TOR isn't competing against other MMOs and "the PvP systems at the start of other MMO's", they're competing against what's out now.

Is this actually true? I ask because I've suddenly died for no obvious reason (like, I was over 50% health, my companion was over 50% health, and the mob/boss was under 10% health, then BAM - dead) multiple times.

I'm 39 now, and have 2 un-abandonable quests that I'd love to abandon (and I'm not going to back to do them). They are both bonus series quests (the main one, not the sub ones). From Balmorra and Tattoine (I believe the 2nd is Tat). Every other gray quest I've been able to abandon, but not these 2. I tried the reset option, hoping that would do something, but it didn't seem to do anything (except remove the reset option as clickable).

IMO, Rift had no compelling story, but the game systems (mechanics, UI, world design, etc) are miles ahead of ToR. Bioware has always been absolutely fantastic at designing game stories, and mediocre at best at designing the world they put those stories in. Take Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim vs NWN/Mass Effect/Dragon Age - I know I'd LOVE to play Bioware's stories in Bethesda's worlds/systems. Basically I feel that if you could transfer the setting/voiceovers/stories/cinematics of ToR to Rift's world/systems, you'd have a killer game (and if you transfered Rift's story/setting/etc to ToR's world/systems, it'd be a massive flop).

It's nice that he took the time to do that - why it wasn't here I don't know. But nothing at all useful from it, really, except respeccing advanced classes isn't anywhere close.

Yeah, and since (for me at least) Huttball is what pops 90% of the time, well Huttball is simply terrible for melee. Everyone has knockbacks and my juggernaut has the one jump (that doesn't always work in a timely fashion in Warzones). If one of the other 2 pop, though, I don't feel nearly so useless, but Huttball is awful as a Juggernaut. My sorc (first created toon, but I leveled my juggernaut later, and have more fun with it in PvE) is a TON more fun to play in PvP.

I spacebar past any voice over that's not in English. I can read faster than they can speak, and I don't understand what they're saying, so what's the point of listening?

I'm starting to notice the ability delay in PvE now - at first it was only PvP that I noticed it (and it's absolutely garbage in PvP - insane delay sometimes), but maybe now I'm getting "better" with my abilities in PvE or something, I'm noticing things don't respond very well there, either - though still massively better than in warfronts.

For starters, I realize that TOR is brand new, and any comparisons to a WoW interface with good UI mods is a bit much, but seriously, this is a VERY POOR MMO UI. But why not take into account years of UI improvements in WoW (and other MMOs) when designing the TOR UI? So I'm playing a Juggernaut, level 38 at the moment. My resolution is 1440x900, windowed mode. I like to tank 4 mans, solo, and do warzones. These 3 activities tend to focus on different abilities - some are used more in one aspect than another, but the point is, in these 3 activities, all my abilities are used. So I'd like them all easily accessible. For the record, I don't consider the side bars "easily accessible". For starters, some of the warzone maps (Voidstar that I can think of) cover up 3 or 4 of the right side bar buttons, so they are unusable in pvp. Side bars are for things like your mount, buffs, sprint, the self-heal channel, etc. The bottom bars (and I'd like 4 of them, scalable) is where I'd like my "main" abilities. I don't want to have to redo all my bars depending on what I'm doing (tanking, soloing or pvping). I'd just like everything in a place where I can find it easily. I'd also like my relics to stop disappearing from my bars, please. And when I'm on my sorcerer, I'd be kinda cool if the raid frames updated health some - since I tend to go in with a healer mind-set on sorc. Another question - how come when I put a stack of 10 crafting samples into my cargo hold (I'm biochem/bioanalysis), and I already have a stack of 12 there, they don't auto-stack? That's pretty basic stuff... On that note - how come when I send a companion who's ON MY SHIP on a gathering mission, he/she puts what they find IN MY BAG when they're done, instead of IN MY SHIP'S CARGO HOLD, which is where they return to? Yes, I'm used to Ark Inventory and Grid and CT Bar mods from WoW, but seriously - when the Bioware UI developers started planning the UI, did you guys not consider that certain mods (and mod-types) are popular for a very good reason - people like them - and if you are not going to allow mods, you should try to emulate the most popular mods? It just feels like a console UI - I don't need everything so BIG and graphicy - I'd like minimal visuals from the UI, and maximum function, but that's the opposite of what you guys delivered. As MMO UI's go, this is obviously a step back from WoW, but also a pretty big step back from Rift.

