Actually, you're wrong. Most of the features being spoken of have been lauded by the entire gaming community and the industry as a whole. Take off your blinders. Nobody...well, maybe a few people...are saying its a bad game. There's just a bit of sadness that we've been waiting for 4 years and they've dropped an unfinished product in our lap. Its like if you go buy a car that doesn't have a CD player or anti-lock brakes. Anybody would blink in surprise and wonder what the deal is. Nobody would go "Oh it's okay because it took the industry X amount of years to invent those advancements". Thats not productive thinking, it borders on irrational. Will all of this be fixed? Probably. And probably in a relatively short timespan. The problem is, they shouldn't need fixing. I have a sinking feeling a large portion of the MMO community is going to take one look at this, shake their heads and go back to their modern MMO experience. I'm sure many of you are thinking, "good, they can go back to WoW/Rift/Eve/Whatever and leave us alone". You don't want that. Bioware doesn't want that. Because if that happens, this game will fail. Right now it just has to play catch-up, which is a not an enviable position, but its one that the publisher can recover from. Blame EA for this. If you've been paying attention to the dev cycle and know the typical Bioware work ethic, you know damned well that this game was at least a year off from launch, but EA dropped the hammer and forced them to put it to market early. Why? Because digital distribution has unfortunately made publishers lazy, and they rely too heavily on post-launch patches to bring a game "up to speed". EA is one of the very worst offenders . It's sad, really. I have no doubt that Bioware has plans to implement these features and fix the bugs. None at all. And I personally will be playing and enjoying what IS in the game until then. But many will not. I sincerely hope its not too late.

I wouldn't agree with barely avrage, I think its a good game. I really enjoy the advancements in storytelling and some of the nifty "little" features that made me grin the first time I played. However, you're right. Anyone whose payed attention to the dev cycle since 2008 knows what happened. EA threw the hammer down, and an unfinished product came to market.

So. Couple of things here. - We still sat around in IF back in vanilla WoW. Only difference was, we were blowing up General and Trade with LFG advertisements. LFG did nothing to destroy the community. Cross-server LFG and cross-server battlegroups did. There is a big difference that most of you like to overlook. If you want to talk about a community-killer, take a look at Biowares questionable decision to not provide realm forums. No, this will not be fixed. The devs said no. Devils Advocate: The current group problems will diminish as the game matures and more people become willing to take on tank and healer roles. It won't fix the problem, but it will help. - The UI is terrible and limiting. It looks and feels like a game from 2000. Even WoW launched with a better UI and their default UI is -still- pretty crappy. I already need more center-aligned bars than are currently provided for...and I'm only level 26. I'm scared of how I'm going to manage my skills at 50. UI elements that are supposed to align next to each other overlap in certain resolutions and nothing is movable. At all. This is terrible design. Devils Advocate: Devs have stated that UI customization is one of their top priorities. Good. - Pet AI is passable, not fine. I've had my companion randomly Force Leap pats while I was in combat with another group...a group I'd trained away from the pat and out of its aggro radius. This is annoying. Devils Advocate: At least it doesn't break my CC as long as I turn off AOE abilities. - Underwater combat? No one cares. The sense of exploration you get from being able to dive into a lake and swim down to the bottom is a BIG DEAL. Its one of the many things Bioware neglected in their environment design. Linear terrains do not belong in MMOs. Devils Advocate: Everything looks pretty. - Graphics...this is a user issue, not an issue with their engine. Environments look fantastic and I have no complaints except for the relative lack of facial customization which leads to a lot of 'recycled' NPCs. Devils Advocate: No anti-aliasing at launch was a bad move. Bioware claiming that "lots of games" launch without AA is a false statement, plain and simple. We'll get AA eventually, but most people don't know how to 'force' it through their global GPU settings. Those people are seeing jaggies, and it makes them unhappy. - Arena...personally I hope they keep it out. Don't try and graft competitive PVP on to my PVE game, thanks. Don't need WoW's balancing issues. Devils Advocate: None. Just don't, please Bioware. - Inflated currency issues are going to be hilarious in a year. Really. Devils Advocate: I like chinese food. - Bugs...oh, the bugs. Guild and Party chat are broken for an awful lot of people, including myself. Terrain 'snapping' is broken, allowing people to fall through the world in certain zones. Force Leap on certain platform types throw you through the ground. Crew Skills have an RNG bug that allows them to be caught in an endless failure loop. Mouseover tooltips in your map and taxi map screens will 'stick' to your screen if you escape out of the map while hovering over them. There's a memory leak on Taris that makes the zone unplayable for many people (this was actually just patched last night so whatever). Also on Taris is a progression bug that keeps players locked onto the planet and unable to leave for certain classes and in certain situations. These are just a few. They are documented. Just because you don't experience them doesn't mean squat. Devils Advocate: All MMO's have bugs, most of the ones I've listed (and its only a small percentage of the list) are pretty minor. Not being able to use guild and party chat is a game-breaker, however, and Bioware has done little to even acknowledge this well-documented problem. It's an MMO...we should be able to communicate with other players. Don't tell me to use vent...responding with "use a different product" in response to my pointing out another products weakness is immature and idiotic.. Oh, right...devils advocate...yes, launch, bugs, yadda yadda. - Macros/Addons/etc...yes, we'll see them soon. Not worried. Devils Advocate: Mmm, more chinese food. - SWTOR will never surpass WoW's peak subscription level. Ever. No game ever will, this market is finally maturing into one of competition that simply doesn't allow for a juggernaut like that to exist. Note that I said competition. Thats a big issue here. Competition is what makes a market grow, its what drives innovation and improvement. I know you don't want to believe that this game competes with WoW, but it does. And thats a good thing. I'm sure I've wasted my time typing all of this. Most of you are too blind to understand how badly you're hurting a good game by telling Bioware they don't have to make it great. Its sad, really. -

