Could try another MMO together. There's a lot of them out there, and a lot of them are more focused on group play especially now with BW's obsession with kotfe. Actually, the most fun I had playing with my gf was when we both got into Diablo 3 (you can get the ultimate evil edition on consoles now for like $30) which isn't even an MMO but has many of the same features (with no sub, although we had to pay to keep xbox live active but that is nowhere near $15/month) tbh i dont even play swtor regularly anymore but we keep the account active because she still likes it (for some reason). But that's impossible! didn't you read the dev's open letter? KotFE has been widely praised.

Is this a joke?

I gotta say this is a very stupid letter. For a company/dev to come out and defend their support of a game and proclaim it's support for the foreseeable future - it looks bad. If that was true it would be self-evident, and by doing this they're acknowledging that it looks as though the opposite has been true, at least to the extent that it is a legitimate concern worth addressing. And then, to proclaim in no uncertain terms that we will not even be told details about non-kotfe content (ops etc) until the end of 2016 - that means that content will not go live until at least 1.5 years from now based on past timelines. And if that wasn't bad enough, this whole thing about kotfe being widely praised and well-received and lauding it - stupid. It means BioWare is proud of their repetitive and badly written crap and is likely to continue with similar "expansions" in the future. They did not acknowledge that many players do not like paying MMO sub fees for solo content while actual MMO content is placed on the backburner (beyond telling us we wont hear more about such content for 6 months at least). That is apparently the future of this game, now. KOTOR 3 with $15/month ~hour long dlc. And they even counted operations and heroics as new content. I mean all in all this letter did nothing other than confirm what I already knew. They are a completely inept company, and this game will only ever get worse.

I'll be honest I think this goes up to the top. For them to so consistently fail at communicating with players, while also so consistently fail with updates, bugs and QA testing as well - I mean this a culture of incompetence and I've never seen anything like it before in any of the online games I have ever played. That's not fair, at all. You're talking about someone with a track record of making non-committal posts based on false appeasement rather than actually being open and truthful with the playerbase. The number of times I've seen posts along the lines of "oh thats a good idea we'll look into implementing" or "there is a team of devs working tirelessly on this" and so forth is just staggering given what we've actually seen from the company. For him, for whatever reason, to come out and just for once openly admit there is nothing behind the curtain it upset a lot of people - because for a long time they had been pretending to care, pretending to be working on stuff, pretending that this aspect of the game or that aspect of the game would be better, and all the while players were paying subs while they waited. If they use that as an exhibit of anything, it should be that straight up lying to the players about what is coming in the pipeline and giving people false expectations is going to inevitably slap them in the face in the end. That doing so will only cause frustration and lost subs when the truth inevitably comes out.

yes i agree unstoppable needs buffed

jesus christ set up a position for an intern and have him/her do it already

First and foremost - gating future content behind KotFE is stupid. KotFE is repetitive, badly written, and tedious. If you actually expect players to continue slogging through kotfe (and revan) on every alt they ever make, you are completely naive. Second, there is nothing "eternal" about the design of this in any fashion whatsoever. Nothing ever evolves, and it doesnt even sound very fun in its current form. So, a handful of mechanics that will inevitably be mastered and memorized by every player and the entire thing will become trivial and pointless in a handful of weeks at best. Why even bother? What you should have done, is create something akin to the horde modes that have existed in many FPS and other games for years. Dynamic, fun, worthwhile, and engaging. But yeah let's discuss what kind of gear you should get from doing this because that is a very important issue. Going on two years now with no new mmo pve content so I don't see why people need this gear anyway, but yeah thank you for asking us for our opinions BioWare.

I think you're getting into the discussion surrounding BW's marketing of SWTOR pre-release among gaming journalists, who looked at BW's description of an "mmo with story" and wondered whether that made any sense, or would be feasible. At the time it was a great discussion with interesting points on both sides. But that was four years ago, and BW has for better or worse a playerbase of PvP and PvE focused players who play this MMO in the traditional sense as one would expect from other MMOs. Obviously there are players who are only interested in leveling through the lvl 1-50 experience with alts on both sides, and obviously in kotfe and so forth. But for BW to say that after four years they are now focusing on story and by their own statements placing the traditional MMO aspects of the game on the backburner - those players who have been here for four years are going to be wondering wth is happening. Why are they doing this now? What are they trying to accomplish? And, honestly, considering how slow operations were being released before when they were supposedly a focus - what does this mean for the future and is it worth it to stay subscribed if you are a progression/operation focused player? To me, the bigger question is, why are people apparently ok with BioWare turning this into a single player RPG with a subscription fee? If I wanted to play a single player rpg i would go play fallout or inquisition or something, but this is an MMO and it's perfectly reasonable of the playerbase to expect MMO content from an MMO they are subscribed too

You are 100% right, it's ridiculous that they have shifted their focus into making this a single player game while expecting players to continue paying subs. If they wanted to make KOTOR 3 then they should have done that, but this is an MMO and they should remember that if they expect the players to stay. On top of that they also straight up said there would never be another lengthy delay between ops, and this is now going to be at least 2 years which is pathetic.

