^This. I love WoW. I loved it before they revamped the talent system, and I love it even more after. Now, instead of clicking a box for a percent gain here or there, I actually get to choose skills. I can see the difference in my gameplay. I can choose passives or actives depending on how I want to play it. I can switch out my cc for questing vs. raiding. I can take the always-on movement buff or the quick burst of speed. These are choices that I can see and dramatically effect how I play a spec.

The reason people have moved is for the more active population and guaranteed queue pops on Harbinger. Adding another West Coast server will not entice people to leave.

I'm not blown away with the Unite Against Revan! theme, but the class story XP bonus is just what I've needed to prompt me to finish leveling my agent and bounty hunter.

While this is obviously a matter of opinion, and has become a trendy feature to complain about, one cannot argue that everything stated is true. The SWTOR implementation of skill trees was patterned after Cata-era WoW, which was a bloated and convoluted system. My experience of WoW's skill selection now is so much better--I get to choose my movement buff, my cc, how I want to prioritize certain skills in my rotation--all because of a simpler, more elegant, more flexible system. And all I've lost is the bloat and illusion of having more choices.

These short stories are really good pieces of writing. Keep 'em coming!

Open world PvP is its own reward.

Seeing as they've been dangling the Super Secret Space Project (SSSP--it had its own acronym!) out there for a year and a half, its almost inevitable that the expansion would disappoint on some level. My primary issues are that we only have two environments, and they're completely instanced. When I think about space, vast openness comes to mind. The environments they designed feel claustrophobic. If there's anything that's been missing from SWTOR from the start, its the open-world feel. Too many instances and loading screens break the continuity. The other issue I have is that ship customization has been touted as a feature, but during the game I rarely even get a glimpse of anyone's fighter. Either they're too small, or zooming by and gone in a second. I think being able to show off your accomplishments visually is one of the things that pvp progression players enjoy, but the opportunity isn't really there. That, and the strongest element of SWTOR--the story--seems to be completely missing from GSF. I realize that could come later, but even something like letting us walk up to our fighters in an actual hangar environment would make a huge difference here. They made some odd choices, as GSF doesn't seem tailored for fans of the ground game, and it doesn't strike me as having strong appeal to PvPers. I hope it turns out well, and I'm sure new players leveling for the first time will appreciate the diversion, but as someone who's been through all that, I feel GSF adds little in terms of what I want from my MMO.

They've said they'll make faster speeders once the tech guys tell them its possible. Actually, I think your first video shows a lot more. Better music triggers and some animated loading screens would be a much more elegant way to transition between environments. You also did something so crucial to Star Wars style--optical wipes between scenes. Even at the time Star Wars was made, optical wipes were considered an old-fashioned technique, yet the film made them work. Those cuts are part of the Star Wars brand--and seem to have been completely ignored in SWTOR. Nice work on this--it would be nice to get a technical perspective on why it would/wouldn't work.

What's that other game? Is something exciting happening that I don't know about?

'Char' becomes highly confusing if you play Guild Wars or GW2.

I don't suggest investing in any new hardware to speed up the load times. Over the life of this game, I've upgraded to a SSD and upped my RAM to 32GB, and have not seen any significant improvement. Its unfortunate. I was browsing Twitch streams the other day, flipping between channels, and every time I came back to a SWTOR streamer they had up a loading screen. No one is going to keep interest in a game that appears to be an endless series of loading screens.

Reputations Crafting Companion affection Dark side/Light side points Social points Really, there are always too many time sinks in these things. I'd prefer less time sinks and more rapid development myself.

I wish they'd redesign Scrapper altogether. Sucker Punch is a pretty lame signature ability, and having to rely on Blaster Whip to build resources is a pain in the ***. That said, jumping out of stealth and unloading on a mob/player is very fun, and Backblast is a beautiful and very gratifying ability. Personally, I'd like to see them replace SP and BW with some abilities that incorporate the shotgun, as Agents do with their big knife.

I normally immediately turn on anyone that mentions SWG because I never played it, don't care to, and really got tired of the bitter attitudes coming from that ex-playerbase. Shockingly--even though you led with SWG--I found every idea you had to be practical, fresh, and well thought out. James Ohlen and the studio leads really need to read this post.

Thank you for your honesty in admitting you don't get it. There are many who--when faced with something they don't understand--will rail against it rather than accept the limits of their own experience. You will not understand what good RP is until you try it, and with no chat bubbles in this game, you will never have that opportunity.

It sounds like a lot of people in this thread have never RP'd. Let me help you understand. When you're RPing, you're generally having a conversation with another player, or a group of players. In addition to saying thing, you're also responding to others actions, emotes, etc. Now, its true that I can read all of this in the chat box, but for me that's the equivlent of RPing in a text forum--there's generally a lot going on, multiple players--and if you want to follow the storyline you need to be focused on whats happening. If its happening in a text box, that's where all my attention is. However, some clever designer came up with a wonderful thing called chat bubbles. With these enabled, my attention no longer has to be on a scrolling dialogue box--I can actually pay attention to other players' actions, appreciate their appearance, and otherwise enjoy this game's beautiful graphics. The difference is like reading a script versus reading a comic book.

It's not difficult, its just time-consuming to do the scanning. If the time gate wasn't there, it you could argue it would be too easy. I did the quest once and got him, but could not see doing it again. I say leave this one as it is, but in the future Bioware really needs to focus on mechanics that are fun, not just grindy.

What we need is an web-based armory that allows us to: 1) see a character's stats, achievements, operation progress, gear, etc. and 2) ties forum posts to a specific character so there's some sort of accountability.

Jedi apparel. Of all the issues that are involved in making an MMO--keeping new content rolling out, keeping the playerbase entertained, updating systems as the gameplay grows stale, speeding the leveling curve to make high-level content accessible to newer players, and doing it all under the umbrella of a grand narrative--with all these things, you want BioWare to reach into your mind's eye and create more Jedi apparel options to match your exact vision? There are like, thousands of combinations of apparel at this point, and you cannot find a single one that satisfies. And yet this should somehow be given priority. Do you find you're generally a difficult to satisfy person? Because I'm thinking the problem here may not be with the game.

I cannot think of a game without some degree of clipping on the 3D models, particularly when players are able to mix and match item sets with no restrictions. Generally, most gamers are happy to overlook such minor nuisances. Perhaps rather than posting lengthy rants, you should consider reflecting on why such a minor thing is so important to you.

I had this issue. I was in the beta on Windows 7, upgraded to Win 8, and the game no longer worked. I was not terribly disappointed I couldn't play, as I have no intention of paying a subscription upon release.

Respeccing in the field isn't that big of a deal, but what is a pain is swapping out gear and abilities. When you have a PvP set, a DPS set, and a healing set, it takes up a lot of inventory space and becomes quite a hassle to manage. Also, moving abilities around to be more accessible for a different build is a major hassle. Any 'dual spec' system needs to take these factors into account.

If you delete it (as I did) you actually need to return to the quest terminal to get a new one.

Given the choice between having eight new class stories or eight new digital expansions to play through on my main, I'll take the expansions. Even in Makeb, there was more than enough flavor dialogue for the classes to perpetuate my RP. I'm happy with the approach BW has taken, and would rather have them focused on story arcs that affect all of our characters, not just individual classes. This is an MMO after all. We need content to bring people together, not segregate them based on class.

I'm in the XIV beta, and "amazing" is really stretching it. The game is not crap. It looks good and is relatively fun. That said, its got all the same old MMO tropes, but nothing innovative enough to move it beyond the quality of something like Tera. Its fine, but its a pretty standard MMO in a Final Fantasy world.