Just what is your evidence of these things you state as if they're unquestionable facts anyway? I have news for you, the 5 man instances and raid content in WoW has steadily gotten more difficult with every expansion. The perceived lowering of difficulty by some isn't the game getting easier, it's the players and guilds just getting better. .. and what are you talking about "sold and retained more each". First, please provide evidence that the latter expansions retained less players. Don't just throw out some random statement like that without backing it up with evidence. Then please realize that with the first two expansions, WoW was still relatively new, and with those two expansions the game had already pushed the envelope far beyond any expectations within a finite market. All WoW can do now is try and squeeze a few more in. The unchecked growth had to stop sometime, and the LFD tool had absolutely nothing to do with it. Blizzard is a business. If a feature in WoW was causing them to lose subscriptions instead of helping to retain subscriptions, that feature would be gone. Just think about what you're trying to put over on people there. You're trying to say that a company would just keep going with a concept that's destroying their game..... why? Just because? They're doing it just to make you mad? .. and again, as asked 1000 or more times already, and never answered but instead conveniently skipped over, just what about spamming lfg messages in a chat channel is being social? Just what about whispering players of needed classes and getting put on ignore for bothering them is "building community"?

I think that you're really overestimating. Don't get me wrong. I really wish it wasn't the case because I want SWTOR to succeed. Unfortunately with BW not releasing any word on giving mmo gamers what they're asking to be included and/or fixed, and in fact letting mmo gamers know some desired elements won't be in the game soon, the numbers are going to drop just as fast and as far as they did with WAR. The biggest drop is going to be this month I'm afraid. That's unless there's a press release soon where they reverse some previous decisions, and let mmo gamers know they're serious about making this game worth people switching mmos. Most people are only going to sub to one mmo, and why would anyone think people are going to choose a game that doesn't provide them the features they want in the mmo they play over a game that does?

Hey, we don't have a dungeon finder in SWTOR, so our community is great!!! /sarcasm off

lololol what? You best do your homework on that. You have it the complete opposite.

I'm always amazed at apparently how few actually know what RPG means, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with play acting.

We are talking to people. We're talking to people over and over and over, but hardly ever do we get a response. Or do you mean whisper people? Because I politely tried that too. I did receive a few responses alright. "Putting you on ignore." Would me putting that in bold over-sized lettering help you to understand the situation better? Because obviously you don't understand it now.

I'd be curious to read the explanation about how being forced to stay in one area and repeatedly spam a chat channel looking for a group offers one more of an "experience". I'm on a server where someone started a lfg channel, and it's just another chat channel filled with the same lfg messages spammed over and over. Except now they're in yellow, and even more annoying to people, so people leave the channel eventually. Umm what good is "making friends" if when you log back in the game the friend you just made the day before, or whenever is already way past the appropriate level for the content you want to run? Just how does getting in a guild help? I'm in a guild, and there are only a couple of players that are close enough to my level that I could get a group with, I rarely see them on when I'm on, and again, what good is that when the next time I log in those players are now beyond the appropriate level for the content I want to do. I'm sure you thought that answer to the situation was the be all end all, but ... ummm... no. It isn't. From my experience, and from a very large number of others that have posted in the two versions of this thread, the answer is a definite yes. Very often it actually takes 2 or 3 or more times longer to find a group than it does to complete the run.

Just what games are you talking about? The games that have failed since WoW have all actually shied away from offering most of the features you can find in WoW. They've all tried to distance themselves from that game by offering something different, and have fallen flat. You do know that by a huge number, most WoW players have never actually participated in the raid type endgame content right? Most players in WoW are leveling slowly, and/or playing multiple alts and leveling each one of them slowly. Sorry, but checking a thread on any forums that is even remotely resembling a poll looking for evidence of anything is essentially foolish. Forum run polls and the like are notorious for being gamed by "special interest" groups. As in messages of "hey post in this thread" etc etc running back and forth behind the scenes, etc etc. That, and given that there's already been a few games released that were specifically designed to cater to the exact group you're speaking of which have only garnered a very small subscription base, I'm pretty sure no company worth it's salt would have made the decision to go that route. besides, there's nothing about SWTOR that's very different about WOW as far as game play and atmosphere other than the choices one can make as they follow the story. SWTOR just doesn't have many of the desired features. Could you point out what about WoW hampers immersion, if that's what someone s looking for. You do realize that despite all the raging for years, WoW did more to facilitate RPing than any game had done to date, and that the Warcraft series of games, including WoW, is steeped in story and lore? I'm afraid you've walked into a bit of a trap here. I use posts from people like yourself to point out that obviously you have either never played WoW, or if you did you went into it not wanting to like it. As I think I already stated, in my opinion the mmo genre is a finite market. It may grow, but at a much much slower pace than other video game genres. The thing is though, that is predicated on players leveling through the game only doing instanced group runs. That is very very rare, given that if one is only intent on achieving max level as fast as possible the xp gained in open world questing is usually always greater than dungeon running. At least it is in WoW anyway, and if it isn't in other games then it's just a case of poor game design,