I can't wait until this games community grows a pair and realizes they need their favorite game to be competitive if its to last on the market.

A fresh-launched MMO from seven years ago, sure. This isn't 2004 anymore, it's 2011. Even the Korean MMO's on the horizon (see: Tera) have most of these issued nailed down for launch. Biowares excuse? It doesn't need one -- you're all handing it to them. You're telling them you don't expect them to make a product that competes in the current market. I've given up on this community. It's ridiculous, and its going to destroy this game.

And this is the majority of responses to this persons legitimate list of concerns. We don't want WoW -- we want the level of polish that WoW has. Granted, it's been developed over seven years, so they've had a lot of time to get things right. That doesn't excuse this title feeling like its 7 years old though. What you kids don't understand is that Bioware will not grow as long as you coddle them. They will not change for the better as long as you respond to any concern with "Go back to WoW". Its the equivalent of walking in to a restaurant and commenting that the service/food is better at a competing restaurant. Does the manager respond with "go back to that place, then"? No. As a mature and responsible business owner he will take the criticism and improve his service and menu, because that's what competition is about. You guys seem to think Bioware shouldn't have to compete with Blizzard, but they do. Having the Star Wars franchise tied to this game doesn't immediately grant it a free pass. Be honest and vocal about your desire for change; don't coddle the developer. Otherwise they won't grow, your game will not get any better, and it will be free-to-play inside of a year. In short, grow up.

