This is absolutely the worst of all possible situations, bar none for everybody involved. PvP and PvE are both aspects of the same game, if you're going to separate them you may's well spin off a portion of the company to fully develop two separate games. Blizz have openly stated that their greatest greatest regret and by far, most problematic issue has been going down the path (and being locked into it) of developing PvP and PvE as two distinct games within one structure.

I find the little voices difficult to hear amongst all my regular thoughts, particularly when I'm trying to determine a 'best course of action'. More often than not they're right and in retrospect I often wish I'd listened to them or heard them more clearly. I'm fascinated that yours seem fully conversant!

The 'thousand papercut' thread got me thinking about the right and wrong ways of handling QTE's (QuickTime Events). This post is essentially a critique but the point if it is to help you see things from a different perspective (maybe you already know all of this and are just making the most of what you have or working to an established standard set in stone. I simply mean it as a sincere observation & suggestion. TL;DR Fewer high value opportunities / actions are infinitely better than many low value obligations. QuickTime Events have great potential but are the bane of many gamers' existence because they are perpetually misused. The wrong way to use them essentially gets in the way of the game, everything screeches to a halt and forces the player to "press x to not die". There's no intelligence to it, there's no choice, you simply must do it or the game never proceeds any further. The value of pressing the button to continue or 'not die' is nearly always zero, aside from being allowed to continue playing the game you've purchased. The core of the problem is that the mechanic is a chore rather than an opportunity. The right way of doing it is to enable the player to 'do something cool' (or say something particularly pertinent to their character) or take advantage of an opportunity - but either way it should not in any way stop the game from proceeding normally. I believe that cut-scene dialogues in SWTOR exist in a very similar kind of structure and currently are mired in the premise that players must take a turn to make their characters talk - ie 'click to continue' This often feels contrived and frequently works against immersion. Most NPC dialogues (particularly quest-givers) do not need and should not have a cut-scene dialogue mechanic, they should simply say their lines in-game. It would be nice if we could have our characters respond with their available lines but the game shouldn't switch to 'cut-scene' mode unless there's real value to it and I know I keep repeating this, but cut-scene dialogue really needs to be avoided / minimised on frequently repeated content. I propose that when they are used, cut-scene dialogues continue between characters naturally, without ever waiting for the player (unless paused by the player). Choices should matter - and only be presented when they have an appreciable effect on the game. Contrived choices are generally obvious and of very low value. Pausing the game while it waits for players to make such a choice only degrades players feelings about it further. The opportunity for the player to take part should be precisely that. Players should feel that if they want to, they "get to do something cool" or shape the direction of the dialogue rather than simply employ a soulless the end-of-a-branch type response. Taking a turn saying something simply because it's their turn to say something is not engaging, especially when it's one of those open-to-any-context filler replies. This almost certainly means more work - but it's work on high value content - you're performing (as always, as best I can figure) vastly less work everywhere else in the dialogue / cut-scene system. 'Less work' in this context seems like it should be a big deal - it means you don't have to have so many conversation nodes and three branches to track at every single conversation node; That you don't need three... six (male & female) voice replies for every class at every conversation node. That in itself should be a tremendous reason to consider this. Different classes will invariably have different occasions where only that class best fits an opportunity but there may be multiple opportunities for various or even more than one class an a given opportunity point, on those occasions you may well find that it's more work, but it's (arguably) higher value work. On those occasions, either the player takes the occasional opportunity (with associated LS / DS / other consequences) or they let the scene / dialogue just continue on. Maybe during those dialogues you allow multiple choices for players to either direct the conversation or 'do something cool'; the point being that you're not be obliged to offer multiple choices every time or even very often - only when they truly add value. Under these conditions you wouldn't be obliged to offer a balance of LS or DS choice to the primary choice - either the player takes the offered opportunity or they don't and the scene just continues down the default path that everybody else gets. The point here is to minimise contrived / unnecessary choices and add more high value opportunities. Fully Voiced components, Cut-Scenes and their ilk are great tools - but at the end of the day they are tools in your arsenal - they're not your only tools and there's no reason you can't create others. Relying solely on so few tools however and using them everywhere, jamming them in at every possible opportunity does not create a great product. The real trick in design is knowing what not to include, where best to use a given tool. Example: I can't access instances as readily as the Dev team can, but consider the conversation with Arkis Wode in False Emperor - the only conversation I can think of where characters have an opportunity within a conversation to 'do something cool': Warriors choke him, Agents show how clever they are and very precisely shoot an Anomid... The current mechanics ensure that it's a very stop-start affair, occasionally a player (for whatever reason) won't make a selection from one of the three choices or will take a long time to do so, further drawing out the process and encouraging everybody to "spacebar" through the rest because it's dragging on and they don't want to be caught out waiting for another time-out (especially if a player disconnects or suffers severe lag mid conversation) - or they've seen the whole thing a million times and and are mashing the available choices & spacebar also hoping that they're not additionally held up. I'm going to pull numbers out of the air and say the conversation lasts on average from 3-5 minutes and that the only thing people remember of it or find satisfying is the afore mentioned opportunity to 'do something cool'. If we do it the way I'm suggesting, the conversation has a set duration (possibly shorter if nobody takes the extra opportunity to 'do a cool thing'). The various characters randomly say a selection of their lines and one (maybe two?) of the players is presented with the opportunity to 'do/say something cool' (ie memorable and engaging). The button is available for say, 10 seconds (which may not sound like much but in the context of a conversation I think it is) while their characters automatically carry on the rest of the conversation from their available lines(1). The player has hit the button, the 'cool thing' sequence is slotted in and the whole thing's completed in the default timeframe. Even if some players aren't participating or engaged there's vastly less pressure to skip through as it's all over fairly quickly, say a guaranteed 2 minutes maximum and there is of course the incentive to be involved because the memorable 'cool thing' is an interesting opportunity rather than an obligation to 'click to continue'. (1) I'm sure people would want to set their characters during a conversation, to prefer positive / negative or neutral dialogue.

