By "smoothest launch" they mean "nothing major broke". that's not the same thing as offering a fulfilling gaming experience.

To be honest, I consider Free to Play to be inevtiable just because there's usually more money to be made that way. But I wouldn't expect to see free-to-play - even very limited free to play (say... free-till level 10) till after we see free trials.

actually, to ninja is to appear out of nowhere, take an item to which you are not entitled (say, from a chest, while someone else is fighting it's mob guardian) and run off giggling). What you describe is just "being a douche" to use the technical term.

The world was a big enough threat that just surviving meant working together. It was Ultima Online for me. I was overwhemed the first time I played. I actually had to ask customer support for a few pointers, which they were kind enough to give me, in realtime. Those were the days indeed.

There's neutral gear incoming. Note the big empty space on the faction station between the light and dark side vendors.

Let me guess. You two anti-addons guys. You've disabled your browser spellchecker because its "cheating", right?

Strictly speaking, they're not. Addons usually contain ideas and features that COULD be added by the developers themselves. However, it takes time that is far better used developing content and new features. One API and irregular support tweaks, and the players will take care of the UI for themselves, vs numerous tweaks over the course of many many patches for the rest of the lifespan of the game. It should be a no-brainer, really.

It is a well known fact that younger gamers always have the most leet skillz. They don't even need addons.

With addons, every player has the same chances in the game, since every player effectively has access to addons.

Actually, I never ever claimed that it was required. That was anti-addon guys strawman. The default UI is largely serviceable. A little horrible, underexplained and those two hotbars on the side are really awkward and out of the way... Personally I prefer a sphere of icons, to reduce the amount of distance I need to move the mouse.

Yes, yes you are, but I'm trying not to hold that against you.

Actually, no. I haven't played RIFT or LOTRO. You know you can usually customise addon UI's too, right? You can start from someone else's base and fit it to your preferences.

Be handy if it was to actually mention that someplace then, instead of expecting people to intuit it. Professional UI designers, huh?

Because Addons LET THE PLAYER BASE DO THE UI DESIGN. And if you ask me who I want doing my UI design, a professional UI designer, or another player who's spent countless hours actually playing the game, honestly, I'm probably going to go with the player.

It MOVES icons around on me! Look, if i put an icon somewhere, I **** well want it to stay where it's put. I don't give a hyper-fig if I'm now in cover and it's not usable at the moment, I want it to be where I put it so I know where to find it the second i pop OUT of cover.

There are limits, even to "full customisation". Can you replace the entire UI with an image of a fruitbat with full customisation? No, you can't. But you can do it with addons.

We need devs who FEED on the tears of the fallen, like in the old days.

4 colours? Bleedin' LUXURY. In my day, games were monochrome. Wit just buzzy speaker f'r sound effects AND music, and we had to load off cassette tape!</python>

Because if you're going to spend hundreds of hours playing a game, you want to be able to make youself comfortable with the UI, and addons are one of the best ways of doing that.

Not really - No matter what class its for it's usually worth a decent amount of credits.

You know what we need? I know what we need. MONSTER IN-FIGHTING.

Actually, it's an optical illusion caused by the force field.

It's clearly not, or there would be a LOT of droids in pods at this point. I took him in the field at one point, where he was somehow even worse. I had to send him away, even though his healing bonus was actually more useful to me in that group than Khem Val's tanking. I just couldn't take him saying "I was just wonder what I could do to please you" any more.

So, basically what you're saying is that they'll systematically nerf every skill until they're ALL as useless as each other. Excellent game design there.

the word I would use is "boredom" rather than "immersion".