I agree 100% with this.

I agree with you. This is one of several reasons that I stopped - or very grudgingly - do PUG groups in FPs. It is annoying and feels like jumping through hoops... especially when the group is fully capable of just smashing through without breaking a sweat.

Agree... I still have my original Rakgoul DNA stuff - from the original event - but there is no vendor to use them. I just tucked them away in inventory on the off chance that they might be useful again.

I am having same problem since about 8AM or shortly after. Was ingame about 20 minutes and then got bumped completely out... never to get back in again. Tried about 5 times now so far. It's now over an hour. I am in PA... so way north of you, but same coast.

Exactly... WTH... 2 days in a row? This couldn't be deployed yesterday during the downtime? 1 day I can stomach... 2 days is incompetence.

Opinion can certainly be based in fact as much as it can be based on pie-in-the-sky. I offered an opinion that was relevant to the conversation and was shared by others here. I'm not sure why you think that opinions can't be formed as statements... they certainly can be and often are. In this case, my statement was obviously an opinion and I never pretended otherwise. I think that I made it pretty obvious that my initial statement was a personal opinion that was shared by others (e.g. the person I quoted and others in this thread). The example that you provided: ""I think I'm not X" and "I am not X" are two very common ways of sharing an opinion. They are often used interchangeably. Context is important. People often state "I think that I am not X" or "I am not X" and mean exactly the same thing. You aren't going to get far schooling me on grammar with an online dictionary. One thing that one learns in graduate school is which grammar rules can be broken and when in writing graduate level research papers. And I'm not conceding that any rules were broken here in making this observation. One example of what I mean is that it is against the "rules" we were taught in grade school through HS to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as "and" or "but", but this is certainly permissible in baccalaureate as well as graduate level writing. You can certainly argue that more apples are being eaten than oranges. That was never in question. What is in question is whether they taste the same or can be evaluated on same level with the same criteria. Some criteria can be shared, like ripeness for instance, but many others cannot such as texture, sweetness, sourness, etc. These characteristics are as subjective as they are measurable. As such, you will have varying degrees of opposing assessments over these criteria. The most accurate you can get is that they are different and different people will prefer one over the other, depending on their individual tastes. Likewise, the populations between MMOs are very different as has been noted here by more than one person. Also, as has been pointed out here, SWTOR has more differences than similarities when compared to other games such as WoW. Those differences are a significant argument against the "Twitch game health indicator" crowd. Who said anything about "masses" returning to SWTOR? I noted that I see people trying out SWTOR or returning every day. That certainly does not translate to "masses" in any sense of the word. People are returning for the same or similar reasons that I did. I know that from their comments. The point was this would not necessarily be felt on Twitch streaming. There is a limited part of the gaming population who would find streaming a viable medium... and I would argue that as the gaming population physically ages, you will see less of that in the older population. But you also see less of it in younger sections of the population who lead very busy lives or work during prime streaming hours. How big or small those portions of the population are in any given game are a guess. These unaccounted for variables are in addition to the others already noted here consisting of sparse recent content release etc. I do have hope for future content release after reading the Roadmap, however. Yes, people were making the point that Twitch was a significant - if not sole - indicator of the health of a game. And several people made great arguments against it. I found those arguments more compelling than you folks in the Twitch crowd. Interesting that this part of the dialogue all started when I offered a supporting opinion to the anti-Twitch crowd. I did find the thread interesting enough to read all 24 pages, though. There was some great insight as to the state of the game... though the Twitch data wasn't very compelling by and of itself.

Nope. I clearly meant that I stated my opinion. Which exactly describes what I did. Don't assume what I meant... and don't rephrase what you THINK I meant, lol. I finally made it through this entire thread. I read every post, every opinion. None of it changed my opinion, nor the context or content of what I stated above. I remain unimpressed by Twitch as a social medium, content medium, or population indicator. As I stated above, there are clearly too many unaccounted for variables to make any kind of valid statistical argument in comparison to other games. Some/many of those variables have absolutely no comparative correlation whatsoever... which lends credence to SWTOR being a "fruit", but clearly a different kind of "fruit" (apples vs. oranges in other words). Would I agree that the game population has experienced a decline? Certainly. I think that is obvious and I would agree with some of the arguments in this thread as to why that might be so. But those are also opinions... educated guesses, which I think have some merit. I also see new and/or returning players posting in general chat on a daily basis. That is every. single. day. Now... do I see Twitch as a sole indicator as to the health of this - or any other - game? Absolutely not. Not even close.