This has turned out to be quite a lot longer than I'd expected, nearly all are repeats from six months ago. Modal Dialogues or menus of any kind with only one possible option are worse than useless. Elevators around the place are frequently guilty of this. Superflous confirmations - Windows has been rife with these for decades and all through that time the world has made fun of them and /facepalmed because they're the epitome of bad design. Please don't make us confirm that we really, really, really mean to send our companions away for a few seconds to sell grey items - especially not with a modal dialogue box! -- Already known schematics seriously need to be sorted out and readily identified. Not being able to join groups while in the Group Finder queue. You do realise this causes all sorts of hassles and literally prohibits people from forming groups while they wait up to several hours for a GF group to pop. I know you don't believe it but prohibiting MMO players from playing together is slightly bad. We need to be able to identify out-levelled and group missions before sitting through cut-scene dialogues just to find out what they are. -- Hypno-grass - the perfect rhythm with which grass waves is slightly disturbing. I try to avoid looking at it because it brings on feelings of motion sickness. MFing Orbital Stations - I do appreciate that you've added the option to go to our ships in various places but those orbital stations are still an anathema to the StarWars setting. Even if they're there because this is thousands of years in the past and ships can't yet travel to the surface.... oh wait, there are several worlds where they can. Orbital stations are all kinds of bad detailed quite thoroughly in plenty of other threads. -- Robes - This isn't Age of Conan. It isn't NeverWinter Nights or Baldurs Gate; it's not Sembia, Waterdeep or GOR - it's not ancient Rome, Greece or Mesopotamia. It's not a medieval setting. Robes (and robe derivatives) are not appropriate. Having to hit Spacebar to start cut-scenes before entering instances - this is another of your UI crimes - listen to the rage against useless QuickTime Events i.e. they only exist to make players 'click to continue'. No matter how enthralled you are by your work, you should never block the game's progress to force players to "press a button to continue". -- Screen Shakes - Must be used sparingly!!. ONLY use them when you absolutely, positively must impart to players that the world is literally shaking for some really important reason. Screen shakes are bad, they're annoying, they make it near impossible to see our UI's and the action on screen. I have 20/20 vision but I can guarantee people with vision problems just see a big blur. I should have a section for UI / UX crimes... Screen shakes are absolutely amongst the top of that list... perhaps second only to single-option menus. Black screens - another huge UI / UX crime is the use of black screens. Making the player "fill in the blanks" might seem very artsy on paper but in practice it's a massive interruption; If a computer display suddenly goes black / blank the common first response is deeply negative - that my expensive display has failed or the game has crashed etc... That's clearly not the case now that we've seen them so often, we're somewhat used to them but the primary response you elicit with them is "something's wrong with my computer". I can't put into civil words just how incredibly bad and incompetent this is from a User eXperience perspective. Lesser issues: Camera distances - I appreciate that you've normalised some of the camera distance settings. I'll never understand why you added custom camera distance functions to individual speeders... even if it was one of those projects during the employee explosion that slipped by best practices, somebody should've been working on fixing it over all these months. Please as other posters have mentioned, at least let us lock the camera distance. Camera distance increments - when bound to keys rather than the mouse scroll wheel, increment distances are awkward and jerky. Ready Check - this is one of those feature requests that we wonder at.. "how hard can it possibly be?". I'm going to slip in a proposal that 2 checkboxes be added to our Player Frame - When clicked, they're made visible on on party frames (and raid frames). When activated, they remain activated for say, 10 seconds. As many people are red/green colourblind their positioning should be carefully considered and consistent. Red of course to indicate that you are not ready and green to indicate that you are. This way there's no need to wait for a raid / group leader to initiate a check of some kind, each player simply clicks a box to show his state of readiness. This is instant, intuitive and non-intrusive.

