Diplomacy is damn near 90% companion gifts - so many I just end up deleting them out of my bag.

My simple answer: yes, they need it dearly - a long with just about evry other aspect of the game lol

Go to Walmart and buy a $30 USB cooling pad for about $25. Should help with the overheating some. This game is HARD on equipment to say the least though so don't be surprised if it still gets hot!

Hell no. For the million reasons listed by everyone else. Plus - I didn't see this one - every class is exactly the same across factions. A friend and I play on opposite factions as tanks with totally "different" classes and races and we literally get the same skills (effect wise they are exact, with different names) at the same levels? The game blows. I am rather depressed about this one but the more I play the game and the more I talk to other people about it the more I realize that ToR sucks. Unfortunately, I might as well waste my time on this one till some of the games I'm waiting on come out. I had huge huge hopes for this game especially because it is set in STAR WARS but they dropped the ball big time. I always HATED WoW but honestly, if I'm going to play ToR I might as well play the feature rich (never thought I'd say this) version with a different name.

They had five years, no shortage of money, and plenty of industry standards to compare themselves to. I don't think it would be a stretch to argue that the only reason any one is really playing this game is because of the setting of the game.

I apologize then. My impression was that your rush of enjoyment came from the similarity between the games simply because they were so drastically different. Though I do have to question how you could find the same rush of enjoyment from the original UO and ToR/WoW! A big part of it for me came from the fact you could actually lose something in UO. I would love to see a modern version of the original UO but I just don't think that will ever happen. On a side note: your showing your age by even bringing up the original UO!

I am a vanguard tank and it's damn annoying to tank in this game. I don't blame dps when they pull off me - no one has any idea the amount of threat they are generating so I EXPECT dps to do their job: MAX DPS. How in god's name are they supposed to "feel" when to pull off? That's ridiculous. All I'm asking for is give me something - take my taunts off such large timers and I'll be happy. It's a disaster with adds and I don't want to hear some bs about I should manage my taunts better because I have to taunt even single mobs as soon as they are off CD if I'm with even decent dps. Beyond the taunts: I can't be doing consistent damage to multiple mobs even after I do taunt them; which, is required according to the press release on threat BW put out recently. I'm not making an argument that there should or should not be a threat meter or anything but I don't want to hear people ************ that I'm a bad tank when I have no way of knowing where the threat is going until someone starts getting beat on. I keep the healer guarded obviously but if we have 5 adds, I only have two taunts - one is a single target on a 15 sec CD and one is a small AoE taunt on a 2 min CD. There is only so much I can do. And I'm sure as hell not going to be blaming DPS for doing their job due to the fact that ToR makes it difficult (if not impossible) to hold multiple difficult mobs. /let blasting on my ability as a player begin lol

Not to be an *** - but have you ever been in upper management at a large corporation? We with advanced degrees are wonderful at using big words but what you just described is how a fair portion of business gets accomplished around the world. Heh, the projections are a little more specific than what you describe; with big budgets you start working with actual product pipelines - not just guesses. Not all of us operate on pure speculation. In fact - I'd be willing to bet very, very, very large sums of money I can explain the financial analysis in great detail that went into the these decisions (even using the exact same words!) Why? Because post-graduate finance diploma's require a standardized education process. How does this relate? Because the finance department rules the world. I'd hardly argue this last paragraph is a positive statement in light of the fact that you were defending BW. At worst, this is an argument on the side of their poor decision making in this particular matter. If I come across as pretentious in this post - sorry, sort of. Your blatant implication that any and all of us who post on these forums lack any better information than idle "trolling" speculation is wrong and insulting to us who spent many years working toward a certain amount of education (whether institutionalized or self-taught: ton of respect for the kids writing graphics engines with no university help) can offer a little bit more informed opinions than just guessing. I'm not saying that each and every one of us has all the answers but often, many people can contribute accurate estimations of the processes involved in these decisions from experience.

