Just had to comment on this: The Vanguard/Powertech is NOT, has NEVER, and WILL NEVER, be a RANGED tank. It's a melee class that uses close ranged combat abilities to tank and dps its enemies, precisely like its two Jedi/Stih counterparts. Not trying to be rude or nit-pick your choice of words, but I've simply seen far too many Vanguards running around trying to tank or dps with auto-shot and HIB to let that one go Bioware really should consider repeatively stating in big bold letters at the AC pop-op, when people contemplate which AC to chose that: VANGUARDS IS A MELEE CLASS; MEANING THAT YOU'RE MEANT TO BE IN MELEE RANGED WITH YOUR ENEMIES AT ALL TIMES!! /rant

Interesting post, and yes it will be interesting to see how Bioware will handle the data from GSH aswell. I do have some few things to add to your post though (From the perspective af scientific methodology) Except for that last part this is most likely (mostly) true. I'd personally doubt that they accumulate entirely comprehensive data sets for all player behavior, rather than attempting to sample representive parts of the player base, based on the demography data they have from our account data. There isn't really a need to analyse everyone, just as various poll-surveys doesn't need to ask everyone, to get an indication of how an election has gone. The "Why" is directly false though, aswell as: If you attempt to claim this litterary. One cannot determine a "why" solely from a "what" nor achieve perfect data to ground ones beliefs on. Best case scenario would be that they'd gain a statistically significant data-set which they can use to analyse and interpret through the means of a theory of "why" the data-set looks as it does. In short, a very falliable proces prone to mistakes. Furthermore it would be a very time- and resource consumming proces that when done to such an extreme (trying to be perfect) most likely would not yield any results more beneficial than simply relying on statistical and theoretical premisses anyway Indeed probably a product of constant analysis of the "comsumer-behavior", aswell as the internal logics of the game (its narrative and structure), the visions of the developers and longterm strategy for game (their "roadmap", I believe they call it). The consumer behavioral data is an important part of the interaction between the consumers and developers, and an excellent way for consumers to "vote with their wallet", but very unlikely to be the only one (again determining "why" from "what" alone, yields very unreliable results, and would most likely be attributable to personal bias aswell) This is an oversimplication. Consumer behavioral data would never be the sole reason for making decisions regarding gameplay. Furthermore than just the methodological limitations, remember that such a data-set only shows what people used to do, not how they'll react to a new feature. In short, you can tell if people really played a certain feature, but you can't tell whether they liked it/felt obligated to do it/feel that it's a valuable feature and so on. For this they'd need far more than just behavioral data, such as opinions voiced on the forums (Even if such aren't always accurate displays of the community feelings) In the end, why do you think Bioware (and other companies) host and maintain forums and websites for us to voice our opinions on, entirely for free, if not for (also) probing our consumer opinions and feedback? Just as Beta-invites aren't just given out to players because game-developers are "goody-two-shoes" that want to pamper their playerbase with early access, these forums are not just for us to vent our frustrations and elation Yes! Aswell as giving Bioware constructive and logical feedback on their forums, paying for the game so that they make money and so, you will be able to influence the developers. They are here to try and "reel" us in and play their game, so both your opinion and behavior is important to them But a very interesting and valid post you've made. Knowing about and understanding the "grinding mechanics" that determine how developers "develop" does give the consumerbase better means of providing accurate feedback to the developers, which in turn (most likely) will "translate" into more enjoyrable gameplay

And just how is Cartel market items supposed to generate money? Don't you rather mean to claim that the majority of the generated credits are channeled into the Cartel Market items, making them a part of the economy, rather than the basic capital for the economy? As far as I know the only way to generate capital in this game is by quest-rewards/looting npcs and the only way to discharge those credits from the economy again, is by purchasing skill upgrades, repairbills, vendors and other "Credit sinks" (such as the Nar Shadaa Casino event). Everything in between that is just transfering and channeling generated credits from player to player. But yes, trolling about the economy is apparently the "FotM" spec for doomsaying trolls trying to predict the end of this game. Can't wait to see what they come up with next, after this invariably fails to bring down a well functioning MMO, just like the myriad of other half-arsed attempts to predict the future of MMOs that failed to accurately predict anything.

