Well, that is true now - but WoW during vanilla had a nostalgic value that has run its well dry and has diminished to drought now, which is why most MMOs just don't do it for me. This game is doing it for me, but I'm starting to feel surprised by how bad this game seems to be doing judging by population decreases on server stat sites and the general opinion on these forums.

I've played enough MMOs to understand that end-game can get stale. I think this game has a "decent" polish, and it has light sabers and what I remember and love about Star Wars - If it was a random story line, I wouldn't be playing. I have a month left so I might as well get to 50 to see what's up. I played WoW for 5 years so as someone said above, it probably won't be that great for me judging by these comments. End-game is my favourite part of an MMO, just having content to do, and PvP that is enticing is what pushes me to play. If it consists of lackluster content in a month's time then I may just return for the Panadas, honestly. My first character was a Jedi Guardian, got to 35 then my server died, so my motivation is being squeezed to its limits being under 35 currently. Thanks for the comments all. You've been great.

Thank you all for the replies, did not expect to get so many.

Is this game worth playin' to 50? I have a 25 Marauder, and I am enjoying myself, but I'm getting a bit discouraged by friends who have returned to WoW. I mean, I can play an MMO alone np, I just want to know if it's worth the ride and a resub to you.

Do whatever has to be done, because all of those light servers that turn standard in the evenings are dropping more and more each day. Having to transfer or quit sucks - don't give some players that option. My server is fine now, but I had to reroll. Sucks, but seriously. Half of the servers have less than 30 people per planet and from 30-80 regulars on the fleet during prime-time. It's a recipe for disaster once more people quit, or their friends leave them, etc.

Well said. Population decay will kill at least 50% of servers. Downtime doesn't help. It should be 2 hours for a valor patch.

I don't ever care for downtime but this cuts into play time that's valued, again. 3-4 hours for a patch for something that doesn't affect me or anybody else not 50 for that matter. /whine

There's more will to play, but only by a small margin, imo. Warhammer felt dead 2 weeks in, Age of Conan almost right away. Hellgate died pretty quick, and was buggy but had a decent core. WoW is WoW, and Rift was OK, but I could feel the decay in the air right away. Aion, also, felt like a lost cause after a few days. This feels a bit more than those do. I'd put it between WoW and LOTRO, shifting more towards LOTRO currently, but even that seems to have more of a game to it at present.

I do agree with the OP. The logic many have is flawed. I still think if you could put SWTOR between WoW and LOTRO that it would fit snug in the middle. The population does seem to be decreasing and this game may very well end up with just over a million base players if lucky. I'd say by the time the first expansion is released that things will be "all right". This thread made me look up GW2. It does look pretty good, but I want to stick to an MMO for once. If 50 sucks for a while, then I'm packing the bags.

I'd say every MMO is bad. Age of Conan's community was one of the worst, and WoW's community is still just as bad in terms of the forums. With SWTOR, I feel like there's excessive whining due to people either having hopes too high or a crap PC.

Got more to say than one word? Or less to say than a heap of paragraphs? It would be nice to hear a simplified version of everyone's pros and cons. Pros 1) Atmosphere The world is brimming with personality and the unending voice acting is great. The best feature no-doubt. The universe and title represents the Star Wars universe well in MMORPG form as the story immerses the player depending on their class choice. The companion system and the size and detail of the plants further adds to the atmosphere. Being apart of a progressive SP-like story, with the MP opinion is good for me. Downside is excessive instancing at times. 2) Customization You start with faction - both are different in their own way, and I believe you haven't played the game until you've played a class from both. Character design is good enough and the choice of two paths on your class, with 3 trees per path is how it should be done. You can customize yourself in most ways and your companion in a lot of ways, as well as your ship. Being able to upgrade and customize is what an MMO is about. Cons 1. Support and Maintenance I've had issues with quests since day 1. Some bonus objectives stick around and clog up the quest log, to which I've had no help yet, but an answered ticket that gave no answers. There seems to be a general outcry of anger with regards to support, and I stand by saying that if you have the budget for such a production value, you should be able to maintain what you've created. Maintenance day seems to be 2-3 days someday, even if one day is for 3-4 hours, it feels excessive. 2. Population Decay Servers need to be merged, or transfers need to be made available. Period. There's at least a dozen or more US servers that have a light-standard population. The one that I started on, Gardens of Talla, went from seemingly heavy to light in no-time, forcing me to reroll on another server. It caused a few friends to quit for good. The heavy servers feel great. There's just the perfect amount of players, but even then I hope that it doesn't fall. On a graph, most servers are well below the 50% full mark.