I think they made a good, to really good, single player game (well, multiple ones, due to the class quests). There are standard MMO filler quests in the middle, that are ok, but nothing groundbreaking. So on the positive side - really good single player story (fully voiced!) that I pay attention to and am enjoying. The few Flashpoints I've run have been ok, nothing special, nothing terrible. The first one (Black Talong), I enjoyed the most, mostly because of all the conversations. I realize this would get old the 19th time I ran Black Talon, but the ones after BT were pretty much conversation-free. I kind of lost interest in them (and I'm a tank, so people want me to come along). So I'm kind of neutral on 4 mans. PvP - absolutely terrible. My first class was a sorceror (I've always healed, and I'm 18 in TOR), but I started another character to slice - made it a warrior, and chose Juggernaut. I had so much more fun in PvE (with both the gameplay and the story), that my Jugger is now 33. In MMOs, I like PvP. I don't claim to be super good, but I'm not horrible. So I tried PvP here. As a Sorceror, it's, at best, OK. The major issues are the awful combat response time that exists ONLY in warfronts - UI not updating, spells not going off, players warping strangely across vast distances, etc. As a Juggernaut, it's simply terrible. I can do my jump, and I don't land for 3 seconds (in PvE it's instant, or nearly enough so that it seems like it). Auto-facing needs to be gotten rid of (at least in PvP), so many CCs, slows and knockbacks make getting to melee nearly impossible (and my jump is NOT a reliable way to get to someone). Oh, did I mention that 9 out of 10 warzones are Huttball? 2 faction MMOs don't work at launch for PvP balance, and server-only queues (thankfully Bioware was smart enough to include a neutral warzone) lead to this faction imbalance being obvious to everyone on every server. Warhammer had this problem, Rift had this problem, and now TOR has this problem (and WoW had it for a long time as well). Talk about not learning from the mistakes of others. I do NOT want to play Alliance I do NOT want to play Order I do NOT want to play Republic And mostly for visual reasons (both WoW and WAR - the "good" side, to me, is easily the least interesting visually - especially humans in WoW and elves in WAR - and NO I don't mean Blood Elves for Horde - give me Tauren, Orcs and Undead all day over Blood Elves). In Star Wars - the Republic seems..boring. The only interesting Light Saber wielder that's not Empire in the movies is Luke before he "learns control". So as for PvP - definitely a failure here. Overall, in terms of MMO-ness, I'd say subpar. In terms of a game that cost me $60 - pretty good so far. But subscription worthy? Leaning towards no (after 2 or 3 months of playing when I've exhausted any quests I want to do).

I pretty much agree with this. The single player questing is pretty good (only sometimes does it get boring). But the PvP is simply awful. And honestly, if in 5 years this game has amazingly balanced and smooth PvP, I'll still think "SWTOR PvP sucks", because, well, right now it does, and I don't see myself lasting that long here.

If it came down to PvP (lol Huttball 95% of the time) only, I can't imagine playing this game for the PvP. I thought Rift's was about as bad as a new MMO could be with regards to PvP, but the PvP here is, at the moment, terrible. I'll pay to play until I've exhausted the single player quest lines I want to do, but the MMO-ness of this game is...not great. Glitches and bugs are one thing, but design problems are something completely different. After PvP, my next biggest complaint is the total lack of UI customization. At least Rift got this right in letting you scale things. But I can't scale or move much of anything, and the one thing I CAN scale and move (raid frames) doesn't actually update remotely timely.

Way too many stuns and especially knockbacks, which make Huttball so annoying (and that Huttball always pops).

Anyone else experience this? You pick up a daily PvP quest (Warzone matches won: 0/1) You queue for PvP You enter PvP (nearly always Huttball) You WIN You still see Warzone matches won: 0/1 in your daily quest. This has happened at least twice to me that I know of (and I don't mean where Huttball ends 0-0 and you are declared a winner, but you actually WIN huttball and still don't get credit).

Yes to both of these.

His guess was also my guess, only because every node I COULD gather, after I gathered it, it despawned. I've yet to find one I could gather and have it stay around after I did.

