No need to explain such things to me. I'm aware of them. I'm merely stating how I strongly believe many people will react, which is not dependent on you or anyone else finding it reasonable or not.

I don't hate the game, overall I like it, but it's not quite what I was hoping it would be. It's good, and I think it has many clever and interesting innovations, but just as many that are being done in every MMO. So I have no difficulty understanding the difficulties it's being faced with. That being said I don't yet have any plans to cancel my subscription or downgrade to a free to play account. When they asked for player feedback during the beta, I told them they need to take this seriously. They need to respond to bugs and key player issues quickly. They waited, far too long, to deal with dead servers and server transfers in general. Their should have been paid character transfers the moment any transfer system was implemented. This in my opinion is their most critical mistake. The group finder should have had a higher priority and been in much earlier than it was. They are slow to properly balance classes. Things are commonly broken by patches. I sincerely regret maining a Juggernaut tank. The class feels incomplete, tedious, and not able to effectively (and in fun ways) to deal with much more than standing and taking it in the face. I hear much the same from other Juggernauts and Jedi Guardians. That shouldn't happen. Very questionable time vs. difficulty vs. reward traits to gear progression and gear availability in flashpoints and operations. Playing casually I *easily* got full Tionese gear. Then, even more quickly and easily I upgraded it with full Columi gear, which proved a fairly minor upgrade as a whole. It's basically stalled out since then. Far more than combining both previous stages together and multiplying them several times over. It feels like I'm seeing mostly the same stuff no matter what flashpoint or raid I'm doing. It seems I'm now only upgrading main stat/stamina as better gear simply dumps previous bonuses for others. I know the graphics issue annoyed many players, while it seems fixed now, they took it as BioWare deciding as what their systems could handle for them by having the ability to have higher quality graphics but not letting us select them. Most people love character customization. It feels so accessible and interesting until you hit level 50. Now extracting mods is so phenomenally overpriced people get stuck wearing things they dislike. They also now have far less incentive to gear hunt for their companions for the same reason. If the items and by extension the mods are bound to your character there is no reason, whatsoever, for the ridiculous price. This functions only to hurt player freedom and reduce time spent playing the game. Fail for us, fail for them. The game changes drastically from leveling to being level capped. The game revolves around your companions until you hit 50 and then you can't hardly ever use them. It seems common sense to me to have made another type of flashpoint that you did with companions AND other players and their companions. The single player/story feel of the game abruptly disappears. The way you play the game changes entirely. It's not about your story or companions, it' requires other players to get anything done while it was purely optional before. There really is nothing to do on your own other than repeat the same daily missions which is not a substitute. Yeah that's how typical MMOs play out end game, but the game also tries to sell itself to people who like the solo and story play more, and in the end they just get left out. There is going to be a finite end until all these things can be procedurally generated sure enough, but I'm just saying more thought should have been put towards this. There is nothing in place to keep these types of players around, so they get bored and leave. I'd be curious to see the statistics of accounts of the first and second player exoduses. Seems to me there was two different noticeable drops in player population. I'd be willing to bet that the first drop would be roughly about how long it took the casual launch day/first month players to complete their class story and reach level 50. As well as play a role in the second drop, but less so. Probably time to do so once more with an additional class. I think some people treated it like a single player game. They finished it and never came back. A monthly subscription probably convinced many of these social players to instead put the money towards another single player game and move on, rather than keep paying for something not all that different. I could go on, but what good will it do. I know people who have already quit and are going to quit soon. More than 70% of the people we came in with. It all comes down to this: Too slow to react, and a little too much of the same.Blizzard only gets away with it with WoW because it sat unopposed for so long, it's become "just something you do" "something that's become part of your life". And "because of friends and guildmates". If WoW was released today as it is, and players didn't have these long term relationships with other players - it would not have achieved nearly what is has. So I sincerely hope all current and future MMOs try their own thing and stop taking so much inspiration from WoW. More of what we've all had for years and years, without the relationships, does not equal a strong foundation upon which to build from.

I can see they have to protect themselves from exploitation, but they need to find a way not to screw people who've been subbed and paying all this time. If the day come that people's main characters are taken away from them, then there is a going to be crapstorm of hatemail and forum anger. "Either pay monthly or you can't play that character you've been playing since launch." And I have zero doubt many people will quit playing on the spot due to principal.

Thanks for the link and info!

I'm in full columi level gear, with a Rakata lightsabre. I've not yet bought any Rakata gear even though I could buy one or two. I'm not sure what to go for first. I've read and seen people say to bias towards defense. Yet it appears most of my upgrade options sacrifice large amounts of defense for shield and absorb, so what should I do?