"This just in... the economy of SWToR will collapse overnight. Save yourselves! Invest your fortune in rakling pets and Huttball practice jerseys, as these items are surely recession-proof! Then be sure to run away as fast as you can to another MMO, becaurse surely this game is doomed and will be taken down permanently becourse of this most assuredly disaster of the economy. It is most surely not just a simple "wax and wane" of a simplistic MMO-economy, tied in to the introduction of a most wanted feature in the game, that "Trolls united" are attempting to disawow and use to predict the comming doom of society, as with pretty much all other introductions of new features" Unlike its real-life counterpart, the economy of SWToR isn't dominated by an intricate web of hedgefonds, capital ventures, international rules and regulations set in motion to protect the already rich and a myriad of other mind-blowingly complex factors. All of which seek to increase the amount of wealth as represented in monetary value, which unfortunately isn't always matched by an equal grow of actual value of goods and services, providing the basis for recessions and collapses of economic infrastructures (Putting an extremely complex system in overly simplistic terms) In SWToR we can simply chose to work (dailies/questing/grinding etc) and thereby create both monetary value(as per the credits we make) and actual value(as simply adding more credits to the server), Which we can do forever and ever, if we choose to. This effectively removes the possibility of recession and/or collapse of the economy of a server. Having people spend allot of money on strongholds or any other feature in the game will not collapse the economy of the servers, simply course it to "wane" for a short while, in the WORST CASE SCENARIO! Which is brought on by people over-spending on the strongholds, rather than simply spend an amount of their credits proportional their total wealth, which is really the only way you even CAN go about it. In real life you can take out loans to pay for your spendings beyond your income and wealth and thereby risk the possibility of not being able to pay it back and go broke. This could never happen in a MMO-economy as you always have to option to generate more wealth. Furthermore, that perhaps certain mounts and novelty items aren't sold at their premium value for a short while is not an indicator of recession, as these -rare- items never was and never will be, a main component of the economy and as such, have their pricing as a reliable indicator of server economy (key items). And we could go on and on. But enough of this. The short version: Thanks for providing a not-entirely generic troll thread predicting the invariable forthcomming doom of all MMOs ever. But honestly this whole "Doomsaying" culture got really tiresome and predictable around the time the first multi-user dungeon game was in beta, as the interwebz was already overflowing with predictions of its, and every other games, invariable doom. For future reference though, you do realise that it's entirely okay to simply state to a game-developer that you'd rather want another or a different feature introduce to the game instead? You do not have to predict the doom of the game simply because you don't like something they're adding to the game, or attempt to introduce panic in the playerbase, so that the feature is pre-concieved as a failure. In short, engage in a constructive dialogue about what you'd like to have in the game, while at the same time respecting that your opinion is but one of many, and that ultimately it's the developers responsibility to make the choices -they- feel are the right ones. And last point: Claiming that Bioware is insensitive for putting up the Rakhgoul event while there is an Ebola epidemic going on, is simply moronic and utterly disrespectful. Having a pre-scheduled event in a game, concerning a -fictitious- outbreak of a -fictitious- illness in an -entirely- fictional movie/game universe is not insensitive towards a very real disease plagueing the poorest continent of the world. These two events has nothing to do with each other and connecting them and further using that as a line of argument against events in said fictional universe really shows a level of disrespect towards the people suffering from Ebola, that is distasteful, to say the least. If you want to make a point about Ebola, or help the people suffering from it, write to your local and goverment officials and get them to pressure the medicinal industry to actually research a cure for the disease, instead of just largely ignoring it as they have been since it was first discovered, simply because it rarely affected people from the developed countries and thereby hasn't been seen as profitable disease to attempt to cure

While I can absolutely sympatise with the feelings of being "overlooked" as a group of players in this game, by not getting rewards that are really shiny and unique, I do believe you might be forgetting that there might be a valid reason for Bioware to not really put allot of effort into the pvp-rewards. Simply put: It probably isn't even the majority of players in this game, that pvp's at all, and of those that do, even fewer do so at a consistent basis. And of these, it's probably only a small minority that attempts to be competitive about pvp to any extent. Bioware is, as any commercial enterprise, forced to "go where the money is" and in this game, there can be no doubt that that is in the Cartel market and related content. PvP (in the broad sense) is likely neither a terribly profitable area of the game or even something that can "reel in" new players to the game, and the elite tier of the ranked pvp, (which truely is a minority of a minority) is probably even less profitable for Bioware, so why should they start treating these as special snowflakes with truely unique and special rewards? To try and engage new players and hopefully "re-ignite" SWToR as a competitive PvP-game? Even a quick glance at the competition from the other MMO's currently available on the market, would make one quickly realise that they'd need vastly more than just fancy cosmetic rewards to be a serious contender for the PvP-centric MMO-players. Compared to the level of competiveness, livestreaming of money-prize tournaments, people making a living off posting gaming videos/guides on youtube and so on, that you'd get from IPs such as WoW, LoL, Starcraft etc., SWToR doesn't really "go the distance". Other than being a Star wars franchise, and thereby automatically popular, the pvp in this game doesn't offer much for people who truely care for the competitive pvp-elements in MMO's. I'd even go as far as saying it's really just the generic "point-grinding-pvp" roundabout, that you get in this game. And unless Bioware would invest massively into developing new and unique content to steal away those pvp-centric players from the other MMOs, it's probably going to be like trying to win a race against top-tuned sportscars in a rusty Ford Escort. And considering that they already have a huge income from the Cartel market (by all accounts), why should they risk it? There is a huge potential in this game and IP, for crafting a true spetacular PvP-friendly MMO setting that could lure in more people. But thinking that simply peddeling the same generic PvP-content that you could get in all other games, and adding a fancy hat to it (a.k.a. unique rewards), would thereby magically revitalise the pvp-community and make it the flagship succes of this game, is rather far-fetched tbh. Bioware really needs to start thinking outside the box, if they want SWToR to be taken as a serious contender for pvp aswell.