Been through AO, EQ, WoW, L2 and Aion. DCU. AoC. Hmm. Probably more. Developed on MUDs before that. Ninety percent of my guild is unable to use guild chat and general chat is rife with people complaining about party chat being broken as well. This is documented on the forums, Bioware asked everyone to give specifics. No response since then. Not included in "Known In-Game Bugs" thread. This is a huge issue that Bioware apparently does not care about. People are getting stuck on Taris due to a bad progression bug and being forced to drop all quests and untrack all quests in order to proceed. Again, documented with an initial response and nothing since then. This one at least made it into the Bug thread though. The hotfix did not address this. Esseles flashpoint, Force Leap on certain platforms throws you through the floor and into limbo. Unstuck does not function, neither does Fast Travel. Documented? Same as above. Crew Skills, players are experiencing a bug where companions repeatedly fail at gathering while reporting "positive" results. Aka, "Here you go master, only the best for you" -- with no item or skillup. Documented. UI Bugs: CNTRL-U to reload UI sometimes only reloads the minimap. Escaping out of your full sized map or travel/taxi map while displaying a mouse-over tooltip 'sticks' the tooltip to your game screen. And on..and on...not even getting into the class and ability specific stuff... Most of these are small annoyances, except I've had one friend just walk away from game for two days because he couldn't proceed from Taris. And the guild/party chat...seriously? It's an MMO and I can't party up with people because I can't read/post on party chat. Thats the most basic functionality of an MMO, is to allow player communication. I've been one of the first to defend Bioware for many things on these forums, and I try very hard to approach issues with an open mind. I truly do enjoy the game and the design, but, sorry kiddos. This has some serious issues. Don't be fanboys. Nothings perfect, we must all agree on that. No MMO launch is perfect and in many ways this HAS been quite smooth. But the bugs are piling up....just because you don't experience/notice them doesn't mean the rest of us are just making things up.

A lot of bugs, period. If I didn't know better I'd think this was a Bethesda game. Pretty disappointed in Bioware, or perhaps EA for forcing them to release an unfinished product. Edit: trust me I've been through more MMO launches than you. I am fully aware of what to expect. However this is just ridiculous. Edit edit: lol. sigh. nailed. nice troll. MOVE ALONG. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Troll harder. The top guilds in the world use meters.

Its no worse the original WoW, it took me 4 months of playing 8 hours a day to cap on that game back when it first released. I consider that the 'norm' for leveling... Especially having played a couple of NCSoft titles. Lets talk about grind...ugh. Those Korean MMO's are no joke.

I wanted to re-spec...and then I took a boatload of credits to the knee. Okay seriously. This is, once again, a double-edged sword. Leveling as my prot-minded Guardian has not been difficult at all, but I've admittedly wanted to 'experiment' with the DPS trees and see how they play out differently. Personally, I like having that kind of flexibility in a game. When I first thought about this problem, my gut reaction was "well it's a role-playing game, and they want us to settle into a role. That makes perfect sense." But then I remembered that there are multiple trees along the same "role" in each AC. The AC is what forces us to settle into a role. The talent points? They're supposed to force us to balance our character according to our personal strengths and weakness' as players. Yes, you can tell me to roll an alt. And my response is: don't be a *******, you roll alts to experience different classes, factions and advanced classes. Not move points around. I shouldn't have to roll an alt just to screw around with my talent points and see what works best for me. What if I wanted to be a DPS Guardian? There's two DPS trees. Am I really asking too much to be able to experiment between the two without consequence? No. I'm not. Making the Advanced Classes a 'lifelong' choice is a wonderful thing that I applauded Bioware for. But limiting my character with respec costs is archaic game design, and regardless of it being a matter of need, its what I and most other players want. I don't care if you don't understand why. It's not your call. None of you have any right or reason to invalidate our desire to experiment and discover our characters full potential. And I'll tell you something right now: If you're NOT willing to experiment, if you're NOT willing to open your mind and try different paths, you are doing it wrong. Yes, you are doing it wrong. I am a better player than you because I choose to experiment and discover all facets of my advanced class, learn the strengths and weakness' of each tree and tailor my point spread to suit my skill as a player. Keep that in mind next time you try and act high-and-mighty and tell people they're noob for wanting to respec. Drink your red bull and go back to looking up cookie cutter builds, noob.

... Sigh. I don't have the energy to explain how ridiculous this, or the perceived need for such a feature, really is. Carry on.

