Hey, the "elder" game (what a horrible term whoever coined that) may need new content - but it's not *that* old!

I only subbed because the game is simply too crippled in free to play mode. But no, I won't stay after a month. I can see this game being an intermittent sub game for me - if they add a decent amount of new content in RoTHC. Instead of subbing every month, you only have to sub long enough to swap credits around, get key speeder unlocks, any leveling, some crafting, sort out your chars, etc and then unsub for several more months. Rinse. Repeat.

From the title I thought the OP would ask if there is any development going on in the game.

Lol, they never added the Cathar either?

By all accounts SWTOR was always supposed to be a subscription game, and the free to play switch was a sudden contingency plan. But it's strange how it worked out: 1) Standard in-game gear is an horrendous abomination. 2) Design cool gear for the cartel market (not that they've succeeded in doing this yet!) 3)... 4) Profit! On the other hand, they outsourced a lot of art design to Russia and China, so maybe the designers were just that bad. But I prefer the conspiracy theory.

Yes, WoW has flying mounts. The game's known for its increasingly epeen mount-a-saurs. And yeah, like you mention, the world models may not have been designed with flight in mind.

It's a good idea that was suggested during beta and every other day in some new thread after launch. I'm pretty sure one of the now-fired devs even brushed past a question about it. Basically, I just wouldn't get your hopes up.

You must not remember what a train wreck the game was before 1.2 - there were lots of fixes, but no, the game had neither a good first month nor a good first year, but it still lives. It will continue to live as long as they have the "Star Wars" license.

I wouldn't say there's any innovation, but WoW and other MMOs seem convinced that leveling is something awful that needs to be rushed through as quickly as possible to get to the real game. But they never really had a good plan about how they could possibly update all these fully voice-acted personal stories and keep them fresh. Players come to SWTOR to play out a story about being a Jedi hero or Sith arch-villain, and then leave when the story ends. Details are murky but this expansion seems to have 1 planetary storyline which not only won't continue player stories, but will have even less replay value then the 8 playable stories that came before. And since even Bioware isn't promising that it's at all comparable to a real expansion, it's hard not to be skeptical.

I have zero confidence in Bioware at this point. I wouldn't be shocked if there never even is an "expansion" or it turns out to be half a planet on rails with silly bad quests and minimal voice-acting. Bioware has lied and broken almost every promise or statement they ever made about this game. Don't put any faith in this alleged expansion. I kind of accept this game as a mediocre KOTOR 3 with no real future. Don't expect anything more and you won't be disappointed when it doesn't deliver.

More writers, more voice actors, more cut-scenes. They were focused on getting the game out in time for the holidays and it was already hugely over budget It was a good idea to scrap killing companions. You'd have way too many Imperial players kill their companions just because they could, find themselves permanently disadvantaged in crafting and additional companion missions, and get frustrated at the game. If this were a single player RPG you could have choices that totally mess up your game, or more likely force you to go back to a previous save to fix it. Those kinds of meaningful choices just don't work very well in an MMO where you can't go back to a previous save. As cool as it seems, it would be wildly unpopular. Fixing it by making the choice meaningless is a lot of dev work to produce this really lame result: "Oh, you killed your healer Quinn? Dumb move, marauder! But conveniently, and only because you killed him, it just so happens we found this dude, umm, Finn, who looks and sounds like Quinn and also heals you. Try not to lose this one!"

Exactly - it's an excuse. The main reason is the game's models (gear especially) aren't easily adapted to aliens and never will be.

"Perfect" is a loaded word - let's assume you meant "ideal" or "best possible." Realistically, the only thing I can see towards that is for BW to actually deliver new content on a consistent basis. Nothing else matters as much. We all know the game's first year was basically a titanic shipwreck, and the best possible SWTOR from here out is basically just keeping those bilge pumps running and keeping the game afloat as long as possible with active development.

No one's begrudging anything - also the game may be good, but "great" is a stretch. There's work to get this game in-line with what WoW, GW2, and other MMOs/RPGs have already brought to the table, chief of which is an accelerating, crazy-fast timeline of new content and QoL features. No one can say SWTOR has matched their dev cycles, especially in light of what a train wreck the game's development was all of last year.

Since it's from their earnings report, I'm sure that statement is very literally true (and audited) - those were doubtless the top 3 titles contributing to that $180 million and SWTOR was probably #3 on that list. As for whether that's good, who knows? That could mean the game brought in $10 million for the quarter, or something closer to $40 million in revenue, vs. what kind of expenses? And how much revenue from subs? But they mentioned it, and weren't playing damage-control like they did all last year, so I'd wager they're making more than expected.

TLDR: The compatibility issues with new playable species are with the game's models. The more alien the species, the more likely that toon will end up headless, nekkid, and/or invisible. The stuff about players wanting to be all re-skinned humans was just some face-saving excuse.

LOL, yeah the game is pretty basic with its quests. I can't say many are memorable. It is mostly kill x. Now, the stories associated with the very basic quests are memorable, but that's another thing. One of the devs (Ohlen?) described what happened: I remember he said they spent a lot of time "chasing tech" and that's why they ended up with so many very basic MMO-style quests. They didn't have time to build-in newer puzzle quests, or "bombing run" quests, or silly humorous quests, etc. Even the escort quests are a little waypoint-driven (click this). So yeah, I wouldn't say any of the quests are good by themselves. This game lives and dies on its stories.

You must not have been in WoW for a long time - you click a button on your profile to switch Primary Spec and Secondary Spec. That's it - talents changed, glyphs changed, keybinds changed automagically. There's another button to switch between different gear sets automagically as well. It's been like that for years. You visit your trainer only once to train the dual spec talent for some extremely extremely nominal cost of like 15 gold that any level character can afford (not 200k credits). In MoP, that's actually the only time you ever visit your class trainer ever anymore - they've eliminated all the training of skills, which are added automatically and for free. They've actually eliminated the trees as well, but that's not necessarily all good. I see this is still a sore subject - people really went off the wall in this thread. I suppose the remaining subs are overly defensive about the game after last year. I get that, but I still thought if anything they might have added this type of feature as a cartel market item, or something, if nothing else.

Your Shadow turned into a Shade.

Though this seems a small feature, if the expansion implemented just this it would show Makeb isn't just warmed-over old content, but was actually pushing the game forward. Every other MMO has this feature, and no one can realistically say a 200k legacy feature with no keybinds and that requires a manual rebuild of spec points is even remotely comparable to WoW or other modern MMOs.

If that happened to me, I wouldn't remedy the situation by subbing! Anyhow, I like the subbing/unsubbing strat. I ducked in and felt like I had to sub just to avoid all the hassles they've added for non-sub players. But sub once, then you can draw money from your old toons, unlock faster speeders, level normally and all that and go back to preferred with less hassle.

My guess is you're right, but who can say what Makeb is? I feel like it's probably the same warmed-over old content they promised last summer for last year, but who knows? Until then, why order sight unseen? It's simple: wait until you can decide what the "expansion" is worth, if anything.

You really shouldn't order it until there's a beta out, or at least a firm release date. Why order something when you're not sure what you're getting or when?

Lol, remember it got to the point where the EA CEO was like, "SWToR isn't even that important to us, investors need to stop focusing on that, we have so many other titles like Tiger Woods Golf" or whatever. Yep, mentioning it at all in a sentence that isn't pure damage control is a huge improvement. Probably a very good sign.

You'd think even the cartel stuff would dry up without new content, though. You'd think. Who knows - not like Lucas wasn't able to do well-enough polishing the same original movies.