Seems to me that the OP is missing a rather critical point in his argumentation. The Trooper isn't a trooper, just as the Bounty hunter isn't a bounty hunter, the agent a agent and smuggler a smuggler. They are legends of their time having overcome incredible odds and shown remarkable resilience, making them eventually able to go toe to toe with even really good force-users in combat and even succeed, where ordinary men and women would fail assuredly. The force-user classes are all also notiable, force-users that achive incredible things. But compared to the true "alphas" of the Star Wars universe, such as Yoda, Luke, Ragnos etc., they are insignificant. The PC's merely a master a single combat-form or use of force-power, where the "alphas" proper, transformed and molded fighting with the force, effectively mastering several fighting forms and being able to accomplish feats of strenght using their force powers, that made them "gods-amongst-men" even compared to their fellow force-users. In short: You are not Yoda/ Ragnos/ Sadow etc., you are "Bob from accounting" compared to these guys... Which is why it is entirely realistic that those legendary non-force user warriors are able to go toe-with-toe with you, and even "wipe-the-floor" with you, if you let them dictate the terms of the fight.

Seems rather like wishful thinking to me, that Bioware would be able to switch the game engine, modify a new one to function with the game, characters, items, ops etc, without simply having to create a new game entirely. Doing so in only a year? I think we'd be talking about near-divine programming skills needed at Bioware. While I'm no techie, I do understand that a game engine is little more than a generic tool-set that through heavy modifications and addon (a.k.a. the game developing process) can eventually become the basis for a functional game (its programming paradigm, if you will). In short, it's the fundamental rules for, not just how things look, but also how things interact, how they can be manipulated, how calculations are done and so on. Changing a game engine would therefore not just be a matter of changing the specific codes that you'd like to be different, it would also require you to change all the codes that relies on those codes. Which when you try to change something as fundamental as the game-engine, would create a spiralling effect, that would, effectively, require you to make an entirely new game. Disregarding the techical aspects, I'd still think my answer would be "why?". What would we essentially gain by changing the game-engine, especially to one that would require more processing power at the user-end? MMO's owe allot of it's popularity to the fact that they can be played on a wide variety of computers, making them ascessable to more people than say, "AAA-First person shooters" and the like. Second, who's saying that this game would really need to fundamentally change itself to succeed? I read an article recently, that claimed that SWToR was actually the fourth highest grossing MMO-franchise currently out there (Only WoW and two other mmo's with huge popularity in Asia, makes more money than SWToR). This may or may not be true, but given the amount of added features to the game in the last year alone(Arena/GSF/New raid tier, and upcomming player/guild housing + a new expansion shortly), aswell as the popularity of the cartel market, I do believe that there are signs pointing to SWToRs economy being very healthy currently. (In comparison WoW has released only a single new raid tier in the last year, as far as I know) While the current engine might not support cross-server content, I'd still wager that we havn't seen even 5% of what the game-engine potentially could do, and as such, there are still allot of things/features/gimmicks that could be added to the game without having to fundamentally alter the game-engine. It's definately entertaining to imagine what could have been with another game-engine and game design (personally I would have loved a more free class system than the current one), but doing so on a premise that the game either needs or would benefit tremendously from a game engine change, is rather foolhardy imo. When the goose is already laying gold eggs, exchanging it with another would be rather silly

