Yeah well, tried to get a group going during prime time last night on the second highest populated English EU server and I still couldn't get a fourth player to join our group for The Foundry so we gave up after 2 hours and 20 minutes of non-stop LFMing in /1 on fleet, on Taris and on Quesh. We were also using the so called "LFG tool" and whispered people on our FLists. Oh, there were 300 people online at the fleet while we did this. The system is not working at all. I have yet to run into a single player on my server that is NOT desperate for a good LFG tool. People seem to think that LFG tools have to be cross-realm and that they have to teleport players... they don't. Well, Bioware have already said that they're working on a better LFG tool and that it's among the highest priorities so it IS coming. They also stated that their dev team still thinks that such a tool shouldn't be cross-realm so no worries there either.

I love the new UI, even though I've suffered from serious migraines the past 16 years I don't feel anything while playing with the new UI, or any other game for that matter. Those of you who are experiencing problems, get a pair of http://steelseries.com/products/other/steelseries-desmo, they're pretty cheap ($100) and they help you up your game in general, improves visual endurance and decreases eye fatigue and dry eyes. Money well spent no matter what kind of competitive gaming you're doing. Keeping the room well lit really helps as well.

I agree with pretty much everything you said in the OP. Sure I'm enjoying myself in the game but yeah, the world really does feel rather dead. What I miss: - Weather - Ambient sound - Background music - Wildlife - Day/night cycle - NPCs and mobs that move, all they do is stand around until killed, then they respawn in the exact same location. - Freedom of choice. Everything is so, soooo linear. - Map design. Linearity is a problem here as well, and I feel that a lot of planets are essentially "the same" but with various kinds of "debris" and different color filters slapped on. This leads me to the next point... - Playable races. They're basically all "humans" with very minor modifications and different skin colors. I mean, what appears to be humans with a piece of cloth covering their eyes is a different race. I'm not arguing that they're not a unique (oh well) race, I just think it's a shame that they didn't use the wide variety of species available in the lore to create diverse playable races cause that would also lead to the world feeling more alive, more vibrant and diverse.

I like the idea of playing with people from my own server. That is good for the community. I DON'T like standing around for 1-2 hours spamming in fleet for a FP group. The last two instances I ran (or at least attempted to run) was Boarding Party and The Foundry. For Boarding Party we spammed /1 at the fleet and on Taris for 1 hour and 40 minutes before getting a full group. For The Foundry we spammed /1 at the fleet, on Quesh and on Taris for 2 hours and 10 minutes before we had to give up. I can add that the number of players at fleet was never below 250 when we did this. I don't know what the problem is. The existing LFG system would work rather well if people used it but they don't. Out of the 250 - 300 players at the fleet less than 5 are generally tagged as LFG. Everyone is spamming /1 though and when you spam that damn channel for 2 hours without being able to form a group it gets irritating. Sure, if the game had a good LFG tool we could have spent that time questing or doing something else but I honestly don't know if we'd have gotten a group anyhow. It seems the main problem is that people don't want to run the FPs. I'm hoping it'll be different at 50 (and I'm almost assuming it's at least better).