I chose Jedi at first, and went with Guardian. The voice acting was decent, but like a boring elevator ride at the same time. Solid Snake's voice is pretty cool though. Leveling got boring, server died out. Now... I'm a Sith. Don't even care if there are a lot, that's how it is. I wanted to make a Jedi to be good, to face evil, yada yawn. The voice acting and story progression feels better and more polished on the Empire. The ship, and Imperial Fleet are better too. I like the atmosphere a lot better, and red lightsabers are better, but depending on the mood, a blue or green might be what's best for the eyeballs.

Yeah, I do. I feel that most who don't like it were either expecting too much, or plain have lost the feel for doing quests, or what we can translate otherwise into 'a grind', there's appeal and then those who aren't interested and that's fine. The game has not delivered on all aspects. The spread out population thing needs to be tended to, or else players, and their friends will quit. Like a domino effect for some groups. I lost 4 friends at launch and then the server died. Now I'm on a heavy and it's way better. Support seems horrible, game seems to have a solid core, just needs more patching and a few more player concerns answered to be a fair competitor imo.

Kicked back, ouch fellow community forum posters.

WoW was good. 5 years, or 6, I don't know, I don't care. It was good. The novelty of it was a blast for me back in the day. Panadas are OK, but it's done with. I'm just "waiting for D3". I want an MMO to play, and this might as well be it because Star Wars is hard to top imo. I quit for a while after launch, back after a month now. Level 38 Jedi Guardian. I find the current changes a bit refreshing, but... I had to reroll because my server died out in a 4 week span of time =/ 29% Light and sometimes Standard. Usually no more than 40-50 people on any planet now. So, I made a Sith on a fairly populated server which is different. A Sith Marauder seems much better, and the dialogue of the dark side seems to have better voice acting and makes the story feels more compelling. Jedi wasn't doin' it for me. Delay between attacks seems much more polished. Feels like gliding through butter with dual-wield. The frame rate seems better overall too, but the fleet still destroys me after 100 people. I get what I need and I get out. My problem is the reroll biz. I invested time into that character and there are no transfers, no server merges. I only hope that my server now which is usually standard, but in the evenings is "heavy" and sometimes "very heavy", I can only hope that the pulse lives on. I give the game an 8/10. I was going to give a 7.5, but the voice acting is really good, the interface feels friendly, it feels a bit polished and server-side there seems to be maintenance and control. Combat is flashy enough for my eyes and the worlds are great visually. The few responsibilities to make you feel active are alright, and getting a ship and two types of mounts is always good. The companion system and professions add to immersion. The support side of the game seems weak however. The game loses 2 points for me mainly because there's little music half of the time it seems, or at least it cuts off for me after a certain point. It also loses points for excessive instancing in some questing areas, and for space combat having turned up like an arcade game. There's a feeling of playing a single player game while online in a lobby sometimes. Other times rocking it out in flashpoints and heroic quests with others is pretty fun. PvP feels OK to me. I'd rate it a 7 for what I experienced at launch. The level range in the Warzone BGs was a bit excessive. Players aeons under me in level, and above as well. Around 2000 it began. PSO, DAoC, Guild Wars, WoW, Lord of the Rings, AoC, Aion, Warhammer, Champion's Online, Hellgate London, Rift... I like this game a lot, and I'm definitely going to experience 50 at least once, but hoping in the next 6 months there's enough added and polished to keep the game a standing structure for appeal. Games like Hellgate were flawed, people couldn't run them, the support was horrible. Others game died out because they were too much of a grind or had no end-game. Here there's a bit of everything, it just needs to be raised, maintained then polished. My 200 cents.

I've rolled a Marauder, a Guardian. Light saber was the way to go at first but I made a BH and got to level 12 and found it fun and different. Is it worth sticking out? How's the speed and difficulty 30-50?

Bumpp

I have a Jedi Guardian at 34 and I've been struggling. The server is standard, 32% full, so not so inspiring to play. There's usually less than 50 wherever I go, something up to 80 on the fleet. There are people questing beside me, but not many. I enjoy the game but there seems to be a lot of questing that's a whole lot of the same. 2 levels feels like a heap of work, or at least a lot of time and bonus objectives pass by before I'm able to do other things. I figure at 40 things pick up a bit. I also have a 16 Marauder, he's really fun because the server is heavy, and there's like 200 people on the fleet alone. I feel like this server will live on, so I'm forced to level the Marauder but I don't know if I can withstand 16-34 again. Might have to stick it out with the Standard on my Jedi to reach 50. I'll go down with the ship if I have to. :(

Played WoW at launch. No content between SWTOR and WoW then imo, not until things started to get polished. End-game vanilla was good times though, but I'm speaking more-so of the initial leveling experience of both.