Once upon a time there was a very creative and progressive game-developing company. They released one hit title after another and were the heroes of gamers everywhere and the envy of other game-developers, simply becaurse they dared to be different. Then one day, a big publisher came along and offered them allot of money to get to publish their games. In return they only had to stop being progressive and creative in their approach to game-developing, so that other developers would stop looking so bad in comparison... This silly story aside, looking through some of the various suggestions made in this post through the eyes of a casual pvp'er, it seems that the discussion might be "missing the forest for all the trees". At the heart of it, is SWToR pvp really anything more than a generic-point-grinding-mmo pvp-scene? A collection of various warzones and arenas, that serves no other real purpose than grinding points so ones toon can buy new gear and do marginally better in same warzones and arenas? A.k.a. same thing you can get in pretty much every other mmo. No metagame to engage players in a greater conflict, little sense of achievement, no real point in committing to it to any larger degree. You que, you play, you're done. Rinse and repeat. Don't get me wrong, I do like pvp even in this game, but lets face the facts: No amount of fancy rewards or well-designed rating systems are going to magically make pvp broadly appealling in SWToR, as anything other than a "mini-game" in the game atleast. To make pvp appealing to "the masses" Bioware really has to stop peddeling the same generic pvp content continuoesly and start being bold (again). Instead of just generic arena content and a new warzone map every other year, they really need to start thinking "outside the box" and start making content that makes pvp matter more than just silly points and e-peen for the most dedicated. Make us fight over planets and resources for the war between reps and imps, fight battles that matters on a grander scale, add options to make custom tournaments/matchmaking, Huttball-leagues, tie GSF-content in with "normal-pvp" content and so on. The star wars universe has the narrative framework to truely carry and make people care about it's "base-conflict" of good and evil, but as long as it presented in a "soulless generic-point-grinding" warzone/arena that matters f... all in the end, I really doubt pvp will be anything other than a mini-game in SWToR.

I do think your concept of the classes getting a new AC, as our future "new class" in SWToR might be a realistic option, however it might be very tricky to implement such properly, getting both class-balance and proper playstyle of a AC implementet resonably. Looking through your suggestions, my opinion would be as follows: Knight/Warrior AC: Interesting idea, but as experience has taught MMO-designers "Buff-classes" are extremely difficult to balance and avoid being either useless or mandatory for endgame. Having a class which core element is making other players better, rather than bringing something themselves, is very tricky to make both appealing to play and balanced. Consular/Inquisitor: Not quite sure what you're trying to go for here? A class that can both do ranged and melee damage equally well? The concept might be appealing "on paper", but again I'd think it would be difficult to balance and a mess to play. When should the player do melee and when ranged, mix between them during the fight or something else? Interesting concept, but will need to be fleshed out much more Trooper/Hunter: Seems you're basically just adding stealth to the Commando/Mercenary AC's? Might make for some interesting playstyles though, but hard to see how such an AC would be other than a PVP-AC for the basic class. With "crowd control" as a core mechanic though, how do you see this class adding something in PvE (endgame) compared to the other AC's and the other AC's not just being subpar in PVP compared to this new AC? Smuggler/Operative: Well I can tell you straight up that a ranged tanking class would be game breaking for PvE endgame and not viable. The game mechanics would simply not allow such a class to function (Same thing as it was for PT/VG tanks in development). Ops bosses rely on melee attacks as their primary attack and adding a class that can tank them without being in melee ranged would require a completely "re-writing" of the game mechanics and the bosses tactics. While it within the "star wars universe" could make sense, it simply wouldn't within the game. To sum up: Some nice ideas, but they need to be "fleshed out" more. Only the Smuggler/operative AC would be completely unrealistic to implement, but the others have some interesting ideas imo

There's really no question about it, join imp-side for the easy wins or go rep and be slaughtered almost 99% of the time. There isn't any faction balance on this server, when it comes to pvp. Unless you plan running premades all the time, or have a fetish for losing every single warzone horribly, go imp

Must admit that I find this "event" to be rather insulting to the customer-base of this game. While I do realise that this is most likely just a "last-minute effort" to add some new summer content, now that player housing has been postponed, I do believe we should expect a higher level of creativity from the Bioware staff than this. Standing in the same spot, right-clicking the same object in the hope of getting a token, so I can go right-clik on another object, so that I can hopefully get lucky and win an object that's just reskins of existing models, is neither fun nor engaging. And it's most-certainly is a far less creative and interactive "event" than I'd expect from a multi-million dollar gaming company to release as an advertised event in their mmo. Heck, there's vastly more creativity and interactivity in the starting side-quest on the starter planets, than there is in this event. Even though I'd normally consider myself a level-headed person, who understands that we can't get new and exciting content every couple of weeks and so, and do not "rage" if the game grows a bit stale due to lack of new content for a few months. However I must say that I'm almost at the point where I'd demand an official apology from Bioware for insulting it's customer-base's intelligence with calling this an "event". At the very least they could have made these slot-machines something we could have interacted with, played a game on or something, seen some kind of animation, ANYTHING really, rather than just a right-click and then wait for it to glow red or green. That's not an event, Bioware, that's just b.s.

