One of the best things I've ever read on these forums. Thank you.

Yes. How long depends on how well they keep up their pace on improving the game, and how well they keep to their promises (SSR, I'm looking at you). But for the forseeable future, I plan to keep playing.

No, I haven't had any interest in the romance plots whatsoever. I have no more interest in participating in a straight romance scenario than I'm sure a lot of (but not all, I know) straight people have in participating in a homosexual romance scenario. If they were going to leave it out, I honestly wish they'd have just left it all out of left me a toggle to turn it off so I'm not dodging flirt responses and having to shoot Corso down when he hits on my character for the umpteenth time. I hope they do it sooner than later, and do it right. Honestly even though I've heard they've given news to the contrary, they need to just add the option into existing companions rather than only in new companions. Doing it all in new companions...to do that right, that would be a minimum of 2 characters per class for a grand total of 16 new companions? With full voice? No, I sincerely doubt that. Instead, they'll do at BEST 2 new companions per side, at worst 2 companions for everyone in the whole game, which will get very stale very fast across multiple characters. It's much less work for a much better product to simply add new voice lines where necessary (and it won't even be necessary for every line of dialog) and simply add ways to opt-into the plot later in the game, which will be a nice bonus for hetero characters who made unwitting mistakes earlier on. I have no stories, and my experiences / stories are "watching my male companions get pissed yet again because I don't want to boink them."

Nnnneh. Really Neh. No, in fact. Just to prevent the inevitable obscene submissions all images would need to be vetted personally by staff members. Furthermore, it would look horribly out of place next to the rest of the textures in the game. This would not magically create a character that looks like a swtor version of you. It would create a character that mostly look like a swtor character except where it has your picture plastered badly across the face.

Are there chests in this game that are really that big a deal? As far as I'm aware all boss chests are completely locked down until the boss is dead, making this rather moot. And if I'm wrong, they could easily make it that way. There's pllllenty of middle ground here.

Pretty much what it says on the tin. Having the entire group's aggro / in combat status all tied together causes a lot of problems and doesn't have any real purpose that I can see. Trying to gather materials when the rest of the group is over-eager to hit the next pull is horribly frustrating, not to mention the occasional grief potential it leaves open. While we're at it, you could also just remove the inability to gather materials in combat. Not allowing it tends to create more ninja opportunities than it removes.

Contract does not trump state and/or federal law. If a contract is found to be in violation of state and / or federal law, the contract is in part or in total void. I'm not saying that SWTOR's EULA does violate any laws (to my knowledge it doesn't), I just hate people spreading the FUD that contradicts this principle. A simple "you agreed to it because you signed the contract" is a silly way to enter any discussion/argument about EULA's and individual rights.

As sad and geeky as I feel for saying this, this is because the rifles and pistols in the game aren't, in fact, lasers. They're "blasters", and they work on a different principle which I'm not sure is any better for physics but here's the basic idea. The cartridge for a blaster rifle or pistol contains a type of gas. A round of gas is pushed into the chamber and ignited when the trigger is pulled, causing it to explode forward out of the barrel (they must have some fantastic material science behind the barrel and chamber) and fire towards the target. It's been many years since I've read this stuff, but that was AFAIK the basic idea. In even more hazy areas of my recollection of star wars lore, it's called tibanna gas, and Bespin was important specifically because of its production of this military-valuable commodity. At any rate, once you get past the physics of blasters, the idea that they'd be a visible bolt travelling through the air is probably more sensible than if they were lasers.

Yes. It's what I've wanted theme-park style MMOs to be since their inception, which is the entertainment value of a single-player RPG with MMO stuck onto it. It has issues, to be sure, and how long I continue to enjoy the game will depend on how well Bioware continues to add to and more importantly improve the game, but they have IMO a very solid foundation to work on.

Sure, I'll bite. Rolling on loot is a meta-action. It doesn't even exist in the world of our characters. When our characters go to loot the body, they don't find it stuck to the corpse with the only way to get it being a mystical set of dice that appear from nowhere. The rolling for items is something that purely exists for us, the players, and not our characters. Therefore whatever action you take on the need/greed window is something YOU, the player, does, and not your character.

