Bug fixes are 'next week'. Tomorrows downtime is just back end.

Not sure if stupid on purpose....

Why would that drive you mad? You join in!

look in your ui.

not in terms of what it was expected to hit. based on the brand alone it was widely regarded by the game/mmo community to be the first western mmo to break 1m subs. when it didnt it was widely believed that the market just wasnt that large in the west. then came wow, which broke 1m while swg was struggling to keep 300k. based on the market, the ip, the developers, and who they had backing them, it was a failure regardless. in retrospect, if you want to base it entirely on sub nets across the market, you would be correct. however, based on the facts that sony/lucasarts were putting their money on, and what kind of numbers they expected to pull, it most certainly was. if it werent, things like the cu, and subsequently nge, wouldnt have occurred.

i see where you are coming from. however, that kind of option completely breaks how the story here is presented. even if you take the special case of revan, who did make the change from jedi to dark jedi to full on sith lord the actual player character didnt get to make that choice. the pc was at best a shadow of revan and never became truly jedi nor sith. either way, with the way the story here is told, it wouldnt work.

you didnt have the ability to go from jedi to sith in kotor

i did a starter freebie weekend thing. i played through the starting zone area and decided between mechanics and the state that the game was in at the time that it wasnt for me. while its fine that you want to change gear often, the only thing stopping you is you. whether you want to change your mods to do it, or farm out new ones (heck, base 50 purples are cheap and more than sufficient for everything up to hardmode ops). also, your "one time credit sink" suggestion is blatantly false. if it were "good enough" then we wouldnt have had a 12% inflation in the first 3 months of the game. why exactly do you think bioware has added so many MORE credit sinks? im well aware of how appearance tabs work. rift uses essentially the same set up. appearance tabs were good fits for those games, THEY WONT BE HERE. they completely invalidate orange gear, and would wreck the existing economy. i understand you want them, because some other game did, that doesnt mean they will work the same way here as there because the 2 games were designed differently. this is really iffy, mainly because i remember naked raids from rift. it looks absolutely atrocious. i can understand some players wanting to remove belts, because they dont like the graphic, but the slope gets pretty slippery and generally falls into pure stupidity. if the majority of the playerbase had a bit of sense, if this wasnt the same era of 80% of cod clans having penii for symbols, i may agree with you. honestly though, unless the playerbase in general can show that it would be used responsibly, i cant agree. the only time gear dyes work correctly is when the gear itself is designed to be used with them. the gear here was not, and neither was lotro. dyes ALWAYS look like garbage otherwise. between color tone being off, and general mismatching, dyes are just ugly. the devs themselves have discussed WHY we dont have, and will likely never get a dye system. considering that we dont even have a "shoulder" slot, i dont really see how you can use those specifically as "ugly". i like the majority of gear in the game. i have yet to make a character and not been able to find a set of gear that i liked for them, even my republic toons! some i had to search harder for than others, and some are in need of more variety, but the devs themselves have stated that very same thing. i can even see how you would rather have the old system that you prefer instead of adapting to a new one, but thats now how design works. you cant just cherry pick mechanics from every "AAA" (i love how loosely you use that term btw) and expect a good game experience out of it. wow has come the closest to doing it, and it still has endemic problems that after 13 years of development they havent been able to fix. even going back and rereading the op, i agree with some of what you want. i agree that we should have the same gear customization options for companions as we do players, i agree that we need many more options for orange gear, preferably crafted, but available would be great, i even agree that some work can be done in terms of hotkeys/ui. its the lazy solutions that i object to. i firmly believe that if you want a special snowflake appearance that you should have to put forth a minimum of effort to achieve it. whether its finding a crafter to make you what you want, seeking out the skin itself, or filling those things with correct mods if you want 50 outfits. you already have solutions in game. even bringing up your mac vs pc, if the mac os is so much better then why is it such a tiny market share? there hasnt been an actual hardware difference in quite some time, you can effectively run os10 on practically any hardware, yet its still the extreme minority. if it was honestly so much easier to use and "efficient" one would think that the computer illiterate crowd (the majority) would be all over it.

just to clarify, the highest evidence i have found says it topped out at 300k, and when it started losing 10k per week it was down to 180k-200k subs. just to add, also saying that we need space combat, ala jtl, was only a 50k sub net.

while i can agree that illum isnt a sandbox, i believe that he was stating that illum should be part of what he was attempting to accomplish. im kinda wondering if you actually do, since based on what many consider "sandbox" there has NEVER been a sandbox game, which is arguably accurate. why? based on investor reports he is correct. ea sold the game based on projections of 1.2m, which they are still above based on concrete sources. you can make the argument that it wont be above that for long, but im kinda wondering what exactly your basis for that is since the vast majority of gripes can be met with decent evidence to the contrary. the game is losing subs, but i have yet to see any evidence, nor come across any myself, that can pin the "blame" on any reason, or even range of reasons.

i havent really played lotro, so i cant comment on that. however, that exactly what you are saying. the orange system was designed to not only allow you to customize look, but stats also. with the melding of the two of course its going to be more complex, thats the nature of evolution. besides that, are you seriously complaining that moving mods is difficult? are you also making a serious argument that you MUST move all of your mods?

it is already designed efficiently. you want to dumb it down in by removing the existing versatility.

so you want to pay more for a generally worse product?

yeah, cause the blog of the guy that was head dev for a number of years and wrote/designed most of it is a "fan site" just like that second thread that actually links to credible sources a number is completely biased for it. its nice to know that the only thing you actually took a look at was "wiki" and jumped to conclusions. even then, with its initial jump, huge ip, and veteran devs im not surprised it was thought across the market. that initial month alone it climbed to 2nd place for western mmos. dont get me wrong, it was very much proven to be a general "failure" within the market, both by size and by failing to meet its designed expectations. im not defending galaxies in the least, it was a general mess that swtor shouldnt copy, and if the forums are listened to, will get another nge that will be the deathknell of it, just as it was for swg.

between veteran leadership, superb ip, and initial launch, that is what the general belief was. you can find it in many places if you choose to do a search. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_Galaxies http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=20945.500;wap2 http://rubenfield.com/?p=86 are all solid collected sources of information. most of which is first hand, although many of those also have links to the specific information you may want to look for. in general i was merely pointing out that his calling that argument into question was indeed invalid. as for on topic, there are a number of very valid concerns about "adding" sandbox to the game. in point of fact that very argument has been done to death. i personally dont care for it, and dont see a feasibly nor realistic way to add it without a fairly comprehensive redesign of existing features and content.