People tend to forget that they too were once newbies and didn't know how to play. They did some raiding, and now they think they're better than those who haven't done raiding. I've done my fair share of raiding, I've had a good amount of good gear, but I've never belittled anyone for being new to a game or the MMO genre. In fact, I prefer helping new players out, because they're usually a lot more thankful, and you end up with some great in-game friends. As for the RP aspect, I have to say when I'm in a group doing either flash points or heroics, I hardly ever RP. I tend to concentrate on keeping people healed so much that everything else just passes me by

Not yet at least, but who knows what future expansions will give us. They have pretty much confirmed space combat will be expanded at least.

Depends a bit on the planet at well. A lot of the monsters on Voss for example hit like freight trains. Voss is the only planet I've had problems killing stuff What tops the cake, is 2 strong mobs (the ones with a silver star) that beat me and my companion to a pulp within seconds, even though I've got force shield and my 50% damage reduction on... Granted, my gear isn't the best, but I have no problem with Corellia mobs =)

I'm notorious for having bad luck with pickup groups, so it happens to me a lot. Often also people dropping the group once they're finished with their own quests, regardless of what the rest of the group still has left. I pretty much stick to guild groups and solo play (even though I hate soloing in MMO's) for now, in the hopes it'll get better at some point, when those who didn't really want to play in the first place stop playing.

48 Jedi sage, healing specced. Have loved the ride so far, and usually I hate solo leveling in MMO's. The storyline has been getting better and better with some lovely twists here and there. Only thing that annoyed me somewhat, is that the mobs in Voss hit like freight trains, I had a hard time killing some of them even if I was a level or 2 above the mob's level. The ones on Corellia are a lot easier, even though they're 2 levels higher than me I really like the Voss as a race though, they look pretty cool. And Corellia is just epic, I really get a sense of scale there.. (and, before you think I'm a fanboy, I don't particularly like Star Wars, the original 3 movies were okay, hated ep 1-3, and the last Bioware game I liked was Planescape: Torment )

Pretty much yes.. Although, there weren't as many people playing WoW on release as there are people playing SWToR now.

Guess you're talking about early WoW raiding. My early raiding experience is a guild with 100-ish members, 100-ish of whom were good players. We were also generally ready to go at a moment's notice, which we had to be since there were no instances and bosses were often on VERY long respawn timers. People made sure AFTER each raid to stock up on any items that were required during raid. The most spectacular raids I've done though, were the spur of the moment Relic Raids in DAoC. The biggest one was probably some 200 vs 200 players at the Relic keep itself (after they fixed most of the crash and performance issues ) as well as groups of some 20-25 people taking smaller keeps around the map. I realize MMO's have evolved, and stuff like this isn't likely to happen again, but it does show that add-ons aren't "required" (like many people like to claim) until the devs start developing encounters with certain add-ons in mind. Again, I'm not against add-ons by default, just the ones that automate half the game.

Definitely something weird going on.. I've stood in the middle of the flames without taking damage, and I've died from fire damage just entering the room, before attacking the boss

Raiding existed and was successfully done well before add-ons and min-maxing, and it was a lot of fun even. However, knowing the boss mechanics (preferably learned through experience) and the willingness to improve how you play your class are quite vital. Also, realizing it's not all about you, and listening to raid leaders that likely know the raid far better than you helps Add-ons aren't a problem for the most part, there's just a few that ruin things, and those are the add-ons that turn everything into easy-mode/lazy-mode, and basically remove all need for tactics. Things like gearscore I wouldn't even mind, because I seldom group/raid with a pickup group, and things like damage meters I've always found interesting, although they were never a reason for me to kick someone from a group/raid. However, add-ons that auto-cancel a heal when the target is above xx% for example alter the game, and those shouldn't be allowed.

The only way to stop the discussions would be if the servers were split into 1 set that allowed add-ons and another set that didn't allow add-ons. That's really the only fair way of doing things, because, like others already said, putting in add-ons will inevitably change game balance and make it impossible for those choosing not to use add-ons to enjoy add-on balanced content. I can already imagine the additional whining split servers would cause though ...