Actually, for quite awhile now (I think almost a year) the LFD tool in WoW allows players to que with friends from multiple servers. So you can have four friends on four different servers from each other and your own, and all five of you can que up together as a group. So if you meet players you enjoy playing with, you just need to add them to your battle.net friends list and you can group up with them regardless of what servers you're all on.

I'm just stunned...... Sometimes it's like reading posts from people that live in a mirror dimension where everything is the opposite of our own. Bub, if Bioware/EA spent the time and money they did on this game and didn't intend on attracting the very same customers that are, or have been, attracted to WoW, then this game is without any question going to go down as one of the biggest blunders in mmo development history. If there's one thing that's become clear in the last 6 or 7 years, it's that the market for mmo subscriptions is finite. WoW stretched that market for the genre, but those subscriptions are pretty much all still playing that game. If a company wants to make it they have to get players from that game. Sure there's plenty of people that are disillusioned with WoW, I'm one of them, but those people aren't of any one single camp. They all have a multitude of different reasons why they don't like WoW. There's no one single group of players that don't like WoW out there that a gaming company can focus on and still have a successful AAA mmo on their hands. That's why to have a successful AAA mmo on your hands, you can't turn your nose up at extremely popular features that are available in WoW. If you do, you're not giving players any reason not to play that game. So we get back to a LFG/LFD tool. Most young adult/adult people have lives outside of mmo gaming that take up most of their day. They treat mmo gaming as a hobby. A hobby that they can only give so much time a day to, and that time is limited. Why are most of those people going to continue playing a game that makes in almost impossible for them to see large chunks of the content in the time they have to give the game per day? Why wouldn't they go back to a game that allows them to actually enjoy their hobby as much as possible for the small amount of time they have per day? Some people here keep throwing out the chestnut "It'll just attract WoW kiddies". That's actually the opposite of what it'll do. "WoW kiddies" have all the time in the world to play compared to young adults and older adults that have heavy school/work schedules. What a LFG/LFD tool will do is attract "WoW grownups", among other grownups. Which will in turn raise the maturity level (yes I know not all grown ups are mature) on every server. Which in turn will improve the community on every server. It's just another example of an argument used by people raging "keep LFG/LFD tool out of SWTOR!" that is shooting themselves in the foot. They're actually advocating an action that does the complete opposite of what they want.

Ummm ya, to a chat room, because evidently for some people it's perfectly alright to spend $60.00 and then $15.00 a month for a game where you just stay in one area and spam a chat channel.

Let's get down to brass tacks here. These games are made by companies. As much as some want to believe it, these games are not "artistic endeavors" created for the simple pleasure of creating them. The object is to make money. I know, that hurts, but there it is. Do you, or anyone else, seriously think that if any game company that had a lfg/lfd tool implemented in their game started to see that it was having any significant negative effect on their subscription retention they would keep it? Or in other words, so as to address the malarkey about "damage to community".. If the damage the tool did to a game's community was significant enough to have enough players leave the game because of that damaged community, do you really think a company would keep that tool in place? I can see it now.... Group sitting in a meeting room looking at a white board with a graph up on it. On the graph is a red line going downhill from left to right. "Yup Bob, they're leaving in droves. We nailed it! High fives guys!"

So you think it's ok to pay for a GAME, but not be able to play large parts of that game for long periods of time? K, well I'm creating a 'game" where you just have a little room that you sit in for one or two hours a night. I'll be happy to take $60.00+ and $15.00 a month from you for that.