What you've detailed as 'history' has absolutely nothing to do with Bioware. It appears you either don't know what you're talking about, or are trolling. I'm assuming the latter. Bioware had about as much to do with Warhammers failure as Activision had to do with WoW's success. Don't come on here with your run-on gibberish if you want to make a point. Do some fact checking, or we'll all either assume you're an idiot or bored.

Because no other game has ever had scaleable items/mounts right. Has anyone ever noticed that the anti-WoW crowd tends to bring up WoW way more than the people who actually played it? Give it a rest. WoW was informed by many MMOs before it, just like SWTOR is informed by WoW and many MMO's since. This is how genre's work, people. Get over it.

Huge mistake? Some people have funny ideas of huge mistakes. No LFG is a small mistake that will be corrected when Bioware decides how it really wants to handle community.

The game isn't perfect. It's damned good, but not perfect. There's a few planets that are just a chore, a few dull hours here and there that feel a lot worse than they really are until you take a break for awhile. I've hardly played today, mucked around on a few alts and that's about it. Needed some recharge time -- I've hardly slept since I got in. Take all things in moderation.

Got pretty much everything in there, except maybe... Option to assign Cover Bar to any Quickslot Bar (just like how the Companion Bar settings currently work) Local (not online) Space Combat sim/training, Sabacc parlor and spec simulation during queue times More cowbell (see: sideboob)

Learn to read.

Pretty much knew what I was buying, except for the pet not being a pet issue. The marketing specifically called it a companion pet, and this was changed or an outright lie. Not sure. The mount being a slow speed is unexpected, but I can't say I'm surprised. Everyone that had to 'save up' (lol) for their mount in-game would be whining about iwin purchases otherwise. Holo dancer doesn't always dance, she just stands there. This is a bug I'm sure they will fix. The flare gun is useful in groups, actually. Kinna like it. Why do I need a camera to accomplish prntscreen? And I took the stat loss right up front and chose not to use the color crystal. It's ugly, looks like a vibro-blade from a distance, and has no business being in a Star Wars property.

This was actually brought up in beta, as the escorted shuttle seems to be randomly being destroyed during the final run (docking bay in sight, etc). I myself haven't completed this yet, even playing it through to near perfection with the shuttle taking almost no damage the entire mission, then inexplicably exploding and granting me with a mission failure at the last moment. Having seen the multiple threads during beta about this, I only tried twice before giving up under the assumption that it is an ongoing issue that will be fixed. Not everybody encounters this. I'm not sure what the requirements are to re-create the issue. It may be that some of us are getting our ships too early, at 16-17, and the mission is 20 or 21 if I recall. I don't know.

Hostile? So if somebody comes in and sits down at your table, and begins telling you that your food is crap, it's hostile to inform them that they are welcome to eat elsewhere? Don't be foolish.

Your opponent takes damage the moment you press the button. If it's off the GCD it INTERRUPTS any animation already in motion (which doesn't negatively effect anything, the damage for that attack has already been dealt). Yes, you then have to wait for riposte or whatever to finish before your next attack begins. But keep in mind, this is why the tooltip doesn't say "Does not trigger the GCD", it says it doesn't RESPECT the GCD. You guys are used to everything happening at the end of a GCD. Everything happens at the beginning, in this combat system. This is why the animations can play out without it actually negatively effecting your ability to use skills. You just need to get used to this. Shorten your queue time, the moment the next ability comes into queue (which is instantly if its an off-GCD ability), regardless of whether or not the previous animation has finished, damage is calculated. This is why being off the global GCD is still helpful. I promise you this is a perception problem, not a mechanical one. Some of the best pvp'rs in the world are touting the hell out of this system because it actually lets them feel like they're fighting as opposed to stuttering skills.