It's usually the lucky in these situations that confuse "luck" with "speed". Beating the RNG is not "harder". They're not making it "easier", they're removing some of the RNG and replacing it with grindable but obtainable reward.

I'm sorry, just had to call out this part. I find this funny when people say....well to be more specific... The irony of these statements is that the people who "have a life" (if you define that as having a job and responsibilities and things you like to do outside the game), are the ones MOST likely to be negatively impacted by poorly chosen and frequent downtimes. If I have no other responsibilities, I can simply wait for the downtime to be over and play when the servers happen to be up. If I have other responsibilities, the downtime might be during one of the few times per week I can play.

There needs to be something like this for newcomers to the game. I'd probably suggest the following: Level 20: Free AC Respec. May be used at any time, but is one-use only. Level 40: Same as level 20 Level 50: AC Respecs must be purchased, at an extremely high cost.

I figured on that sort of thing, I just wondered if there's a difference between Light I and Light V for plot purposes, or if Light is Light. And how, if at all, the game figures things out if you're "neutral" (have LS and DS points and neither outweighs the other enough to push you to Light I or Dark I.)

I understand that much, I'm just wondering what effect alignment levels have on the plot. In other words, does it change from Light I to Light V. And does a "neutral" alignment have an effect on the plot at all.

So, I've been thinking of doing a "grey" Sith Sorc for a few reasons. I'd like to play a "wants good for the galaxy, willing to break the rules and sometimes the narrower path towards what she sees as the greater good" type of character. I'd also like to retain my red saber crystals without being 100% evil, and eventually angle for the "grey" gear that will supposedly be added. My question is about the plot as it relates to "grey" characters. When determining LS/DS "plot points" if any, does it simply take the net result? In other words, if my character has 1000 LS ponits and 1100 DS points, does it simply go "Dark-Sided" and go from there? Or do the threshholds (LS I-V, DS I-V) have variable impacts?

If Project doesn't feel very "BAM!" for you, I'm not sure what to tell you. A giant rock or hunk of metal to the head is about as BAM as it gets. That said, let me tell you my average solo PvE setup as a midlevel Balance spec Shadow: Open with Force in Balance, an AoE that does a very nice chunk of damage. Thing 1 gets a Project to the head, Thing 2 gets a Force Stun while I'm already running towards thing 3, the strongest thing in the pack (champ/elite if any) and hit him with breach while I start tossing out some Saber Strikes, a quick tab to the closer of the two weaker Things gets them a boot to the head while they're still stunned (Tumult), this will often finish one of them off. The short stun'd but already heavy damaged weaker things start to close and I hit a Saber Whirl, if there's a little sliver of health left they get some saber thwacking too. Any time one of my saber abilities procs the Force Strike talent, I fire off a mind crush at the tougher enemies. Force in Balance gets used frequently even against single targets for the damage and Force Suppression debuff, Project at this point is a filler move along with saber strike. If I have extra force to burn, it's Double Strikes or more Saber Whirls depending on single target or AoE. I rarely if ever use Telekinetic Throw unless I need a little health boost (via Focused Insight). Overall, I love the feel of it. It might not be everyone's cup of tea. IMO, though, it's very kinetic and always on the move and just plain fun.

"Consular classes are based on junk throwing." Again, 7 non-telekinesis vs. 1 telekinesis ability for balance shadows. 1-2 talents per tree that deal with Project vs. 18-20 talents per tree that do not. I'm sorry, but on this point, you're just talking completely out of left field and if you want to compose a sensible argument you need to let this notion go. I use Project every fight yes, but I use all of my other abilities even more. If consular specs were "based on" throwing things, I would have 4-5 abilities that I use frequently at the very least that throw things. At the very least 2-3. I do not. I have 1 that I use on a regular basis and one that I rarely use. Throwing things for Jedi bothers you. We get that. But the class is not "based on" it and no matter how many times you say that, it will not make it true. The bizarre insistence that it is, is hurting your overall argument. SW:TOR exists in the EU. If you can't accept the EU, you can't accept SW:TOR. You're still too devoted to the movies and the movies alone as acceptable canon when informing something that exists, entirely, in the realm of the EU. If we were to go by movie canon, and movie canon at utter face value with no interpretation as you seem to suggest we do, no Jedi class would throw anything. They wouldn't use "kinetic force projections", they wouldn't do anything but defensively return their opponents attacks back at them at best. You seem to exist in this bizarre quantum state of both accepting and not accepting non-movie content, and it's rather baffling.

