The fact that killing other players is... fun? Seriously, did I miss when playing a game for fun was "a thing" and not just the medium for attaining temporary prizes to show off to boost one's digital ego? It's like playing Arena all over again... /dismisses pet I'M SORRY WILSON! I'M SOOOOORRY!

Funny thing, reading through the repetitive complaints in this thread, as well as many others over the last month, I can say that nearly all of them can be traced back to the individual making the complaint's choices rather than any specific mistake made by BW. Playing in a dead server? Roll on a new one, make an alt you'd been thinking of playing but haven't yet, and play it until they give us server transfers. Sure, you don't have your Legacy for now, but is that REALLY the end of the world to you? Players raged over the queue times at release, demanding en masse that more servers needed to be created. They created these servers, enthusiasm died down as people returned to their day-to-day between play sessions, and now there are too many servers. Our fault, we got what we asked for monkey-paw-stylie. I've yet to have THAT much of a problem with PvP premades or a lack of PvP, so I really wish I knew what the frell you people are talking about there. Once in awhile I get faced against a premade, just like what happens in nigh every MMO with a battleground-style PvP option, and I get my *** handed to me (other than the other night, pugs STOMPED a premade, good times). Usually though, it's just random players in a team fighting, and I win about as often as I lose the match. Admittedly, this is all circumstantial and maybe I'm just lucky, but most folks I actually have a conversation about this with seem to be in the same boat. Inability to access FPs and other endgame content to to low population or play times... well, not every wants to play the same thing as you at the same TIME as you! This ties into the first bit, mind you, and I'm sorry if you got unlucky in choosing your first server without knowing the situation (I did the same thing, got an Inquisitor resting on a dead server because I was sick of playing alone), but that's the risk you run when you just choose a server at random. It blows, and this is the closest thing to a legitimate complaint I've yet seen on this level of discussion, but the player base is more responsible for this than the game itself. Nobody likes to hear it, but there it is. One thing I've definitely noticed is just how many of those people complaining pretty much state how they've been playing this game SOLELY as a way to get away from WoW until [insert upcoming MMO release of their choice] drops, but continue to complain that the game ISN'T like World of Warcraft (a game which, at this point, remains at the top for sake of familiarity and sheer mass, not quality. If WoW were to release today, right now, with the same expectations that it has created in all of us, it would crash and burn so fast we wouldn't be able to recall that it ever existed). Sorry to say folks, some of us wanted to get away from WoW without losing the classic MMO feel. This isn't to say there aren't legitimate complaints to be made. Yes, by now they need to be hauling *** to address the population issues (that, again, the players getting what they wanted caused) and most DEFINITELY need to focus on releasing the things they promise to us WHEN they're promised, but to claim the game is being killed... Frankly, from what I can tell, the majority of you never wanted to play THIS game, you just wanted a NEW game to play, as long as it was an MMO. Feel free to enjoy Terra and GW2 when it releases... for about two days, until you start talking about what's killing THOSE games, too. And you will, TRUST me on that one (specifically GW2... so disappointed man, SOOO disappointed...)

I do other things. Y'know, like regular real-life every day stuff i have to do eventually anyway, so I do it when I can't do what I really wanted to. Makes life pretty simple.

I think I would be okay with ONE legacy name change per legacy when you first reach 50. Sometimes you liked your choice when you made it, made sense at the time, but after you've further developed the rest of your characters into this elaborate legacy story (if you're my kind of dork and do this sort of thing in your head while playing) you realize that, while the name you chose may have worked for one of your characters, the rest might look a little stupid. I mean, while I don't hate my legacy name, I DO wish I could make it something a little more species-neutral, so as to not look stupid when I'm playing a non-human. Also, for those folks calling anyone who chose their name badly stupid, all I have to say is: REALLY? Yes, free "whenever-you-want" changes would cheapen the emphasis on Legacy and are a bad idea, and they should have LISTENED when it warned that the name is permanent, but not everyone actually reads the website/forums, and their single warning in-game was ALL they had for information on it. That's basically what happened with my girlfriend's legacy. She assumed she would be able to choose ONE name, permanently, for every character in her legacy. When she chose a very character-specific name and realized ALL her alts (she has many) would be forced to use a name that doesn't suit them she was more than a little pissed. She doesn't read forums, trusts me to warn her about new things in patch notes, and doesn't follow anything about the game besides actually PLAYING. It happens, lighten the frell up.

Sometimes, when I come to the forums, I wonder if I ever left WoW at all. Same people, same inane crap, different forum.

Self-admitted troll, you have failed in all your endeavors.

Fixed for accuracy. I've had 10-15 people I know who play on other servers (I chill on Mind Trick, more-or-less a constant Standard pop) rage about their low populations and claim they were quitting. Talk to them a week later, they're playing new characters they've rolled on better servers until they can transfer their originals. Maybe you should try it, yourself?

Shot mango juice from my nose... while surrounded by people at work. Well played, sir,

That would definitely explain it! I generally like the style of the game, and with everything at high settings it definitely keeps me intrigued.

Honestly, I was just happy that they let me up the character texture AA. Ugly as balls armor is not improved by horrendous anti-aliasing, so the change is notable. I don't see as they improved much else, as I remember they just allowed us to use a resource/setting already in the game, just not active. Still, glad my armor doesn't look like a toddler puked all over it any more.

"Why should I make a thread in the right forum if nobody else is!" does not lend credence to your intelligence, nor to your opinion. Sinking to the level of the lowest denominator is not something you should aspire to.

