The "in my opinion" part is considered to be a given by most reasonable people. Others just use the absence of that qualifier as an excuse to attack the poster and to derail and deflect attention from the topic of the discussion.

It's a fairy tale, and a particularly sterilized and white-washed one at that. Not that it is a necessarily bad thing, but that's what it is.

Because he is a carrier of common sense and logic who doesn't follow The Party Line on every topic.

"Gritty" is not a word that applies to any series which featured an installment starring a 7 year old Little Orphan Ani and his cartoon rabbit sidekick.

They wear black. They have foreign accents. They are badguys. That's just science.

The flip flopping is already pretty much in full steam ahead mode. It's shockingly amazing how many people who shot down "sandbox features" and those who supported those features are now suddenly extremely happy and excited about "sandbox features". Ok, it's neither shocking, nor amazing, but it's funny, nonetheless.

Uh, the "companion system" of TOR is about as new as mouse support. It was "new" in an MMO, but maybe that's because nobody thought a system to replace human players was a good idea for a multiplayer game.

That's not what I said. It's not a coincidence that the announcement machine has been turned to 11 a few weeks from the release of the first real Western MMO competition that TOR will face since it launched. If you believe it is, then you haven't been paying attention to MMO history.

Clearly EA is.

I don't know how it relates to PvP but the Imp to Pub ratio on EH is at least 2:1 in favor of the badguys.

They have new and real competition coming. They are scared. This is why they now suddenly are showing interest in the customers that they have spent the last two and a half years ignoring.

Every planet that existed at launch, and every mob on it, is identical to what it was on launch day. They haven't even bothered to change the newbie world "mod station" quest, which was obsolete before launch. Don't get your hopes up.

No offence intended but I find it highly ironic that you are "pro PC and anti-console" yet you cite Bioware games (which are all Console games ported to the PC) and Blizzard, which did more to dumb down (console-ify) PC games than any other publisher. Mass Effect, IMO, was a horribly dated generic FPS with a very well executed (if clichéd) story. Dragon Age: Origins was a very good oldschool PC game neutered by a horrible real-time combat system to make it palatable to Console gamers. Bethesda products on the other hand, IMO, are PC games that have been badly neutered to fit consoles. However, their construction kit philosophy allows the player to mod them into far better games.

TOR planets are far too small for anything but instanced housing. It would require a massive rebuild of planetary zones to fit housing in and since they have done almost no tweaking to any planet since launch, that seems highly improbable.

Out of here as soon as ESO launches. Not that I have particularly high hopes for ESO, but my last TOR time card was a test. Couldn't get any groups together to finish up a bunch of Heroics on my two mains. Tried Taris (Imp side) and Hoth (Rep side) for 2 months, off and on. Not only never any luck finding groups, not one single reply to any lfg/lfm calls. Never saw more than 30 people on Taris or 20 on Hoth. It's now a Cash Shop based game. I have close to 3000 CC's. There's a bunch of stuff in the CM that I would spend (free) CC's on, but I can't buy any of it directly. All of it is Gambling Bag only. So yeah... after a while, you have to ask yourself... "Why am I playing a Mulitplayer game where nobody groups, and why am I playing a Cash Shop game where you can't directly buy anything you want?" Answer: I'm not, anymore.

I didn't say it isn't a cash grab. It is, though a comparatively minor one in relation to the near ubiquitous Cartel Market of TOR. ESO will likely go full on TOR Cash Grab if it tanks too. That's what Cash Shops are... they are the ejector seat of the MMO. You don't yank the cord till you are about to crash.

Human oversight and moderation of all servers is the easiest way to forever stop all gold sellers. You wouldn't tolerate this sort of obnoxious harassment of paying customers in a bar, movie theatre, restaurant, sporting event, or anywhere else. All of these other businesses make far less money than an MMO and all have "security" of one form or another.

Hilarious. ESO is now a "cash grab"... even though it A) Isn't even out yet, and B) is being called a "cash grab" by people who defend the Cash Shop of TOR as not a cash grab. How exactly does one (I think it's one) item constitute a cash grab while a cash shop that is the source of the majority of all new additions to this game not constitute a cash grab?

This is Star Wars. It's a cartoon. There's nothing remotely realistic about any of the people, governments, technology, or pretty much anything else in the entire IP universe. The Ultimate Powers in this universe use melee weapons. That sort of says it all.

It's all about degrees and focus. A single mount being available for purchase is not the same thing as the game focusing on the cash shop, as TOR and other MMO's are doing. Will it always be that limited? Who knows? It will depend entirely on how successful it is under a subscription model, exactly like TOR, which would still be a purely subscription game had it performed up to expectations.

They are slightly different. One is making the accusation that Person X is the equivalent of a Wal-Mart greeter without the apron. One is making the accusation that Person Y is a corporate ninja spy carrying out a clandestine operation to bring down the enemy... by posting rants on an anonymous internet forum? Besides that. When people accuse Person X of "being a Bioware employee", what they are really saying is... "Person X may as well be a Bioware employee". It is an "insult" to their opinions, by inferring that they have all the credibility of advertising.

Just a friendly tip... This conspiracy theory about secret spies infiltrating the TOR forums to somehow bring about the game's doom.... kind of, you know.... makes you look more than a little loopy.

Sure. And putting a "Sport" decal on a minivan makes it a sports car too.

Whatever works will be the model going forward. If any of ESO, Wildstar, EQNext or some other MMO sell 5 million subscriptions, then however they did it will become the new standard and that game will be copied for the next decade. Like EQ and WoW before.

WoW is 10 years old. That's why they have cash shop now. Whether or not it would have one if it just launched today, nobody knows. Given that Blizzard made more money off a purely subscription model than TOR will make if it lasts 100 years, I'd suspect that they might stick to that model if they were launching WoW2 tomorrow.