you do. It's fine that you have a way you prefer to play, and want to keep doing so, but believe it or not, there are players who ARE interested in seeing old content, just because it was never there. I hate to use it as an example, but World of Warcraft is just such a game. I never ran Black Temple in Burning Crusade because I wasn't part of a raiding guild at that time. I in fact didn't run Black Temple until well into the days of the Cataclysm expansion, long after level 70 content was trivial (to say the least). They didn't need to nerf it so only a couple of us could run it; point of fact, we COULD have run it if we wanted by just waiting til we were at the new level cap and sporting gear from content meant to prep us for then-current raids. Instead, we took level 70 alts and ran Black Temple. We didn't consult strategy guides, we asked players already familiar with the content to let us figure it out (unless we just couldn't, and a couple of times we couldn't). We wiped many times. But eventually Illidan went down. There are players who get a sense of value and fun out of running old content because it's there, not because it's the only place to get the most powerful gear. I encourage you to acknowledge those players' experiences as valid as your own instead of tolling the bell of how "outdated" raids/ops may be as a game mechanic.

I get the impression you may be having difficulty understanding that there are players who don't approach the game in the way you do. There are players who are "competitively" minded who always have to have the latest gear, the most powerful gear, because that's what provides satisfaction for them and a justification for the time (and possibly money, if they're a subscriber) they put into the game. That's perfectly fine. I think you might be one of those players. There are others who want not only the story, but the social experience as well. There's content out there they haven't done yet, and it doesn't matter to them that it isn't "cutting edge". I've been playing MMOs since 1996, when I first loaded up Meridian 59. I've NEVER been someone who did "progression" content. I didn't care if someone else got there first, I only cared that I'd get there "sooner or later". My goals in the game are obviously different from yours. That's as equally valid as your pursuit of the game.

Or they'll hook up with an awesome guild who's excited to have someone legitimately new to the game, who will then run them through the original stuff and give them all the time they need to enjoy the story, and improve their experience overall, netting the guild a loyal member who's excited to go do new content with them and will try their best because of the initial investment the guild made in them. Also, the "everyone else is doing it" line doesn't hold true very well. Don't underestimate the individualistic nature of many gamers.

In general, any part of an MMO that requires a particular party makeup is going to have problems if some roles aren't as plentiful as others. You either wind up going the route of lower-difficulty cross-realm group finders, or you consider stepping away from the "holy trinity" of MMOs (Tank/Healer/Damage Dealer). SWTOR was built on that trinity because they'd have been foolish at the time of implementation (when WoW was still around 12 million subscribers) to not take what they thought was working from WoW, and try to fix what wasn't. They did. WoW lacked cohesive, involving story. They gave us that. It lacked (at the time) AOE looting. They gave us that. It lacked last names. They gave us that. It lacked personal space/"player housing", which we got in the form of our own ships. It lacked voiced-over questgivers. We got that in SPADES. The first semi-successful MMO to really "get it right" by stepping outside the "holy trinity" was Wildstar. I'm still honestly not sure why the game didn't do better than it did: it's fun, good mix of storytelling and humor, its combat is active and involved (get out of that red or you're going to get hurt), and it's a graphically fun game to look at. I think they went insane with the player housing at launch (I honestly was overwhelmed with options, and with the grind to acquire some things), but otherwise, it was (and remains) a fun game. I think people were (and maybe are) just burned out on "Triple A" MMOs. Maybe people are just looking for the kind of single player experiences with optional grouping that some "offline" games provide now.

So the question I'd have regarding dev interaction is this: what's their motivation? They're human beings. As has been amply demonstrated in pretty much every MMO that made an attempt at community since WoW, reaction to developer statements is, at best, hostile, and at worst outright demeaning. I think back to the Wrath of the Lich King beta. Greg Street, "Ghostcrawler", was brand new to Blizzard at that point, to the point that there was even a thread on the beta forums at the time wondering whether Ghostcrawler was a man or a woman (and reasonably convincing arguments, based on at-the-time very limited details, for both conclusions). When the beta was still populated with invite-only players on a limited scale, the forums were constructive, friendly, issues were brought up respectfully and developers would post frequently. As the number of beta testers increased, the quality of posts from players took a nosedive, and the frequency of developer posts radically diminished. Some of this could be laid at the feet of the dev scramble that always happens prior to launch. The rest of it is a logical human response to entering a virtual "lion's den". I've not seen a single forum community ever improve. It was the same with the beta for Old Republic, too. Early invites were polite, respectful, raised issues, and the devs talked a lot to us. As more people got invited, the quality of posts went down, and the frequency of dev posts likewise diminished. The game's been live for years now. It went through growing pains, then the pains of converting to F2P, and now people are once again upset over <insert thing here>. That won't ever change. There's an entire generation of digital natives from a variety of countries who have been trained to think that if they're loud or abrasive enough, they'll be given what they want. People wanted ship combat... they got it. People wanted player housing... they got it. People wanted story-driven content... they got it. More than that, they wanted something they HADN'T gotten before, which they got: a new character, instead of the one they'd been playing for years in the inevitable MMO endgame cycle of "New tier of content/new tier of gear/rinse/repeat". The reality is MMOs are a limited beast. Once you hit the level cap, you have a lot less to do unless you're willing to explore other areas of game play (if you PvE'd a lot, try PvP; if you zipped through all the cutscenes because you just wanted a quest objective to chase, immerse yourself in the story; if you played Empire, try Republic; if you were a Bounty Hunter, try a Sith, on and on). Even then you have the obsessive types who use whatever free time they have (and some folks have an awful lot of it, while others have to squeeze it in between school, work, family, offline social life, etc.) to burn through the content. Then once they're done, they come to the forums and start demanding more. They aren't looking at the health of the game. They aren't looking at a slow build for a story-driven game. They aren't looking at limited developer resources. They aren't looking at (or may not even be aware of) development, QA and implementation time. All they know is "I've done all the stuff I want to do, I want more stuff to do. It isn't there? OH MY GOD THE GAME IS DYING!" This ignores the fact that with a couple notable exceptions (Matrix Online being key among them), MMOs take a VERY VERY LONG TIME to die. They have to reach the point where there's consistent revenue loss against the cost of maintaining the servers & tech support (as new development will often be the first thing to die in a game; they'll go into maintenance mode for some time first). On top of this, we're talking about Star Wars. Despite the content we're in no longer being main timeline canon (after the whole EU was shuffled off into "alternate timeline" land after the Disney purchase), the hunger people have for Star Wars seems never-ending. If given the opportunity in nearly any capacity to be a part of this universe, people will take it. Mobile games, shooters, RPGs, MMOs, people will take it. That's only going UP right now since we're in the beginning of a new phase of not only direct sequels to the original trilogy, but ancillary movies to fill in other stories people want: young Han Solo, Boba Fett, Yoda's past, squadrons of X-Wing pilots, the list goes on and on. That interest alone can insure that this game keeps going for a long time. "What, you mean I can be a Bounty Hunter like Boba Fett? THERE ARE HUTTS TO WORK FOR AND FIGHT? COOL!" "Wait, I can be a Jedi Knight? Hand me that lightsaber. I want a purple one like Mace WIndu, I... OMG THERE'S A PURPLE LIGHTSABER IN THE GAME." "What game did you love, dad? 'Knights of the Old Republic'? That looked fun. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE'S MORE STUFF IN THAT WORLD?!" Hyperbole isn't justified, nor are dire predictions of the game's death. I'm ALMOST inclined, at this point, to say World of Warcraft may die before Old Republic does, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if, by the time SWTOR dies, a new MMO set in the new main timeline would crop up... from EA/BioWare, who Disney are just fine leaving in charge of Star Wars video entertainment options.

