Let's see... didn't read the OP.... joined in 2008... assumed, based on length that the post had to be negative... responds with a personal insult. Interesting.

@Arress I've already established that while I liked QDMcGraw's post, I disliked the point he was trying to make. However, I don't see how your Q times have anything to do with what he said. Did you even read the OP?

Poor guy. Imagine seeing a few paragraphs, and it being such a time involved task to read them, that you'd avoid doing so entirely... a life unable to handle books, newspaper articles, online publications, or even subtitled movies. It's tragic.

Yes! But, it's difficult to quantify how someone is actually WRONG on an OPINION, without trying to dissuade them with actual facts. Thus, why the dual spec debate is so heated. If it is someone's opinion that dual spec is a good thing, and they have lots of supporting evidence on how it will improve their own gaming experience, it's nearly impossible to dissuade them with arguments based in how it will negatively affect your own gaming experience. It's necessary to try to step into their shoes, and explain how from their own perspective seeing it your way will improve their own gaming experience. Neither party is wrong. They're both right, but from their own perspectives in forming their own opinions on what they'd enjoy in the game.

We come from similar backgrounds it seems, man. I'm an older player myself, with real life obligations that outweigh gaming... and while I enjoyed your OP, I also thought it really came across condescending to me towards the group of players who are disappointed with current end game content, and frustrated with their ability to differentiate themselves in this game. At one time both of us enjoyed the type of content they find lacking. Saying that they should be patient is one thing, but condescendingly mocking their maturity level for wanting to enjoy the game under their play style, was uncool in my opinion. And again, I don't fall into that group of players any longer.

I understand the want for players who dedicate their time to the game to want to differentiate themselves, and accomplish something tangible in game. In fact, I just mocked a long post that was suggesting such a thing is intrinsically immature. That's a core element of the MMO genre. It's imporntant. Immersion is also imporntant. Where we're going to disagree is on 2 things: 1. That this game isn't absurdly easy and EZ mode in it's current state already. 2. That giving casual players adjustments to the game that make the experience more enjoyable for them, must also take away from the accomplishments of the more dedicated players. Surely, a good MMO can cater to BOTH player groups. Let's pretend dual spec is added, so my roommate, who falls into the "casual" player group, doesn't have a miserable time leveling his tank, and other players just like him have a more enjoyable experience. That's a good thing. Also a good thing? Fixing End Game raid content, so bosses aren't bugged, there's meaningful loot drops, and the players who dedicate more time to the game have more fun. Does the dual spec adjustment meaningfully effect the "Elite" player in a negative way? No. Will my casual player buddy ever see the end game content? No. But, for BW, both players should matter, because if they're happy they'll willingly give $$ to continue having a good time playing the game.

So the OP is implying that it's OK for SW:TOR to have no way for players who dedicate large amounts of time to the game to differentiate themselves, because they lack maturity for wanting to do such a thing. Got it. Moving along.

Yeah, hit and miss for me on the cover. Sometimes it can be useful for me, but more often it's a problem. For example, not being able to heal a teammate because he's behind a box. More ways for Line of Site to break as a healer is enough of a bad thing, that I dislike the cover overall. With the current lack of quality of life adjustments for healing... the system is a bit troublesome to deal with overall. No click casting, lack of UI adjustments, poor display of debuffs on mobs, and more frequent line of site problems all contribute to making healing in SW:TOR more of a chore than in other games I've been a healer in. Edit: I do like the premise of the OP's post though. Rather than arguing that issues people are complaining about don't exist, he's searching for things that are positives in the game. And, I agree with most of what was said.

