Honestly I think they just don't have the tech ready to do it. It's such a garbage talking point, I can't believe they would take it seriously.

holy balls are they dense.

Or you're just old and out of touch. And as a side note, your comments regarding internet dating are profoundly ignorant.

The definition of elitism isn't "things I don't like".

I ignored the advertising and looked at the actual product. Now don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed the cinematics and VO quite a bit, and while the story was good it really wasn't anything new. WoW has story. The distinction with SWTOR is the way it is delivered to you. I would still hesitate to call it "story driven" though, because while there is more immersion with the VO rather than just the text, underneath that SWTOR is still structured as a traditional MMO, with character levels, talent points, gear grind, etc. And there is a schism between the two, because the story doesn't impact the gameplay significantly. To me "story driven" would mean no leveling and no class trainers, instead your character would progress based solely on the choices made during the story. And there would be way more phasing, I'd expect to see my decisions manifest themselves in the in-game world.

fear fear fear fear

Good point. In my experience LFD had no impact on the amount of socializing done in a pugged run. The level of difficulty of the content did. In WotLK no one said anything other than "hi" or "bye" because the content was an aoe zergfest. In early Cata while using LFD to run heroics we would communicate quite a bit, and gear winners would often get a round of "grats". YMMV.

I'll notice a slight stutter with Smash occasionally, but the situation has improved greatly since launch. I don't notice it with any other ability. No more dead channels or abilities simply not firing.

Did someone already say 45 dollars?

Yar. BW doesn't pay me, I pay them.

I asked the question, then thought of the answer 5 minutes later. Duh. Thank you for the response.

How valuable is that second point in Close Quarters?

This is what I got on my first pass. http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/marauder#99d8e8elc-2i-i

Cross server queuing should come first imo, this is probably the smart move on BW's part. The timing on the announcement really sucks.

You'll be able to convert your merc comms into WZ comms at a 1:1 ratio. So don't worry, it's all good.

Very awesome, thank you.

All this tells me is that you think of yourself as casual, and therefore the way you play must be what defines someone as casual. Also that you aren't particularly threatened by people who play less than you, and you feel obligated to take potshots at those who play more than you. The reason most of these definitions fail is because they attempt to look at casual and hardcore as existing on a single spectrum. That isn't accurate at all.

The words "casual" and "hardcore" are almost entirely without any concrete meaning. Mostly they're used as derogatory labels.

What kind of options do you have with the enemy cast bar?

Harsh. But thumbs up Mac client!

No, it's there. Sithwarrior.com is a good place to go, as stupiddrummer already mentioned.

Gotcha. Peace.

It's not so much about the encounter mechanics. Those are actually pretty transparent. Think of raiding as a highly coordinated group dance. The more difficult the encounter the more elaborate the dance. Think of logs as a video tape of the dance. You play it back when you're no longer in the moment so you can slow it down and see exactly what you did wrong. When it's easy the film isn't really necessary but as things get more complex it becomes a valuable tool. That's the best way I can think to explain it. If we disagree, then we disagree.

BW has indicated that their content will be much more difficult, and from what I understand this is exactly the case on the PTS. The argument for logs goes hand in hand with how tightly tuned the content is, because at the high end of that tuning it is a requirement that everyone be able to push their class to its theoretical maximum.

And the upshot of this implementation is that BioWare is creating barriers to their own content.