I really wish I could somehow take predictions of ANY MMO's "death" and turn them into money. I'd never need to work again. *SIGH* Here's the deal: an MMO is "dead" when the company turns the servers off. EverQuest 2? That's dead. Matrix Online? Dead. World of Warcraft? They're STILL subscription-only (though I figure at this point they're likely to transition to F2P in the next couple of years). Old Republic? Doing better now as a F2P game than when it was sub-only. I just came back after a solid 4-year absence, and I'm already prepped to transition to a full subscription at the end of this week (I'm running on a referral 7-day subscription right now, in fact). The game is still FUN. There's nothing wrong with not enjoying a game if you've been playing awhile. There really isn't. But predicting its death serves no real purpose.

I get what you're saying, OP, but as much as I might want otherwise, I'm having difficulty seeing this as anything other than another "I want a sandbox MMO" thread. I realize you acknowledged that players want structure, which I agree with, and to be honest even I have to admit I haven't felt anywhere near the drive to log in that I felt when the game was new. I just don't think that returning to Star Wars Galaxies is the answer. Not saying it was a bad game, but I *am* saying that the proof is in the pudding: at its height its subscription numbers never came close to 1/5 of where World of Warcraft is at now, after it's lost a couple million subscriptions in the past few months. The problem is, I'm not sure I see what the actual solution might be.

I'm afraid this just doesn't hold up, and approaches dangerously close to attacking the person instead of the idea. It seems like you're unable to actually refute someone's legitimate claim to an item they helped cause drop, so you instead cast aspersions on the person holding a view contrary to yours. Very bad form, and it only makes you look worse, not them. As has been asked already, if someone wants an item that you want, what makes your wants a higher priority than theirs? At the end of it all, you were in a group who all worked to defeat a boss who dropped some loot, loot that different players all have equal rights to, even if it's for radically different reasons. The best you can do is roll on a priority that matches your personal desire for the item, and let the dice fall where they may. No one owns it til it's been put in someone's inventory, so no one can "steal" it from someone else. After an item goes in someone's inventory, it's theirs, and you have no right (and thankfully no ability) to determine what someone else does with their property. All the bully-tactic threats of guild or server blacklisting, dire predictions of that player's inability to get groups in the future, won't change that fundamental fact: it's theirs, to do with as they want, and they don't require your permission to roll Need on it in the first place. So why act as though they should?

I still maintain that the Roll/Pass system is the only system even more impartial than unfiltered NBG. If everyone passes on something, then no one gets it. To insure it has some value, the system could always "vendor" it and distribute the credits equally, but otherwise, you have to figure if no one rolls on something (and between characters and companions, I don't see that happening much), no one's going to care what happens to it one way or the other.

Needless, to say, Master Looter is unacceptable in a PUG. It works great if you know and trust the people you're running with (or the leader, at least). The system open to the least abuse of those above is NBG, as long as you don't start adding personal qualifications onto it. Most fair, most impartial, zero player ability to interfere in the system.

It's a creative, if heavy-handed, solution. The problem is, I don't think complicating the system will solve the issue. I think we need a simplification. Some have advocated removing the Need button altogether, and I'm sort of in this camp, but its outworking would be a reduction to a Roll/Pass system. If you want it, roll, if you don't, pass. No tiers of priority, no questions about whether a need is actually a need, just a flat-out statement of "I want this." People will still complain that someone rolled on something they didn't think that person should have, but their complaint doesn't have a lot of foundation: at that point their chance was 100% equal, with no priorities shifting that chance, to receive the item, and they simply lost the roll.