If BW showed they were learning their lessons with SWTOR and started fixing some things, and adding some things, for mmo gamers, yes I would trust them. There are many aspects of SWTOR that are very well done. I'd say that BW either was listening to entirely the wrong part of their community when in development (those that in truth only represented a very small fraction of those that would come to try SWTOR), or they were just that inexperienced with the genre, and that is why so much that affected the "G" is either wrong, or left out.

Aye, not to mention stuck with them for the instance run because it's so fracking hard to get a group together you don't want to leave or kick anyone, thus making something that's supposed to be enjoyable a miserable experience.

I didn't say "everyone". I said "most". /fail at reading

So, the people that have been posting in the various iterations of this same thread at a ratio of 4 to 1 (4 being people that are having excruciatingly long wait times) are what? Lying? Playing an entirely different mmo than you are?

What does them getting to 50 have to do with anything? Everyone getting to 50 is not going to make one iota difference in wait times for groups. Everyone getting to max level has never made an iota of difference in wait times to find groups in any other mmo where there wasn't a LFD tool, and there's absolutely no reason to think it'll be different in SWTOR. It's just a "band-aid" statement thrown out there to try and appease people for the short term so they don't cancel their sub after the free month.

This. I don't have time per game session to spend 30 minutes, usually closer to an an hour, sometimes a hour+, finding a group. Most people don't have that kind of time per game session. Being able to sit on yer backside all day long isn't a per-requisite for playing mmos. If it were this genre would have stayed with EQ sub numbers being acceptable. I'd say that it must be you that's the "young one" since obviously you don't have a job, or a family, or even a moderate school load, or any of the myriad of time constraints, most people that play mmos today have.

Most mmo players of today don't expect to be added to some random person's friend's list, or to add some random person to their friend's list. In fact, most people find that very rude. That just makes it doubly hard to find a group. This is one of the most rude things anyone can do in a mmo. Not only that, but try being a tank or healer when people think it's fine to whisper you out of the blue all game session long. My opinion is that it is you that has absolutely no idea about mmos and how things work in modern mmos. The internet, and the mmo genre, has become a place to be very wary of as far as "letting in" relatively random people. There's all kinds of weird, angry at the world, malevolent, drama filled, players out there. Doing an instance run with them is one thing. Having anyone you have ever grouped with think it's ok to whisper, invite, etc etc. is entirely another. This thread was started by yet another that's either living in a past looked at through very rose coloured glasses (meaning a past that never was), or simply "thinking" it should work, because, "well, everyone in the world is just like me....right?"

It most certainly is. Umm what? I say again, What? Are you trying to put forward that standing for hours in one spot and not being able to experience any of the game's content other than the same space station you've seen a thousand times before is somehow a meter of one's dedication to playing a mmo? That a mmo should be about NOT experiencing the game? Sorry, but if you want a online experience where you just stand around then you go play Second Life, not a mmorpGAME. These aren't meant to be just your little social clubs. Social clubs where apparently some want a company to force others into participating in by making them captive audiences. No you can't do those things, because you either have to stand in Fleet to have anyone see your LFG message, or stand in Fleet to see those looking for an invite. Furthermore, why should anyone have to miss any of the available content? It's not all about leveling. At least it most certainly isn't for me. I want to see everything the game has to offer, including the most fun aspects of the game, which are usually the Heroics and Flashpoints.

This right here is what the BW design team should have on a big wall poster in bold letters pasted on any room they occupy during the day. This, Bioware, is your core customer, and this is what your core customer is desperately asking you to give them. Not the people play acting and afraid they'll get kicked when people see what server they're from, not people wanting the game to force others to be their friends, not people wanting to dictate to others how they play just because they're the .1% of mmo gamers that can play the game autonomously within their guild. This person right here. Repeat that story a couple of million times, address what they want, and you have long term subscribers wrapped up. Oh for heaven's sake. I see behavior hourly in SWTOR that is 10x worse than what I ever saw in WoW before the LFD tool, and what I used to see before the LFD in WoW was way way worse than what anyone sees in that game nowadays. If you think that dungeon and raid content in WoW has gotten easier since the LFD tool, then you haven't been playing the game. Simple as that.

You've watched the internet degrade. Not just WoW. You don't think there's just as vile things going on in SWTOR general chat at the moment? Just what game are you playing? A LFD tool can't be blamed for all the nastiness that's in mmos these days.

Can you please provide some proof of this?

.. and their LFD has absolutely nothing to do with why that is happening. nada, zip, zilch, zero. Sure, here's one quick example. Take a look at this threads predecessor, read through it, then read through this version. The shift as people have leveled through the game has been very significant.

We sat around in one spot and spammed a LFG message, and waited, and waited, and waited. Which is exactly why the LFD was designed. Which is why so many people are saying it's silly not to have one in SWTOR. There's been plenty of innovative features added to mmos over the years, and SWTOR has many of them. So I'm assuming you believe SWTOR shouldn't have those features either, you know, because we did without them back in the day and all............

