PvEers ask for buffs to themselves and for nerfs bosses PvPers ask for buffs to themselves and for nerfs to other peoples classes The correlation: everyone wants themselves to be buffed and for whatever kicked their *** to get nerfed. Its just that raiders get their asses kicked by NPCs whilst PvPers get their asses kicked by other players. You will also notice a strong correlation between player skill and amount of nerfing / buffing to be done (the worse a player is, the more they whine) and you will also notice a strong correlation between pvp whining and pve raid composition, i.e. the class asking for the most buffs in pvp is usually the least desired class in pve too. Generally, PvEers and PvPers agree on which classes need buffs and which need nerfs, its just the type of changes required where they disagree.

SW:TOR cost a lot to make SW:TOR costs money to maintain SW:TOR costs money to expand SW:TOR makes money from subscriptions SW:TOR makes money from the cartel market As long as the money that SW:TOR makes is greater than the cost to maintain the game then expect TOR to be around for a long time. SW:TOR will only get shut down once EA have recouped the costs of development combined with minimal profits from ongoing operations. However, given the negative press associated with closing down an MMO, I would expect this game to linger on in a maintanence mode long after the game stopped producing any sort of significant profit. So, your game is safe for now

They don't deliberately grind studio's in to the ground, its just a by-product of the EA corporate culture. EA themselves are great at making simulations of real life: sports games, shooters etc. These games require no innovation at all because they are based on real life. The designers simply need some interesting settings for the shooters but mostly the games just require skilled technical people to do the good graphics and build the physics enginers. Creativity is not highly desired on these products. Now, EA make a load of money off their core products, so much so that there is extreme pressure from all angles to spend that money on expanding the business. So, EA looked at the gaming market, determined that they had large market shares where FPS and sports games were concerned, but had little to no market share for things like RTS's and RPGs. Now, instead of invest in internal development to try to enter these markets on their own, EA instead buy up existing successful studios to do the work instead. On the surface this is a great idea as these successful companies have already put in the hard work and taken all the risk in developing their games, so EA just gets to ride their success. The problem is these companies are generally success because they took risks and tried to innovate. Once subsumed by EA, this culture of innovation, creativity and risk taking is squashed and so all games that come out of the company in the future lack the very essence that made previous titles successful. From there, it is a downward spiral: with EA squashing creativity and innovation in favour of playing it safe and driving up profits, a lot of the original designers and developers end up leaving the original company until you are left with the dregs who are only too happy to pander to EA's corporate culture. This can be seen in most of their recent purchases, like Mark Jacobs leaving Mythic, the Dr's leaving Bioware etc. Both Mythic and Bioware were massively innovative in their respective markets but all titles released since acquisition by EA have been lackluster, just more re-packaged crap. It all stems from a fundamental lack of understanding of the gaming market by the guys making the decisions in EA. John Riccitello has been fundamental in maintaining the corporate culture of risk aversion and so whilst he may not have started it, he is definitely responsible for not improving EA's attitude to risk and for the demise of some very prominent gaming studios. I truely hope the new CEO of EA does something good for the company. My highest hope is that EA withdraw from the RPG market entirely and leave it to the professionals. My worst fear is they promote Jeff Hickman to CEO and he destoys the entire industry!

I think this could be a very good thing for the gaming industry in general, it just depends on JR's replacement. EA has a culture of maximising profit by way of risk aversion and selling boxes. It is a very valid culture and can work well. Indeed, for games like Fifa, COD, MOH etc, that sort of culture is perfect because those types of games naturally discourage innovation and risk taking! Games that simulate real life, be it sport, war or whatever, don't need to change much because real life doesn't really change. Just update the graphics, rosters and maps and re-release the games. EA's big problem is that they got greedy and tried to expand. If you look back over the last 5 or so years, you can see EA branching out away from real life simulations (sports, shooters, sims) and in to the realm of RPGs. RPGs are worth big money so it was natural for EA to want a slice of the pie. However, their corporate culture of risk aversion and selling boxes completely fails for RPG games. The playerbase is completely different and expects different things. Innovation is the key to success, not a recipe for failure. So, my hope is that whoever replaces JR long term either recognises this fact and starts encouraging innovation, either across the board or just for their RPG titles, or I hope the new guy realises that RPGs aren't EA's strength and just leaves the genre to people who do it better. EA have bought and killed too many development houses trying to expand their market share and it just hasn't been worth it, either for EA as a business or the market as a whole.