I'm sure someone already laughed at this previously, but what the heck does spamming a lfg message repeatedly for hours on end have to do with difficulty of the game? Or wait.... do you actually equate "difficulty" with hours spent repeating the same mundane action over and over, and/or being forced to sit and NOT BE ABLE TO PLAY various aspects of the game you're paying to play? Furthermore, you want skilled players? Do you understand what aspect of dungeon running and raiding is always the most difficult for players to master? It's the coordination required between multiple players. How do people eventually master that? Practice, practice, practice. You know how they get practiced? By running dungeons a lot. You want a sure way to have a game filled with unskilled players? Put up needless roadblocks that hinder their ability to group up, or actually discourages them from grouping up, to do group oriented content. Thus yet another reason why LFG/LFD tools were implemented in games. A segment wanted content that was challenging, devs wanted to create challenging content, but if there weren't enough skilled players out there capable of learning how to beat challenging content then it wasn't worth putting in. So what to do? You create a tool that makes it easier for players to get into groups, and because it's easier to get into groups, more players start to learn the essential skill of coordinating with other players required, and the guilds/groups wanting to take on the challenging content have a much larger pool of players to draw from. Aaaaannnnd one other thing. Just what mmos from days gone by were of "higher" difficulty than mmos of today? That's more "difficult". Not repetitive and mundane tasks that are simply just time sinks. I've been playing mmos for 12+ years now, so I'm hanging on the edge of my seat in anticipation of your answer.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me just what about standing around for hours on end spamming a lfg message has to do with laziness? Really. Do people even think about what they're typing? Or is now just an automatic mantra for some of you, regardless that it simply has no basis in reality?

All those things are currently happening in many many SWTOR groups right at this very moment, so it's pretty clear that those issues have nothing to do with a LFG/LFD tool.

It's no exaggeration at all. I myself spent easily that much time looking for a group to do one a couple of nights ago. On average it's been about an hour every time I've wanted to do a flashpoint, and for many heroics I've just had to give up seeing them.

In a game with so much content meant for grouping, not having the ability to find a group is pretty much essential isn't it? lulz

If they have the same people working on game issues as they do working on these forums, then we are in even bigger trouble than most think we are.

I played WoW at release, unsubbed, and went back after the LFD tool was implemented. I saw no depreciation in the difficulty of 5 mans. In fact they were actually harder than they were in vanilla. What I did see was a lot more players that knew what they were doing in the dungeon runs.

I'll guarantee you that the lack of a LFG/LFD tool is THE biggest showstopper revolving around this game right now. In fact I'll go further and say that I guarantee you that the lack of one has already caused more people to get fed up and quite the game than any of the other issues that this game has combined. It isn't just ancillary for most people. The frustration one feels from standing around for God knows how long whenever you want to do group content at early levels is causing people to look ahead at the rest of the leveling process and just plain give up.

Hey, your paying to not play because you're spending hours standing around spamming lfg messages, so might as well get used it. Well until the game goes free to play due to lack of customer retention... you know, brought about in large part because so many players are getting to level 20 or so and thinking about just how long they've had to waste their time, and looking forward to 30 or so more levels of it, and saying "nah, that's enough for me, I'm going to a game where I can actually play it."

Well right there is what's been happening on these forums for the most part when it comes to discussions about a LFG/LFD tool. .5% of the game's population dictating how the rest of us are going to play because they felt the tool didn't work very well for RPers in another game. Kudos to you for being honest. It's refreshing to see someone with actual integrity. Simply request that RP servers be exempt from the tool then, or have a separate tool just for RP servers. Why make the rest of us conform to what you people want when we don't play on your servers?

It's too bad we don't have an identifier showing what server the poster is on. I already have a pretty good idea where most of the anti-LFG/LFD reside, but it would be nice if Bioware would pay attention to it. It's very sad that .5% of the game's players are managing to dictate how the rest of us are going to play, even though they could leave their little playacting servers out if it.

mmorpg.com review This site totally relies on game company advertising to stay alive, and it usually avoids making a negative comment about a game it's reviewing like the plague for fear of repercussions in terms of lost advertising revenue. Even they had to mention how much a LFG tool is needed in SWTOR. Cmon people. Even though I think the "ruins community" is complete hogwash, if it were true in some fantasy world, what good is "community" when because of the frustrations brought about by wasting hours on end looking for groups, hardly anyone is in the game anymore to "commune" with?