I did the same. My first char is/was a Sith Sorc - took artificing, archaeology and treasure hunting. My 2nd char is/was an Operative - took Armortech, Scavenging and Investigation. Those were going to be my 2 primary characters (with the Sorc being the "main" if there is one). But somewhere in the mid-teens, while trying to keep ALL of my crafts on both chars level appropriate, I simply couldn't afford to. Now, I hadn't quite figured out reverse engineering, so was using more mats than I really should have been, and was trying to sell my (pretty much worthless) crafted items on the AH, without much luck. So I felt I "needed" a slicer. So created a 3rd character - Juggernaut - Slicing, Synthweaving and Underworld Trading. This character is now my joint-highest level character, and has a ship, so is constantly running slicing missions, and easily my richest. Not sure if hitting 30k credits with level appropriate Synth and UT at 18 is considered "good", but there was no way I was going to be able to do that on either of the other characters, with the increasing costs of training skills. But, even though I did not intend this character to be my "main", I play it the most now, just to run slicing missions without having to constantly swap characters every 10 or so minutes. Also, the reason I'm doing it this way is that I really hate the idea of leveling to cap without caring about crafts, then starting at 1 when you're say level 50, and powering it up. What would be nice if the crafts crafted useful items along the way up, but they don't seem to do a very good job of that (only experience is the Synth, Artifice and Armor). World commendations and PvP gear seem much better for no credit cost and much less time.

I can''t see myself playing it that long, barring amazing content updates between patches. It''s a VERY GOOD single player RPG (with a bad UI) that other people happen to be playing with you at the same time. For that reason alone I don''t feel like I mis-spent my money. But as an MMO, I''m not seeing what it offers that other games don''t already offer (and do better). I don''t know if I''m in the majority or minority, but not being a lifelong Star Wars fanboy, the setting alone is not enough to keep me here, and the MMO part of this is no better (and in many ways weaker) than at least 2 other MMOs I''ve played in this past year. But the single player stuff absolutely rocks (which is what Bioware has always been great at), so if that''s regularly updated, which means I don''t have 6 months between me finishing stuff and the next patch/expansion, I could see myself staying. But if the content meant to hold me over is just more raiding and gearing (of mains and/or alts), well, other games I have played already do that just fine, and in one of those games I have 5 years of history/rep/gold/5 max characters, and I''d just as soon do raiding and gearing over there. That''s kind of how I felt about Rift - it was a marginally better game (but weaker PvP) than WoW, that looked a lot better, but it wasn''t better ENOUGH to disregard my then 4 years of WoW. At first glance, the MMO-ness of TOR seems marginally weaker than WoW.

Just echoing this. There is a very good reason certain mods for WoW are extremely popular - they fix/improve bad UI choices/implementations by Blizzard. Bioware seems to have made many of the exact same choices that Blizzard did (7 years ago), but not given us the ability to fix/improve them.

Visually, they are the same. Same manufacturer. The only difference I can see is that the TOR one generates a longer number.

Read the first few posts only - sorry if I repeat things too much...but.. WAIT? the UI is not movable/resizable? I only played for about 2 hours last night (got the game, installed, played a bit but had to go in work early today, so early night last night), and I didn't tinker with the UI, so this is news to me. The UI is...not good. It's not bad, but it's not good. If not being movable/resizable is true - that, IMO, is a step backwards for an MMO. So that would be my #1 - the UI. #2 - No dual-spec. I'm sure there are people that hate dual-speccing. I'm not sure why anyone would, but for me, this is an even bigger step backwards for an MMO. WoW adding dual-speccing was great. Rift having MORE than 2 specs was awesome. TOR not having any dual spec is not great. #3 - Spell-ranks. Ugh - WoW got rid of them for a reason. It was a good reason. #4 - and this one is minor, but I find the camera very...awkward. I slowed the only setting I could find down nearly as low as I could, and it whips around quite a bit. Other than that, so far I'm liking what I see. But my suspicion is that this is a REALLY GOOD single player game, but not a great MMO. For me, an MMO NEEDS dual spec, and I can almost 100% promise no dual spec means I'll stop paying after the 1 or 2 stories that interest me have been played through. I do want to give props to the voice-acting, though. Better than ANY of the voice acting in the prequel trilogy.