The double-xp weekend combined with the Gree Event has simply offered players an alternative route for leveling up. Whilst some people may think it is an exploit, it seems as though normal questing or mob grinding both work out very quickly. If I were still playing, I would personally be there on Ilum grinding mobs over and over again. For my personal playstyle, I really hate questing. Given the amount of quests invovled in a typical MMO, the story lines involved are generally exceedingly lacklustre. SW:TOR is no exception. I enjoy a good quest line, so the class quests in TOR are OK, the epic book quests in LOTRO were, well, epic! But average quest writing sucks imo. Combat, on the other hand, is what I live for! I love killing stuff with my characters, pushing myself for maximum output and minimal downtime. Combine this with my love for player advancement and you are on to a winner! Lots of combat + quick leveling = satisfied customer (me). It is something I actually loved about SWG in the early days: I'd head to Anchorhead, join or start a squill group (15-20 people) then we'd all grab our 2 squill quests which would spawn 2 squill nests. Then, we'd all just roll out into the desert and farm those squills over and over again! We'd improve our combat abilities, get loads of XP and credits, have a fun social time too without being slowed down and annoyed by quest text / storelines. So, I agree with the OP: don't disable this feature, let it continue as an option for those players that enjoy grouping / socialising whilst those that dont like it can continue to repeat quests on other planets.

To have a very healthy crafting economy, crafting must be useful / required at endgame. To make crafting useful at endgame, the gear either needs to be equivalent to other endgame gear or every single craft needs to be able to make consumables that are required at endgame. If they made crafted endgame gear equivalent to dropped endgame loot, it reduces the lifespan of endgame pve. Given that the lifespan of endgame PvE is already woefully short, doing this would basically kill off the game as people would only complete raids / flashpoints for a bit of fun or a rare drop, then stop. If they made every craft make consumables and then make those consumables required, we'd all be pissed off so that wouldn't work either. Basically, the more important you make crafting, the less worthwhile other forms of gameplay become. I personally think the optimum solution is to make 6 of our gear slots BiS from crafting and the other 8 BiS from loot. That way each profession could have something worthwhile crafting and "required" at endgame whilst still keeping enough loot from drops to encourage endgame raiding. Ofc, it'll never compare to SWG but then this is a completely different game. In TOR, gear is the reward. In SWG, gear was a stepping stone to more meaningful gameplay which was the reward.

EA have a fantastic business model in general. From a pure business point of view, they are indeed extremely successful. Essentially, their business model is all about minimising risk and maximising box sales. They typically execute this business model by sticking with long running series, repackaging them, reskinning them and selling them back to the consumer. Their games are usually very short in duration to encourage the end user to go out and buy another one. EA don't innovate either, they let other studios do the innovation then once something has been proven to be a success, they buy that studio then repackage and re-release. Unfortunately, this model of business means that the games produced by EA generally don't appeal to core gamers or traditional gamers. They lack the innovation and duration expected by many of us. That is why TOR bombed so heavily: typical MMO gamers are "core" gamers and expect fresh ideas, innovation, unique features etc but EA, as usual, played it safe and just reused features that had proven successful in other MMOs. It is also why EA's main revenue generators (sports, racing and fps) will always continue to be profitable and fit the business plan for EA: the core ideas of these games virtually never change and so the games themselves dont need changing, just slight updates to rosters / maps / graphics and they are good to go! At the end of the day, the rules of sports hardly ever change, in an FPS, pulling a trigger on a gun is always the same etc. In a perfect world, EA would stick to their core genres of sports, racing and FPS and leave the more interesting genres to proper developers and publishers. EA's aversion to innovation means they are unlikely to ever hit it big in the RPG genre. Sadly, EA has soooo much money from their core business that they need to spend it somewhere and are consequently ruining many of our favourite studios.

The reason this game feels like it lacks direction is because it lacks direction! It has never *had* direction! Essentially, the designers were full of delusions of granduer: they genuinely thought they could beat WoW and they had the budget to do so. So, they tried to build an MMO for everyone, catering to every playstyle, in an effort to get maximum subscription numbers. Unfortunately, Bioware lacked the expertise to pull it off, so all we ended up with is watered down features throughout the game. There is something for every playstyle, granted, but each feature in and of itself is worse than competitors out there. This was initially compounded by completely mixed marketing messages. The doctors pushed the story aspect of this game, appealing to the casuals / single players out there. James Ohlen pushed the endgame raiding angle, telling us it would be far more heroic than any other mmo out there. Gabe pushed the pvp angle, telling us this would be the first MMO where PvP and PvE shared equal space during leveling and endgame. So, you ended up with a community who wanted everything, a game that didn't deliver on anything, and a management team who didn't know what to do. It is my firm belief that the management team still dont know what to do! This game no longer has the money to try to be everything to everyone. It simply costs too much to develop pvp, pve, story, crafting, space and do expansions! If they continue to try, they will continue to lose subs until the game gets shut down. In my personal opinion, the game would be better off long-term if they went niche. Decide on a direction (story, raiding, pvp etc) and push that angle hard. Make this the best damn solo-story mmo on the market and appeal long term to that crowd. Gun for the raiding crowd and bulk up and flesh out the endgame pve. Go hardcore with the pvp crowd if that is your desire. Whichever direction they choose, they have to resign themselves to being a "niche" game, however niche games foster long-term loyal playerbases which would continue to fund development of that niche for many many years to come.

