Surnames came about the same way, it's just a label that people get stuck with. Every decent sized town in England had a smith, and a baker, and a miller... Sons tended to learn the father's trade so you had John the Smith, his son David the Smith, grandson James the Smith... eventually they just become The Smith Family. Even exotic sounding names often turn out to be something like "there was this guy from a town called Tuniri so everyone called him Hector from Tuniri..." I always thought there was a clever stealth pun with Darth (Dark) (In)Vader and his master Darth (Dark) (In)Sidious. since the first time you see the Man In Black he's entering a starship that has just been captured, and the Emporer is just about the most vile character in the movies... I'm wondering when they'll run out of good "violence" names and start introducing characters like "Darth Hurt" "Lord Bruise" and "Apprentice Papercut."

I doubt they care whether you approve or not. In some cases, the alternate spellings ARE clever and imaginative ways to keep the name they want when the original version is taken. It's also quite common in MMOs, where each account can have multiple characters and inactive accounts are not purged, after a few months there are millions of characters on a server and the most common names are already taken. Some people like to reuse the same names in different games or started on a different server, didn't like the people there or found a friend played on another server and rerolled. When the regular spelling of the name they want is taken, it's the next best thing to use an alternate spelling. Personally I'm not concerned about odd spellings or the Xhan'solox toons they can name their characters whatever they want. I find "message" names to be mildly annoying, I assume they are heavy into PVP when I see someone named Runandhidenoob or StabbystabbyIkillu but it's not worth getting bent out of shape over. Unless you are on an RP server and in an RP-focused guild and someone joins with a silly name like that, I don't see any reason to complain about other players' names.

I don't either. In fact I'm a die-hard cynic because throughout my life I have constantly observed people refusing to give honest answers and take responsiblity for their own mistakes. I understand that coming out and saying "we didn't do as good a job as we could have when designing this game" won't help save it or bring people back, and I'm not going waste my time waiting for it to be said. But I know that no one at the company believes what they have to say about it.

It's very very much not right. And it's about as surprising to see it happen as the sun rising in the east. I'd be more shocked if the demands for simple, honest answers were honored.

I agree. I bought the game when it first came out, stopped playing after two months because the game itself was not a finished product, and came back just before the F2P announcement to find that some of the problems had been corrected, but others are basic to the game itself and cannot be corrected without a complete redesign of the game. It has its good points but both the company and the players had unrealistic expectations for the game. However, the fact remains that no EA/Bioware employee is going to give his own opinion of the game during an interview or on-record statement if that opinion contradicts the official statements made about the game. Doing so would be career suicide. Even making inflamatory statements about it after leaving the company can be dangerous, as it would hurt the person's chances for finding employment with another company in the same field if he has a reputation for making former employers look bad.

Yes. This is common in business, politics, and social interactions in general. I've been around long enough to see the same things happen time after time.

When a person makes a comment as an official spokesperson for a company, he doesn't often have the option of speaking his own personal opinion. At least he doesn't if he wants to keep getting a paycheck from the company. At this moment, the company is focusing on the free w/ cash shop model to save the game, so deviation from that focus doesn't do anything for the game, the company, or the employee making the statements. At this point, fixing the many problems that are basic to the game's design and function would require essentially throwing away most of the game and starting over almost from the concept onwards. Considering they have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the game as it is, it's unlikely they will have the opportunity to spend hundreds of millions more to remake the game. What you see is what you get. The focus right now is to present the shift in direction as a positive change, not a desperate attempt to avoid complete failure. So the official word is that the game itself is solid but the subscription model is holding it back. Going on record saying that the developers themselves are not pleased with the way the game works, that it was rushed through development at the demand of the parent company, that it was released in an unfinished state and at this point does not have the support or budget to be completely fixed will only cause more problems, first and foremost for the person making these statements. The people behind the game are not stupid. They know these issues exist and likely knew what would happen long before the players did. But they cannot discuss these things openly while they still have a job, and those who are no longer employed there will usually be dismissed as disgruntled ex-employees trying to make their former bosses look bad. Expecting anything else is futile, watch, and wait, and hope that enough people stay/come back to make the game profitable.

I think EA/Bioware took a huge risk by concentrating so much of their initial efforts on an overlooked aspect of the MMO genre, and paid a high price for it, in money and reputation. It's unlikely that they will direct much of their efforts towards the storyline because it is the most expensive aspect of the game and promises the least return for the money invested. It's simply being realistic to admit that the game is run by a for-profit company and their focus has to be on making more money than they spend. If it cost $X to develop a new chapter in a single class's story, then it will take $8X to add a new chapter for the game as a whole. They may bring this down to $2X by developing a faction-specific story instead, one for Republic players and another for Empire, but after playing through the story once there's little incentive to play it again with another class. It's a big clue to their plans that free members will be restricted from things like the trade network, flashpoints, PVP and Ops, while anyone can play through the level 1-50 storyline for every character. It's the reason why the game lost some two thirds of its subs, no matter how good the stories are they come to an end after a week or two of intense play, maybe a month for the casual player, and you are left with the same familiar wzs and fps to play over and over. For people drawn to the Star Wars name and not traditional MMO players, the game ends at 50. Even playing alts is somewhat pointless, you might be interested in the differences between Sith Assassin and Sorcerer but the story is exactly the same, and though the story is different the gameplay is the same for a Sith Assassin and Jedi Shadow. It was even somewhat frustrating to play different classes in the same faction, after playing through Hutta with a Bounty Hunter I found I didn't want to play nearly the same game with an Agent. So the average player probably plays four characters to level 10, one on each starting world, then picks one or two to continue to the end of the story before getting bored with the game and quitting. So most people played the characters they want to play, experienced the stories they wanted to explore, and unsubbed when they finished. With the upcoming free options, these casual players can experience whichever stories they want at their own pace, without the bother of subbing/unsubbing to the game. I think it is doubtful that they will want to sink millions more into expanding the stories for every character when they either offer this content for free or charge for it through subs/cash shop options. Free players are unlikely to pay to experience new chapters and so developers will have a hard time convincing EA to sink that kind of money into a project that has little hope of showing a profit. Unfortunately, I think their most likely route to profit will be selling competetive advantages in the cash shop to players who approach MMOs from a more traditional viewpoint, while more casual users boost their population numbers but not the bottom line.