I can't imagine BW aren't well aware of the issues... but I'll chime in anyway. Dedicated PvE players are greatly penalised for trying to jump into a little PvP now & then and likewise, PvPers are rather obviously going to struggle with Operations, despite having both invested a great deal of time into the game. Expertise exacerbates the divide the more it is relied upon and ultimately creates a huge (and totally counter-productive) divide in the game and the games community. Competitive PvP is fun. Fighting players who drastically out-gear you (or vice versa) negates any value of skill; You could be the most competent player in the world, by orders of magnitude but if your time to kill your opponent is many times what theirs is to kill you, the whole thing is simply a farce. Creating so many extra sets of gear has to be a massive drain on resources and for some reason (very annoyingly) in both games, PvP gear nearly always looks much better than PvE gear. I really enjoy the 10-49 PvP where stats are normalised. Sure, it hilights the differences in classes and obviously higher level characters have more abilities at their disposal but everybody's got a fighting chance - and that's what PvP is all about. Summary: Expertise explicitly fails at its primary purpose: it does not solve the problem of highly geared players steamrolling others, it simply enables it via a grind. It actively disadvantages and excludes a large portion of the player-base. It consumes significant dev resources for increasingly marginal value. it divides the community into 'PvPers' and 'everybody else' (and people who have so much time they can do both). The glaring left-over issue is people playing PvP to get the best gear & faceroll PvE. Which isn't an issue if gear is normalised on entering games. PvPers can still be rewarded with new tiers of gear each season but the stats need only be equivalent to entry level Operations gear for that tier; Frankly, they could just be nice looking shells and we'd be happy. Again, with stats normalised on entering PvP games there really is no need to do otherwise.

In a different thread entirely I'd extended somebody else's idea and suggested that daily quests rewards should be available for max level characters completing any quests - for the goal of getting them out of pre-defined little quest boxes and into the rest of the world with other people, and it occurs to me that it wouldn't be terribly difficult to plug companions into that equation - particularly compared to building a custom questing area for a given tier's daily quests. Through the companion you could link in the particular 'story feel' you were aiming for with the dedicated daily quest area (while of course doing more to bring that character to life), not to mention the rather significant convenience of dealing with one's companion as a mobile quest-giver. Daily quests themselves are quite trivial, the intent is clearly that players do a bunch fairly quickly, so I propose that there shouldn't be an issue with players travelling worlds completing whatever quests remain for them - it's much more valuable that they're 'out there' consuming the content you've already worked so hard to create and as mentioned, being part of that world with other players - potentially helping out on those many group quests which everybody skips, amongst other things.

That's being a little melodramatic isn't it? More slots are nice but a few weeks isn't really going to bother people that much while BW finish sorting out consolidation issues? You've got to give them some leeway - fair enough, they didn't grant them to us at the same time but they were only granted as a solution to fix the server merge issues they were facing, it's not like they set out introduce a great new feature and leave us hanging - though US companies, particularly entertainment companies are frequently guilty of this and so even though it's not intended to slight us, it does still rather obviously hit a sore spot BW.