You'll be lucky to get 4 warzones an hour. Doable during peak times but otherwise quite rare. Warzones offer more XP the higher level you are, but less XP comparative to what you need to level up. So, all in all, warzones are a terrible way to level in terms of speed. They are a lot of fun though! As mentioned above me, planetary missions are by far the fastest way to level. Staying under-leveled helps a lot, but just getting in the habit of skipping quests or planets is a good idea. Space bar through everything but once you reach a quest area, kill everything in sight! You typically earn more XP from mob kills than you do from handing in quests when on a planet, so kill everything you can! When underleveled this means very quick leveling. Flashpoints, warzones, heroics and space missions are all great fun and are what I'd do when leveling, but they are all much slower ways of leveling compared to planetary quests

For those people who enjoy reputation systems (i dont, btw), then "winning" for them means completing the reputation grind and getting all titles / cosmetics. Therefore, for those people, this new reputation is pay2win. The fact that 99.9% of us (myself included) couldn't give a toss about reputation doesn't change that fact, for those that do care about it this change is a massive slap in the face. Let me explain an equivalent example for raiders: Bioware put a boss in the game that can only be killed if you have purchased an item off the store. The boss drops no gear, doesn't gate anything, its just there. For many raiders, "winning" means beating all bosses in game and/or collecting the best gear possible. If Bioware did this, the forums would be in complete disarray with claims of P2W. Yet, that is exactly what has happened with this reputation faction: Bioware have prevented people from completing the game (winning) unless they buy something from the store. It really is that simple.

Giving credits to someone who has spent money on the cartel market is not "standard gameplay", it is still gameplay linked explicitly to the cartel market. For the record, I personally dont care about anything currently in the cartel market because so far none of it has affected my gameplay or my goals for the game. The fluff items are generally crap so I wouldn't want them anyway, I dont need the unlocks and I hate reputation grinds in any forms. Thats not the point though. For other players who do place a high importance on completing reputation grinds, or owning all the outfits etc, their gameplay is restricted by the cartel market even as a subscriber. It doesn't matter that you can purchase unwanted cartel items from the GTN because the availability of items on the GTN is 100% dependant upon purchasing stuff from the store. So, if your gameplay has been restricted by the cartel market despite you being a subscriber, that means a line has been crossed and they have implemented pay-2-win. It may be the mildest form of pay2win and 99% of the population couldn't care less (me included) but that doesn't change the fact that they've done it and that is the direction they are heading.

This arguement just stems from the fact that there is no industry accepted model for "freemium" / hybrid MMOs. In my personal opinion, in a "freemium" MMO like SW:TOR, subscribers should be able to access 100% of the content directly through playing the game. Nothing should ever be locked away from them except using standard gameplay. Free-to-play players should be able to play the game for free but be restricted, and then be able to remove those restrictions by paying for unlocks in the store. On top of that, there should exist "convenience" items so that if you are time-strapped you can buy items to help speed things up instead of playing the game as normal. I believe my personal opinion is what most standard subscription players feel a freemium mmo should be like. The problem is that SW:TOR is moving away from that. They have put lots and lots of exclusives in the cartel market which are not available at all through normal gameplay. Now they have also put an entire reputation faction in to the game which is locked behind cartel market usage. There is no way a standard subscriber can progress through this rep system through standard gameplay. To those that care about reputation, this is upsetting. So, whatever your personal feelings on the nature of fluff / rep / speeder in the market, please understand that to many of us, if an item cannot be obtained or progress cannot be made through standard gameplay as a subscriber but instead requires spending additional money, then the game is breaking a cardinel rule and is heading in the wrong direction. This is why I never spent a single penny in the cartel market and is has also contributed to me cancelling my subscription. EAWares' entire philosophy regarding it's cartel market is to suck money out of the existing playerbase rather than to provide an alternate method of playing. Its wrong and very, very short sighted.