Oh my god, someone knows about Everquest and isn't convinced WoW was the first ever MMO Played EQ a lot... Early on it didn't have a customizable UI at all, and the entire UI was actually opaque, so the actual game screen was pretty small .. There were only 8 hotkeys for spells, and no additional hot bars.. If you wanted to cast a spell that wasn't on the hot bar, you had to memorize it first from your spell book, and of course the spell book took up the little window of the game world you had =) And to the "every MMO is a WoW clone" crowd, WoW is an EQ1 clone with some DAoC thrown in.

True.. Considering the whole story driven nature of the game, some sort of escape speeder would've been nice And it took me a while to notice the button too, it's really small and the same color as the mini map, so it doesn't stick out at all ..

There's an "exit area" button, top right of the mini map.. Granted, it's a bit small, but it's there.

Add-ons are fine, as long as people don't force them on you in order to join groups/raids, unless those people pay for your subscription .. As for WoW being easy.. The early raids in WoW weren't hard, and add-ons such as raid assist made the raids near trivial. That ruined my WoW experience to such an extent that I quit playing. I have friends who continued playing and raiding a lot, and they told me things had gotten a lot more difficult and dynamic. It also helped that raid assist got nerfed so it didn't automate most tasks, but by then I couldn't be bothered to pick up the game again. As for meters, as long as the instance is successful, I really don't care about who did what. There are also plenty reasons why someone would do less dps than someone else.. For example, someone might be running around killing adds rather than concentrate on the main boss. Due to the running, they might loose a lot of dps. People keeping off-tanks alive might have much lower healing done than whoever's spamming the main tank, etc.

Raiding on a competitive level? It used to be about the fun and challenge, not about the competition .. I got booted once from a raid in WoW because I didn't have raid assist installed ... That was almost an hour into the raid with me as one of the main healers and no wipes and VERY few deaths. The fact that I was easily keeping my targets healed meant nothing, but not having the add-on meant everything. That's just not rational no matter how you look at it. I'm not saying it's a WoW thing, it's just that after that episode I pretty much stopped raiding, because I refuse to rely on add-ons when common sense, skill and knowledge of the encounter makes you more efficient than an add-on ever could. So for me personally, it's WoW that killed what I liked about raiding. I loved the dungeons in WoW though, did a lot of them with guildies, right up until most of them started raiding Before WoW I raided extensively in EQ1, but I did it to challenge myself and not to be first on server or be better than some other raiding guild, or even for the loot. The loot was just a means to an end.

In a different thread you say "The game needs addons or the devs will be forced to make content easier for the people who have no idea what they are doing." and now you're asking why people are bad at playing games? People are bad at games because rather than figure out how the game works, they use cheats/exploits/automation add-ons/etc. to fuel their instant-gratification needs... Thankfully there's a lot of people who actually still learn how to play rather than whine about how this or that is too difficult ..

People who have no idea what they're doing should get a clue about what they have to do, not use an add-on to hold their hand ...

Add-ons are fine unless they automate parts of the game. For example, the early Raid Assist WoW add-on basically allowed auto-healing during raids, which is obviously a no-no ... There is no *NEED* for add-ons like so many claim here, after all, people successfully raided in EQ1, and that didn't have add-ons (or a raid window, or even a raid chat channel), it also didn't have things like target's target, buff bars, and what not. Add-ons also add a lot of headaches, because if the game gets patched and an add-on breaks, chances are many people that use the add-on will come here to complain, rather than complain to the developers of the add-on itself.

I wouldn't mind if they added the option for macro's or add-ons, but I wouldn't use them. I just learn to use the interface, regardless of how good or bad it is Of course, that might be because I already played MMO's before WoW ...

Just look at newspapers and magazines, the only thing that sells is destruction, death and violence.. Put something positive on the frontpage, and you won't have any sales Like you, I'm really enjoying the game. For the first time since DAoC I'm enjoying enjoying leveling. Also for the first time since DAoC, I'm sticking to my main rather than start a bazillion alts. I'm playing a Jedi Sage (full healing) and the story just keeps getting more and more interesting. Yesterday I finished most of Balmorra, and really loved the design of the planet and the general atmosphere. There are bugs of course (companions having certain skills re-activated every time they zone or are re-summoned, my social gear's stats not counting whenever I zone (fixed by re-equipping), companions and elevators not going well together ), but so far they're all minor annoyances.