Definately seems like good changes for the vanguard dps, will be nice to have a somewhat viable dps spec in addition to the tanking spec. While it would still need more utillity, in addition to dps on par with the other melee classes, to be a truely competitive melee-dps spec, it's definately a big step in the right direction for this AC (Still think there's a way to go to catch up with the (atm ridicously) cooldown's of the guardian, Inspiration from sentinels, stealth-rez/cleanse from scoundrels and resilence for shadows, too make it a truely viable class for those difficult melee spots in raids (In a "all other things considered equal" situation)) For the tank-spec, it's a nice minor buff to a pretty decent spec already. Will be nice to see how it performs on live. Would be nice to see this spec getting some major love down the road though, to make it more engaging and active to tank with, rather than just being a mostly passive "soak-tank" with a "FCFS"-rotation, but doubt we'll see such changes outside of an expansion (Since it is still a viable tank atm)

And have the Rancor mount increased the amount of players playing ranked? Surely some yes, but enough to make ranked pop regulary on the low-populated servers? Not in my experience. If I'm wrong, then why are Bio implementing ranked dailies/weeklies to increase the amount of players? Don't get me wrong, in an ideal world I'd rather just have ranked for the most skilled pvp'ers, just as (current) nightmare modes are the "game-mode" for hardcore pve'ers. I enjoy both, but as it is on my server, save for spending most of saturday afternoon/evening que'ing to get my fill, I don't have any other realistic options to get to play ranked. So yes, choosing between the "pride" of having ranked for the best of the best only, and actually playing ranked, I'd choose actually playing it (regulary). And while "Cross-server ques" would be an ideal solution for the problem, we'll all just have to deal with the fact that is isn't comming (anytime soon atleast)

I'll "re-evaluate my line of thinking" and opinions when presented with evidence and/or logics countering my arguments, thank you very much for the suggestion though I was, in my post, talking about the motivation for doing ranked at all, not the abuse/harrasment that people usually suffer when playing pvp(which happens at all levels of skill, ranked and unranked, in my experience) And while people queing with fully augmented Obroan gear and knowledgable of advanced arena tactics would be an awesome situation, fact still remains that is far from the reality (on most servers, I'd believe). To change that, Bioware implements dailies/weeklies to make more people que, which is a good (and hopefully) effectual idea, but my argument still stands that it will not be an effective way of motivating more people to join in this game-mode, as long as you're only rewarded by winning, as such a thing would be very far off for people not skilled in arena play already, as that is what they're faced with on low-populated servers(in terms of people playing ranked, that is)

Must say I'm a bit baffled by the logics being applied to this new weekly/daily for ranked. I thought, obvious wrongly apperently, that the idea was to bring more people into playing pvp ranked, rather than simply giving more ranked coms to those playing already? Wasn't the unranked daily weekly charged for that exact same purpose, that it was driving people away from pvp that you had to win (even on the servers with massive pvp-inbalance)? While I do agree that pvp'ers(or rather people who enjoy competing at the highest tier of content in pvp aswell) should be able to have a "dedicated" gaming system, such as the nightmare modes is for raiders, I don't really see how putting in an unachievable daily/weekly would encourage more people to join in trying to get better at this content? Putting in a requirement for starting on nightmare mode DF, that you must first suffer through endless wipes of Brontes on nightmare mode and must conquerer her, before you can start on nightmare mode DF at all, doesn't make sense in my head either. While ranked (ideally) should be the "stage" for the most dedicated and skilled players to play against eachother, the fact remains that other than at primetime in weekends, there's hardly a single "pop" of the ranked ques on the server where I play, which I imagine is not an isolated issue for my server. Chosing between not playing most of the time in a system designed (exclusively) for the elite, or playing (fairly) regulary and "suffering" the occasional bad player, isn't really a choice is it? What's the point of being awesome at something you don't get to do? (Not that I claim to be that, in any way) So while it would be awesome to have a dedicated system for those passionate about the pvp experience (aswell), the fact remains that there isn't enough people playing it to make it a stable (self-sufficient) enviroment in this game as is. To get more people playing it, requires them to be motivated to do so, and people don't generate stable enduring motivation by punishment or the lure of an unachievable reward, but by concrete (incremental ideally) rewards. And yes, this will properly mean that we'll suffer through loads of clueless people queing up to get easy coms, but some of those might actually get interesting to doing more pvp and learning how to be better at it, meaning that the long term benefits might be that we get more (good) people playing pvp, providing more (regular) competition for the community as a whole. I might be the "odd one out" on these forums in this regard, but I fully acknowledge that I wasn't "born into" superior pvp-skills, but actually had to (and still have to) learn how to get better, and yes, I didn't do that just for the sake of being good at pvp (done it even for such silly things, as liking the "War Hero" title and gear on my old guardian). But I've come to actually like pvp'ing like I enjoy raiding aswell and I'd do like more people joining into doing it, so they can share all the fun experiences that "lay within" this game-mode. But I guess I just have to hope that the dear Bioware will skip their reading of motivational theory about half a century further ahead and realise that (enduring) motivation is created by actual rewards for doing, rather than the lure of unrealistic achievements, so we can get a actually stable pvp enviroment on the non-pvp servers aswell, while we wait for "cross-server queing"