To them it's not about creating innovative or attractive content - it's about occasionally adding smth (anything) to every aspect of the game, then checking it off their list and ignoring it again for years while they try to appease other niche groups. Rishi and Odessen have isses? Too bad, they've already moved on to story time. Maybe the next time pvp comes up in 2018 they'll get it right, though.

wvw in gw2 is what you make of it i feel like. If you join a random map, and run to the pug commander tag, then yeah you will likely only get into blob vs blob fights or worse just karma train across the map as the commander intentionally avoids fights. Honestly, though, you're doing it wrong. If I needed gold, karma, or XP i would do that but 9/10 times when I was in wvw I was solo roaming or in a small group of 5-10 with friends or guildies. I would just try and get fights and usually that wasn't a problem, and if the map got too blobby I would go to that dueling map I can't remember the name of atm as there was almost always dueling and group/guild fights going on there - players were always pretty chill there, too. i just kinda prefer owpvp though I don't know. I tried eso and hated cyrodil because it's like they just ctrl-c and ctrl-v 'd everything from GW2, although the imperial city area was fun for smaller fights and solo stuff. But I hate the gearing in that game, its grindy and unbalanced as all hell. what fps games did you try? some are better than others, although I haven't gotten really into one since mw2 which was years ago and I probably wouldn't do that again tbh lol

Neither. They are terrible, lazy, and just apathetic with the story content and tbh it's not even MMO content. If they wanted to release KOTOR 3 they should have done that, but that ship has sailed. They are nowhere near smart enough to turn this into a story based single player game that still works as an appealing MMO with frequent updates, if that is even possible. What I'm saying is if it really comes down to that choice I'm already gone.

This map means one thing to me - they will now pat themselves on the back and go back to ignoring pvp completely for at least 1.5 - 2 years based on past precedent. Love it or hate it, it's all we're going to get for a very long time. And in the same patch they destroyed what little owpvp still existed within the conquest system, by allowing guilds to go into a pve instance and attack an opposing faction base/commander without being flagged. Meh

But at least there wasn't 10,000 skytroopers.

So in chapter 12, we see satele shan + phantom marr create force-imbued class specific weapons for every character. That is not a new and exciting take on Star Wars, that is a lazy plot device rudely shoved into KotFE's already flimsy plotline and only to try and explain and justify the alliance of light and dark, and how a non-force using class would even benefit from that in the inevitable 1v1 with Arcann the invincible (who can apparently even survive falling out of a building like nothing happened). Make no mistake about it. This is nothing more than BW's lackluster writing coming full circle and colliding head on with its own laziness and apathy. The alliance is not there because they wanted it for the *exciting* stories - it's there because clumsily shoehorning both factions and light/dark into one story is simply easier, cheaper, and faster than actually creating interesting and unique stories. You know, actually living up to their disingenuous refocusing on story content that has left the game lacking actual MMO content - even more than it normally does in a given year. They started it with Revan, obviously continued it with KotFE, and now they've completely gone off the rails and exploded in a ravine. So when we do actually fight Arcann, jedi/sith will fight using the power of light and dark while troopers and agents and so forth bust out their special gun and invariably end with the same cutscene (with exactly the same dialogue) of Arcann dying or let's be honest barely surviving so they can extend KotFE into yet more chapters. They are just milking the BioWare brand with this false commitment to story content, and doing so in a way that will do nothing to help SWTOR. I remember this game being marketed as "the mmo with story", and it wasn't until a year and a half later that they finally introduced the first substantial story driven content with Makeb. In Makeb, they actually bothered to give republic and imperial factions opposing goals and objectives with unique characters and dialogue. And then came revan, with it's singular story. Regardless of faction or class every player's experiences in the Revan exp are exactly the same. Any way you look at that, it's a decline. And now we are being told we are in the midst of a "return" to story driven content, but they have simply just followed the same lazy plan as Revan. Only it's worse now, because they are actually treating their laziness as if it's something worth praising or celebrating. Or, creating more content focused on their badly written plotlines. *cough* the new warzone *cough* While I have no doubt some players may actually like and enjoy KotFE, those of us who have been here since release are wondering what this could mean for the future. If BioWare decides this was a good idea, and creates more chapter based "stories" like this they will undoubtedly follow suit and ignore class + faction just out of pure laziness. If in doing that, they ignore other aspects of the game (PVP, PVE, etc) even more than they have already done since release - just what kind of game is this? And what will it look like a year or 2 years from now? The biggest flaw with SWTOR since release has been imo it's lack of focus. As I said, they marketed it as an mmo with story and then released no substantial story content until a year and a half later. Players focused on PVP or PVE find themselves with sparse updates followed by long periods with nothing, in which BW attempts to appease or attract players with one random and misguided idea after another (SH, GSF, conquest, etc.) If THIS is bioware finally attempting to find a focus for the game, then it's completely disappointing that it is just so badly written and lazily executed. It also means that all of those niche players they've been simultaneously attempting to appease since release will finally have reason to just throw their hands up in the air and move on. If THIS is what BioWare can produce when they completely focus on one aspect of the game, then ladies and gentlemen - what could they possibly do to vastly improve PVP, PVE, GSH, GSF, Conquest, or even the story content they've so lazily committed themselves too?