TOR cost so much to make due to voice acting, world building and the art, not due to the complexity of the game. You could easily make a "good" MMO for far less than Bioware spent IF you have a good design philosophy and dont waste money on fluff. You can have it both ways. Original SWG did it. Whilst SWG was primarily sandbox, it did have a few themepark elements. It had two primary quest arcs (rebel and empire) which, at the time, were actually refered to as the Rebel Themepark and the Empire Themepark! It also had a few other quest arcs that you could complete. It also had endgame PvE raids! When I was playing, it had Geonosian Bunker, Corellian Corvette and Death Watch Bunker. Raiding is a themepark activity, i.e. structured and tightly controlled experience. Now, imagine a game similar to SWG (pre-cu). Increase the amount of themepark content (questlines, instances, raids) and "dumb-down" the themepark elements to make them easier to understand for the general public, specifically the crafting and professions. What you end up with is the structure and progression of a themepark (quests, instances, raids) combined with the freedom and community features of a sandbox (character freedom, player cities, strong crafting economy etc). It can be done and it shouldn't be that hard. The ONLY truely challenging part of merging sandbox and themepark features is balance of endgame PvE. If people have complete freedom of character progression then it makes balancing bosses quite hard as the potential range of power is massive. This is where intelligent design comes in: you can still control maximum / minimum potential of character builds through clever profession design. Whilst I agree that a sandbox MMO will always be more complex, the key terminology I used was "accessability". You can have extremely complex systems whilst still making the game accessable to the average gamer. You just need to be able to easily and concisely provide the information to the end user in order for your game to be playable. Proper tutorials, excellent tooltips, clear explanations, intuitive UI etc are all essential when introducing new concepts to players. Not many games do this well, so the developer of a hybrid MMO needs to ensure it is done properly if they want to succeed. And addressing your point of sandbox and themepark not being able to work together, I would like to point you at every single MMO in existance. Every single MMO in existance has features of both, it is just that most MMOs focus on one design philosophy over the other. However, if you want an example of a proper hybrid, look at the Eldar Scrolls Online. Assuming the devs follow through on their promises, that game is going to have complete character freedom (sandbox), large focus on player driven world pvp (sandbox), large focus on player crafting (sandbox) but is also going to have loads and loads of questing (themepark), instances and endgame raids (themepark). It can be done!

The best MMO ever, when it is developed, will draw from the best aspects of both themepark and sandbox design philosophies. Both design philosophies have their strengths and weaknesses. Themepark allows for structured stories, control of classes and therefore balance, clear progression, and typical implementation means they are more accessible for the average gamer. Sandbox generally promotes replayability and community, the two most important aspects of any MMO, yet typical implementation of the sandbox philosophy has just resulted in games that are too complicated to get in to, thus they remained niche. The perfect MMO, in my opinion, will need the following: Strong Storylines [themepark] Total Freedom of Character Customisation [sandbox] Player Housing / Cities [sandbox] Optional World PvP [sandbox] with strongly encouraged objectives [themepark] Group PvE Instances [themepark] Endgame World PvE [themepark] Scaling, Random Quests [sandbox] Instanced PvP [themepark] Player Driven Economy [sandbox] Large Zones / Continents / Planets to explore [themepark in itself, but necessary to host certain sandbox features] These things are just my personal preference, but the idea is to offer the user the choice of structured play (themepark) or freedom to play how they want (sandbox) whilst supporting the community and encouraging players to think for themselves. These features must be backed up by the following core principles of MMO design: Strong IP Accessability Strong Marketing Stable, scalable game engine No matter how good your content is, an MMO lives or dies by the strength of its community, especially sandbox features. So, you need a strong IP to draw people in, you need a great marketing team to sell the game to the public, you need the game to be accessible (i.e. good beginner tutorials, simple user interface etc) and you need the tech to support your massive community. A large community is also self-fulfilling: an MMO has a large community because it has a large community. Friends keep friends playing. For sandbox features where the community drives the content, you need a large community to keep it fun. I believe that the reason we have sooo many themepark MMOs now is not because themepark is best, but because market analysts cannot distinguish the true reasons for success and failure in MMOs. They simply dont have the data. To date, virtually all sandbox MMOs have simply been vastly complicated to get in to, thus driving large proportions of players away. That isn't to say that the core features of that MMO were bad, far from it, simply that the UI / explanations etc were too complicated for most people.

Because integrated voice chat removes a large number of barriers that currently prevents pugs from communicating using voice chat. In a sentence, thats why you'd want integrated voice chat within an MMO. Not everyone has access to a vent/mumble/ts server. Not everyone has the technological capability to use a third party program. Not everyone wants to. In game voice chat removes those barriers and thus increases voice chat usage. The difficulty is in the implementation and usage by the community. In LOTRO, voice chat was epic. Everyone used it, it helped encourage and maintain a large pugging community, all endgame raids were cleared by pugs using in game voice chat. All pvp raids used in game voice chat. It was just commonly used. All guilds, ofc, used their own voice chat servers for guild actvities and just socialising, but for pugs, in game voice was king. In game voice chat made the game much, much better than it otherwise would have been. Ofc, for every game like LOTRO there are 10 out of there with VOIP just full of idiots shouting obcenities, so it might not work for TOR. I personally believe it would be a huge benefit for TOR because this game should / could have a large pugging community and normal warzones would certainly be much more interesting if voice chat were enabled. The fact that we are restricted to our own servers would discourage the childish obscenities seen in FPS's so I think we'd be alright. Also, from an implementation point of view, it should be fairly easy: just find a decent VOIP program with an open API, integrate it, use separate servers for handling the voice chat and ur done! No lag, no mess, increased co-operation, hard pugging made possible....win!