My comment was a stated opinion - see what I did there? I don't know about Twitch, nor want to know about it, other than I know enough about it now (from reading through this thread) not to trust it as a sole indicator for analytics. Statistics is something that I DO know something about, I had to study it and then use them enough in research to finish two masters degrees. To do that I had to write over 100 research papers which both made use of existing statistics as well as compiled and then analyzed them. I HAVE read past the first page in this thread and am finding the discussion fascinating. I especially found the opposing analysis of the same data interesting. The fact is what I stated in my above post... there isn't enough relevant data - solely with Twitch demographics - to make a valid statistical argument. e.g. There are too many unaccounted for variables to make a legitimate comparison... and that is where this Twitch argument falls flat.

There is truth to this. I came back to the game for a couple of reasons - the biggest is that I could not find a game that was as good as this one anywhere else out there. That includes the garbage heap that is WoW, which I played for 6 years from vanilla... and then left because some stupid dev thought that pandas were a good idea for a character race. I found myself comparing each new try to this game and found it coming up short... so I came back and stayed. I am glad I did... and I brought a couple people with me.

<shrug> you are as entitled to an opinion as I am to one - though they be different... and differing opinions do not equal valid statistics. The point that you missed is that there are many SWTOR players who don't wish to have anything to do with watching other people play a game. I, for one, would rather watch paint dry or water boil. That point has been made a few different ways here - I just added my voice to the mix. Therefore it IS relevant to the topic and points that were made here... one of which I quoted. No one I know ingame - guild or through other means - has anything to do with Twitch. The stats that you mention - in comparison to other games - are an apples to oranges comparison. The games might be "fruit" but they aren't the same fruit - the player composition is much different. I'm not saying there isn't some overlap, however... but the base sets are very different. You do not have enough data to base a valid statistical argument on. ...but you DO have enough to form an opinion based on incomplete data. And, if you know anything about statistics, you know that incomplete data often leads to erroneous assumptions.

+1 more. I log in and play every single day. Never been on Twitch and never plan to be. Don't know anything about it, don't WANT to know anything about it, and don't want to waste my time trying to figure it out. I got better things to do with my time.

I DO like your dry sarcasm, lol. That's actually a breath of fresh air.

Never stated or implied that I was happy that the content was broken for others, nor did I state or imply that I did not do Ops because it involved content that was too hard for me to do. In fact, I stated the exact opposite; that I used to be a raid baron - raiding was a major part of my play style. I used to raid so often - here and in other games - that I got burnt out on it and it certainly wasn't fun anymore. There ARE other perfectly viable reasons that people avoid Ops like the plague they are that have nothing whatsoever to do with ability or lack thereof. I LoL'd for the 2 reasons which I stated: A) Regularly scheduled maintenance was delayed for two days to fix, what seemed to me, to be a pretty minor issue and, 2) coming here to see what as up and seeing the QQ. But I've been gaming since the mid 70's, online gaming since the mid 90's, and started raiding about 2001 (DAoC). I can certainly understand how newer gamers incorporate that as a major part of their play style… been there, done that.

Nope, not new. I took about a year and a half or so break when I was working on my Masters, but other than that I was subbed since 3 months from launch. We'll call it a mini meltdown, because, yes I've seen worse. It's STILL hilarious. A.) I log in every. single. day. No exaggeration - both when I wake up before work over coffee and to wind down when I come home from work. My job has me working hours away from home so this is how I relax. B.) I DID note that the servers would be down on TUESDAY, not Thursday, lol. I found that unusual so I came looking. There is a common expression about making assumptions.

Don't see anything in my post that stated or implied that you or anyone stop running ops or that my opinion was all that mattered here. All I did was laugh pretty hard at the situation and the resulting meltdown because I found it funny that this "broken" thing wasn't even noticeable to me. And I still do find it pretty humorous... the only thing that I found the least bit annoying was the servers shutting down just after I got home from work.

<shrug> So?

Oh this thread is sooo funny! I didn't even know there was an issue that "needed" fixed until I came here when the servers went down to see why. Yeeeaaah… Ops are the most boring part of this game... just barely ahead of PvP, LoL! Haven't done even one since I returned to the game months ago and am enjoying the game much much more than when I was a raid baron years ago.

Well it isn't the Internet... this is literally the ONLY OL game I play that has these issues. Doesn't occur with ANY other game I play OL.

Yep, really really old. I am a returning player - been back just over a week. When I played the last time, lag was a serious problem, as it was the time I played before that. At the time, I thought it possible that it was at least partly on my end as I had a 6 year old computer. It finally bit the dust July of last year. Now I have returned with a brand new custom built gaming computer - the best that I could afford... ...and the problem still exists. Bad lag spikes all last week with occasional crashes. Two crashes last night with lag spikes occurring all day... and today 5 crashes. Tell me how a game that has been out this long hasn't fixed this problem already? This is seriously affecting ability to group for anything and seriously compromises immersion. Big time annoying.