There's definately allot of possibilities for the next expansions. Personally I'd like something either expanding the story around the Mandolorians or (a plot-sensible) return of the Emperor, in the near future, though there are allot of other exiting potentials. In regards to Revan, I might be one of the few that would really like Bioware to quickly and permantly kill him off, if they re-introduce him to the universe. Not that he isn't a great and compelling character, powerfull and what not, but simply becaurse having him around means that all that we (as the current characters) do and achieves, gets "dwarfed" and made less meaningfull, if the lore-setting is really just a product of a conflict that happened 300 years ago and the character (Revan) that conflict created. While bringing him back would properly be a popular decision amongst many of those who played KoToR, having him back to continue *his* story will ultimately negate the importance of what the characters in this game has achieved, in my opinion. But mostly I hope that new expansions will increase the players direct influence on the conflict between the Empire and the Republic. Implementing warzones where the 2 factions can battle each other, as an example, with long term consequences (such as one side being able to hold the warzone and gain some sort of bonus or the like), is something I think is a bit lacking in this game. And lore-wise there seems to be rather a few possibilities for setting such a stage as conflicts over resources seems rather commonplace in this setting (Ilum, Correlia, Kuat etc.). But that's just my "two-cents": Less Revan, more WAR

It does seem that Bioware has "pissed their pants to keep warm" lorewise, in regards to the current state of power balance between the Republic and the Empire. The Empire is pretty much left hours away from total defeat, with a gigantic power vacuum in an organisational structure that NEEDS to have an exceptionally strong leader, that can bully his/hers underlings into submission and keep them focusing their fighting prowess towards the (external) enemy, saved only by a superweapon that (at best) would just make the uanvoidable victory by the Republic a extremely costly affair for them. (Aswell as perhaps the Republic's unwillingness to fully commit to wiping out the Empire, with the chance of repeating the error of the last war, which ultimately made the Empire return with vastly more strength and commitment). In defense of Bioware, it must be said that achieving a proper balance of power between these two factions, does seem quite an impossible task. In my understanding of the lore in SW, aswell as the philosofical implications of the light and dark side of the force, it would seem that an Empire of dark side force-users, properly lead and focussed, would invariably "wipe the floor" with the Republic army and jedi, as dark side use of the force grants far more powerful abillities, albeit on a short term scale, making their army nearly unstoppable. The catch of this power is though, much in line with the notions of Karma in eastern philosophy, that not only does this "drain" on the force, that dark side user use, come at a hefty toll, it will also eventually return what is drained back to the force. So while the Empire, at the height of their power before the drain is returned, would win every battle(more or less, of course) they would invariably lose the war(s) in the long run as long as they are opposed by the Jedi, whose power might be somewhat less on a personal level, but lasting becaurse of their symbiotic relationship with the force. On the organisational level the story is much the same, in relation to the power-balance between the factions. The Republic, while often and invariably stuck in the indecisiveness that the rule of democracy inspires, has as a core value of its society, that it'll progress through coorporation and unity of the Republic as a whole, not by the strength of individuals. On a short term scale this does not always hold true, they will properly regulary be saved by strong individuals performing exceptional feats, but in the grand scale of things, the power of both these individuals and the Republic organisation as a whole, stems from the unity and coorporation, from that power is an collective entity, rather than an individualistic entity, in this society. In the Empire, as in most dictatorships in real life, power is an individualistic entity, where wether you have it yourself or not, can have drastic consequences on the "quality of life" you have. Each and everybody will strive for power, becaurse it's the only way you can stay "alive", and the only