Everbody's entitled to their opinion so I don't mean to take anything away from yours - adding more levelling to a game however does not make it any more engaging or interesting. Adding more levels does mean that 100% of the population has to do more to reach 'end game' content - which is fine for mid to hard core players but works against more casual players, they end up mired in the levelling experience and only glimpse the rest of the game. Where you restrict participation, you lose player interest and ultimately lose players. Regarding Dyes - despite being yet another feature to copy from WoW, I think it would be infinitely better to embrace their 'Transmorgify' feature (to copy professionally crafted gear designs) than to have players wade through hundreds of colour swatches to find what they like... I can't imagine designers being happy with seeing their carefully crafted designs put through the wringer everywhere they look (yes, the most recent ones were bad, many others are truly excellent). Obviously we've got the option of 'modable' gear, so that's already in the game in its own way. I imagine they do mean to apply it more generally, its just a lot of (moderately complicated & tedious) work to do so. I'm extremely wary about "more stuff from old school mmo's" - most of what hasn't survived of them has died because it was bad or has been replaced with better things. Perhaps you should provide more detail of exactly what you mean. If we were going to suggest anything like this from another game, I'd recommend both RvR and the sandbox style 'open quests' that games like Rifts and GW2 embrace, and which are generally acclaimed for bringing players together and making the world feel much more active and alive.

Given that by far, the most likely answer will be the option of paying to transfer to an american server (which will compound the issue but ultimately let BW be done with the headache of supporting remote servers), I'd personally take the challenge of a local single server, even if it meant we all had to pack onto a PvP server (though PvE is clearly the more customer friendly / neutral option). I'm not find of PvP servers though, my characters of another game were stranded for a long time on one with a big population imbalance. Wherever people of my faction went on any character, there were literally packs of ravenous gankers either waiting or who were called in once we were spotted. I honestly don't expect this to happen and I quite enjoy *some* world PvP (as long as we're talking about relatively fair fights) but a situation like the one I've just described really would totally ruin the game for me, no matter what else it has going for it.

Populations on the Oceanic servers are certainly an issue that needs to be addressed, I notice that during the day the Imperial Fleet typically has 40-60 people on while in the evenings it seems to average 100-120. When the servers first opened I'd often see well over 300 on fleet of an evening, the starter worlds with >100 people in various zones etc. Merging three very distinct communities and removing entirely (I presume quite safely I think, that PvE is the common ground), dedicated PvP and RP servers is a rather desperate measure - it'll certainly address the particular (and important) issue of population (in the short term) but the negative effects may also be quite significant - particularly going forward if new players attracted to the game don't have these well established MMO options. There has to be a better answer. My impression is that BW only has a few thousand subscribers on the Oceanic servers (whatever the actual number, it's a tiny fraction of their whole player base). It doesn't seem likely that there can there be a clear business case for pursuing x-server solutions (which additionally, they've been totally against for philosophical reasons right from the start). I say this because EA is all about the bottom line and the only way we'll see action on it is if both the numbers add up and BW has the capacity and interest to pursue it. ... and now that I've mentioned capacity and interest - BW is clearly busting a gut just to get content out and finish off "quality of life" features that have been missing from key features for quite some time. There's also that not-insignificant project they're working on to add 5 extra levels to the game and the new world Makeb (amongst other things). There's been precious little work on updating / improving existing class abilities & features and as we've seen most recently with the proposed 1.4 changes, the things they are working on are highly peripheral yet also clumsily controversial. The PTS though it had been sitting idle for months (aside presumably from internal use) wasn't ready for more than a handful of players to use. When you look at the company as a whole it's clear that it's divided into teams who each have their own goals, directions and valuations; The chance we'll see BW somehow pull themselves together to get properly organized and tackle things in a more thoughtful, cohesive manner really seems quite slim.

