No MMO will ever live up to the memory of your first one garnished with the unrealistic anticipation of the next.

Everyone is in the same boat. This isn't SWG, EQ or WoW. This is SWTOR. I suggest you deal with it. No-one is forcing you to play.

I'm a VERY old player and have played pretty much every mainstream MMO released in the last 15 years or so. Hardcore raider? Been there, wearing the t-shirt. Carebear? EVE was my game for that. Bottom line is that I've learned that there will NEVER be the perfect game as there will always be someone to criticise any mechanic or feature others think is fabulous. If you spend your time reading forums you are just immersing yourself in the angst of others with an axe to grind. The ecomomics of today will ensure that every game introduced will eventually, over the course of time, sink to a level whereby sufficient subscribers play it fairly casually in order to cover costs. Gone are the days (if they ever existed) where you have figurehead developers forging a path to the perfect MMO. Games, by and large, are never as popular as just before release. Thereafter follows disappointment and recrimination. People need to take a step back and be objective. Stop ascribing your personal panacea to games in development. You will always be disappointed.

I would imagine that Bethesda (or whoever) could save an awful lot of money by just adding an online chat room to Skyrim as that is the extent of MM the vast majority of players utilise in MMOs today. Because of the breadth of choice in todays online market people are all too ready to jump ship at the first sign of a game being too hard, or not hard enough, or not having server transfers, or a lack of pink fluffy kittens available as vanity pets. The bottom line is that there are a million reasons why one can dislike a game but please remember they are your own personal reasons and unlikely to be shared by all. There is no one perfect game out there. You have to make your choice of what is important to you in a game and overlook the handful of features that annoy you.

If that is the make or break issue then I suggest you probably don't enjoy the game too much anyway.

Actually you are the one who is ignorant. You are failing to realise that there are many many servers, each with their own micro economy. If you are on one where the laws of supply and demand have worked and the market is operating then good for you. For the vast majority of servers however this is just not the case. The relatively low numbers in each population makes it a lottery whether or not there are enough people making use of the GTN.

The problem with the economy is that it isn't big enough. The game is split over a bajillion servers each with its own micro economy. If there is not enough players selling item X then there will be no buyers bothering to routinely check the market for them. If that demand isn't there then sellers don't bother trying to sell them. It's a circle. Add into the mix that each server economy is so small then the slightest fluctuation in suppply or demand will have a huge knock on effect and you have what we see today, effectively no market available to the majority of players on the majority of servers. Cross faction selling will have little effect as the overall market size on most servers is so small anyway it won't make much difference. Contrast the economy in SWTOR with that in EVE. EVE is a single server community and while you can't actually see the entire market from any one point in space prices are effectively governed due to the relatively large numbers of players taking part. Player A may not see player Z's goods on the market in EVE due to the enormous distance between them however because you have players B, C, X and Y in between, having their prices regulated by those around them the prices of A and Z are effectively linked. SWTOR does not have this functionality purely due to the lower number of players on each server. EVE's economy is so huge (one could describe it as an intrinsic part of the game) that CCP employ an economist to oversee and report on it. So, what can Bioware do to improve the economy? Well, for one they could overhaul and improve the functionality of the market in game interface. At present it is next to impossible to find an item you are looking for. Sometimes that is because the item isn't there. Other times it's because the filtering tools fail to list it for some reason. And don't even get me started on selling. Let's try being able to list things for longer than 2 days for starters. Bottom line is that the buy/sell interface is NOT intuitive. It puts people off and often they won't bother coming back as the gear they pick us is good enough for their purposes. I'm sure there should be a ready market for harvestables and mods however on the servers I play on they just aren't there in any number (if at all). I think its too early to write off the economy totally as it will take a while for things to settle down and supply and demand to even out. But Bioware do need to look at server population and interface design. Ultimately it may be the needs of the economy that forces server mergers. In the meantime, anyone on a server with a half way operational economy let me know as I may have to roll an alt or two on it.

To be honest the crafting in EVE is very similar to SWTOR. Select start and off it goes and does it. Old Skool EQ with pre-combines. Now THAT was crafting.

Actually it's probably not. For an entire guild (were there more than two people in the guild at the time I wonder?) to quit over such issues just s few months into the game smacks of group hysteria rather than rational decision making. I would say that of my experience ONLINE almost the entirety of the players enjoy themselves. It only tends to be those with an axe to grind that lurk on these forums rather than actually play the game that feels Bioware owe them the ultimate uber awesome MMO. Remember one person's fail is probably many more peoples win. They just don't see the need to voice their opinions all the time.

Actually linear questing happened...

Seriously, get some sleep at night. There's your problem right there.

I'm assuming he's clicking through the cinematics while you're immersing yourself in the story. Or..... He's pulling your plonker....

It's a fine balance. To be honest for levelling I appreciate a quiet server as you're not hanging around for repops and other players don't ninja your clickies when you clear the mobs for them. On the other hand if you've got to the stage of needing to group up then you do need a popular server although then run the risk of login queues. I do feel however that there are probably twice as many servers as are strictly neccessary. Maybe Bioware could just close some servers to new players and offer free transfers to existing players. Leave the servers on the list so they can be brought back online as required?