Too many writers have simply forgotten how to make the good guys seem cool. Its not that people gravitate towards the evil side, its that people gravitate towards the cool side. Game developers in general have lost the ability to promote the good guys because they follow stupid social conventions. Why would you want to be the squeeky clean good guy in a robe when you could be a ****** with awesome armour and a humerous attitude?!?! Writers / designers need to get rid of this stupid "good = clean, bad = evil and funny" mentality. What they need is everyone to be "grey"!!! No good person is 100% good, and no evil person is 100% evil. From their own points of view, everyone thinks of themselves as the good person and all others as evil. We only make the distinction so that we know who to like and who to hate. In reality, we're all the same. So, we need to give some of the humour to the good guys. We need to give the bulky armour, the dark colours etc to the good guys too. It's easy to make both sides equally appealing, its just the designers being lazy and/or conforming to social expectations. Good examples of "cool" good guys: 1) Indiana Jones - This guy kills loads of people without a second thought, "robs" tombs for previous artifacts and practically rapes a woman in last crusade. Yet, we love him and think of him as a good guy! 2) Han Solo (yes, i know, 2 Harrison Fords..) - He is a smuggler who traffics narcotics and other illegal goods around the galaxy. He works for anyone who can pay, also kills without thought and is very humerous. We also love Han Solo! 3) Constantine - Chain smoker, rude, committed suicide, yet he looks cool and fights demons and other ethereal entities. He's pretty ****** but yet he's a good guy. 4) Riddick - Serial killer, locked up and escaped from numerous prisons, again, no compunction about killing anyone or leaving friends behind. Yet, he makes a great hero in Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick. 5) James Bond - Kills people all the time, massive womaniser, steals from other nations (all in the name of England ofc) and generally cocky, arrogant idiot. Yet, the world loves him! 6) The Transporter (Jason Statham) - Again, works for massive crime syndicates transporting drugs, money, stolen goods and human cargo, helping with bank robberies etc. Essentially, a bad guy. Yet, he makes another good hero! The point im trying to make here is that it is possible to make the good guys seem as cool as bad guys. The developers need to adopt a "the ends justify the means" philosophy as that is essentially what we, as an audience, buy in to. We're happy for James Bond to kill people, rob them, torture them, break the rules etc because in the end, he's working for the safety of England and that is a worthwhile cause. Squeeky clean is not cool, which is why the good guys are often outnumbered in MMOs