Maybe I would have liked KoTR if I played it for a longer period of time. It was 2003, I was in a college dorm, and it was a time of my life where if a game wasn't multiplayer, I wasn't likely to have bothered. We were occupied playing Halo, Smash Bros Melee, Warcraft 3, DoTA, and other big titles of the time, and my spare RPG time ended up filtering into Wind Waker, that just released. It's been suggested to me that since I like Buldur's Gate, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age Origins, it's a no-brainer I'd like KoTR. I just didn't like it initially, and haven't had a chance to give it a play through. I wasn't really trying to say KoTR was a bad game. It was the 2003 game of the year by a lot of major publications. I just was trying to say that I didn't play it, so I was trying not to say much about it. As far as the accusation that I dislike the StarWars IP. Well, yes and no. Two of my favorite games, in my personal top 20 list of things I've played, are Rogue Squadron and Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast. I like the premise of the force, Jedi, the Sith... and enjoyed a lot of the characters like Han Solo and Darth Vader, as a young kid, and really like space centered SciFi in general. That said, I think that the characters in Star Wars can lean too far to the cheesy side, too stereotypical evil or good, almost as caricatures. That's just bad writing, however, and in no way does having a Star Wars IP mean that you're forced into that kind of writing. BW's inclusion of dark side choices for Jedi, and character classes like the Scoundrel, showed an understanding that the lines could be blurred. The decision choices in this game, however, were some of the worst I've seen Bioware do before, I think in part, because they were concentrating too much on the light and dark side, rather than forcing a player into a hard moral decision as in Mass Effect. - To this end, I think the Star Wars IP hurt the game. Not because of the IP itself, but because of the over emphasis on the alignment system and what dark side / light side choices should stereotypically be. So, there's a touch of background on where those particular opinions were coming from. I wasn't trolling. And like I mentioned in my last post, I still don't hate the game and think it has potential to build into something decent. Although, in it's current state, it has a LOT of issues. And those that the OP was trying to discount, in fact, are problems I've seen in a big way, and most people I talk to agree are problems. What's up with the denial?

Incoming ridiculously long post that will likely piss everyone off! In response to the OP: "No open world everything is instance" A larger portion of the game is instanced than anything proceeding it, and the use of shards has resulted in me not seeing a single imperial yet on a heavy population server. Furthermore, the "open world" consists of very walled in environments allowing almost no exploration. "leveling is a grind just like WoW except with a story" Leveling Quests are simplistic, like WoW, only with a lot of spoken dialogue added. In addition story driven class quests were added, with lots of additional dialogue. Some players like the story, and dialogue options, while others think that they're an annoying distraction and discourage grouping. The solo quests themselves, though, are pretty much the same types of things you'd be doing in WoW. As for the group flashpoints? Well, so far I've found them to be vastly inferior to WoW instances. "Worse than Kotor" I disliked Kotor enough to have barely played it. So I can't say either way. "PVP is terrible, worst ever" Ignoring the obvious balance issues, which are to be expected from a new MMO... The game released with pretty much 0 world PvP, and a couple of small... WoW battlegrounds, pretty much. There is serious input delay, and the character animations are not done with PvP responsiveness in mind. I actually question whether the input delay, and animation issues can be fixed, since the amount of work that needs to be done is enormous. As far as fixable issues go, having a bunch of PvP geared out level 50s grouping up and stomping on low levels, seems to be a pretty terrible thing. They can start by fixing that crap right away. But, still... "Worst PvP Ever" isn't that much of a stretch. It's really really really bad. "jedis everywhere, stupid game when everyone plays imba class" This isn't a big deal. Each side has 2 full Classes that are jedi, and each class is split into 2 ACs.... each AC has a tank/healer, utility, and damage tree. That's 12 different ways you can play a Jedi in SW:TOR. I don't see a problem here, unless you hate the look and sound of lightsabers. I personally think they're nifty.... so, actually.... I LOVE the fact Jedi and Sith are everywhere in a Star Wars themed game. Good job BW! "World is empty, soulless, nothing to do" Well, on the "empty and soulless", shards make it so that other players aren't seen as often. Static NPCs also add to this "empty" feeling. I disagree on the "nothing to do". "the delay in abilities is gamebreaking" It is for PvP. "Space combat is a stupid rail shooter" It is. But I like it. Oh, and OP.... You forgot a lot of other negatives. Like: No UI custimization. No Macros. No mods. No guild banks. No swimming. Too much running (it's come up ALOT actually, when talking to other players) Crafting sucks. The economy isn't working. Lacking End game content. This post is comming accross incredibly negative, and suggests I hate the game, I suppose. To which, surprisingly, I don't. I think it's an OK game, that has a lot of potential if the dev's work their asses off to address it's shortcommings. It unfortunately will NEVER be an amazing game, since a lot of the design decisions are fundamentally flawed... dang negative again! Well, let me go out of my way to say something nice on something SW:TOR does better than other MMOs before it... I'll come up with something.... wait.. uhm... surely... well... Bad time to draw a blank, eh?... I can come up with SOMETHING, surely something... anything... uh... ****. It... well... ****.... uhm.... I KNOW! The Companion system is good!-ish. No matter what kind of role the player choses, they can pick a companion that compliments their role, so they can complete solo content without help, or major burden. It's a great idea, that hasn't been done too well in previous MMOs before. Of course, I could get into how the companion's bar is inferior to control than a hunter pet or warlock in WoW, how it's an annoying extra burden to have to gear your companion, the lack of responsiveness they have in combat, the static nature of their roles, inability to carry gear, lack of dialogue, and basically suggest they're crap compared to, I dunno, a Skyrim companion. But.... ****. I'm doing it again. Game sucks right now. I didn't even realize how bad until I typed this post. I'm sort of sad... and.. I'll stop talking before I convince MYSELF to uninstall before the devs have a chance to fix anything.