You people are silly. This will not be addressed. Learn to use it. Learn to weave, and stop smashing buttons. The combat looks and feels very smooth if you just relax and tie your abilities naturally with the animation. What you guys are complaining about is actually an addressed flaw, a flaw that most MMO's have had for ages, where the design falls back on everything happening unnaturally fast in order to accommodate peoples herpa-derpa need to mash buttons. Lower the queue if you're fast enough for that kind of responsiveness. This game is animated realistically. Every parry and dodge and strike is fully animated out, as it should be. Yes, you have to wait for your saber swing to finish before swinging another. You're complaining because the animation isn't chopped up. Seriously. Relax, get into the flow. It works very well. Edit: This is precisely what Bioware meant when they said they wanted to 'draw people in to the movies', so to speak. This is why many of us find the combat so damned engaging. You may feel its limiting you in pvp, but it's a realistic limitation...one that your opponent shares as well. Cheeeeeell. BTW the reason Masters Strike is channeled is because it's three hits, each one doing substantially more damage than the previous. It's a combo, and it looks and feels really cool because the channel is cancelled if your opponent dies after one of those strikes, so you're not waiting uselessly for the combo to end as you wave your saber over a dead corpse like a madman.

Hmm. How to respond to this. First off, I feel your pain. I almost rolled on an RP server specifically to see less "DarthAfleck" type names running around, or JK's stalking the halls of the Temple with red sabers. However, in the end I chose not to. Why? Because quite honestly, MMO's are a bad place for RP. Part of the problem is the leveling-lockstep required by everyone involved in a story arc, and the self-imposed limitations that end up crippling any guilds chance for success in the game. Granted, I realize that roleplayers measure success with a different stick than the average gaming community, but that doesn't change the fact that the game was designed and is intended to be played with a PvE or PvP mindset. RP servers are little more than 'hidey holes' that publishers use to sequester You from Everyone Else. The reason they do this is because of the exact attitude you've displayed here. In your opinion, everybody not roleplaying has no regard for anybody else. This is ridiculous. It's not a roleplaying game in that sense. There is already a story here, and a crafted world that allows you to deeply immerse yourself in that story -- which is what most players are doing. Your need to broaden that stories scope into poorly-written interactive fan-fiction does not fit in to game design, and YOU are the ones attempting to force players to think/act in an unnatural manner with no regard for our desire to play the game as it was designed to be played. Let me make that point very clear -- YOU are attempting to broaden the boundaries of the game and impose limitations on players to satisfy your own goals. This has been a problem with the roleplay community in MMO's since the beginning, and is why publishers now give you your own servers to go sandbox in so you don't bother the rest of us. Yet here you sit on the forums trying to decry the relatively few players who end up on your side of the fence and rightful pursue their own player freedom. Stop it. The roleplay community has always policed itself and will always police itself, because the rest of us -- including the publisher -- think you're silly and will not waste a moment of our/their time on bolstering your sense of entitlement to play the game wrong. If you don't like somebodies name, don't roleplay with them. Seeing GOKUSSJ running around Coruscant should be a great indication that this is probably not a person you want in your SL's. By the way, this is coming from somebody who has over 15 years of forum and chat roleplay experience, where roleplay is for writing and creative interaction. Not toggling your 'walk/run' key and using badly formulated emotes to try and get that Twi'lek girl naked in the back of your star cruiser. You and your kin are the joke of the roleplay community, you are trying to forcibly limit other players by insisting they play the game incorrectly, and you will find no sympathy from us. Ever.

I've been involved in one form of RP or another for going on roughly 15 years, most of it either forum based or chat based (see: IRC). I try not to judge people too harshly on their writing ability, or lack thereof. But I admittedly am very picky about who I play with. I like to read, I like to write, I like the feeling of crafting a story with another imagination. Lack of care in post composition rips me rudely out of the fiction we are trying to create. That being said -- I've never been a fan of RP in MMOs. Too limiting for my tastes. I'm tempted to roll on an RP server in SWTOR only to enjoy a play experience that doesn't include a JK named DarthAfleck running around the Jedi Temple with a red lightsaber.