Unsubbed a few weeks back, runs out next week. Top 5 reasons: 1) Lack of World PvP this is the biggest issue for me. By world pvp, I mean 1 or more zones dedicated to pvp where everyone is auto-flagged. These zones should contain worthwhile objectives to both encourage fighting, discourage camping and keep people coming back. Given that they would be dedicated zones, it would mean it would be 100% optional and so the carebears would be happy. I've posted many times about what specific form I would like world pvp to take, but in short take a look at LOTRO's Ettenmoors or WAR's PvP lakes. I do not agree with griefing in mainstream mmos and camping is lame, but proper world pvp is great! My favourite memories from all mmos I've played have always been from world pvp. Granted, world pvp often gets a bit dull with too much ranged pew-pew, but when it is done right it is absolutely epic and beats every raiding experience I've ever had. This is the first MMO I've played where the world pvp has been so terrible that raiding is actually more enjoyable. 2) Too Simplistic Combat Mechanics People tell me this game is more complicated than WoW.......I can't even begin to imagine how dull WoW must be! I can from LOTRO which is vastly more complex than TOR. There are simply more stats so you can finely tune your character exactly the way you want, but there also isn't a "best" way. Every single class had tons and tons of ways to gear and spec and all of them were equally valid. The "meta-game" in LOTRO was a lot of fun, but it is almost non-existant here. LOTRO also had support classes (captain, burglar, loremaster) which meant that PvE had more complicated boss mechanics, but more importantly, many viable alternatives for success. For the 4 1/2 years I played the game, they never implemented a single enrage timer because it wasn't ever needed! They implemented more intelligent mechanics to ensure difficulty and class skill but reduce restrictions. For example, some bosses would have tons and tons of adds. One strategy was to bring 2 champions (AoE melee DPS in heavy armour). This would be the equivalent of an enrage timer: bring enough DPS or you get overwhelmed and die. An alternative would be to bring a loremaster and a champion, so the loremaster would stun or root half the adds whilst you killed the others. Another alternative would be to bring a captain and a burglar, so you'd have the captain heal-kite the adds whilst both captain and burg debuffed the boss and you'd nuke it in double time. Basically, the game gave you options which meant playing how you wanted, not how you were forced. In TOR, its tank, healer and 2 dps for everything. Classes make very little difference, tactics are all the same......its boring! 3) Boring Classes This ties in with the simplistic combat mechanics, but I find all the classes in game too similar and thus my motivation to level alts was always low. Every class is essentially the same, with simple rotations that are easy to learn. There are very few "signature" moves, armour etc is all weak. Don't get me wrong, I love my shadow main and it was fun the first time, but whilst leveling alts I just kept on thinking "Whats the point?" There is literally nothing to look forwards to. I compare this to LOTRO. Every single class had a very unique playstyle that was so utterly different to the other classes that it felt new. It took time to learn new classes and every class had something unique and funky to look forwards to. My main was a captain, primarily a buffer but a jack of all trades. My first alt was a dwarf guardian. My motivation was being a walking wall of armour with a heavy axe, i.e. the Gimli fantasy. My second alt was a dwarf champion. I looked forwards to being a walking pool of AoE death! One of it's signature moves (SHING-SHING!) was great to use and something to strive for. Nothing else in game came close to the AoE damage of a champion. My third alt was a loremaster, a pet class focusing on CC and debuffs. It took real skill to play solo as you were soooo damn squishy. Yet, you had cool pets to look forwards to (saber tooth tigers, eagles etc) and some truely epic skills (March of the Ents, root, lightning) that again was completely unmatched by any other class. My fourth alt was a burglar, the only stealth class. It focused on DPS and Debuffing with some CC on the side so was fun to play, and also had the unique mechanic of crit-chains that no other class had. In short, each class gave you something unique and exciting to look forwards to. TOR, by comparison, only changes the aesthetics of skills, but the underlying mechanics are all the same. 4) Vertical Gear Progression I've never played an MMO where vertical gear progression worked. Every game I've played, all it does is segregate the community, cause arguements and lead to a situation where people think gear is greater than skill. I hate it! Its dull, unimaginative and kills the meta game: you simply need the top tier gear and ur fine. Horizontal gear progression is where its at. "Comparable Incomparables". LOTRO had it (except for a short time with radience gear) and it worked fantastically. There was no barrier to raiding except player skill because endgame gear was all "roughly" equal. This meant finding pugs was easier. However, the meta-game was still amazing. You could, if you wanted to, tweak yourself for individual raids / bosses, so you'd drop some health and damage in order to increase mitigation. It kept things fun, fluid and you were ever experimenting and playing to the groups strengths and weaknesses without ever leaving anyone behind. 5) Future Direction of the Game Whilst I prefer sandbox elements, I dont mind themeparks. I'm the sort of player who enjoys everything! I raid, I level alts, I do flashpoints, I pvp, I craft. When I get bored of one activity, I just switch to another. The key for themeparks is to ensure each activity is good enough so that I never get bored with all of them at the same time. For themepark activities, keeping it interesting for long periods of time is very difficult because you are essentially just repeating the same experience over and over again. Due to reasons 1-4 above, I tend to get bored of the themepark activities very quickly because they are so goddamn easy and short lived! In TOR, I've done everything except rated warzones. I've killed every boss, got all gear that I wanted, maxed companion affection, got a high valor rank, maxed lots of crafting professions.....it was all too easy and all of it lacked depth and meaning. Still, I love Star Wars and so I stuck with it, posting my feedback on the forums in the hopes that the developers would "get it" and start being more intelligent with their content design. It hasn't happened. The developers (or more specifically, the guys designing the stuff that the developers implement) are just churning out more of the same. The expansion is proving their inability to adapt and improve and so my final hopes of the game improving have been killed. If the game isn't going to improve and I no longer enjoy the existing content then its time to call it a day. It was fun for a while (early beta tester, subbed since launch) but ultimately just another disappointment in a long list of poorly implemented games released by companies that should know better.