This takes the cake as the most insane thing I have seen on ANY mmo forum since I started playing UO on release day. The pre-t2a UO was the best MMO of all time and nothing will ever top it because it wasn't burdened by having to have 10million subscribers so it didn't cater to the lowest common denominator (then it got bought by... guess who?). WoW and SW:ToR have absolutely nothing in common with the original UO. Did you even play the game or did you just post it because you see old-schoolers speaking about how bad *** the original UO was? Or was the statement supposed to be sarcastic? On what grounds can you possibly be making this comparison? Oh, you must mean the fact that UO didn't have races or classes and WoW/ToR both have races/classes and so that makes them similar? Or the fact that UO was completely skill based (I.E., if you want to raise lumberjacking you go beat on trees and the skill goes up) and that is the complete opposite of WoW/ToR? Or the fact that the economy of UO was completely player driven and that is the complete opposite of WoW/ToR? Or that pvp was truly open EVERYWHERE in UO and that it had real consequences, I.E., if you died you lost every piece of equipment you had on you and were holding as the other player picked through your corpse? I could make the list of how WoW/ToR were literally the EXACT opposite of the original UO in literally every single facet of the game go on for pages and pages. Surely, you must of meant that WoW/ToR were similar to UO due to the fact that WoW/ToR share in common absolutely nothing with UO? In all the years I've spent looking for a game that was 1/1000000th the game the orignal UO was this post just absolutely blew my mind in a way I have yet to be blown on away reading the endless game comparisons on any games forum. Unfortunately for those of us that were lucky enough to experience the original (pre-t2a) Ultima Online most of us realize there will NEVER be a game like it because it wasn't a game for the whiners and babies that took over the MMO scene but - being a finance major - I understand why the major releases want the lowest common denominator: money.

I'd say it's safe to say that the only reason 99% of the players paying for this game are still paying for this game is because it is (supposed) to set in the Star Wars "universe." The fact that it is called "Star Wars" is the only reason I'm paying a monthly fee - but that effect won't last much past a better game and from what I read, I'll completely lose interest after 2 weeks at 50 because I'm not going through the same BS with an alt. I don't like "grinding." As an MMO the game sucks. Sorry. I had huge huge huge hopes for this game - I dropped $900+ on a custom built computer in anticipation for this game mainly (even though it was time for an upgrade if I wanted to play any of the new MMOs coming out). I still play because most of the F2P games out there suck and at least I have a few friends still playing this game (most quit pretty quick just to go back to MW3 or wait on some of the newer mmo's). I am about at 50 with my vanguard and I don't think I'll be playing post Diablo 3/GW2 releases; plus, there are a couple MMOs on the horizon I'll be keeping an eye out for. The bad thing is I wasn't someone who closely followed the game pre-release, I learned a long time ago not to get my hopes up but I'd absolutely LOVE to know where the half a billion they spent on development went? I'm not a game developer (I have a finance degree though) and it has been my understanding that most game development resources (time/money) go into a graphics engine? From what I've been able to gather on the internet the Hero engine is antiquated at best and I'm sure it didn't take much to license it and adapt it considering the insane amount of money apparently blew on the development. I can tell you there are going to be some capital budgeting guys in EA's finance department that aren't happy with the IRRs and other measures of financial return (or success) they start seeing with from what I can tell is an already dropping subscriber base - not considering initial investment and what I'm assuming are still pretty high current cash outflows. This is opinion - please save your hate.

As a Vanguard tank I think the problem here is the fact that tanks have a hard time generating threat in general and not near enough taunts. I have two. That's it. 1 aoe and 1 direct and neither of them generate much threat (not near enough to hold off good DPS players) and they are both on high cooldowns. I think the aoe is 2min if I remember off-hand? It's almost impossible to hold aggro on multiple mobs.

I can't group if I wanted to - I started on heavy server that is now completely empty for the most part.

I've already begun applying for other beta's and considering other available options to spend my time on. I can't quantitatively support this argument but I would say it would be hard to claim that the server I play on is any where near as full as it was. I would argue that it is "practically" empty now.

Uh... HELL NO. I'd wear a star wars t-shirt or something but no thanks on this.

Agreed. 110%.