There are quite a few things I'd like to see in six months. I'll list a few of them: 1) Target's target UI frame. Why it wasn't in the game already in early alpha is beyond me to be honest. 2) Responsive, fluid game-play. This will indeed make or break the game and the current situation is really, really not good for the game. 3) A combat log and the personal damage meter that are supposedly on its way. 4) Customizable UI that allows us to move stuff around, change its scale and stuff like that. I'm fine with them not allowing addons if they just allow us to modify and scale the existing UI to our liking. 5) Hood up/down toggle. It makes no sense at all not to have such a feature but to give the non-hooded classes the ability to toggle their head slot gear on/off. The hoods make our characters "bald and chubby-looking" which is irritating during gameplay but even more so during cut-scenes. 6) A LFG tool that is very much like WoW's (which is rather brilliant) but it should NOT be cross-realm. That is the one thing I have against WoW's LFG tool as I think it's much better that you're grouped with players on your own server. This way people are much more likely to behave and you'll actually make friends that you'll run into again. 7) Guild bank. 8) Dual specs are welcome although it's not something I'm craving. AC respeccing should however NEVER be allowed. You pick a class and you play it, just like any other game and if you want to play another class you create such a character. The only difference here is you get to play to level 10 before you finalize your character creation, after having tried out some of the basic functions of the two related classes. 9) Neutral gear. People should be able to actually play their character in a way that he or she behaves like the player would if he or she was there in person. Now people tend to be "forced" to go full dark or full light. 10) A complete overhaul of the GTN's functions and interface. I hate to bring up WoW but the AH is working really well in my opinion. 11) Remove the instancing. Note that I'm not talking about your class quest areas, I'm talking about the actual planets/zones. 12) Get rid of the (many) game-breaking bugs that should have been fixed before launch. Some of the end game material seems to have barely been tested, some parts almost feel like placeholders. It's one of the reasons a lot of us feel that the release was rushed. 13) Since it's 6 months in the future I'd of course like to see some new content, but in my opinion fixing the gameplay, removing bugs, implementing essential features and getting everything to work as intended has the highest priority.

Well, didn't one of the developers shed some light on this issue by saying that they ARE implementing features to allow you to keep track of YOUR performance? To me it sounds as if they're adding personal dps meters to the game, meters that keep track of what you are doing but leaves you in the dark as to what others are doing. This is all fine and dandy in my opinion, in order to be able to try out different specs and spell priorities and actually come to any conclusions this is a must-have if you ask me. Now I am quite content with the idea of having them be personal but I do think that they should implement a certain feature. Let us appoint a raid leader through the UI and have that players meters become "all-knowing". A raid leader really needs the data to analyze what's going on and why his raid was unable to clear a hurdle. This way he'll be able to and those who don't want to put an all-knowing tool in the hands of random, rude PuG flamers can at least rest assured that immature and rude people seldom make raid leaders. Well, I say bring it on. Some form of meter has to be implemented as it's almost essential and it seems that it's in fact on its way... once again, in some form.

Yeah, I agree that that particular point is not valid when it comes to end game content. There IS some end game content in the game already and more will be added in content patches. It's completely impossible to create a game that can give unemployed gamers the ability to live their lives in-game and spend the amount of time that equals one or even two full-time jobs in the game without running out of content to dive into. That particular argument is however 100% valid when it comes to game features and functionality though. I know that this thread is about end game content but I just wanted to say this since the quoted argument is likely to be used all over the pages of this thread; features and functionality should be in a game at launch and in this case a brand new title should not be compared to how the main competitor was at launch 7 years ago but to how that competitor is today. End game content however can in my opinion be added in content patches. That's perfectly fine in my book, as long as there's some stuff to do at max level already at launch, which there is in this case.

It would seem insanely absurd to me but sadly, it makes perfect sense in my opinion since EA is involved. This is however very, very interesting. Can't wait to see how this plays out.

I'm going to keep playing. I do however think that the release should have been delayed like 3 months so that the game was actually ready for release before customers were brought in. The game as it is is still fun and even though I must say that WoW is vastly superior gameplay-wise I'm tired of it and I don't want to go back to it. I enjoy this game so I will keep playing. Here's to hoping that most of the major issues and the lack of some essential features are gone within a few months in which case this game has a real good chance of being around for many years to come.