If they can replicate LOTRO's implementation (with slightly better quality) then a big fat yes from me! The VOIP in LOTRO was perfect. It came with the game, so you knew 100% of people had it. It had an on/off option (off by default) so only those who wanted to use it, used it. The setup was a doddle: choose an input device, output device, volume and push to talk. That was it. You know what? Just about everyone used it! Granted, 95% only ever used it to listen, but integrated voice chat meant that pugging was a much more enjoyable experience than in any other game I've played. A pug group with a leader using the in game voice chat meant you were in for a smooth run. Co-ordination became instantly much, much better. The community felt more "connected" because you actually talked to one another, rather than typed. Pug raiding became possible with minimal hassle. PvP in the ettenmoors actually involved tactics! It seems stupid when I type that, but in TOR pug pvp just results in me shouting at my screen at the incompetance of other players as they wake up my stuns, leave their nodes, mess about etc. None of that happened in LOTRO as pvp groups, fellowship groups and raids were all organised using voice chat. Ultimately, you can easily miss a typed command in the heat of the moment, you can't easily miss a spoken command. As to 3rd party software, yeh, ofc it is better, but the downloading / installing / configuring of multiple applications means that 99% of pugs dont use voice chat. My guild use vent, and did so in lotro too, but integrated voice chat is there for pugs, not guilds. Not everyone has a server they can use. Not everyone wants to download and install 3rd party programs. Not everyone is capable! If it was integrated, it removes the tech barrier and opens up a whole world of cooperation between pugs. Done right, especially in an instance-heavy game like TOR, integrated voice chat is well worth doing.

I would like to think that, as in real life, I would have the mental capacity and strength of will to remain an Atheist until presented with proof of a deity.

East / West is what I use probably 80% of the time Left / Right is what I use the remaining 20% I HATE snow/grass in civil war! I have a go at everyone that uses it. This is pure empire terminology that, as a republic player, we managed to avoid for probably 10 months. On my original server, Frostclaw, republic never ever used it. On our next server, Nightmare Lands, we never used it. Now, on TRE, it gets used all the time. And every time I ask people why they are using snow/grass, it is always because they are playing a republic alt but they have empire mains.

SWG "failed" and had to resort to the CU/NGE due to shoddy implementation, not due to the core ideas of the game. Basically, the game was too hard and complicated for the average user to get in to it. This meant sub numbers were always going to be lower than what the devs wanted. However, the core ideas (crafting, pvp, player cities, open dungeons, random missions, mission scaling etc) are all fantastic ideas and have proven themselves worthwhile in other games that implemented these ideas better. So, dont write off SWG because initial sub numbers were lower-than-current-industry-aims-but-still-high-for-the-time. For those that could get past the horrible implementation (ui, graphics, class balance etc) the game was amazing and something to aspire to for other MMO developers.

For the record, I don't think we'll ever get meaningful world pvp in this game, the engine can't seem to handle it and the devs dont seem capable of designing it. Anyways, I think meaningful world pvp should be built on the following pillars: 1) Meaningful Objectives 2) Rewards 3) Realm Pride 4) Self-balancing Mechanism 5) Scalability SW:TOR world pvp only ever got the rewards part sorted in original ilum, but even then the rewards weren't great, just valor. It has lacked everything else. Anyways, reasons why these 5 things are important 1) Meaningful objectives gives the developers some control of the fighting as they know where the majority of the fighting will occur. It also gives players a focus when they enter world pvp, i.e. they know where to go for some fun. By making the objectives meaningful it also gives people a reason to keep fighting: if we just take this objective then we can... 2) All forms of gameplay become boring at some point or another. That is a fact. Rewards keep people playing and fighting long after they have gotten bored of the core activity. If you combine rewards with objectives then you keep people fighting in desired locations for longer. 3) It is extremely important to get your players emotionally invested in pvp. This is where realm pride comes in. If you can, through story telling, objectives, server annoucements, rewards, whatever, get your players emotionally invested in beating the opposition then again, it prolongs world pvp and keeps the fights going and going. Defenders of a base who all feel realm pride are much more likely to continue defending against overwhelming odds than defenders who aren't emotionally invested in the outcome. 4) Hopefully self-balancing mechanism should be obvious, yet too many devs miss this one. In any sort of pvp without number restrictions, player imbalances will occur. The game should be designed to accomodate this. Some games do this through 3 teams (DAoC), some do it using NPCs (lotro, wow), some do it with outnumbered buffs etc. However it is achieved isn't too important, so long as it is achieved. Nobody likes an unfair fight so the more you can minimise imbalance, the better. 5) Scalability. Your engine / mechanics / maps etc should be designed to handle different scale fights. whether it is 5v5 or 500v500, world pvp needs to remain fun. There will obviously be tech limits at some point but the more you can work around these issues, the better. As a designer, you should be aiming for maximum market share which means handling a lot of pvpers in one area!