I found the mobs to be too static in this game, ESPECIALLY in the early areas. They stand in small groups that aggro together, almost exclusively, with the exception of singles that take simple set paths. VERY lazily done, IMHO, and the worst job I've seen on such as thing, since.... ever. I've actually NEVER seen it done this bad, and I've been playing MMOs off and on for about 10 years. I actually can't recall the last time I've played an MMO where the areas were quite this walled in either. Very strict paths you need to follow in this one, leading up to your very static mobs. I play MMOs for the social aspects of the game, to the extent that the chat interface is the most imporntant thing to me. Therefore, as you can imagine, mob pathing isn't a dealbreaker for me. Regardless, though, it was done incredibly poorly in this game, to the extent that I find it pretty distracting quite often.

I think what the fanboys don't realize is that most people don't go to the forums. The majority of the community is just playing the game, and a lot of the people who are playing the game, and not talking in the forums, feel the same way about the game as the people voicing opinions here. If a LOT of people are in the forums saying things like "The lack of UI customization in this game really bothers me. It feels like a step backwards from other MMOs I've played before", then sure enough if you poll a random guild in TOR, there will be people who feel the same way. The forums are something of a canary in the mine. There's a lot of venom spewing from some folks of "if you don't like the game, go somewhere else", to which all I have to say is: THEY WILL go somewhere else if some of the issues aren't addressed within their tolerance, and let me tell ya', empty servers are less fun!

Spacebar.... Spacebar.... Spacebar... SPACEBAR. SPACEBAR. SPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBARSPACEBAR!

@QDMcGraw Dude, I've programmed in several languages, so don't give me the line of BS of being ignorant to the task at hand. I was making an argument that some of the "hardcore" crowd do not want brackets yet, since it's likely to increase their queue times, but the casuals want them because decked out 50s are ruining their games. One group is MUCH smaller than the other, so good business would be to listen to the "casuals" and give them what they want as soon as possible. Given that the devs seem to have looked into brackets already, they need to get on it, and implement a solution as soon as possible. Rather than waiting until more 50s are able to fill out the top bracket. Anyways..... this is getting a touch off subject, and I doubt we actually disagree on much, so.... yeah. Lunch.

Weird premise.... At best "hardcore" mmo players in group 1, would represent 30% of the community, and at worst less than 10%. If retaining subs is a key goal, then ignoring the casual player base is a HUGE mistake. And, they're currently screwing up in that regard. Right now. As an example, a small number of players who either used exploits or have WAY too much time on their hands, have already hit level 50. With not enough end game content to keep them occupied (since they have nothing better to do than play the game aaalll day long), they start hitting PvP. Which doesn't have brackets setup yet. They proceed to stomp thousands of lower level players, who might, I dunno, have freaking jobs. Allowing that smaller percentage of players to piss off the much larger group of players... is bad business. It would be smart to implement a level 50 bracket IMMEDIATELY, even if there's not enough level 50 players, and that smaller group ends up with high queue times.