So so true. Their ability to develop a character through story is second to none among the current major RPG creators. They do a better job than anyone has done since Squaresoft in their FF7 days. Just fantastic. Unfortunately, they don't spend a fraction of that time/effort/genius on their character design system. If they did this game would have a future. As to which system to steal? I always loved Shadowbane's. like 15 playable races, 4 base classes, maybe 30 professions, and then everyone selects 4 disciplines, of which there were maybe 75 to choose from. You rarely saw 2 people playing the same character. There have been plenty of decent ones. The skill based system of Ultima or Darkfall is a lot of fun and leaves tons of room for individuality. Guild Wars had a great system that allowed for creativity by limiting the number of moves you could select...This game has 8 classes each with maybe 2 viable talent specs...16 options, that's not a hard number to beat (and it's probably high, in reality, since Marauder and Sniper probably only have 1 option). Or they could have risked trying something new. I really enjoyed DCUO when it came out, but knew that it was ill-fated because it was run by Sony. Combining an MMORPG with a fighting game or an FPS is a great idea if you have the player support to put up with the long process of balancing (which SWTOR definitely could). Someone will eventually try a system where everyone can heal, tank, and dps, and their role changes depending on their situation. It will allow for the most complex boss fights and require the most individual skill in group PvE, requiring players to transition rapidly between roles. I'm not sure it will be different enough, but it will be fun for a while.

It's always like this at the start of an MMO release. The hard core fans rush to the forums to crush any would-be naysayers. The subscription numbers look massive. And then...the free months start running out, casual players fade to find something that feels new...then all that's left is hardcore players, they go through the 7 phases of grief and then they're gone too. And then the game is free to play, with in-game items available for cash purchases! Most of you attacking me probably didn't actually read what I wrote. I think WoW is the worst thing ever to happen to RPGs. It's a boring game with a bunch of boring people playing it. It thrives on its popularity. It is the Paris Hilton of games, popular merely because it's popular. It's a black hole that sucks people back in because it has enough social force to do so, not because it is an attractive game in any way, or fun to play other than having something to do with friends. And the way Blizzard has handled its development and customer service has damaged their rather sterling reputation with serious gamers as well. They should do themselves and everyone else a favor and flip the switch. My disappointment with SWTOR is that they emulated WoW too much. I was excited when I heard they weren't going to have an auto attack system. I heard rumors that you were going to have to manually block attacks. I heard this game was going to be different at a fundamental gameplay level, but it's not. They chose to go with a safe, well-established format that we've all played before and in doing so have doomed their game. Fight it if you want to, but you'll be just as sick of the gear grind and the spreadsheets and the Warzones as I am in a month or three. We've all done it before. Why bother doing it again? Don't go back to WoW though. Go back to reading. Or Skyrim. Or Ornithology. Just please stop casting dollar votes for Blizzard's monstrosity.

Enjoyed leveling. The stories are great... You did some really good things, but you don't really know anything much about character building in RPGs and you never have. You stole what is possibly the most unimaginative character system since EverQuest. Sure, you got rid of auto attack, but you made that irrelevant. In the end people are going to mathematically calculate out which specs are best and what gear is best for those specs and then use those, and you're going to have to adjust the gear and talent tree changes with that in mind. People will have a "rotation," a set of buttons they push in a certain order to do maximum damage...This won't be disputable. There will be no personal creativity, 1 or 2 specs will be the best and that's it. People are going to feel like they're playing WoW, and we've all already played WoW. Honestly, of all the character design systems you could have stolen, you really chose the worst one. The DPS Tank Healer system has been beaten to death. The talent system has basically been proven (by Blizzard) to be impossible to balance in a way that gives players more than 1 or 2 real choices...You just couldn't have chosen worse unless you chose to make everyone exactly the same. Why couldn't you have done something new? You're BioWare. Your game is Star Wars. You could've tried anything. I am dissapoint.