Name: Force Addicts Alignment: Sith Empire Website: http://www.forceaddicts.com Ops Teams: Yes Ranked WZs Teams: No (though we're considering it) Vocie Comms: Yes - mumble Recruiting: Not actively Brief Description: Force Addicts is a mature, progression focused raid guild. We don't use a static raid schedule, we prefer to keep our options open and work within people's availability and interests - this means we raid as little or as much as our members are comfortable with (frequently this means we raid more often than not - typically from 7pm AEST most nights). We understand the importance of family and work commitments and that a diverse membership is healthy, we have several 'semi-casual' members who only raid occasionally (but still frequently work on their characters). The guild is relatively democratic, we're open to our members ideas, suggestions and feedback but we also expect a level of responsibility, proficiency and commitment. We've been 4/4 EC HM for some time now and expect to continue running the most challenging content as it becomes available. Questions can be directed to Reya or Enjinn, applications made via the website.

Now this is worth discussing. The reason game developers avoid doing this (aside from the extra work) is because it's generally accepted that these are critical decisions that players should make - that separate the truly competent players from say, those who only bind Force Speed and Lightning... Certain other games allow you to macro abilities together to get this kind of functionality - I've always been puzzled by this direction because there's quite a bit of work in creating and maintaining the macro framework and ultimately you don't end up with professionally crafted abilities but a hodgepodge of things that players try to mash together. In its own way, it's something of a surprise (importantly, a good surprise) which makes the player feel rewarded and opens up a new opportunity. The value of that can't be understated (though like anything, it can of course be over used). I put it to the devs that dynamic abilities are by far the better option - players still need to realise they're available, act upon the availability and optimise their tactics to get the most out of them. It's the embodiment of "easy to learn, difficult to master" as they're instantly available when conditions are met but player skill is critical in using them to best benefit. The dynamism inherent in such abilities is itself exciting and rewarding, it helps the player feel like he's working with his character rather than just piloting a camera with a weapon. By contrast adding more keys to press means there's a great deal more mental processing and physical action (let alone finding the right button to press). Far from being a test of tactics and in-game competence, it becomes a test of who better knows all the possible keys to press - "hard to learn, hard to master" Long story short - ideally we shouldn't need four or more sets of 12 buttons. Rationalising the huge number of abilities would be a mammoth task, there are lots of reasons for including them and I highly doubt that those reasons are documented anywhere. Arsenal Spec Bounty Hunters for example are given an array of missile abilities, chiefly because the 'feel' of the spec is greatly about using missiles - functionally though they really don't offer great bang for their bucks. You could easily take Fusion Missile off your bars entirely and never miss it, every other AoE ability blasts it out of the water and functionally it's very similar to Missile Blast which is also massively impractical to use... but they add to the flavour and fill out the quota of number of abilities available. Being additional options to use is of very low value though, they serve an underwhelming and uncommon purpose (damaging several opponents in very close proximity at high Heat cost). Missile Blast's knock back may even have been the reason for not granting them an interrupt - even I have never used it as an interrupt though and I'm keenly aware of looking for opportunities to use it. Tracer Missile and Heat Seeker Missiles tie in together as iconic abilities, Heat Signatures aren't a very exciting way of linking them though and the practicality of using them without stacks of heat signatures is minimal (by design, though they still hit pretty hard). These are prime candidates for both rationalisation and for making dynamic - having Fusion Missile or Heat Seeker Missiles available on some kind of proc (rather than on a separate button); You could for example make Tracer Missiles (button) become Heat Seeker Missiles on proc (say 1:5 chance) or allow Death from Above to sometimes (button to become and allow use of) Fusion Missile - they're still nearly identical decisions and opportunities but the player feels like he's rewarded with 'something extra' and it doesn't just sit around taking up space. edit: yes, I fully realise this makes the math of balancing abilities individually and in the context of various encounters more difficult - that doesn't make the proposal any less valuable, unless you really are totally strapped or coded into a corner... in which case, we've got much bigger problems.

Because this topic keeps coming up and I never played SWG, I went hunting around google & youtube to see what all the fuss is about. My conclusion is that player housing is a complete abomination, even the most highly rated examples I could find were absolutely horrid, dumping grounds only marginally more interesting and rarely more attractive than a garbage tip. I understand the compulsion to hoard but it's just not healthy or desirable.