Was an example, I didn't state that's what I always do. It was a way to illustrate how ineffectual the AOEs are. But I did use it last night. Was playing Lost Island and that horrible Sentinal Droid fight, the sniper adds would pop up and I'd nail them both with one of those purple reusable cybertech grenades, force choked one, and taunted sabre threw on the other one. Moments later they both went back on to the healer from pure heal aggro. My attacks took roughly half their HP. And leaving melee range of the boss to deal with them is just begging to get owned by his incinerate, especially while the DPS has to move away from the lightning field. The extra threat will help, but it doesn't fully address the issue with how tiresome it is to run around and pick up adds all the time. When there are so many ranged adds that aren't grouped together, a higher threat AOE isn't all that useful since you might only hit one or two with it. Sabre throw needs to have a shorter cooldown. 30 seconds is too long for how weak it is. I needs to cause more threat, possibly hit multiple targets (but ignores CC'ed unaggroed targets) and probably apply a stack of sunder armor. A larger ranged AOE attack of some kind would be great. Point blank AOEs really aren't that useful since the difficulty is getting things together in the first place. Like the Force Wave attack attack from KOTOR, an AOE pushback/knockdown. The pushback would probably do more harm than good, but a knockdown or stun on weak only targets would work, while giving you a way to pick up scattered enemies who aren't getting nailed hard. It's silly but a useful way to pick up adds that aren't being damaged is to BUFF the party. If they haven't been touched and don't have heal aggro yet, it'll attract them. Funny how a buff is at times the best add grabbing tool. When your party is aware of this, it's even more useful.

Some threat boosts. Sure, it will help but we're still stuck with the same inadequate tools. All those abilities are still extremely short range and dealing with scattered/ranged adds will be just about as cumbersome. When the existing abilities are not serviceable for dealing with how flashpoints and such are designed due to cooldown and range issues, simply making them do more threat isn't going to help the core problem which is making it less tedious to have to stroll around all over the place keeping aggro on all the ranged adds. Combining that with a melee range interrupt, which you often need to stay on a boss to interrupt key abilities, it's completely counter intuitive to require you to run around and leave threat/damage/interrupt range on the boss so much. It's not the proper way to deal with the problem. The class itself feels incomplete and inadequate for the task. After researching how the other tanks work, I am confident any of them are far superior in general, especially dealing with adds, to the Juggernaut/Guardian. Maybe not in cooldowns for eating nasty boss abilities, but that seems to be about it. I'm not saying they can't be used, I get by, but it feels like handicapping yourself while decreasing the fun factor of playing. The key word for tanking as a Jugger - Tedious.

So I've been playing a Juggernaut tank for awhile. Doing mostly hard modes, but I've seen some raiding to. I'm basically Columi level gear across the board. I'm no stranger to any role in MMOs and typically excel in all of them. But as time goes on I am beginning to absolutely loath tanking on my Juggernaught. It feels incomplete and imbalanced. If all I need to do is is stand there and take it in the face, the class works well. Fight after fight, boss after boss, flashpoint after flashpoint I tell myself "If I was a Bounty Hunter with range, this would probably be a lot easier." I hate how everything seems to have a knockback on a short cooldown, I hate getting juggled around like a ragdoll while trying to trundle around the room and gather up adds. Being a melee in the End of Torvix mission in the Black Hole is a prime example. Every 5 freaking seconds you're getting knocked back by something. I have a very low damage and threat saber throw that won't keep aggro off a guarded healer long enough for the mob to get to me most of the time, and it has a 30 sec cooldown. I do not feel like I have adequate tools to effectively deal with the things being thrown at me. 5-8 ranged mobs, some with knockbacks and stuns is just tediously painful to tank. Sure I can get a little mobility with my charge or my friendly defensive leap, but getting around is only part of the problem. The utter lack of any good way to deal with ranged adds is just horrible. Even playing through easier flashpoints with people who know it and overgear it, I always have to try and constantly tab through everything tossing attacks on them to maintain threat against AOE. Doing so basically completely stops any meaningful threat generation on elites or more than I need to control. Dealing with melee adds is a cakewalk, but there are so many ranged adds, you have to be on 100% the whole time or people keep getting nailed and think you're a noob tank even though they should do better about attacking your target. In other MMOs, with some more effort I could always deal with over zealous DPS. I feel much less able to deal with it, and it just strains the healer even more so. Tanking SWTOR is more stressful, draining, and tedious than any other MMO I've ever played. Including dealing with clueless DPS in random cross server WoW dungeon groups. My AOE threat is slow and fairly weak, has a bit of a cooldown and a very short range. The saber AOE strike is alright at times, but they both are next to useless on the hordes of ranged adds who seem to be invariably scattered all over the place. Threat generation seems inconsistent at times and it seems like I have to do even MORE damage to get something back than the damage to pulled it off in the first place. My abilities aren't that interesting on top of being inadequate. My top level tanking ability is a slightly more powerful version of one of my basic attacks. The minimum range on saber throw makes no sense, since you have another low target HP sabre throw that can be used point blank. Combine that with a 30 sec timer and it's low damage and threat? Very inadequate tool for ranged threat which is it's only meaningful use. My tiny self heal, as a tank, *drops* threat when you need to get *hit* for it to function. And if you parry or dodge like a good tank, it doesn't seem to work either. So even if you pop it, taunt, and burst threat it doesn't always go off. The better your gear gets, the less chance you have of it doing anything. It seems completely counter intuitive. I'm considering quitting SWTOR, and this is by far the biggest factor. It's not enjoyable to play my class. And I'm not going to tell everyone else to stuff it for a good while for me to level and gear another tank class because my current one feels incomplete.