Stopped reading there, all understanding between is now shattered, this is a terrible idea and in no way helps the problem you made this thread about. /shudder

The companions ARE a little... special. That being said, the ONLY thing I agree with you about it the nature of the AI's idiocy (I can't count how many times I've had one run away from a pull I was in the midst of, only to aggro a much BIGGER group, die quickly, and send the raging enemies my way). Creating a party of all companions would be stupid, and encourage people to never play with any other ACTUAL players (y'know, kind of the point in an MMO). I just cannot, for the life of me, figure out all these complaints and demands for features in an MMO which, effectively, cripples the multiplayer aspect of the game. Companions suck, so find someone working the same area as you and see if they'd want to group up to polish off the quests in that area. Basically: OP is correct, the AI needs to be capable of not ACTIVELY TRYING TO MURDER YOU, but that's all.

Frankly, I'm jealous, that sounds like everyone involved ended up having a lot of fun. Y'know, one side gets beat up on a little, they get sick of it and work to get the advantage, then come back to hand out some wrath out to their previous tormentors. Rinse, repeat, fun had by all. Hell, you even mention how awesome it was to destroy the griefers! Sounds like you had some awesome world PvP moments, but you're so focused on artificial prizes that you can't even recognize when you've just had some true socially-produced fun in an MMO with, y'know, other people. Sad, really.

Most people wouldn't mind an in-server LFG (which, in a manner of speaking, already exists) but cross-server LFG hate isn't the vocal minority for once, it's been nigh-unanimously chosen for being the downfall of any manner of community in WoW. It's just too easy to be a tool to people when you know that not only will you personally not have to deal with the repercussions, but your character's reputation wont even suffer from it (since the likelihood of you ever running into these people again is low). It's bad, even Blizzard have said they regret ever adding it, and the addition of it would effectively cripple what fledgling community TOR is developing. Mind you, I have yet to have a problem finding people who want to play together. Probably helps that I actually chat while looking for people to play with, rather than just spam a LFG ad over and over. Server merging would be the best all-around option at this particular time, if it weren't for the way gaming blogs/news/sites rip apart ANY game that realized they may have over-anticipated the sheer volume of people playing by a small amount and decide to fix the problem. Peer pressure works, sometimes.

I'm willing to call bunk on WoW, unless they started giving out a mess of extended playtime after Cataclysm (when I stopped playing) or during the year I didn't have the internet (around TBC), they have only given free game time to all accounts ONCE (and that was only a day to make up for almost two days of downtime). The Ulduar update left several NA servers crashing hourly for almost a week, and it took an organized call-in of a couple of thousand people clogging the support lines for Blizzard to even acknowledge the problem, another week to fix it, and during that entire time any post on the forums relating to the even was deleted and the poster suspended. In the end the problem was fixed, but we didn't get much more than that for our trouble. I didn't play WAR long enough to see anything from that area, EVE tends to be good about it though. Rift... well, I haven't played Rift at all yet (though I have a free copy with a month sub from PAX to try out, haven't bothered) but I hear decent things about their community support, so you could be right. I just know that, of the other dozen or so MMOs I've played over the last decade or so, this is the first time I've gotten compensation that was worth more than the time lost.

That's pretty much the standard way of things in every MMO I've ever played, you get a hollow apology with no information to explain a downtime or rollback (or flimsy information at best) and NO compensation for lost time. Bioware handled things quickly, efficiently, and they gave us a full day in compensation for half that time lost. Well done.

Here I was, thinking this was going to be a nice, respectable thread. Oh what a silly dip**** I am! Seriously though, I actually give props to Bioware for the professional way they approached a serious issue coming up (and in a reasonable amount of time, with compensation to match). The only people who act truly outraged over downtimes after a major update in ANY game are people who've no idea what programming is like.

I can't speak for LOTRO, but I call bunk on WoW and EQ. That three-day downtime after one of the early EQ updates ended with a "Hey, it's fixed, you're welcome. Deal with it." and nearly a week of several NA servers crashing hourly after the Ulduar update in WoW required an organized call-in of several thousand for Blizzard to even acknowledge the problem. They fixed it, but started to delete any thread about the subject after that and suspend the account that made it. Not saying that this wasn't irritating, given I missed most of my free time to play today, but a whole day free to compensate for half that time lost... Everything went much better than expected.

Not to mention, we all actually DID get free game time for it. Yeah, I don't remember any other major MMO doing that for down time.

Just realized I did the stupid thing, too. Brofist? /brofist

This. Precisely this. Having played every major MMO (and several not-so-major-why-the-hell-did-I-spend-money-on-this-crap ones, as well) at least for awhile in the last decade, having some downtime the day after a content patch is pretty much par for the course. I mean, seriously, does nobody here recall that stint in WoW right after Ulduar where a huge chunk of NA servers would crash every 1-3 hours, requiring a complete rollback and regular announcements of "We have now fixed this error", only to crash AGAIN in another hour? That crap took MONTHS of going through that cycle before Blizzard admitted it was a serious problem. Hell, after the first round of "We fixed it" they refused to even acknowledge the problem until people started calling in by the thousands! At least Bioware's being pretty open about this process and they're trying to make sure it's as stable as possible before bringing the servers back up, rather than just throwing a few quick patches at the servers and hoping it doesn't cause more problems. In short: I need you all to pull up your frilly stockings, tighten your thongs, and stop acting like a bunch of pansies.