If we're going for "realism" here, then a scoundrel shotgunning a Sith in the cerebellum would prooooobably turn said Sith's head into pink mist, lightsaber or no lightsaber.

Here's a tip: Go to Google, and in the search bar, type "site:swtor.com/community" before your search keywords. Presto, you're Googling the forum.

I know this has been said a hundred times by now, but maybe the more times we say it, the more the devs will listen.... Some characters need freedom of weapon choice. The fact that bounty hunters can't use rifles is just a travesty. http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/15600000/Darth-Vader-Bounty-Hunters-star-wars-15606903-800-600.jpg Sith/Jedi should have the freedom to choose double-bladed lightsabers, agents the ability to use pistols.... http://www.outlawstudent.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/james-bond.jpg Weapons are mainly cosmetic, anyway. Class balance is in abilities, not weapon choice. Heck, it would even make more sense in certain instances: in their tooltip, gunslingers are said to "specialize in long-range combat." Who the **** specializes in long-range combat by spray-and-praying with akimbo pistols? Give that man a rifle -- he'll STILL be a cowboy. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-27bOQSfMowo/TVr9PtZHasI/AAAAAAAAJ5w/C6CeQzKjd0I/s1600/true69grit14851.jpg

True. The social system feels only half fleshed out right now. I'm sure BW will make changes once they have the other kinks worked out of the system.

I didn't read the entire thread (just the first few pages), but I don't think this is an unfair issue. Everyone has two choices for looks (that are also viable in combat). HEAVY ARMOR: Choice between Jedi heavy and Trooper heavy. MEDIUM ARMOR: Choice between Jedi medium and Smuggler medium. LIGHT ARMOR: Choice between Jedi light and..... and..... yup, Social. I don't think it gets much simpler than this. I would love for my Scoundrel to wear moddable pilot armor, but if I were a Sage, I would HATE being limited to dresses and lampshades.

This is before many of your time, but the text-based Dragonrealms back in the mid-90s was AWESOME. Learn-through-use skill system, unimpeded thievery/pickpocketing of other players, "real" character death, great universe, loads of secrets (e.g. Thieves guild for any of you who played), a system that described in WORDS rather than numbers (e.g. "your sword thunked into the goblin's arm, nearly severing it" rather than "418 DMG").... I could go on. A lot of this is much harder to do in graphical MMOs now, but man, hopefully someday we have an MMO without any effing NUMBERS in it. EDIT: Very strange.... I either hit the back or refresh button on my browser, and the forum actually REPOSTED my post from 15 minutes ago.

This is before many of your time, but the text-based Dragonrealms back in the mid-90s was AWESOME. Learn-through-use skill system, unimpeded thievery/pickpocketing of other players, "real" character death, great universe, loads of secrets (e.g. Thieves guild for any of you who played), a system that described in WORDS rather than numbers (e.g. "your sword thunked into the goblin's arm, nearly severing it" rather than "418 DMG").... I could go on. A lot of this is much harder to do in graphical MMOs now, but man, hopefully someday we have an MMO without any effing NUMBERS in it.

WoW didn't break the mold... they continued simplifying the mold in place. The MMORPG genre has been a steady progression downwards to appease the rapidly increasing percentage of lowest-common-denominator internet users.

I played some MUSH's and MUX's back in the day where you had to write a multi-page character bio and have it approved before you could even enter the game, haha. Game combat couldn't even happen without a third-party GM showing up and moderating it. It was very RPG. To a lesser extent, Dragonrealms was pretty ****** as well.

At this point, the MMORPG genre pretty much equals theme park. There is no escaping it -- the only way a company can know for certain that their game will be commercially viable is by copying this formula. The question is whether the additions that BioWare made are eventually going to change the existing genre for the better. I think they will. Seriously, the group conversation thing is the best mechanic I've seen in years for "encouraged" roleplay. It's incredibly basic and the responses are sometimes retarded, but it's a step in the right direction.

The problem is that for the mainstream, casual gamer, these theme park games ARE immersive. It's like giving cocaine to an eight-year old... it's going to get the job done. The immersion high fades when you start seeing the game system more than the world, characters, and story, which tends to happen very quickly for MMO veterans, but slowly for the n00b. The theme park fix isn't going to be enough for even the n00b someday. We need real immersion, and that's only going to happen if more RP elements are reinserted into the genre.

I've been playing MMORPGs since they were text-based, and the genre's slow descent from role-playing game to theme park wonderland has been difficult to watch, to say the least. I miss the days when MMOs were outgrowths of pen-and-paper games, where you felt the need to play a CHARACTER, where emoting meant describing your actions in detail, not /dancing naked on the mailbox in Orgrimmar. It was all about immersion. Sure, you wanted loot, and sure, you wanted to become more powerful, but the fun was in immersing yourself in the game world, not in "beating" it. You never see a group of level 1 pen and paper D&D players sitting around a table talking about how to best powerlevel their way to "endgame." They are having fun right from the start playing their characters. A history lesson: RPG systems were created to give structure to role-played scenarios. You wanted to swing a sword at a goblin? Okay, well the sword does 1d8 damage. Roll for it. The sad truth: We are now playing the systems themselves, and the role-playing element is on life-support. I'm not sure where the genre started heading south, but it was definitely WoW's popularity and status as money-printing machine that caused every other company to follow suit. Vanilla WoW was immersive at first, but then again, every MMO game world is immersive and vast and interesting while you are still exploring it. But without that feeling of CHARACTER, the game world inevitably devolves into a number-crunching theme park hamsterwheel minmaxing gearfest that never seems to stop. Why play the game? For better gear. Why get better gear? To help you grind for more, etc. It's not an MMORPG -- it's merely Diablo with no end to the story. [sidenote: I understand the draw of PVP and the challenge of endgame raiding for guilds, but why not play MW or BF if you want arcade PVP? Raiding is fun from a social standpoint, but at it's heart it's really a group exercise in managing efficiency. Fun for some, but not an RPG element.] The first previews for SWTOR gave me little hope for the game -- it looked like yet another theme park clone. The personal storylines were highly reminiscent of what LOTRO did, which in my opinion represents the real nadir of the genre (i.e. everyone experiencing the same thing). But after playing this game for a few weeks, I am actually hopeful for the genre. Yes, this game is a total theme park environment, but compared to WoW, LOTRO, and every other game that has come out in the past seven years, what Bioware added makes me feel just a tiny bit like I'm playing a character again. The personal storylines, the voice-acting, the ability to role-play moral decisions during questlines, the group conversations, and the ability to achieve a certain "look" with moddable gear all contribute to a certain level of character immersion. There is still no real incentive to role-play between PCs, and the game is still a kiddie theme park wonderland when it comes to "questing," but it feels like a step in the right direction. If WoW represents a blasted wasteland after a nuclear apocalypse, then maybe these small additions to the formula represent a sapling here and a blossom there in an otherwise dead genre. That said, I have no doubt that this game will eventually devolve into numbercrafting endgame, but maybe the genre isn't dead after all. Maybe one day we'll have games where we can create our own organic stories, just like we did before. Games where your character is described in part by numbers, but not defined by them. One can hope... /mytwocents

Too much math. Just make gear which requires you to not have Light II/Dark II or above.