We need to stop comparing any MMO to WoW. The reason WoW became what it is can NOT be duplicated. WoW is the result of circumstance, time and place, as much as anything. Those stars will never again come together. The time had passed.

It's not a mess. It just is what it is. You either enjoy what it is or you don't.

It destroyed the community. Or at least that's what the nay Sayers swore would happen. *pokes community with a stick* You dead yet?

The poster is pushing back against the mentality that players owe the developers something beyond their initial investment. We owe them time, patience, understanding, ect. Players are blamed for the game not being more successful all the time. And indeed the word fault is appropriate. This isn't some indie game created by someone just for the sake of it. A great deal of money is at stake. This is a business, EA owns Bioware and expects a certain return in investment. Swtor exists purely to generate capital and increase the value of the IP so EA can make even more money with the next project.

A slug is nastier, damage wise. It moves slower and causes a lot more bleeding. The cauterizing effect of a blaster bolt actually makes accuracy more important. You can bleed to death being shot in a non vital place with a slug. A blaster wound wouldn't bleed like that. But in general, the advantage of a slug thrower is simply that a Jedi might not expect it. Beyond that... We already know how easily the force can be used to throw small physical objects around. Deflecting blaster fire takes actual effort on their part. A slow moving slug is just impractical.

Yup. The Empire never defeats the Republic until good old Sidious.

You are misusing Marty stu. The character does not fit the definition. Throwing the label around at anything you don't like is steadily destroying the actual meaning of what used to be a fairly potent insult.

Again, the story is being judged on what think its supposed to be rather than being judged on what it is. Your character is never shown to be stupid, only EXTREMELY out of their depth and forced to scrape and claw in a desperate bid for survival. And something else... Palpatine didn't start off at level one. This is an origin story. It's future chapters that give the opportunity for some real scheming.

Incorrect. The one and only storyline that really provides a decent illusion of independence is the smuggler... And that's still an illusion. Because of the nature of these storylines, they are all driven forward by events outside of your control. If anything the SI spends far less time under someone else's authority than most of the others. The Sith Warrior, for instance is NEVER independent.

Yeah, he was one of the best villains out of all the storylines. Even when he wasn't around, there was always a sense that he was somewhere pulling strings and setting you up for a fall.

People bash the Inquistor storyline unfairly. The story itself is quite good, it's just a very *different* story than the Sith warrior. The Sith warrior storyline is the Sith experience most people expect, especially if you are playing Dark Side. SI isn't that, but it's by no means a bad story.

WoWs base wasn't some army of casuals who were drawn in with clever commercials, that came much much later. WoW sustained itself with players sick of EQ and the large fan base that Blizzard spent years earning with the Warcraft series. WoW took the most popular MMO of the day and simply improved on EQs formula. Part of the reason company's haven't tried to be radically different is that even after all these years, no one has managed to do what WoW did. That being, take the formula of the most popular MMO and take it up a notch.

My issue is that Innovation does NOT equal profit. You frame situation in a way that suggests changing the formula completely is a no-brainer when it isn't. You are actually correct in the sense that nothing except something truly different will approach WoWs success, but there is still plenty of money to be made with the theme park MMO model as it stands. Particularly since no MMO to date has done what WoW did with Everquest. Take everything it did right, and do it better. Companies are stil trying to simply improve on WoWs model.

The genres popularity is entirely due to WoW. Not liking a game personally is one thing. Pretending it's some sort of blight on the genre is another.

So your idea is, essentially, throw away everything that has defined the MMO since Everquest. And replace it with what? Saying we should dump the old model is easy... And really old news.

Incorrect. WoW is not simply an MMO. It is an institution. It is simply not possible to compete with that directly.

It's not horrible, at least not compared to just about any other MMO. In fact it actually performs better, overall, then most. Especially in terms of fluid combat. Whatever you think of WoW, it cannot be denied that the engine blizzard created is beautifully coded. WoWs engine is not standard, it's exceptional. It does not represent MMO engines in general. Compared to WoW... TORs needs work. Compared to EVERYTHING ELSE, TOR is way up near the top of the list.

Nah... Kind of a flawed example. People act like most players in WoW were actually running dungeons and then the evil group finder came along and ruined it. When, in fact, only a small fraction of players ran dungeons at all. That was the reason the tool was created in the first place. Of course there are going to be issues when something that was an elitist niche reserved for premade groups and guilds is opened to the mainstream, so to speak. But even so... Can you honestly say that people got regularly mad at you for switching to bear form and saving the group after the tank went down? Really?

@ OP I think a good player is someone who is aware of what's going on, is aware of everything they are capable of, and then takes the appropriate action. Unfortunately there are, for example, Imp sorcerers who don't think to do something as simple as throw out a static shield to the healer or tank if something goes wrong and one is in trouble.

I don't see how you can blame WoW. I know it's the hip, fun thing to do... But I don't hold Blizzard responsible for the culture it's PLAYERS have created. And it's not even the noobs and casuals or whatever. It's an attitude that's been perpetuated by WoWs old guard for years. The people who have been playing for years, have done every dungeon dozens of times and who see them as nothing more than emblem farms. People who don't want to be in a group with you unless you've already beaten the content before and god help you if you don't know every fight beforehand.

The 64 bit client has nothing to do with how smooth WoW performs. WoWs engine was built to perform more like a First Person Shooter engine then what most MMOs use. Swtor is actually a lot smoother then many MMOs manage, but it needs further optimization.

Best advice I can give... If your looking to game on a pc, figure out what is the best video card you can afford and build around THAT. Your GPU is king when it comes to gaming. There is no other single component that effects performance as much as that.

You are making too many unfounded assumptions. 1. Players leave because they 'get everything' and therefore leave, having done everything there is to do. I have several issues with this. First, it's NOT the average player who has enough time to actually accomplish this. And it's not just this game. Any MMO you examine will have only a small fraction of its population engaged in the end game on a regular basis, let alone having gotten everything there is to get. Why blame casuals and difficulty, which is subjective, when there are far better, clearer answers. Swtor is a theme park MMO that breaks the model of focusing on end game content while, at the same time, offering an extremely linear leveling experience that makes WoW look like a sand box. It's unrealistic to expect a standard theme park MMO to do massive business anyway, the old model is getting tired after all these years, but Swtor has always been in conflict with itself. Story based leveling experiences do not gel with end game content. Everything that makes Swtor unique goes out the window once you hit 50. That alone was going to lose subs and provide a check against sustained population growth.

Stop exaggerating. We had shoes and you know it.

Back in the old days mistakes were made all the time. The difference was we didn't stress over it. What ever happened to the old wisdom of expecting to wipe during a raid? That's what so strange about the modern raiding mentality. Back in the day you raided to raid. You knew the chance of getting gear out of it was slim in the best of times. Now raids are just gear farms to be blown thru as quickly as possible.