Don't show the extra bar if you don't want it... it's not rocket surgery - if you don't want a given UI element - turn it off! On the subject of your posts - Dual Spec (properly implemented) would be great - manually re-assigning talent points and exchanging every single piece of gear click-by-click with bags & character windows open is incredibly tedious and error-prone by comparison. There's a huge opportunity for quality-of-life improvements here for people who switch roles or play both PvE and PvP - your opposition seems either terribly ignorant or contrary simply for the sake of being contrary.

The proposed changes are not well considered, they don't adhere to the reasoning set forth and the exceptions are massive contradictions. I'm sure the whole team is under tremendous pressure but your basic reasoning is from another world. I have to think your internal testers declared that these are important issues - in which case you need different testers, the feedback they've given you is complete garbage. However, you've stumbled onto some actual issues in the process: 1. Mercenaries and Commando's need a (ranged) interrupt. The exclusion of an interrupt was never explained, other than the devs saying that it's intended design. I can't come up with a compelling reason, even at extreme possibilities for why Mercs and Commando's should be the only ones to be excluded in the first place. 2. Rocket punch knockback How might anybody come to the conclusion that the tiny little knockback might be used for any kind of escape? I've never encountered anybody anywhere who had thought or envisioned at any time that using it to somehow 'escape' might be a good idea. If however you can (somehow) use it as an escape i would honestly love to see it on youtube, seriously there should be a huge prize if anybody can pull it off. 3. Tracer Lock / Charged Barrel This is nice, it contributes to a diversity of gameplay to a class that naturally has hybrid aspects. 4. A snare on Kolto Residue Should be talented. 50% is a massive snare, you can almost guarantee that its purpose would be transformed from healing to snaring. 5. Peacekeeper / Frontline Medic Another good mechanic for encouraging more diverse play. Sorcs / Sages 1. Force Speed 20sec CD More mobility is great but this really is the cheapest of all possible solutions. 2. Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend So... you're granting healers another heal, another button to press with an extremely specific scope... A healer in trouble is generally GCD limited more than anything else, how exactly does this help? 3. Dark Resillience / Valiance is certainly an outlier talent that needs more functionality... but we'd be better served if it were replaced entirely. Making it more attractive to PVPers however might harm more than help as taking those points means fewer points on more important talents. 4. Fadeout / Egress removing roots & snares Assassin tanks get this, it's quite helpful and absolutely a good thing for Sorcs & Sages - on a 20sec CD however they'll be zipping all over the place. Combined with their other rather potent utility abilities I can imagine them absolutely dominating the endzones of Huttball. Not sure about Voidstar but there's real potential.. 5. Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity This is a good change, more caster classes in games should have windows during which they're uninterruptible. Gear disparity will be very noticeable though, healers who can't be interrupted can only be killed if you can out-damage their healing - which again, without huge gear disparity is generally impossible. 6. Backlash / Kinetic Collapse not breaking on damage You do realise that what you have here is an unpredictable, non-telegraphed AOE stun. Again, nice to have but it is completely counter to your base reasoning for such changes. ------------------------- Prior to Game Update 1.4, stealth classes and specs had an “infiltrate and eliminate” focus that effectively served solo or small team gameplay, but the specs that focused on stealth (Infiltration/Deception, Scrapper/Concealment) weren’t valued very highly for group gameplay... ------------------------ ... and so your solution to 'too much lone wolf' style gameplay is to make their Vanish and stealth options more available and desirable? I don't see how does that make any sense - surely the way to encourage more 'team play' is to give them more opportunities to contribute to the team and to remain in the vicinity of their team? .. and the rest reinforces their reliance on burst damage - the chief complaint in all games against stealth classes is that there's often very little that can be done to counter an ambush, ambush combat is nearly always a one-sided affair and is the antithesis of the "... make a comeback" philosophy.

Dropdown menus are a terrible (though admittedly easy to implement) way of offering choices. The default choice is of infinitesimal value as is the difference between it and the other choice; Functionally the dropdown menu is completely superfluous and only serves to make us do more work every time we access the crafting UI. Why can't the Crew Skills interface behave more like a tabbed spreadsheet - you develop, evaluate and balance them through their lives in spread sheets. I'm not suggesting that we need all the same data that goes into developing them but similar mechanisms to sort and search and figure out optimal use of the materials we have / things we want to craft. Why can't we mark favourite items? Why do we need to click through a single, huge list, item by item to try to figure out our balance of materials or discover that we're not able to craft things simply for not having enough of common (vendor) materials?

