Curious as to how F2P is popular, I know I won't bother paying for it if it's free. If its a P2W model I'll play till I can't do any more with what is given and I'll leave. I will not pay to be successful in a video game. Then again, I'm one of those that are happy with 'monthly subscription/what you see is what you get' payment plans, and I'm not one of these tools who download countless ringtones apps and games for their phone that get added to the monthly bill either. But there seems to be alot of em so I guess it would be popular, if only among the countless tools that populate the Earth.

Played a druid, we have entirely different armies of bars and buttons hidden behind the army of bars and buttons.

I guess it depends on how many derps are playing this game who buy ringtones or games for their phones or pay for pay-per-view or even pay money for upgrades to facebook games. Personally, I'm a what you see is what you get kinda guy. I like to pay a flat fee and have access to everything rather than being nickel and dimed for content, especially in a p2w environment. Quite frankly I would move on.

I gave STO another shot since its F2P now. I never subscribed before because the trial demonstrated to me it wasn't worth paying for. After three hours of giving it the benefit of the doubt it's clear to me that it's still not worth paying for.

Don't forget mayhem.

We have some strange people in here who think mining rocks and transporting cargo are "fun" .....I wonder if they made an mmo where doing paperwork was an interactive feature, would you play it?

Probably is. I'm not much older than you (I'm 32) but I remember times when I knew my neighbors, I knew the local shop owners, and people were a heck of alot more friendly than they are nowadays. I don't know you personally so I couldn't say for sure but I'm willing to bet if you aren't living with your parents you have no idea who your neighbors are. Likewise, I remember when I knew a good chunk of the playerbase on one server. Horde and Alliance. We had rivalries, whether it was guild pve or just pvp in general, we had the local tosspot who severely need a good old fashioned beatdown, we had great people who strived to make our server a welcome home to new players, we had deep thinkers or at least people who pawned themselves off as such and we had jokers. We had that for two reasons, because we had a place where we could communicate and we had to rely on each other to accomplish big things. I'll admit server specific forums would go along way to fostering a better local community but adding cross server lfg will kill it. Go look at Ravenholdt. Browsing those forums used to be awesome, now you'll be hard pressed to find the top 10 posts updated within a day. I visit a forum with 10 users that posts more than that.

Spamming is not socializing. It's not effective either. Do you honestly listen to car sales pitches on tv commercials? Buy now , only fifty-nine ninety nine THATS RIGHT THIS WEEKEND ONLY ONLY 5995! ...Why would you listen to people repeatedly spamming in general? Try a different tactic. Boss strats aside, I seem to recall entirely different topics in my groups. But then again, I met awesome people and knew it and made sure I was friends with them. The tossers and tools I let fall by the wayside. We actually had fun in our old groups, a few wipes were worth the lulz of putting misdirect on our favorite elemental shaman after 2 chain lightnings on a trash pull. But you're right: The vast majority of people aren't that social and wouldn't talk to one another at a bus stop. You know why? Because nowadays there really is no such thing as a community. People barely make eye contact let alone smile or wave at one another and really, can you blame them? No one needs anyone anymore. We can all, for the most part, be self sufficient without any help from our neighbors, and that's the point. When you don't need anyone around you for help, you're not playing an mmo.

6:53 is prime time?

My way of grouping forces you to socialize, something that is the main ingredient to a successful mmo. People who complain about this being a single player experience then in the next breath say we need an lfg tool make me laugh. I guess you'd have to see what I've seen before and after they introduced lfg. If there is one singular reason I cannot stand WoW now, lfg would be it. A large part of why I enjoyed playing was the people I met and mingled with back when you pretty much had to. Once cross server lfg kicked in that feeling quickly died, it's funny how when you don't need people they slowly stop talking to one another. WoW truly became a single player game as far as I am concerned, running dungeons constantly with five nameless people you'll never run across again is no different than npc ai. Think SW is a barren wasteland now? Wait till that kicks in.

Just FYI, They have a giant shuttle that takes you right to fleet, literally a few feet away from the robot that gives you the flashpoint quest in each questing zone. You could do your quests and look for people who most likely will find that questgiver and will want to knock that out, rather than traveling to fleet where most people who are leveling are only there for a talent respec or to grab some supplies. I pretty much leveled a priest to outlands without ever leaving the city, easiest thing I've ever done. I don't know about money, but you definitely get better gear for your level out of flashpoints than through quests.

