Those citing the current state of the global economy as another reason SWTOR should be proud of it's number are unfortunately mistaken, the current state of things is actually a benefit to SWTOR and will boost it's numbers. People will cut back on going out (eating/drinking/movies etc.) and stay home instead and MMOs represent very good value for money in terms of $/hr of entertainment.

Whilst I hope the game does well and those involved have secure jobs it's still in it's honeymoon period so I'd say it's a bit premature to declare it a success. I'm sure it will have a good core following for a long time to come and hopefully that's enough to sustain it, personally I've had enough though and just cancelled. No I'm not going back to WoW...

Well to be fair if it's stated in advance the group wants to skip them then you shouldn't join the group if you want to watch them. I hope everyone watches the cutscenes at least once for each FP but I can understand if you're grinding them have done them 5x already they can get old fast. Doesn't sound like the OP is trying to dictate how other people play the game as he's upfront about the conditions of the group he's forming - the choice is yours whether you join or not under those conditions.

No actually it's about player enjoyment - yeah I've been a healer in 'those other games' at a raid level. I'll agree some took macroing etc. too far and actually made healing take virtually no skill and therefore it became boring. the problem with SW:TOR though is the UI just makes healing annoying, it's not that it requires a massive amount of skill it's just it needs a lot of clicking about and stuff like having to drop the enemy target to heal means decisions like whether to carry on with a heal or stop and interrupt a boss ability are taken out of the healer's hands as they aren't aware there's anything needing to be interrupted etc. Should SW:TOR implement everything for healing the WoW did? Absolutely not BUT the UI needs a lot of improvements to make it enjoyable as well as challenging to heal at raid level.

Err, they want you to see the game world they've created, not just zoom between planets only seeing the class quest stuff. They also need to drag out the levelling process, it's a major component of MMOs, getting free levels just means people get 50 sooner and a lot who do will quit and move on soon after. Sure class quests might be one of the most enjoyable parts of the game but if you don't want to do FPs, heroics, space stuff or filler quests then it's not the game that needs to change...

Only thing I've really noticed is the game does start getting a bit harder at Tatooine (I think I ended up using CC a lot there rather than mindlessly spamming nukes) and having just started in Alderaan I notice it's a bit more intense there to (might just be the nature of some on the initial quests though). I wouldn't call it difficult but it certainly requires a bit of concentration, no bad thing (welcome actually) but a bit of a shock after boring mindless spamming for 26 or so levels As for grinding - as has been said it's part of MMOs but you seem to have made it worse for yourself by having so many chars so progress on any particular char no doubt seems even slower. If you're also skipping FPs and Heroics (as am I) then you're also skipping another exp gain mechanism that's not so grindy.

yeah I do question the "you're not just a healer" thing when it comes to high level stuff. Sure we have utility as well with stuns/interrupts/CC but I find it hard to believe the high level flashpoints and ops can be done with the group healer dpsing on anything but trash, otherwise it would be trivially easy. Personally I think if you're going a healing spec sage then expect to be healing most of the time in groups.

Yeah it's a big flaw with the game but apparently it's OK because it's a new MMO and it will all be fixed eventually. Which ofc glosses over the fact they've had a beta period and over a decade of other MMOs to learn from. Plus the fact most other MMOs have had much more customisable UI's from release and certainly haven't had ridiculous short-comings like over-lapping buttons.

