Yeah, I reactivated my subscription this month and tried to get back into the game while I wait and see how the Daybreak Games debacle plays out. I played a few of my characters and agree that the Sith Warrior was not too bad, at least it felt somewhat responsive, but the Sith Sorcerer was an absolute joke. That used to be one of my 2 favorite classes but now it is so slow and boring that I could barely finish the instance before I logged off and mowed the lawn for some excitement. I have already canceled my subscription again, for what will probably be the last time, as what they have done to this game makes it completely uninteresting. This is a shame because the original companion story lines made the 1 - 50 game one of my favorites, but they have managed to ruin even that.

It really annoys professional developers how much damage game developers have done to destroy confidence in software with their finger pointing at the code base to justify why fixing something would just be too hard. I have seen it in every game from EQ to WoW so it is some kind of standard industry excuse. When I started at my current company 20 years ago, the code base was already over 10 years old and we were quite easily able to go back and read, understand and modify it as needed when none of the original coders were still around. In 2009 we released a full rewrite on a new platform and still have no problem going back and making changes. Programming is not that hard, it just requires a certain kind of person, but please do not buy into the excuse that they cannot do something... they simply choose not to.

In my experience, forum activity in a game like this usually is a pretty good indicator of player intensity. If the players actually care about the game they will attack changes they dislike and defend/applaud those they do, when the player base goes quiet the game has a problem because the player base no longer cares. The only other reason I have seen for the forums going silent is when the player base become convinced that their posts are ignored. Either because the company they are trying to communicate with just does not feel customer input is valuable or has been infected with a bad case of developer ego.

It is also obvious they never finished their initial storyline as the final few comments come via mail. At the least they could have added a few dozen random conversations to make it feel like the crew are still on board one you reach 50.

I am not sure any new MMO can succeed in the current marketplace since WOW's release. This is not because WOW is the end all/be all of MMO's, nothing could be farther from the truth, but because they all try to chase the WOW MMO design theory and ignore the traditional MMORPG design that kept people engrossed for years. WOW succeeded with its race to the end game design only because they brought an existing fan base of RTS and FPS players who loved the Warcraft story line and truly believed that Blizzard was the best game company on the planet. Now the entire genre is defined this way and the original concept of an open world that a players character lives in has been discredited and even an expansion with 1 month leveling process, to max level, sends the impatient players into a rage. How can any game succeed when it must spend a year or more creating content that is consumed in a month? What is the point of a player chasing gear as they level when every expansion obsoletes all but the very best gear of the previous expansion, in the first zone, and then allows players in quest greens to earn this new gear in under an hour of play? WOW does not evolve the game with each expansion, it rewrites the game with new combat/talents/play styles and completely obsoletes all previous content so that replay value is limited to a rushed leveling process. The majority of the WOW zones are completely empty because of this design and no CRZ, their latest idea, can make obsolete zones meaningful again. New MMO's, like SWTOR, are caught up in the WOW design theory as they want the 10 million subscribers bringing in the big bucks, but cannot meet player expectations for content and abilities that match WOW of today. Perhaps if SWTOR had included 4 expansions worth of leveling content, that players could blow through in a couple of weeks and never visit again until they create an alt, they would have been considered more even with WOW when in truth the only content in WOW that matters in the latest expansion. I do not know if the traditional MMORPG design could succeed today with a player base caught up in the "end game is all that matters" endlessly repeated content style of WOW. But if one did come out, where it was once again "about the journey and not the destination", I would love to play it.

Yes, I am in the Deep Cradle now.

You would think that MMO designers would have learned by now that making something, that adds nothing to gameplay, permamnent is guarenteed to annoy a portion of your user base at some time or another. When does this ever seem like a good design choice? This is particularly true when it is combined with a constant nag screen that appears every time you zone and most likely triggers for the first time when you are with a fast moving group and do not have time to really think it through. This is assuming of course that the designer gives you enough information to know all the implications of your choice. It is unfortunate that the majority of MMO design effort is focused on the graphics engine and zone/quest design and very little focus is directed to the underlying application framework. Features such as character transfers, name changes and any other data centric feature should be thought out at design time, and not bolted on after release when it is 100 times more difficult to implement. I like SWTOR but they, like most other MMO's, seem to go out of their way to create a game that is difficult to manage and enhance.

/Sigh Much changed then in a short time since I last paid attention to the server population. Ok, I guess I will have to pick a new server then and create a few mules to carry my guild bank items.

LOL Yes, I get that feeling but it just seems strange that they would destroy a Heavy population server like this.

The free server tranfer from Kass City has turned it into a ghost town. The Galactic trade network is practically empty. I just did a search for heavy armor/any slot/cheap rarity and it returned 2 items. There is no economy at all anymore as far as I can tell. Now I admit work and some household renovations have had my focus elsewhere, but did I miss some mass evacuation notice or was this transfer totally mismanaged?

No, I did not. But was he a member of the elite, as our charadcters are supposed to be, or just a working stiff type BH? All I know is the story line stresses my characters love for credits at every opportunity and he definitely is not stuffing them in his mattress for a rainy day.

I must add myself to the list who actually despise my ship. It might have been fine for a up and comming BH, who had to steal a ship to get off Drummon Kaas, but the Grand Champion of the Great Hunt, sole survivor of Mandalore's inner circle and earning the type of cash that access to the Black List is sure to bring... it lacks style. A BH should have unlocked the ability to trade in his stolen ship, plus perhaps a million credits, for a new one of his choice. After all it is not like any ship has a real game advantage over any other, but a BH is in this for the luxurios lifestyle his hard earned credits can provide. Flying around in a mobile warehouse does not fit this image.

After finding out that every flashpoint has a checkpoint that practically requires a tank class, I decided to level another BH as Shield Tech. I have been having a great time and still feel that the BH is my favorite class. But as I approached level 40 I found that almost every strong mob I fought has a knock back that fires over and over every single fight. I have started to dread going toe to toe as the constant knock backs have progressed from slightly annoying, to outright irritating and ruining my enjoyment of the game. I do not mind a tough fight, in fact I would not enjoy the class if I did not have to sweat every once and a while, but this ability does not increase the difficulty of the fight, it just slows it down and gets downright boring the 5th or 6th time in a single fight you have to walk back up to the mob. Does this continue through the end game? If so, then the tank class may not be for me.