way you'll (willingly) subjecate yourself to another, is if you either acquire power by doing so or you simply have no chance of overpowering him/her. While this individualistic society can accomplish amazing feats of unity and coherence, such as can be required in wars, as they're ultimately acting on the will of just one individual, it's power and coherence will invariably only function in the short run, as internal pressure(from the constant power-plays) will break apart the unity and/or dwindle the power present in the society. So, to make an already long story last longer, the reality of both their organisational and force-use philosophy, makes it so that the Empire is either an unstoppable power-house, that would trash the Republic outright, or an chaotic and self-destroying "lemming tossing itself off a cliff, becaurse it lacks the foresight to percieve what will happen", there is really no middle-ground in this conceptualisation that the SW-universe relies on. So achieving a proper balance between the factions currently, staying true to the philosophy and lore of SW, is quite the task for Bioware, as SW really is rather black/white in it's fundamental conceptualisation. However, which is why I'd still say Bioware has "pissed their pants", killing off almost every single powerful person, aswell as key-structures in the society, of the Empire already at the end of the class-quest timeline, leaving them in a state where they're really just "still kicking" by the mercy of the Republic, is a rather short-sighted solution (lorewise). While it does make for some rather epic stories (on both sides though), it does leave the ongoing conflict between the Empire and Republic, as something that does require rather the stretch of imagination to be percieved as an important part of the universe, as it stands. The only way to revitalise this conflict as the epi-center of the universe, would be to reinstate a (proper) emperor, who could revitalise the power of the Empire, making them (albeit still temporary) a power to reckon with in the universe. Who that would be, would be the million dollar question though, of course. The obvious choices would be either a resurge of Vitiate; Could be he had an alternate plan all along? He is a rather enigmatic individual afterall(Though I'd rage-quit and boycut Bioware forever, if they reinstate him with nothing but the same nihilistic plan, just to kill him off again (even if it is as a raidboss)). The other would obviously be Darth Marr, but putting aside his obvious power and influence(aswell as popularity in the Imperial society), does he really have what it takes to make an emperor? He can obviously lead and influence the other lords to put aside their power-plays, but does he really have the (tactical/organisational) foresight to overcome the inherent short-commings of the Empire to make them an concievable treat once again? Perhaps if his story and background gets more "fleshed out", he might be a proper emperor to lead the Empire, but as of now I personally can't see him as more than the "least-worst" scenario. To sum up: I really hope Biowares "lore-team" realises the rather hopeless situation that they've left the Empire in currently, aswell as those players playing them (that cares for the lore ofc) and that they have some "master-scheme" to revitalise the Empire. As it stands now, the republic properly wouldn't even have time to finish off the Empire, before they finish themselves off. Super-weapon or not, they're massively out-numbered, have their greatest warriors cut down and are without the leadership that is mandatory for them to be a real threat to the Republic. If the conflict between the Empire and the Republic is to be the "center-piece" of this (story-driven) MMO, rather than a contineuos stream of "common enemies" as the Dread Masters and such(Which we all know will eventually end up with being more and more non-sensical enemies in time(Panda's and time-travel anyone?)), something has to be done to shift the balance of power. But I stil have faith in Bioware to turn this around, afterall isn't it the epic "turns of the table's" in the most darkest of hours, that makes for the greatest stories? TL;DR - Yes, the lore is (too) heavily favoring the Republic at the moment, even despite the Empire's victory on Makeb

Jugg tanks have some issues with the damage output, yes, but that's about it. Anyone saying it's bad for endgame, doesn't know what he/she is talking about, end of discussion. So by all means, play a jugg tank if that's your fancy, a player with good knowledge of, and trainning in, his favored class is generally worth 10 FOTM players anyway