I appreciate that you addressed the Player #3 - of which I am one - because I know that there are a good many of us out there too. I used to do all the group stuff; ran ops/FPs til I was blind... but got so tired of boneheads and running crap over and over (while waiting hours to fil the next op group) that I'd rather watch paint dry than do it some more. If that was all there was to this game, I would not have returned to play it. Some of what you posted I don't care about, but you did hit some of the biggies. If I have to group or do an op to get an item... I'll do without - and that is just plain annoying as you stated - crafting is a solo activity; why do I need to group to get an item for a solo activity... which I'll never win the roll on anyway. I like the SW universe and that is why I spend time here. I do like to group with people who aren't epeen boneheads, but these folks are hard to find. I'm sure they are here, but they are just as tired of boneheads too and aren't actively looking, or aren't willing to put in the PIA time to sort through all the boneheads to find decent peeps to game with. Heck I stopped looking for a decent guild to join who has peeps with my playstyle for this reason. So thanks for posting this. You did list issues that are important to a decent amount of players.

Good post. I agree.

no..... just.... no.

This is the problem with perspective. People like me - and there are many - believe that "the basic game" is what we subscribe to play. What you want for free is exactly what the company should be charging people a subscription for. But I detest the F2P model. I think there should be MORE restrictions on the F2P crowd, not less. I'm talking about a level cap of about 20 or so. Restriction to maybe the first two planets, but certainly nothing past the first chapter. The limitation to amounts of toons and gear are already there unless you pay - but then you become preferred. Restriction to one mount and speeder level - which is captured by the level cap. I like the credit cap as well. But the Preferred customer is a different subject - I think that it should cost much more that a one time $5 investment to reach such a status. Some additional percs such as the ability to sync gear color, hide head slot, etc. might be in order here... but agree with gear and xp limitations - and no CXP. There is an old saying: "You get what you pay for". Subscribe.You shouldn't be playing for free what it takes many manhours to develop and maintain. Subscribe.

I like what you have said in a couple of your posts. Your responses are very thought out as well as thought provoking. I agree that they - and other MMO developers - have not captured the heart of the true MMO player. But the MMO player is as varied as there are flavors of ice cream. The significant portion that SWTOR left out were the farmers. These are the folks who log in everyday to tend their plot of land or other industry - and then participate in a few FPs, Heroics, or ops... maybe even some pvp. Will they ever be the top raiders/pvpers? Of course not... but they provide the bodies that some posters here are referring to as "content". This is a major way to find a steady population... ones that aren't entitled leeches. How hard would it be to make space on some of these planets to do those kinds of activities? Water farming (or something that biochem needs) on Tatooine, for example. Other industries could provide other items that crafters/endgamers need. This is something that they could still do. The other thing that I think they really fell down on was housing. I've lost count of how many folks have asked me to come look at their spread... Its all over the forum about how people like to decorate and then to display their hard work... So they provided housing that is isolated in separate instas instead of making space for communities where people can walk through as well as socialize in - think of Christmas time when many just get into the car and go for a drive to look at the lights. Yeah, they provided a way to publicly list your place - but how many times have you looked at more than the top one or two on the listing? If you make your MMO so that people can find community, then they will come and stay - and they will happily spend their $15 bucks a month doing it. DAOC did it right and that was back in the early 2000s. Whole guilds were able to locate close together near their guild house. I spent many hours just riding my horse through and looking at the creativity and identifying possibilities for my place. F2P is really a lie when it comes right down to it. There is very little "Free" in F2P. That's why the cash shop is so integral in the F2P model. It separates the leeches, along with everyone else, from their money. "Free-to-Pay" is a very descriptive term that I heard many times. It feels alot like a bait and switch - "Come play our game for free" and when you get there the company has their hand out every time you turn around. This is why I don't understand players putting up with it - but as long as people spend their money in this way, a company will deliver this kind of model to capture that revenue. And people blindly accept this as a normal part of their gaming experience. I don't buy it. And I don't buy the "Let's give them more for free so they come play our game. We only spend money to make new content and new flashy things to put in the cash shop. So that's all we should charge anyone for anyway." $15 bucks a month is not alot to put together to enjoy hours of enjoyment each month. I don't feel even a twinge of heartache for those who won't subscribe to the online game(s) they wish to play. I agree with your point about slow leveling - but also return the challenge to playing the lower levels as well. But not just for newbies... I think the challenge should be there for everyone. When I make a new class it is extremely difficult to really learn the whole class in the current structure. Its in those low levels that one really learns their class inside and out. I say don't dumb down the game into easy mode. Working through the challenges of the lower levels is what contributes to a better player at the higher levels. Making a game easy mode is not a way to retain players. Taking away the challenge reduces the fun factor.

You mean to say that they cannot read their own forums and follow this dialogue - but we have to go register to a new site and follow that one because they read that one and not this? That's redundant and stupid. How about linking this thread over there and point them in the right direction... since, according to you, they don't read their own forums and all.