I really don't get what people are complaining about. This is arising due to a DOCUMENTED world event. At other times healing pvp flagged players gets you flagged for pvp. These are the rules as designed by Bioware. If you can't be bothered to read up on the game and expect the mechanics to precisely follow what you EXPECT them to be then there is nothing that can be said to you. You play by the rules or you don't have to play. This scenario is so easily avoided. Plus you have the option of having 40 characters on your account. Go play one of the others if this mechanic offends you so much. I can't stress this enough. SWTOR isn't played by YOUR rules or expectations. Sure, come on the forum and comment on why you think the design is at odds with what you were expecting. But to say it's WRONG, just because you say so isn't on. Bioware is trying to design a game that doesn't slavishly follow what has gone before. It is trying to evolve the genre. This is a short term world event that is easily avoided. If you put yourself in harms way and get your fingers burnt then hopefully you will learn and adapt. There is no worldwide law written down that a PVE balanced server should have no PVP whatsoever. I'm pretty sure there will be players on the RP servers not roleplaying. and the majority of players on the PVP servers will be doing missions. Don't be such carebears. It isn't PVP getting a bad name though this, it is the PVEers.

The point is that this IS how the game is presented. It arises due to the world event which will be gone by this time next week. People should read the game design notes before complaining that they exist.

What strikes me about the OP is not that this scenario unfolded but rather that he felt it neccessary to come onto the forums to complain. This is the way the game is designed. If you want zero interraction with the MM in an MMO(RPG) I suggest it is your expectations which are wrong. You get the same in EVE from players who read the design notes and still get upset when someone comes and blows them up while they're mining. Maybe Skyrim would be a better game for the OP to play?

Possibly because it was directed at the wow community rather than it was an ops lfg feature tbh.

In my experience they are an invaluable way of getting ahead of the content when you are levelling and you are not doing space missions. If you're a level or two higher than the mission then the whole process goes just that little bit faster. They provide a nice chunk of xp and usually 3 or so commendations which you can use to improve your orange gear. Entirely optional but the credits come in useful when saving up for Speeder 2

If you don't raid then I would agree its use would be restricted although even if soloing to cap you might find it useful when fighting the Champion level mobs without being a couple of levels ahead of the curve. The point is though that even if the facility was there in SWTOR your wife would be under no obligation to use it. We're looking for an option to be made available to assist players who did have a use for it. To use your analogy if I DID want to go bungee jumping I'd probably find an elasticated cord jolly useful.

I think we're getting a little sidetracked by talking about healing exclusively. If all you want to do is heal you can target the tank (by hitting his portrait) and just sit there pecking out the healz button. However, targetting mobs is a bit of a nightmare in SWTOR at the moment. So dps classes mould probably benefit the most of "through targetting" and ensure they don't inadvertently grab aggro off a mob the tank isn't directly attacking. In games with bigger raids you would usually do this by targetting through an off tank. Going back to healers however I would imagine they would like to do other things than constantly hitting the heal button. Heck if the game went down this road I can imagine 3rd party bot programs being easily constructed to do the healing. So, target assist or through targetting isn't just for healers. In fact I would argue that it would be more useful for every other class in fact. Adapting the existing target of target window to allow this method of targetting for all classes would, in my opinion, make grouping far more enjoyable and allow the devs to design more complicated encounters. Kilos of WIN all round imo.

Firstly I'm not comparing SWTOR to wow. I'm making a reasoned plea for consideration to be given to making an existing mechanic useful and trying to explain why at present it isn't. Secondly you're clearly not a healer but possibly are one of those that criticise healers for not doing their job. Thirdly, and finally, Bioware isn't Blizzard and shouldn't neccesarily rely on third parties to make their game enjoyable. The reason I have never played wow is not that I am in some way retarded but rather the vocal playerbase puts me off. Rather than rely on knowledge and facts it seems to be those with the loudest most bombastic voices tend to be the ones who expect to be heard.

....and this is just the sort of response you get from someone who doesn't understand the mechanic the rest of us are describing. You don't use target assist if you're soloing by and large but if you're in a large group such as a raid where there are a couple of dozen pcs and npcs all firing off with big graphical effects it "can" become an issue for healers to target effectively. Of course if you're one of those dps'ers who all they do is complain why the healers are letting you die when you grab aggro then I suppose you will never understand.

Most missions tend to be designed to be run in batches. As such I tend to collect all the available quests, run the sub zone and then hand them in all in a oner. Admittedly the storylines can have you bouncing around planets but that aside I don't really see an issue with the way it is at present but that's just my opinion.

I'm glad the more considered responses tend to be broadly in agreement of the extension of "target of target" to incorporate target assist or implied target or whatever you are used to calling it. It seems this method of targetting through the tank (or the main assist) is common in older games and it is only the more recent, ubiquitous wow-clones that have abandoned it due to the more simplistic nature of tank and spank encounters. Hopefully SWTOR will in time develop more complicated encounter strats that extend the player rather than playing to the lowest common denominator. There are players out there that want to be made to think rather than just collect end game rewards by just turning up.

Well actually it isn't as healing is far harder in EQ2 say than in SWTOR and the dps a healer can put out can be pivotal in a long boss fight. Also healing through the mob is possible. You target the mob and can dps it but also heal any player the mob is aggroing. This is uselful when you have mobs that flick target constantly. The point with the games that DO have this feature is that fights by and large are far harder than anything SWTOR currently has. The strats needed for some fights are extremely complicated and it certainly isn't EZ mode to be able to target through your target, without it it would be impossible to win some fights. The thing is that in SWTOR there are no true healers. Even the best healers are a hybrid class and I can forsee a time when the mobs will be putting out so much damage the healers won't be able to pump out enough to keep all the players alive unless they have some mechanics to aid them in fast targetting. The screen can become hugely cluttered with animations to make targetting quite difficult in certain situations. I don't know about the effect on PvP although when I played GW there didn't seem to be any added danger for the healers by having players target through the tank. You still have to be in the tanks proximity if you want to be able to dps his target. If targetting is so easy then I presume you're already doing it independently anyway? I'm not suggesting the Bioware HAVE to implement this feature, I just find it odd that they introduce a "target of target" window but give it almost zero functionality.