I just thought I'd toss my 2p in and say I approve of the OP's message. I don't RP all that often. I like RP, and I like MMO's, but for some reason for me they're not two great tastes that taste great together. That said, I do play on an RP server because I prefer the atmosphere and community that's usually fostered by RP servers. That in mind, I have occasionally tried RP in SW:TOR because, hey, we seem to have a robust casual RP community so why not. I was definitely turned off by the combination of "no chat bubbles" and "no /say animations". It makes the whole player interaction thing feel sterile and lifeless, like I was RPing over a chat client and my on-screen graphics were a purely incidental visual accompaniment. I think the addition of bubbles and animations to /say and bubbles to /party would be a huge improvement for immersion and interaction.

I do actually agree with you on this one, the rock shield feels slightly goofy. Not because they appear around you, but just the style and execution feels weird. They clip with your character frequently, and in a full run the circle of rocks actually floats behind you rather than on you. That said, rather than go into force crystals or anything else I think this should be converted from an activated ability to a passive talent buff and rolled into Combat Technique. This is a layer of micromanagement that shadow tanks just do not need, an irritating, stare-at-your-action-bar ability that was the reason I decided to hold off on Kinetics and just stick with Balance dps until they improve the U.I. Meanwhile, other classes get the bonus it gives just baked into their "tank stance" abilities IIRC.

Ahhh okay, that makes way more sense. Although actually in a game this priority-based rather than rotation based macros like that would gimp you pretty badly. So far I've played Gunslinger, Commando, Sentinel and Shadow, and all of them wouldn't at all work with consolidation macros. Each ability has specific situations I use them in and those situations are frequently not "every time it comes off of cooldown". There are some other macros that in no way play for you but do improve your quality of life. For example, what I would like to see would be mouseover macros for healers (or just healing abilities that function on mouseover), and Assist macros for raiding use.

What is this I don't even. Did you actually read the OP? Both of the things you say you agree should be done, are the things the OP asked for. Every issue is the "most important" issue to someone, as far as the rest of your rant goes.

I"m a bit concerned about how difficult it would be to balance "stats only" until higher crafting levels with "best gear per level" successfully. I know for example, as a Balance Shadow crit is incredibly valuable for me and it would need a very large amount of pure willpower to trump a willpower + crit item. That might be difficult to do without overpowering the item. Also, it'd be nice if people can still turn a profit while leveling...if "best gear for leveling" only comes into play at higher levels that would remove that potential. Other than that, I like this set of ideas a lot better and it looks like overall not a bad plan.

Honestly thus far I can say that Balance Shadow needs a better Proc display *badly*. If there is some sort of on-character display of the proc (like JK-"riposte available to use"), it's so subtle that it always gets completely lost in combat and I have to stare at my buffbar whenever I use melee abilities so I can see Force Strike procs. It's incredibly annoying. I want to look at the nifty graphics of my character being a force powered ball of awesome, not a small cluster of icons jumping up and down.

It's still a terrible list when it breaks down to 1-2 talents per tree, out of...how many available total depending on the tree? You point them out but you leave out the proportion. They're a drop in the bucket. Not optional for a optimal rotation? No, of course it's not. I could just as well complain that I have to use Force Stun on a regular basis while soloing but I think that'd be a rather silly waste of time when I have so many other abilities that I do approve of the appearance of. My point also still stands. Yes, I use Project every combat. I also use Saber Strike, Double Strike, Force Breach, Force Balance, Mind Crush, Force Stun, and Whirling Blow. It's just one ability of many and the only one that uses telekinesis that gets used on a regular basis. Which really also was part of my point...it's the only ability that currently breaks the Balance tree's otherwise trend of constantly lobbing energy waves and invisible use of the force. Maybe if it bothers you that much you might try Balance. You won't get rid of it completely, though, just use it much less from the sound of it. And from the sound of it you won't settle for anything less than the ability (in its current from with its current graphics) being completely gone from Shadow's rotation. Letting Sages only keep it is not a compromise.