If you want the game to be a giant pretty call of duty lobby go for it. You can claim people are going to go do other things, but one they figure out you get more xp chain running flashpoints and better gear than anything you can craft at that level they're just gonna do what they do in wow, stand in one spot and take up space, maybe visit a vendor when their bags fill up and then go back to their pre-designated spot. Don't make me laugh with the chat comment. If he actually talked to people I doubt he would have this chronic problem of spamming lfg in general.

No, he's going to get out into the world by standing in one place and teleporting instantly to a flashpoint and repeating. That's exactly what's going to happen. That's why there are so many people in org and sw, they're all just standing there waiting for queues to pop.

The irony

There are spectators in huttball? When did you have time to notice that? Wait, you noticed spectators in Cruisin? You weren't drivin' like a pro then.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1182270/ The great community left behind. I was there when it died, bet you can't guess when...

Just FYI to everyone truly interested in this topic. I just got back from a recent eye exam. They bumped my contact prescription up from -7.5 to -8.0. The doctor asked me what I do for a living, and I told him I am an office admin, I sit at a desk and work on a computer all day, and added I play on my computer as a hobby after work. He told me that is why my eyesight is getting progressively more nearsighted, I'm never giving my eyes a chance to relax. He strongly recommended that every 15 minutes or so I should take my eyes off the monitor and try to focus on something off in the distance out a window for a few minutes. I figure that advice would benefit everyone, not just those with poor eyesight.

Its so rarely a single BC/BS though. F1Nal typically sits on the gate to Amamake with no less than 15 every night. At the very least its an interdictor and a BC/BS. They never catch me in a griffin/kitsune but still. To me, without a pair of eyes in a fast claoky ship you are just a dead ship flying, especially in 0.0. Jumping though gates blindly is not smart and rarely ends well. It only takes one gate camp with a bubble and a few interceptors with a swarm of drones and BC support to ruin any solo players day. The only solo players that I've ever seen escape said gate camps are when they've been deployed too long without any activity and everyone was asleep at the wheel.

No argument there, there are solo bait ships out there. But the players typically negate any awesome ship combo you come up with by making sure they always have an overwhelming advantage. Its a flaw with a chokepoint style navigation system and tackle mechanics. No one wants to be that guy who gets nabbed with his pants down so you get people bringing just overwhelming force, or a bait ship with backup hiding a system over, or you fly small fleet gangs that are hard to tackle, and in that case, there's usually nothing you can do to the bigger ships but fly away and hope 20 jumps down the road you'll run into easier prey.

Stopped you right there. Paying 30$ a month to be successful in a game. You are a very small minority. I never said what you do never happens, but that's how it works most of the time. True for almost all fleet engagements, small roaming gangs and gate camps. I've only really noticed solo or very small gangs work in low sec or in FW and even those people wave to watch out for pirate corps. Between you and me, frigates are hard to catch on a gate when you have to fly battlecruisers or battleships to tank the gun aggro so I never worried about that much, but then again what can you do to them?

Never flew freighters, but I fail to see how getting ganked in a freighter negates my point? But no, sometimes the inferior ship is a bait ship, but that is my point, that ship has a batphone handy and its a trap, and what comes out the other end is an overwhelming force. There is no skill involved. Not to say it doesn't happen, but so rarely have I seen battles take place pitting equal forces together, its almost always lopsided one way or another.

So you've never used EFT? FYI zerging is not hardcore pvp, which is how it works, people rarely attack without having a massive manpower advantage or superior ship advantage or their hand on the batphone. Just sayin'

I lack creativity, so I went to google and typed in japanese surnames and picked one that rolled off the tongue nicely with my name.

Amusing: Imperials, who arguably are more populated, are dropped off in the middle of a hub of activity and are probably subjected to a giant lagfest until their hardware catches up, while Repubs are forced to travel a long lonely distance and endure a loading screen. Fair and balanced!

IIRC, the problem few/some/many (circle one) people had with armory was that it allowed forum posters to critique your character's gear talent points and raid progression and use that information to invalidate any point you may have been trying to make on the forums. FWIW +1 for an armory-like system.