Lucas included the scene of Obi-wan putting in the beacon warning jedi to stay away only a short time after order 66 began. I think this is his tacit approval of the amount of Jedi in EU. Yoda and Obiwan being "the last two" isn't what made their characters feel special too me. More Jedi being alive than the script of ESB and RoTJ imply isn't a negative. As for extrapolating on the plot elements of order 66. The Republic Army, thus the clone-troop regiments, were already spread very thinly throughout the galaxy so they any Jedi not stationed with a regiment (which would have been a decent handful) wouldn't have been in harms way immediately. Not to mentioned some Jedi managed to survive the betrayal initially (Yoda, Obiwan). Surely it isn't out of the question that other Jedi managed to survive, even if they were within firing range of clone troops.

Eh given the insane population of the Republic and ease of travel its impractical to think the Empire could have dwindled their numbers to so few.

I'll toss some pennies in (I didn't read all 46 pages). I'm somewhat against 100% pure class story-lines. I'd prefer their be class specific content but only where it makes sense and isn't forced. Following a larger narrative where you get to contribute too is cooler in my opinion than "Hey, Bounty Hunter we got another big ****** for you to take down!" Right now they are moving toward the everyone follows the same path which I'm against. I mix (which in reality is what the leveling up process is... just more tilted toward to class exclusivity side).

No. Had this game came out a few years ago it would have done quite well. Its 2012 and a buggy themepark gear-grind w/no sense of achievement is very late to the party.

To be short and to the point, Bioware is lazy.

My goal isn't to convince the entire player-base this very moment they trinity is 100% obsolete. It is more aimed at having a discussion about the future of this game, as non-trinity games from major developers are less than a year away. Arguing it can't change is stupid, every genre (including this) goes through re-defining changes once people get tired of the same old gimmicks, and with this game having a mixed launch, it would be a good idea of Bioware to look into other avenues to make sure their game remains competitive in a changing very soon market (GW2, TSW, WoW:MoP <--- only to a certain extent for the last one).

-Would inflate the min system-requirements for the game, making it have less mass market appeal. -Whatever you think their budget is (100million to 300million), it was huge, not making an in-house engine was a mistake. EDIT: I'm not arguing the HERO engine is better, in fact I think it is WORSE, but if an alternative is wanted, an in-house engine is superior to another company's engine that is admittley aimed at consoles.

Having roles isn't the basis for group content. Having classes that aren't designed to get beat on or spam heals on person getting beat on entirely due to mechanics being designed that something has to (A) soak unavoidable high damage. Remove (A) and that is easily 90% of why we need tanks and healers. Making boss damage avoidable, more use of player specific abilities that will thwart said boss' damage, etc... That doesn't mean you will be able to go in and solo endgame content, it means the endgame content won't be a number crunching game like it is now to a certain extent.

That moronic, changing how players play their character doesn't mean they have to remove their current rendition of endgame content. Sure the content might change slightly from a technical standpoint, but that doesn't come even remotely close to "changing the purpose of their game".

I disagree that they feel completely different. While leveling chance are you are going to be w.e. spec allows you to solo. After awhile, your just damaging down mobs, regardless of the spec, granted removing the trinity doesn't solve this issue either, having it doesn't make it go away.

You haven't played MMOs before WoW then. I'll use the previous Star Wars MMO as an example. The endgame there wasn't about collecting gear and killing named mobs in overly designed zones. The endgame consisted of a sandbox world where you could build cities (everything from guild halls to city halls to mall and houses). You could also unlock jedi which was an alpha class (and worked well before they removed perma death). Endgame doesn't have to be a meaningless gear grind, and it has been done in the past. Companies can't look past WoW's success anymore, even if they seem to omit every copy-cat MMO to date has failed.