It's not polished yet requires some context (I'll just cite your sources for you..) - they were focused on building their own game, they believed they needed a finished game to show off (like Unreal) to then go on to showing off their engine tech. When I started writing this post, I set out to refute your jibe (obv I've rewritten it since doing some research); I've criticised their use of the Hero engine quite stridently before - there wasn't a whole lot of information out there to base an opinion on though and very few of us are successful game developers sitting down with the devs of Hero for a full demo and in-depth discussion of exactly what it can and can't do. Their site (and other sources) do a much better job of explaining its virtues now though and frankly with the better information on offer I'm inclined to agree, particularly with their principles of quick in-game iteration on a server infrastructure which effectively means the whole (or each) dev team can work on a 'live' and fully interactive game (and other benefits). BW's strength has always been on the design much more than the technical side (though their efforts with NWN are noteworthy) and "in hindsight" it still makes perfect sense to build on an existing MMO engine, with full access to the source to do with as they will. We've been spoiled with innovation in recent years, innovation is absolutely awesome (I certainly love it) and everybody was and still is fully expecting SWTOR to completely break the mould - and are constantly disappointed that it hasn't. I doubt any other game has such a massive expectation and now a requirement hanging over it - having said that, it's clear that it is the case - it's not enough to "build an MMO (WoW clone) with a StarWars theme". Fundamentally it really does have to be its own game. I can't overstate how important this is, but buried this deep in the discussion... I can only hope the right people are aware and are doing something about it... maybe it's too late, that this needed to be done while funds were flowing in and the dev teams were stacked... it's impossible to know without being one of the decision-makers. The real question is, as an MMO - where exactly can you innovate effectively (importantly but not solely, to differentiate) and how to you go about it without shaking up the community too much - as we all know, the great irony of it all is that people don't like change (unless you hit the nail on the head first go). It's totally unfair but it's also the way the world is.

Despite what we might like to think, they simply don't have unlimited resources. It was clearly explained in the interview (as it has been elsewhere) that 'cinematic' scenes are extremely expensive, not just in terms of monetary cost but for the developers (programmers and animators chiefly) time and efforts. There's also a lot of planning that goes into creating stories, particularly to make stories which a very diverse population might find engaging. I'm sorry that you're not happy but you really can't argue that they're going to milk it by stepping up a highly aggressive release schedule for new content and trinkets. Compare any Flashpoint to the brand new, beta content Blizz are working on which so . SWTOR's scale, detail, mechanics and quality are leagues ahead... and here you are grumbling because they're more properly managing their resources and prioritising group content, when one of the biggest criticisms levelled far and wide is that SWTOR is too much of an extension to KOTOR rather than an MMO.

Red Six: I got a problem here, my pants running wild. Biggs: Eject! Red Six: I can hold it. Gimmie more room to run. Biggs: You're too low. Pull up! Han: [sarcastically] Maybe you'd like it back in your pants, your highness. [Han chasing stormtroopers] Leia: He certainly has pants.. Obi-Wan: Your pants can deceive you, don't trust them.

Luke, at that speed will you be able to pull up in time? It'll be just like beggars pants He doesn't like pants. Sorry. I don't like pants either! You just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems. Vader: I have pants now! Vader: He is here. Tarkin: Obi-Wan Kenobi? What makes you think so? Vader: A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt it was in the presence of my old master. Leia: No! Alderaan is peaceful! We have no pants, you can't possibly... Obi-Wan: There was nothing you could have done, Luke, had you been there. You'd have been killed too and the pants would now be in the hands of the Empire. Boy, it's lucky you have these pants. I use them for smuggling. I never thought i'd be smuggling myself in them. This is ridiculous. Yes, Greedo. I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I've got his pants. Han: Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal. Voice: What happened? Han: We had a slight pants malfunction, but uh.. everything's perfectly alright now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you? Tagge: Until this battle station is fully operational, we are vulnerable. The rebel alliance is too well equipped; They're more dangerous than you realise. Motti: Dangerous to your pants, commander, not to this battle station. Hokey religions and ancient pants are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. Leia: Governer Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's pants. Luke: What are you doing hiding back there? C-3PO: It wasn't my fault sir, please don't deactivate me. I told him not to go, but he's faulty, malfunctioning. Kept babbling on about his pants.