It's nothing more than a lazy plot device, so they can shoehorn in the idiotic discussions and supposed revelations about the force into classes that don't actually use the force. Because writing one story is easier.

Check the clock on the ipad and make sure the date and time are both correct. I left mine with a dead battery, and apparently was dead for so long it reset both of those and the security key wouldn't take the code until I changed it back to the correct date/time.

Crap. More lazy writing, more stupid segments. Will not play again. All of this bad writing and stupid plotlines to expand on this whole republic/empire light/dark thing which is only a thing because writing one story was easier and cheaper. Nevermind the fact that it has also made KotFE repetitive and dull after slogging through it once or twice. Like that whole stupid segment clicking on random crap so they can make you a special blaster? Are you kidding me? The powerful help they give you to defeat arcann is *litterally* a special class specific weapon? That is idiotic, and just more lazy writing. I've only been playing these new chapters on one character just to see if things get better, and after this one I'm about done with even that. the only positive? there wasn't hundreds of waves of badly coded skytroopers in this one which was a nice change of pace. Although, the stupid frogs that disapear into stealth for no reason whatsoever only to reappear after teleporting away from you....were almost as annoying.

There's also the fact that kotfe is terrible, and doesn't justify not having actual MMO content in anyway.

The only reason they came up with this alliance crap is because creating an identical story for republic and empire (Revan and KotFE) was cheaper, faster, and easier. they can fluff it up anyway they want, but it's idiotic if they expect ppl to think it's for any reason other than their own laziness and apathy - and certainly not this refocus on story we're supposedly in the midst off.

I have this idea in my head that it will be like a horde mode on FPS games, where it's just pointless fun (a good thing) and the objective is to survive as long as possible. Sometimes I want to log on and just destroy things without queuing for stuff or going to a daily area or doing quests etc so in that regard I think it will be cool. If they expanded on it further by letting you take in groups, or literally making it endless by increasing the difficulty of levels until it's just unplayable until you've mastered like every single thing you could possibly master (that would be a ridiculously high level, tho). Like, hypothetically, if it has 100 levels and lvl 100 is just absolutely impossible you'd have a wide range to play with and the replay value would be huge because there would always be a challenge to make it to the next level. I mean as it is, 10 levels (iirc) wont take long to memorize mechanics and get the hang of everything which means I dont see this being very "etermal" as it is Like how about this: after their characters are done and dealt with, it starts you out against like various weak, strong, elite enemies at the same time. No new dialogue would need to be created (or mechanics rly, for that matter), just use current enemies who cares. As you progress, it increases the numbers of strong/elites as well as their abilites/power. Throw in stuff like the medpack heal stations and damage buffs that already in warzones, or other things like the turret in Kaon Under Siege (why groups would be cool, one guy on that covering the others etc.)

Tbh i remember people complaining about ancient hypergate when it came out. if i still cared about pvp i might be more excited about it, but at least its not just another domination map (is it?)

Yes, because the PvP servers all are doing great right now with 24/7 pops and everything is awesome.

I'm actually kind of surprised people still take these seasons seriously. Like, you realize they've implemented this as artificial content? Why bother regularly making new warzones, or doing anything substantial in PVP at all, when you can keep people focused on the same current WZs indefinitely with a leaderboard they can easily reset periodically and the occasional carrot on a stick mount, armor, or title.

They're just milking the BioWare brand + reputation with this disingenuous shift towards story content.