Right, but using that as a "See it doesn't work" isn't really valid due to it being made by a back water developer (Cryptic). It'd be like me saying that the linear FPS (as much as I don't like them personally) games don't work because Rogue Warrior was a terrible game, but it too was made by a back water developer (Rebel). What I should have said is there have been no AAA MMOs that have given the idea a true chance to succeed, but with EQ2 and Wow:MoP on the horizon, we will get a clearer picture then. If Bioware waits to find out, then start developing to change, they will be in a tough spot to say the least.

I completely agree, but if their subs are dwindling, if they have anyone with a good sense of saving an investment, they will try something, even if it isn't what I'm proposing. The inherent whining about classes should be something all MMO developers know will happen no matter what. As long as classes are different (even slightly) people will moan to make their class better (warranted or unwarranted). The watering down to make the game more appealing is backfiring in my opinion from a business standpoint. If every other game out there offers watered down classes that fit into one of three roles, then you need to be doing that BETTER than your competitor to succeed. To think Bioware can outmatch Blizzard at something they have been doing for the last 8 years is frankly absurd.

I don't mind heated debate, but I also prefer being civil. The above comment is why I didn't extend an olive branch so to speak.

Sure if you read only what you want to out of it. Because virtually no one will argue that X-LFD doesn't ruins socialization in these games and gives players a free pass to be a jerk, people will settle for that to get loot faster, as loot is the endgame here. People aren't opting for it because they are having more FUN (the purpose of these games) they are opting for it due to efficiency, which I will concede it does offer. That doesn't change the fact that playing with people who are held accountable for their play (performance and behavior) is FAR MORE FUN than playing with 4 random people with no accountability to each other. If you don't care for socialization at all, why not simply scale all the HP/Abilities down so you can solo the flashpoint? You would get equal or better socialization soloing then you would from a X-LFD, unless you consider insults and e-macho-ism better than silence, I certainly don't.

Almost all the new MMOs in the past half decade have copied WoW to the letter, so an example that is a clear yea or nay won't come until WoW:MoP and GW2.

Right, and making it MORE of a carbon copy is clearly not the answer to get more subs then by that logic.

Nice to see you regurgitating MMO-Champion's headline. Those numbers are not only still a loss, they were inflated with the "Buy a year and git D3!" sham. Almost 2 million players leaving WoW is a clear indication that more of the same isn't the answer.

No one will use the server only one because outside peak hours it will have long queues from DPS. This will compound on it self as people stop using it to make the queues longer, and then it will be abandon. Leaving us with the good-ol cross-server LFD, where I might as well be playing with NPCs.

WoW's 4 consecutive quarter loss in subscribers begs to differ. The genre needs innovation, not copy-cats.

While I won't defend how he makes his points, you are just as ignorant, sacrificing server communities so we can further streamline and already overly streamlined game is stupid. Bioware has no chance of making this game a success if they copy WoW to the letter.

There almost no chance of all 4 players being from the same server.

Right but all flashpoints take 1 tank too, but only have room for 2 dps (the class 90% of the playerbase rolled). So scaling wise: Flashpoint group(xT+xH+x2D) x 2 should = (x2T+x2H+x4D)...? But that isn't true for 80% of the operations (they only need 1 tank). Going a step further is (xT+xH+x2D) x4 = (x4T+x4H+x8D)...? Nope still only 1 tank for 80% of the endgame operations further increasing the role imbalance. But that isn't really on-topic, the issue has nothing to do with finding a tank. It about the content being stale, anyone who has played MMOs in the past hasn't found anything new in terms of endgame content in this game. Being that is was the largest budgeted MMO launch ever and launched in 2012 (8 years after the game that inspired it) is troubling that all of its mechanics already feel massively dated.

Making an anti-social game more anti-social is what a cross-server LFG tool will do. Might as well group us with NPCs instead of players. We could even script them to spourt out anecdotes, it'd be more social than copying the LFG system from WoW to SWTOR.

Not the greatest analogy, but if the F-150s aren't selling and the boats are, why not? And to fix the analogy I would say: "Should Ford start focusing on making boats if F-150s aren't selling?"