Being able to run off any encounter IMHO is a bad thing. It makes it too easy to 'undo' a bad pull, or poorly chosen route. They should give chase until you've reached a safe area, base, starport some guards , Priest of Discord or someone willing to bail you out. Also, based on the mob type, most should run faster then the player. Getting shot off your speeder, another good idea.. else we'd all just speed past the guards and cherry pick the content. In fact, I think getting shot off your speeder should be akin to falling off your motorcycle while going 50mph; lots of of kinetic damage. Heck why not give the bike damage too, now you have to repair it. If a turret knocks you down... opps your bike is salvage, check your insurance. Everyone would be a lot more careful with their transports. To me the enjoyment of an mmo is the journey to cap, not a race through content.

How to make every PvP'er happy For those who enjoy the skill aspect of it. - Give them an arena in which everyone is gearless, with exactly the same stats. If they want to be melee they get a stick, if they want to be ranged they get some rocks. If they want to be stealthy make them small. That's it then they can go at it. I know, I see the flaw already, the stone guys will run out of rocks and the stick guys never have to get more sticks. Hell the small guys are just screwed. So we give the stone guys rocks laying all over the place, and the stick guys, their sticks break from time to time so the have to go find a tree and pull down another one. This is where the small guys will be hiding, ready to jump on the stick guys, all the small guys can do is bite you, but it eventually leads to a nasty infection. For those who enjoy progression in pvp. -For them, they get a world were they all start out with the same gear. Each time they win, they can pick a stat to increases by one. It never goes the other way, so eventually you'll have some unbeatable folks who can go beat on each other, or most likely keep popping newbs. -For those who enjoy the gamble of pvp, this one works with teams, or one on one as well. Everyone has three abilities. Rock, Paper or Scissors. The individual with the winning choice wins, the other guy dies. I can envision some cool Scissor kills effects, paper might be a challange but Bioware is the talent here not me. In team or group combat, it's simply which team had the most winning combinations. In addition this all happens on a different server, the pvp server. Also a PvP specific forum is created. People could play both sides pve and pvp. No need to choose sides. This idea will allow the classes to evolve around the environment and the environment to expand with the classes. Changing classes so they all have equal chance against each other really does leave us with rock paper scissors classes. In my opinion a choice has to be made, split pvp into it's own environ or change the effect of abilities when used in a pvp context. Yea I know it's a pain for the dev's, I write code too. Maintaining two sets of logic for one object in all it's permutations is a pain. But If Bioware tries to keep everyone happy with one set of rules the game will run it's course in a year or so imho. Please forgive my poking fun at the PVP aspect, it was intended to entertain, and encapsulate the issues of pvp. "Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen, Our bending author hath pursued the story...."

How about end game content is you get to play the mob. People who choose 'player run' version of x planet get to play against player run mobs. The people playing the mobs 'lvl' by defeating players, the more levels they accrue the higher level mobs they can choose to play. The player mob doesn't get to pick which mob they play, just the level.. if while playing the mob they don't damage the player sufficient to what a machine run mob would.. they loose points and can get degraded. Progression something like Rat->bat->lizard......robot....elite...champ...? meh just a thought

Yes I too have a special place in my heart for eq1. My current mmo buddies roll their eyes when I start off on an story about epic wins the cost of death the sense of danger. Remember sneaking your rogue solo into the plain of hate to get a piece for your epic weapon. This plain was an extremely dangerous place, one wrong step and the entire zone would come crashing down on your raidi, everyone dead hopefully some necro got off a feign death and could rez one cleric. You didn't have glowies over npc's heads telling you they had a quest, you either talked to everyone you saw or someone told you or you did some reseach on the net. There were right ways to do things and wrong ways, if you didn't learn the right way you got a rep and didn't get groups. Classes where unique (originally), the only class that could do it all was the bard and you needed skills to pull that off. There where many factions, step to close to the wrong one and pop your dead, now you spend the next hour trying to figure out how to get your corpse away from the thing that killed you. Frustrating yes, steep learning curve yup, but once you learned the ropes of your class you had status, not status points but word of mouth community status. "Hey I heard you can solo Phinny, could you help me get my xx for my epic?. "Sure the rate is 50 plat". It died though, idiots couldn't get groups and with out a group much content was out of reach. They blurred the lines between classes. EQ2 meh, initially they where trying to have their cake and eat it too. Started out aimed at the console crowd, was a mess. They fixed that, but it never had the magic, just the grid. SWTOR great game, love it. Many of the annoyances and time sinks of other mmo have been addressed. For instance, I can send my pet after some harvest item and keep on running. I can dismount my mount directly into cover, I don't have to "get off it first". You don't have to mindlessly harvest junk nodes over and over and 'maybe' get a skill point. These come to mind at the moment, but there are many other nuances that I love. Now on the other hand, it plays like it's space combat... a game on rails. You start on a world and just keep riding the triangles till your onto the next planet. I can live with that, the stories are interesting and the dialog entertaining and humorous. But I fear the 50 wall. No more planets, no more story, yes there will be more content.. but I doubt its release will keep pace with consumption. Play pvp you say? IMHO, pvp shouldn't be in an mmo unless it's racial and on a dedicated server. To those who enjoy it, great more power to you, but the effect it has on PVE is horrid. Why? PVP leads to class balancing in a way that destroys their uniqueness. For all the pvp'rs to be happy every class has to have a counter to ever other class, else they'll be clogging up the forums with their "reroll, quit, xxx sucks, xxx hates us" tantrums. Leave the class defining characteristics in the classes, let them play on a free for all world give them what ever rules they need to succeed. Huttball or capture the flag or what ever it is, is that part of a world or just a side game? PVP generally boils down to a groups of people who master a services of maneuvers waiting for the right combination/situation to occur. But I digress, love the game... please don't ruin it, keep the content flowing, add new stories, add open ended content. Bioware look to CCP for ideas on how to deal with and interact with the community, keep the channels open and be honest, we can take it. Bioware call an emergency fix an emergency fix, we won't quite because it's called something alarming, labeling everything maintenance is an insult to our intelligence. To those upset about down time, it happens especially when a mmo is new to market. Expect the unexpected down time, go watch a movie or pet your dog, take a chill pill. Oh wait I was telling eq1 stories wasn't i, sorry about the other stuff. anyone wanna buy a 110 mill + sp toon in eve?

I agree with the OP. The notification was either poorly written, or purposefully evasive. Down time announced 8 hours before it happens isn't system maintenance. Maintenance is something that occurs at regular intervals, like that stuff in the back of the owners manual of your car. Trust us, I think a large portion of the community are veteran mmo players and are very happy with Bioware's launch. We have been through many mmo launches which were error fraught and/or bordered on unplayable. An short notice outage ("emergency") we'll understand. But please trust us and call it what it is, and explain in the notice what is being addressed.