LOTRO did their cash shop well though. Players felt they were buying something worthwhile and substantial when they bought something in LOTRO. As I'm sure you are aware, you could basically unlock everything in the Turbine store to the point where you basically had full access to everything. The stuff in the store had real, long term value and thus not only did F2P attract new players, it encouraged existing players to drop to F2P and actually spend more money unlocking stuff. Additionally, due to lack of restrictions for F2P'ers and the value of stuff sold, F2Pers felt valued and were encouraged to play more and more. In TOR, the cash shop will buy you section x, black hole and armour unlocks. Everything else is fluff. F2Pers are ripped off, exploited and constantly told to subscribe. That is not a way to encourage long term success, only short term money grabbing. I agree that cash shops / micro-transactions can be a great addition to the western mmo market when done right, but TOR hasn't been done right at all. I also believe that subscription-only MMOs still have a strong place in the modern mmo market, but due to stagnation in the market it is becoming harder to justify paying a subscription for a product you don't think is worthy.

Not fussed about gear personally, it was trivial to get gear before, I imagine it will be trivial again. However, I have unsubbed so I wont be seeing ROTHC. I grew annoyed with the game maybe six months ago but, like you say, Rome wasn't built in a day and without the use of slaves, modern development requires a substantial cash backing. So, I stuck it out, giving them my monthly subs and offering them my opinions on the future of the game on the forums in the hopes that they would use my money to develop the game in a way that I would find more enjoyable. I was given a glimmer of hope when Jeff Hickman, during a state of the game thingy, informed us of the Ilum revamp and the move towards horizontal gear scaling in the expansion. Lack of world pvp and vertical gear scaling have been two of my biggest complaints since launch so as you can imagine I was quite excited. However, Ilum revamp totally failed and the PTS has shown that the move towards horizontal gear scaling has also failed, and so I quit. I stayed dedicated, I personally brought my guild over to this game (consequently destroying our guild in lotro), I led raids for a year, I offered my opinions in constructive threads on the forums for a year. Yet, nothing has changed. AT ALL. The game remains fundamentally flawed for all types of gamers and EAWare have chosen not to address any of those flaws with the expansion and 2.0. Before you say, "Why are you still posting", I am posting because I am still a massive Star Wars fan and if this game were ever to improve then I'd come back so I still feel like my posts might possibly help.

Without access to actual subscriber numbers I can't make proper predictions, but I see three distinct possible routes: 1) Re-engineer the game to focus on the core MMORPG market. [High Risk / Reward] This is the least plausible route for TOR to take but has the biggest potential reward. If EAWare decide to properly invest in TOR then they could take the game as it is and seriously expand it's systems to meet the growing demands of the core MMORPG crowd. Proper pvp, expanded raiding, better crafting, proper space, proper roleplaying, player housing etc...all these things are needed to bring back the core crowd who were disappointed with vanilla TOR. The core crowd are important as they are generally dedicated to their game and will put in tons of time to create the community they enjoy. These people run guilds, lead raids, form pug groups, organise server events and are the most important people of any online community. Without these people, long term profitability is based on high player churn rather than player retention. However, I seriously doubt that EAWare have the finances or the talent to pull this off so I give this a 2% chance of happening 2) Bumble along as they are now The game seems to have stabalised at the moment. Assuming that stability continues through the expansion then EAWare can defer making important decisions until some future date and just continue doing what they are doing: developing more of the same. Assuming the current stability is also profitable then EAWare could viably carry on for a year or two and just increase the amount of content there is in game. Presumably most of the people who are still here are enjoying it so as long as they have content to play, they'll continue playing. Downside to this strategy is lack of growth: without innovation they wont draw back old subscribers or the core crowd, nor will they attract a new crowd who previously dismissed the game. I give this route a 70% probability because it completely lacks vision, direction and talent, all the hallmarks of EAWare. 3) Focus on the F2P Crowd F2P, when done well, can be an amazing money spinner AND an amazing consumer experience. TOR's current F2P implementation is a shambles as it is far too restrictive and without enough "meaty" stuff to unlock. To get long term viability in to the store, they need more permanent unlocks available for the more discerning spender. For example, permanent removal of warzone cap for $50. If they could get the cartel market to a point where someone could essentially purchase all unlocks and have the same access as a subscriber then they will be in a good place. Such things encourage money spending and generate feelings of attachment to the game. It'd almost be like purchasing a lifetime subscription for a one-off price. Future money then comes from new content which the F2P people have to buy, whilst subs get free. If EAWare focuses on the F2P crowd then expect lots of bit-sized bits of content that can be easily packaged and sold. Expect lots of casual content as the F2P crowd is, by and large, much more casual than the subscriber crowd. Expect nothing of substance for "core" gamers. I give this route the remaining 28% probability of happening as although this is probably the most profitable route for EAWare, I expect initial spending on the cartel market will be significantly less than initial forecasts. They'll attribute this to their playerbase and the market when they should in fact attribute this to the lack or worthwhile things on the cartel market