I, like many people, ended up regretting server I was assigned to at launch. I have since been playing on a different server and would like to bring my other characters over. I believe this situation should override the "Full" server issue since it would not affect population and would be a great thing to do for you players. So I propose that you allow character transfers to any server where you already have a level 50 character. Simple rules could be put in place to prevent potential abuse, such as a 30-60 day "cooldown". However, you should be able to move one or all characters within a set period of time to an applicable server (within 48hrs of the first transfer?), provided you have the room of course.

I did play and level to 50 on a new server that was more populated. Apparently not enough. I'm not moving a 3rd time when there are more intelligent long time resolutions.

Day after day I log into SWTOR and can find NOTHING to do beyond solo dailies. Server is dead. No general chat, no lvl 50 PvP, and even with a tank and a healer I can't find any hard mode flashpoint groups. There is nothing to do. BioWare is reacting too slow to fix these kinds of issues. Server mergers and character transfers should have already been done.

I leveled from 1-50 on an new server over the last month and a half or so. Not including the spaceport, I almost never ran into other people and the zone population commonly showed less than 10.. And I get the impression the faction I am in on that server is the one with the population advantage. Some of my issues with the game, other than dead servers: Galactic Market interface is cumbersome and slow. My main character's (Sith Juggernaut) top tanking tree ability is a slightly more powerful version of one of my basic attacks I get before level 10. Yawn. I leveled to upper 40s on a Jedi Sentinel. Even by then it wasn't clear to me what abilities I should be using when to best output. Many abilities seemed almost the same in both usage and damage dealt. He also was about as durable as a wet paper bag. Several attacks have animations that take too long, vastly reducing their effectiveness and overall usability. (Ravage/Master Strike for example) Many companions are just basically tossed at you without much story to introduce them. My craftable items were amazing until I hit level 50, then they largely became worthless and difficult to sell. PvP is extremely fun until 50. Then hardcore PvPers get their expertise and largely cancel each other out. Increases damage to players, but also decreases damage taken from players. So to each other they are basically the same but lightyears above casual PvPers. It's not even a fair fight. This stat concept is baffling to me. It's only purpose it to make a huge chasm in viability between casuals/hardcores. Some classes look to easy to play in PvP (Troopers/Bounty Hunters) and spamming just a few attacks is very viable. Sooo much backtracking from one planet to another to get a 30 second conversation that easily could have been done with the holoterminal. Excessively long loading times. So many possibilities into customizing your characters appearance via moddable gear as you level. Once you hit 50 you have to buy new armor and just deal with even with you dislike it - or pay half a million + credits to swap out mods. So far from what I have seen 95% of the difficulty of every boss fight is built around doing enough DPS to beat some stupid enrage timer, and nothing else. Some mobs (usually strongs for example, not even elites or champions) do FAR too much damage. Some quest triggers are poorly designed. For example: "Travel the to Fleet".. But it only counts if you actually get on your ship and pick it as a destination. If you fleet pass there, you have to get on your ship. Fly away, then come back for it to trigger. Encountered a fair amount of broken mobs that continuously evade. Mounts are too slow for how big the worlds are and how much traveling you have to do. Training is too expensive. Glitchy boss fights. HK fight in Foundry, for example. Tanking as a melee tank is a real headache, especially with over eager DPS. When I hit 50 I had no idea what to do, or where to go to gear up. Having to rely on external websites is kinda lame. That's just off the top of my head for the moment..

Eh. He had it for about 1.8 seconds. Wasn't that bad a fail, and only once in many attempts.

@Freeborne Those are almost all ridiculous stretches. Those aren't enrage timers where the enemy sudden gains godlike power because a timer said so. It's a lazy, uncreative mechanic to rely on. End of Story. That is partly my point. By the time we got geared to reliably handle the enrage timers, the gear from the instance we wanted to overcome wasn't needed any more, so what was the point?

I agree, but as a guild/raid leader in WoW it seems these short enrage timers, if a similar concept carries over into the operations, would make it even MORE necessary.