I've got 6 buds in my guild who won't even play until this is fixed. It's making me not want to play when they're not on - plus when I am I'm looking at low textures.

I especially feel stupid because of all of the patches we've since had to wait for, all of which avoided performance/graphics issues.

The more I used to defend the graphics the more I feel stupid. This game looks like a PS2 game with this texture absent.

I had to log in to these forums which I've done only a few times just to add my signature to this thread, which I'm surprised to see is the 5th post, and am not surprised to see. My Jedi Guardian just got a new chest piece, I have AA forced to 4x, and the game just went from looking great to dreadful for some reason. When combat is going I can ignore it, but my new chest is drained just like my textures are on a low setting, and it sucks to constantly see.

I see SWTOR going places. I'd imagine that there will be a top 3, so to speak, leading with World of Warcraft, with Diablo III in second, if not first someday, then TOR and Guild Wars 2 in third and fourth. I read somewhere that there might be over 4 million players at present, somebody else said 6 million. That wouldn't surprise me. I think that there's a polished finesse to combat and I think that the integrated questing system of heroics and large instanced questing areas loaded with detail, and with bonus objectives, is this game's attempt at bringing something a little more interesting to the table. I feel the 3 biggest weaknesses with this game at present are as follows: 1) A little too much instancing for me. You don't even see yourself travel in the elevator so much as just a click. I understand that the game is huge, but it's more of a let-down in massive beautiful zones that you just want to call home, yet the experience is dulled to working together on some quests, in some areas. This is the system though, and the other features and dynamics of the game blend to take from the weak spots. 2) A lack of certain customizations. I know that at least 25% of the player base wishes there was an option between body size 2 and 3. Things like being able to name your droid for a bit of difference, and access to armor, hood up, hood down, like we were introduced to in the progression videos and interviews leading up to release. Nobody wants to feel like a clone of a bunch of other people. Give the player a unique, rewarding feel and you win. 3) The last is regarding a memory leak or networking error with regards to frame drops or "stuttering", most notably that of the Republic or Imperial fleet. You could be out in the wilderness on a planet with an extreme draw distance and not experience this. It needs to be addressed and explained. This is one of the top threads of the performance forums and has been since the game was released. Primarily the thread: "Horrid FPS" There's also the issue of textures at present only being medium from what most seem to be saying. My Jedi Guardian has a more unique armor right now that is very poorly faded as if my textures were on the low with no AF enabled. Other armor and instances of the game are not this way, but overall there's a feel that high textures are not enabled. System Voice Acting 10/10 Interface 9/10 Audio 9/10 Visuals 8.5/10 Performance 8/10 Customization 8/10 Experience Combat 9/10 Flashpoints/Heroics 9/10 Story 8.5/10 Companions 8.5/10 Universe 8/10 Questing 8/10 Crew Skills 8/10 Mounts 7.5/10 PvP 7/10 Space Combat 6/10 Overall: 8.5/10 The reality is that this is the Star Wars universe, there are many planets, and many more will most likely be added. There's Space Combat, decent for a mini-game and some initial XP rewards. Combat, which is the game's strongest point in combination with the sheer magnitude of the game world and the feature of constant voice acting. PvP is an option, nostalgic of battlegrounds in a big way. Classic questing, feel like a boss with your own ship, and a lot more features. For an initial launch with little issues preventing most from playing the game, that alone is a huge pro. You can bet that PvP will be refined with time, and things like the crew skills and companions will no doubt have their updates. One can hope that the mount system, specifically that of the speed is upped to at least 150% if not 180% and in several updates 200% like most games do it. I feel that getting around can really bog a person down sometimes, and that feeling of getting your mount is just not as present in TOR. If you look at the core of this game, then you can just imagine the types of updates to come. Class additions, perhaps, but scarcely with time depending on success, same with race additions as now we know how much time went into voice acting and character design through the game. It's why realistically I cannot see them adding a body between option 2 and 3 which I feel this game needs badly. It's the only thing I've heard constant chatter of. I'll be getting 50 and I hope that end-game content grows. If all looks well I'll definitely be rolling a Bounty Hunter or a Marauder or something to experience the dark side.

Just go into your first MMO experience with a little less critical thinking. If it really is your first then you should have a hell of a time, if the genre is your type. I wish I could go back to before WoW before I started this. The nostalgia is more powerful than the experience.