Actually, yes, I am. I stated at the beginning I was going to give my opinions based on the 1-20 mark. For a returning player who played the game 6 months ago and again the past few nights I think that offers quite an insight. Same as if you were decorating a house, I saw it at the beginning and I saw it 6months later, can see the improvements and things that have remained the same. Do the players, perhaps like yourself, who have played this for a lot longer able to give a review of the whole game? Absolutely! But I am not one of those. As stated at the end, it is personal opinions, and those are mine, they are not "wrong" and I am certainly entitled to give them, not as a "review of the entirety of the game" I don't have the experience to do so. I am a person who played for a while, gave it 6months then came back to basically the same game (for the lvl1-20 range). Do the graphics improve past 20? If so, great! If not, I think it's fine to review them. Same for the crafting, does it somehow get better after level 20? If you could offer constructive criticism that would be great, such as "Combat gets a lot more fluid as you level and gain a lot more skills". Such as the poster afterwards mentioning soloing as a healer specc, that is certainly an option, albeit a slower one.

Hello all, I have just returned to the game after 6 months or so and I thought I would give my impressions in a constructive way. I have about 6 different characters around the 15-20 mark, so this is in no way a talk about end-game, and I know most people will say "The game doesn't begin until end-game" but, you kinda have to get there first. In the 6month period I have been away I have played a couple of MMOs in between, so this is a mild comparison with little name-dropping. - Combat: Compared to most MMOs I have played it still feels as though combat is like going through treacle, so slow and non-responsive. All the abilities regenerate slowly and some don't seem to activate when you push the button. Certainly at the ~lvl20 area I just have to use the same skill repeatedly until it is dead, with another 1 mixed in once a fight. - Story: Still cannot be faltered in any way. By far the most redeeming quality of the game and this is excellent. You can tell 100s of millions were pumped into making the story experience perfect. - Duel-Specc: Was saddened to see duel-specc was still not in the game. As a smuggler/operative, my options are limited; I love healing, but it's more difficult to solo with a healing specc. If I go as a dps specc I cannot heal at all. I read at the start of the year before "Rise of the rakghoul" came out that this would be included in a future patch, just thought it would be a bit sooner. - Skill forwarding: Forgive me if this is in the game, I certainly couldn't find an option for it. This was also heavily discussed at the start of the year and seemed almost a definite to be in the next patch. I don't think it is there and that is disappointing. As a healer this is a little annoying that I have to target the tank to heal, no damage is being taken so I target the mob to shoot then switch back to the tank. With skill-forwarding I could do both at the same time. With the introduction of target-of-target that helps a little, but is still not perfect. - Dying in an instance: In most other MMOs you get thrown out the instance when you die. That is fine, helps against throwing bodies at a mob until it is dead. But in all other MMOs these instances are out in the wilds somewhere, not on the most densley populated part of the game, the space-station. It's a 45second loading time to get into the station, and another 30 to get back into the instance. And once your there, if your a novice like me, you have no idea which one to go back in too. Just slightly annoying - Graphics: Still great, I really like the graphics in SWTOR, it's not cutesy colourful like WoW, but it's not trying to be real like Rift, it sits in the middle and does so perfectly. My computer can handle the game at mid-to-max settings with a relatively older computer, so that works great to get such quality and performance. - Money: Coming across money seems to be a little difficult at the lower levels, but perhaps this is just me. In most other MMOs you can get by on quest rewards and vendoring trash, not using the AH or anything. But in SWTOR I seem to be struggling to pay for my training every other level. The costs are quite high for training. - Crafting: Personally I don't like the crafting system in SWTOR. In every other game you do the crafting yourself, you, the character, are learning to craft items and when you make that awesome sword or gun or whatever and people ask where you got it your excited to tell them you made it yourself. With SWTOR your followers do it all for you, and it isn't the same satisfaction. How does my follower doing slicing missions give me the skill to slice in an instance? Doesn't quite add-up. The other issue is the time involved. In other games it's about a 5second 'cast' to make an item, in SWTOR it ranges from 30seconds to 10minutes, which you then have to wait. What do you all do whilst waiting for the followers to come back with 3 belts or 4 pairs of shoes? It's odd. The money involved is also quite high. With other games most items you make are materials you have gathered and you put together for free, some items need an item from a vendor for a cost, but that's fine, your in control if you want to buy those for that specific recipe or hold out for a while. In SWTOR every craft costs money, which has every craft being a money-sink. Only nice thing about this are all crafts are relatively equal in cost for levelling. - Space Combat: I really enjoy the space combat, I find it to be quite fun. It's certainly not a do-everyday sort of quest, but it is fun to bridge the gap between instances and questing. I would hope a little variety could be added to this in the future such as a rare spawn appearing in the space mission that drops a nice item for your ship. - UI: Soooo very glad this was added, the original UI was a nightmare to navigate. Everything seems to be there too. Even a really nice feature of changing the UI with 2 mouse clicks. As a healer or anyone in a group this is fantastic to be able to quickly switch between the two. - Travelling: This is just ridiculous to be honest. I am on the Space Station and I want to go questing: I run around the ship looking for the Operative docking bay - I run across the docking bay for 30seconds - animation of me leaving the station - run through the ship for 20 seconds - try to find which galaxy sector the planet I want to go to is - animation of me leaving the galaxy - run back through the ship - animation of ship docking - run through the docking station - run through the station for about a minute - then I'm finally out in the open. Sometimes there are fewer steps sometimes there is an extra station involved, it's just mad how long all this takes. This is slightly better that there is a LFG option so the party you form aren't waiting 15minutes for you to get to them. The back-to-station ability should be 30mins-1hour cooldown maximum, not 18hours. The large station and docking stations should just be removed, you enter the correct section on the station, your on the ship and in space. I was undecided which MMO to come back to after a long time away so I decided to download all the patches and updates for a few. SWTOR had 2 to download that offered very little for the lower level. In comparison, Rift had 4 patches to download with massive amounts of changes and additions that affect all levels. I decided to go with SWTOR to give it another chance since there had been 6 months to fix all the little niggling issues with an otherwise good game, but not everything was fixed and when comparing it to other MMOs, for me, personally, it doesn't quite cut it just yet. I gave it about 4-5hours and that was it, slight waste of an entire monthly subscription Everything above is my own opinion, and my own personal experience with the game. All points above are certainly open to debate, but my opinions are not "wrong" they are just my own. Hope to be back some day and hope the above is at least constructive for any developers monitoring the boards. Thanks.