While I won't cancel my own subscription (I'm having way too fun as it is) I can sympathize with TS' reasoning. If some bugs or the lack of some yet to be implemented features brings your overall experience down a notch it makes sense to want to save the gaming experienced for when the issues have been resolved. I for one decided to take a break with my main character (Sith Sorceress) in order to wait for the hood up/down toggle (something that simply has to be implemented sooner or later) as some if not all of the Jedi/Sith classes are currently being more or less forced to wear gear with the hood up which leads to the character appearing to be chubby and bald and that is very annoying since we spend so much of our time watching our own characters talk to and interact with NPCs. I figured I'll enjoy playing with this character more once they've implemented this feature so I'm currently enjoying the Bounty Hunter storyline on an alt. One thing I don't agree with though is the common request for the ability to switch your advanced class. The way I see it you can either decide to roll a Sith Assassin or a Sith Sorcerer, just like how you can decide to roll any class in an MMO such as WoW for instance. If Bioware had taken the usual approach and forced you to pick your class upon character creation rather than having two advanced classes sharing abilities and gameplay during the first 10 levels, would people still be demanding the ability to switch? Nope. The only difference here is you actually get to TRY some of the basic functions of the two related classes and decide at level 10 in which direction you want to take your character. In this case - after having played around with a variety of attacks (ranged, melee, lightning, light saber) do you want to emphasize on swinging your light saber with the option to spec into tanking or do you want to focus on channeling the force in order to wreak havoc from a distance with the option to spec into healing? This way you can make a much more informed decision at level 10. I'd say it's working as intended but in the end that's just my opinion.

Yes, given the time difference the guys implementing these patches and doing the maintenance would actually be able to do it during more "normal" working hours if the European maintenance was scheduled for the appropriate hours. /Sign

I think that Jedi players should not be able to use red crystals unless they are dark and I do think that Sith players should not be able to use blue or green crystals unless they go light but I think it's outrageous that dark Jedi and light Sith can't use their faction's iconic colors, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

Yup, in order to compete against WoW the game has to be as fluid and responsive. The character has to feel as if it's an extension of yourself and your character's actions have to feel as if they're a direct result of your actions behind the keyboard. This is one of the main reasons all other MMOs have "failed" in terms of truly challenging WoW but not the only reason (most of the games have just sucked in comparison). SWTOR, as opposed to all the failed "WoW-killers" out there, has pretty much gotten everything else down (lots of tweaking and some additional features are still needed though) so it really boils down to this; the combat doesn't feel as tight, it's not even close and unless it's worked on the number of subscriptions will begin to fall within the first year. Keep it up Bioware cause the game is truly awesome in the other areas and I don't want to have to go back to WoW in order to experience tight gameplay.

As far as I know it hasn't been stated what kind of meters they will implement. My suggestion is still: * Add a personal meter keeping track of your own dps / overall damage / healing done and make it non-linkable. * Add a raid-wide meter for the raid leader keeping track of each players level of activity, as in % of time in combat spent casting or "doing something useful". It should also display damage taken. (Even though I still think that an "all-knowing" meter for raid leaders is an invaluable asset I'll leave it like this for the sake of discussion) * Add training droids that allow players to try out different specs and ability priorities without having to find out the hard way during a Flashpoint or Operation that "well, this sure didn't turn out well". Pros: 1) Everyone will have the ability to keep track on one's own performance and utilize the tool to improve ability priorities and try out different specs. 2) These tools won't play into the hands of the rude, immature PuG-runners who diss others over the internet in order to feel better about themselves. 3) The leader of a raid will be able to single out slackers and those who have a thing or five to learn about the concept of "don't stand in the fire". 4) Dps players won't know how the other dps players are performing while playing which reduces the amount of "things that are bad from a teamplay or raiding point of view" they pull just to get ahead on the meters. Cons: 1) The raid leader won't be able to fully analyze exactly WHAT someone is doing wrong and unfortunately the good leaders, those who actually use data to help people improve, will have a much harder time doing so. This is a tough nut to crack for sure but in the end we do need some kind of combat log and monitoring or end game raiding, especially at higher difficulties, will be a Nightmare (yes, pun intended).

Yes, given the amount of requests and complaints posted on the forums a thread like this is very much in order. The game is absolutely amazing and it's really headed in the right direction. The problem is that when a game launches people are always too busy requesting things or reporting stuff that is not working the way it was intended that they often forget all the good things. Besides, the people who are just happy and having a blast playing are doing just that, they're not logging on to the forums just to say that they're happy and having a blast. To sum it up; thanks for an absolutely amazing game which in time, after some tweaks and after some additional features have been implemented, will hopefully be loved and played by millions for many years to come.