Well some quick pointers would be: - Tanking in SwToR, you're rarely able, nor need, to hold aggro on all the mobs in a group(Especially at the lower levels). Your job as the tank is to take the toughest mobs in the group and keep them focused on attacking you (Personally I rarely put any sort of real effort in standard and weak mobs, as a rule of thumb) - The average group will most likely expect you to run through fast and chain-pull everything, becaurse that's what the good tanks usually do. However, do yourself a favor and explain to the group that you're new to this and trying to learn. Most times people will be helpful, patient and even offer advice to help you along. For those that don't, just ignore and move on. (Social skills are, sadly, not mandatory anymore, so you'll run in to those once in awhile) - Always try and group the group of mobs together, whenever possible. Easiest way is usually doing the "Corner-pull", where you simply taunt one of the mobs and then run out of their line-of-sight. This way all the mobs in the group will come to you. This can be especially useful versus groups of mobs where there are more than one caster(if only one, same result can be achieved by engaging the caster and let the melee come to you). It's important to know however, that "corner-pull" is apperently an "old-school" trick these days and most derpheads will, almost invariably, start engaging the mobs(usually at random target aswell) the very second you do anything to any mob in the group. So always call out if you're "corner-pulling"(And take a deep breath when the derphead uses his/hers knockback and scatters the group, you've just perfectly aligned for mass-tanking, all around the room again) - Understand that people will eventually expect you to perform perfectly in every encounter every time. Don't shirk from this challenge, but let it challenge you to get each pull performed better that last time. Your job is not to pull big numbers in parses or healing like a care-bear, your job is about controlling every minute detail in every pull. Your job is to analyse and predict how every single mob will react to what you and your group, and respond pro-actively to these behaviors. This will invariably take a long time to learn and require loads of "trial-and-error" to understand how the mechanics actually works, but when you do, you'll know that your best weapons for tanking, are not your skill-set and abillities of your tanking toon, but your raw "tanking-skills" and cunning derived from your knowledge how the mechanics works. In short, you need to become an "detail-driven perfectionistic ego-maniac" that thrives under pressure and pulls like there's no tomorrow! In even shorter, you need to become THE alfa-dog of any group (All of the above is naturally "mildly"(read "allot") exaggerated and dramatised, but it serves as a good indication of the sort of mind-set you'll need to acquire, if you want to eventually push your tanking-skills from being just "a brickwall" to "art") There you go, a rather randomised bit of advice, but advice none the less

While it is nice to see that there are still people how wants to limit the "qq" rather than add to it, I think it'll be rather a "fool's errand" to attempt to stop it. People will properly always find ways to complain about everything and nothing, when there's a mass-media outlet usable under the guise of anonymity. Anyways, towards your proposed solutions, I'd say that I truely doubt that such would provide more class balance, if any: In PvP, it's inarguably annoying to be "outwitted/outclassed" by another player in a 1 v 1, but those doesn't really happen that often, do they? In fact, there isn't really a pvp-mode in the game currently, where you would have to engage in 1 v 1's regulary to win the match. They seem to be more a spurious and random coincidence for any other than steathers trying to cap nodes with a single defender? If the game were balanced around this part of PvP, what about the rest then? Other than making all classes "bland" with an entirely comparable skill-set, how would you balance a tank versus healer, a ranged versus a melee class, balance a "leap" abillity versus a "speed-increase" abillity, "stealth-users" versus" non-stealth-users" etc? As it is now these would present themselves as "situational advantages" with varying degree of usability, depending on, well, the situation. As an example: Balancing around 1 v 1 would require all classes to either have stealth or something to counter stealth-users, as stealth is truely an "alpha-abillity" in a 1 v 1. The value of having the abillity to decide when and how the encounter starts, cannot be underplayed. However in a team-situation the advantage of stealth-use would rely on your abillity to decieve the oppositioning team, to make them leave nodes un- or under-guarded, so you can cap and gain your team an advantage. While the abillity to start a 1 v 1 with the upper-hand, and possibly "rofl-stomp" your opponent might provide a certain personal satisfaction, it's rarely terribly useful for your team, as a whole, unless the situation makes it so. To sum up: Unless SwTor PvP gets a mode, where 1 v 1's are commonplace, balancing around this would not provide any balance, unless you make all classes "bland". For your PvE solution, it's rather simple: Such would never be sufficient as a balancing tool, simply due to the variance in output due to the complexity of the "math behind the dps". Even with hundreds and thousands of parses to minimise the RNG-factor in the output, you'd still be left with questions of "input/lag-stabillity", "skill-cap", "variance in skill-tree choices" and a whole lot of other issues regarding the different "conditions" that the player base plays the game under. To make a long story short, you'd need to balance the classes around performances achieved "live", in the game as is, rather than an isolated and artificial testing ground, to get any sort of reliable statistics of how balanced the classes are in PvE (even though the artificial are most likely utillized aswell). Which, I'm sure, they already have several matrices running to gather such data. The trick is, of course, that when tweaking any variable, what happens is rather hard to predict, even with solid statistical data of what was before. Anyways, I've rambled on too long

Erhm well... PvP forums instead of class forums? I'd say try and present a structured argument in a clear and compelling way over there instead of this "This class suck" type of argument you're posting here, that way you might actually get some decent responses to your complaints. To reply to your post in the current format, I'm only going to say "Allot"...