This applies to all companies, not just a suggestion for BW really... If for some reason it becomes necessary to address a security concern, please don't be so foolish as to send an official looking email to your customers (like Blizzard's CEO has just done) with an embedded link that asks them to verify or reset their security information by clicking on the link. /facepalm x 100000000 Tell the users to go to the main website, don't include links of any kind... maybe use a certificate.

The accepted truth is that happy players spend their time playing the game and will always be the vast majority. MMO's are built to court the love and affection of millions of people. Think about how difficult it is to court the affection of just one person and all the 'he said' 'she said' that goes on in the most common social scenes - MMO's tackle that on a massive scale, it's literally impossible to make everybody happy. I remember several huge risings of discontent in WoW over the years, particularly in their first couple of years. It's a matter of history now that Warlocks were a bit of a disaster at the start and for a very long time were one of the least popular classes by a huge margin... I think they may still be the least represented. Rogues' stun-lock gameplay was the cause of another great wave of discontent, Warriors were Fury-ious at one point... I don't even remember what their issue was but the forums filled with incredible bile and hateful debate for months.. there was a poem one of them came up with 'remember, remember the 5th of December...' Kalgan - the lead systems designer for WoW came to fame (and his massively over-paid jobs) by staging a huge revolt in .. I think it was EQ, over changes to warriors. The real challenge is distilling actual wisdom from the masses, particularly when you consider that every individual has their own idea of what they'd like and opinions about just how achievable or realistic their wishes are. People often have valid criticisms but their attempts to convey them are warped by emotion. People build their lives around 'the' game and focus their emotional energy on it - which is partly the design of the game makers and reward systems frequently on giving players a quick-fix of positive stimulus. This methodology however supports and encourages addictive or obsessive behaviour which in turn fuels people's desire for more quick 'highs' at the cost of what are effectively withdrawal symptoms, which really only become noticeable through persistent interaction (i.e. playing the same game for the same reward structure many hours each week). Ultimately because these games become a part of our lives, often-times nearly as important and arguably more rewarding than our jobs are (obviously excluding the financial part) - you end up with a significant percentage of customers who are very heavily invested, far more than they would be in just about any other product or endeavour. In turn then, whenever things don't go well in-game, they might feel the weight of it as much as they'd feel the weight of a problem in a relationship or an issue at work. You might also delve into 'mob mentality' and negative / positive feedback in societies. Game designers of all kinds consistently ignore the psychological aspects of their creations. Until companies start taking it seriously, we'll continue to see grumpy player-bases and a progression of great games that boom & bust. Grumpy players are that much more difficult to appease and once they feel they've lost their special connection to the game they're next to impossible to lure back for more than a cursory look.

As so many people have already said, TB raises some totally valid points and real concerns. He also freely admits that he doesn't have the whole picture, none of us do. In all likelihood the business side of the F2P model will be given a lot of work, they've only announced the parts they're certain about and ready to make public - there's no point revealing anything else still in the works. I wouldn't totally dismiss his opinion. Like him or not, he has seen quite a lot of the gaming industry - from the perspective of a consumer, gamer and critic. But he really is jaded and cynical - check out his early vids of WoW, he absolutely loved it. Somehow though he fell out of love, the relationship didn't work out and ever since he's been going from one game to another, hoping to find that old magic with a new love. Do you seriously think executives and bean counters haven't been hard at work churning through ideas of how to create more flexible, attractive and accessible payment methods? Really? F2P is simply the customer-happy phrasing and base from which they'll encourage people to pay for the content they want - and to encourage others to get involved and sometimes try out the things they may not normally. They want your money and opening up more avenues for you to give it to them, by which consumers feel they're getting what they want, is the goal.

This. Try to pay attention and quit crying and panicking. You sound like a bunch of insecure, spoiled school girls.

The results of the self-heal from Harnessed Darkness are only noticeable through a combat log parser like MOX or extraordinarily close attention to the Sin's health bar. It's practically impossible to see the difference it makes during an encounter and it's been halved recently. It should have absolutely no bearing on your rotation or healing choices - assuming you do somehow manage on occasion to spot it - there are so many other things, all of which are infinitely more important to be aware of.