It's starting to look to me that BW may actually know that it's inevitable that there's a cross server LFD tool. I want to be positive, so I don't want to believe that their design team is so out of touch with mmos that they don't know that. What may be happening is that they're waiting for the population to come around to the idea once enough have gone through the godawful wait times to experience the fun content they want to experience. I've already seen a huge shift happen on these forums in a big way since release. A very large amount of people that were definite no's to even a server LFD tool have come around to realize it's needed, and needed badly. Those of us with experience playing modern mmos know that just a server wide LFD tool will prove inadequate. It will prove so because the pool of players on most servers will be too small to sustain it, and the wait times will still be intolerable. The only things it will change is that you may not have to spam while you wait, but you will still wait... and wait... and wait......, and depending on how they implement it, you may be able to go do other things while you wait. Unfortunately for most mmo gamers, those that have jobs/school/etc and have limited time per session, it will still mean not getting to see the fun content you want to see. The thing is though, I think most of us know down deep where the lion's share of the anti-LFD rhetoric is coming from, and why. The tales of Moon Guard players getting kicked at the start of instances as soon as other players saw the server name have spread throughout the RP communities over the years, so now in every other RPers mind they are going to be persecuted in the same way once players see what server they are from. RP folks, it's ok, really. Not enough people will pay attention to what the RP servers names are, never mind what server you're from. As long as you can pull your weight to even a moderate degree you won't be kicked just because you're a RPer. Bioware, get er' done now. The number of players that are leaving the game already due to the frustrations of finding a group to do the most fun content in the game is far far too great. People aren't going to leave BECAUSE you implement a cross-server LFD tool, because all this gobbledy**** about "community" and such has all just been a smokescreen.

Trade chats were always dead. "Trade chats" are generally dead in most games that have them. If I have something to sell why would I restrict my potential market to roughly 2% of the players that bother to join a trade chat? Yes, because the port to fleet transport, port to fleet is such a big difference. Or just port directly to Fleet if one hasn't used their fleet pass........ So you managed to find friends that all play the exact times as you, and a guild where most are always around your level, and those around your level are on the exact times you are? You are awesome! Unfortunately most of the rest of us mere mortals ARE having that much trouble, and it's only getting worse.

This is pure made up poppycock. You log into any WoW server and you will see chats teaming with people. Yes it's mostly in the cities. It always was mostly in the cities. There never was any massive amount of chat going on in the questing zones. Well except for Barrens chat way way back in the day, and that petered out for the most part long long before these tools were implemented. When it comes to how server communities in WoW were ruined by the LFG/LFD tools, this forum has too many people that are either suffering from some severe memory disorders, or people that are simply making stuff up to prop arguments that have no legs to stand on given the reality of the way things actually happened. Too many seem to be taking a theoretical con of a LFD tool, and morphing it into a con that never was. Server communities are still thriving in WoW, as they will when SWTOR implements their version. Why? Because in the end most people that choose to pay a monthly subscription to a mmo are at their heart social animals. They want to commune with other people, and they want to foster relationships on their servers. They will do so regardless of any grouping aid. As for not having a cross server tool being some halter put on people that would otherwise be jerks? Just go stand in Fleet and read the chat for awhile. Not having a cross server LFD tool in the game is most certainly not deterring those that are jerks from doing their thing. What it is doing is giving the jerks exactly what they want. A captive audience.

You! You just made my afternoon! lolol :D

Zombies are cuddly I want an in-game zombie companion! Please please please!

Yes, you guessed it, Bioware devs want your xxx midget movies!

Turn them off at Fleet on RP servers, and leave the rest of us alone, and not having our game play being dictated by a mere comparative handful. Please. Thanks.

It is hopeful to read this. Kudos. Unfortunately your design team believing in some social pressure as a panacea for jerks leaves one feeling trepidation as to the experience level of that design team. I say that not in an insulting manner, believe me, but it's just that this server wide "social pressure" has absolutely never done anything to curb bad behavior by either individuals or groups. It's just people looking back and falsely remembering in my opinion It didn't do anything in UO, and it hasn't in any game since. People got so bad in UO the entire game had to be changed so that people being jerks couldn't effect other people's game as much. The behavior of individuals was causing too many players to leave. We had tried the "social pressure" by not interacting with the bad seeds in any way, and these individuals just laughed at us. All our efforts did was make the whole situation worse because now these people went looking for each other, and that my friends is where the seeds of some of the very very large greifer guilds were first planted. Seeds that grew into many nasty vines that have wound their way through mmos ever since. If I had it all to do over I would have screamed from the rooftops to just ignore them, and let the game do what they could to curb the bad behavior. It didn't work in EQ, it didn't work in DAoC, and it most certainly didn't work in WoW. In those very rare occasions where people actually managed to have a jerk leave their server? Ya, all they did was drive that player to find others of the same ilk on another server, and thus fed by "friends", make the game much more miserable for it's inhabitants. I also hope that you understand that a cross server tool isn't just a maybe thing. I'm sorry to have to say you seem to be trying to re-invent the wheel here. You are going to have to implement one as soon as a server wide system proves essentially as useless as the system that's now in place, and that is going to happen. It's been the case in every game that has implemented a server wide LFG/LFD tool first before, and although SWTOR is a good game (grats on that btw ), it isn't something radically different. The pools on individual servers are just going to be too small for a server wide tool to be effective. In my opinion you might as well just "get 'er done" now, and let the dust settle early.

Yup, I had 3 maxxed, and two mid range, and actively used the LFD tool. I can count on one hand the asses I had to deal with in all those runs. As opposed to here in this game, where I have one character to low/mid 30s and have already had 5 or 6 rotten experiences because of ******s in runs.

Stupid is harsh. A poor decision is more like it. In fact, companions shouldn't be able to use anything above green items that are dropped in Heroics, Flashpoints, and Operations. Loot tables for blues and above in those should be for player characters only.

It does get much worse as the runs get tougher. Less people want to pug them. BW should have known that and planned for it in my opinion.

I've been alt tabbing and reading various sites and such. Ya I certainly see why so many are just giving up.