I'm curious what you find so different about it to other MMOs? What does it not have that you're glad about? To me there's basically nothing really new once you get past being in a Star Wars environment. OK space battles I haven't seen before and I actually quite like them but it's hardly done as a core part of the game, it's just a bolt-in mini-game currently. To me the key part of an MMO is the questing and levelling and the questing is poor IMO in SW:TOR. There's nothing new, in fact it's a step back to the EQ days of kill a zillion things and run about a lot. Admittedly that sort of thing will always be a big part of MMOs but it's really over-done in SW:TOR. Maybe it's just me but I haven't been pulled in to the story yet either, in fact the more I play the less part of things I feel. I really enjoyed lvls 1-15, graduating to a Jedi and getting a ship to go off elsewhere. It's pretty much been all repetition since then though, fly to new planet get a load of collect or kill quests, do them and move on. Again not a particular criticism of SW:TOR as all MMOs have that to some degree but I just fail to see what it's doing so much better than other MMOs. I admit I have a low boredom threshold and have become jaded towards MMOs after playing since the early days of EQ but reading some of the fanboi posts here I wonder if I'm playing a different game. The problem for me isn't that SW:TOR is a bad MMO, it's that it's an average MMO and that in itself is bad given the clout behind it and the Star Wars link.

I think the OP makes some good points personally, OK nothing really new but a good summary. The default counter-argument of "it's only just come out, give it time" doesn't wash for me sorry. It's a well-funded MMO with the Star Wars tag attached, it shouldn't be perfect but it should be a lot better than it is. I must admit I completely missed the dev process for SW:TOR, how long was beta? I've beta'd a few MMOs and alpha'd in WoW and SW:TOR feels like a mid-phase beta to me (as in it's still in the we've got the content up and running now lets start polishing everything phase). The state of the UI is unforgivable IMO, it's been a while but I'm pretty sure vanilla EQ had a more customisable interface from what I recall. There's just no excuse for it's current half-assed state. I'm fine if they took a decision not to allow for fully-moddable UIs but it's just so inflexible at the moment it detracts from game play. I mean seriously how can anyone defend an MMO with a non-scalable UI? SW:TOR was the first MMO I've started without the intention of high-level raiding, more just to enjoy the journey to level 50 (I've played MMOs for too long to enjoy the gear grind and time-sink high-level raiding always is). Thing is I'm getting bored already and only started on the 20th December. Compare that with Rift and I really enjoyed the levelling up process even though the back story pales in comparison to what SW:TOR could do. Why shouldn't SW:TOR be compared to WoW? WoW is the market leader and for SW:TOR to succeed they have to pull players away from WoW (or at least pull in players like me that quit WoW a while ago due to boredom). Should SW:TOR be as fully-developed as WoW at launch? Ofc not but it shouldn't be starting in pretty much the same condition vanilla WoW was at either. Can't really complain about queues - an MMO launch is always going to be a difficult balancing act and BW seem to have reacted quickly to it. My shard doesn't have queues anyway I still don't understand the decision to patch the web-site at the same time as the shards though. The reasoning is apparently to get all the disruption over in one go but surely anyone with a brain realises if they can't play the game people probably actually then want to spend time looking at the web-site/forums. Off-peak website maintenance is not very disruptive UNLESS it's done at the same time as shard maintenance.

I think it has the potential to be a very good class but I think currently the UI holds it back, at least for me I can't play as well as I want/expect to due to UI limitations. As for favourite class ever, for me that goes to Rift's chloromancer, genius idea rather than just a rehash of existing stuff (at least I'd not come across a class like it before), basically you healed by doing damage to mobs (via a spell you cast on a single player).

It amazes me this sort of issue wasn't addressed in beta, the current UI should never had made it past alpha let alone that the game's gone live with it.

I've not tried it but does double pressing the party member key target their companion? i.e. in the same way that pressing F1 twice targets your companion does pressing F2 twice target that player's companion? Not as good as having it in the UI but better than trying to click on the companion itself.

Yeah had that issue after using the emergency fleet thing as I wanted to quickly get to a cantina before patching. Ended up doing same as you and going down to Coriscant and thankfully my ship was magically there (after I'd left it at Nar Shadaa).

Yeah I'm slightly ahead I think (went to Nar Shadaa at 23), I've not done any heroics yet either and only one FP. I think I've done most of the normal quests along the way though. I notice quite a few players on Nar Shadaa are 20/21, given the number of mobs you have to wade through I'm actually glad of it though really as otherwise it would be pretty painful (rather than being a fun challenge...).