The thing is people who like WoW's design are using the lawsuit as an excuse, Shadowlands was a complete disaster with a mass exodus a few months after 9.0, they had record launch with almost 1mill sales yet 80%-90% of the players left, especially casual players because casual content was gutted reward wise and other problems. The demise of WoW started very visibly and spectacularly sometime after 9.0, which was almost a year before all the lawsuits dropped, the lawsuits were just the nail to the coffin.

That is where the issue is, you are not able to understand design intend. Systems, the choices you are given, how it works are designed with intend in mind, when you see how the choices worked, the fact that tech users got no choice, the fact that force users were limited to only the mirror when it comes to their initial combat style, all that is evidence that it is intended for existing characters to be limited, that was the main proof we had. Some then started making irrational statements like they are gonna create yet another system on top of what we ve seen in the PTS to change our initial combat style in login? Like why exactly do you think the devs would create 2 different systems for the same thing. What we got into the pts, if though critically, reveals the intend which was to have existing characters be limited and there's many arguments for it, outside of the obvious technical issues, since it benefits bioware a lot if more people make new characters in 7.0 aka unrestricted characters so we are busy for a while. I myself cant wait to start a powertech-sniper in the trooper story. Again you need to trust words less, and think critically about actions you see.

The wording could have easily been interpreted to refer to the 2nd combat style rather than the initial one so there was never any 100% clear statement about that even though it was implied, but anyone smart never trust what is implied. More importantly the moment the system was dropped in the PTS it was clear it was designed with limitations to existing characters in mind, people denying the blatantly obvious because they hoped what they interpreted from bioware's post would come to pass later had nobody to blame but themselves at that point. Hopefully that teaches people to start caring about actions and consequences rather than words. Even if the devs genuinely want something, doesnt mean it can be achieved, and we are not even going into the area of companies promising roadmaps only to cancel them later, words have no value.

Sadly people that are born in privilege see fairness as something wrong and unjust, and over the years, mmorpgs have often pandered to raiders and treated raids as the be all end all of mmorpg. So for them, special treatment is the norm which is why everytime someone tells them they dont deserve special treatment they unironically try to make up reasons as to why they deserve special treatment while anyone in their right minds would tell them that this is a video game and no group deserves to be treated special over the other. And sadly only a very tiny minority of people ever thinks independently and questions whenever the status quo they were born into is right or not, especially if they benefit from it, most just adopt what is "normal" to fit in without thinking. Yet for us outsiders, it becomes pretty clear what is wrong, yet for them it is almost impossible to comprehend because they would have to admit they ve been receiving special treatment for years now.

PEOPLE WANT TO HAVE FUN IN REGS, NOT BE COMPETITIVE, dont confuse competition with casual pvp

Ah yes, roflstomping pug groups via coordinated premades totally helps new players learn and doesnt only result in getting them carried. What's next? You are going to say having a pet healer makes you learn and doesnt in fact make you a worse player because the healer repeatedly has been saving your from your mistakes? Mistakes from which you cannot learn from since the consequences have been negated thanks to the group healer saving you from your mistakes. If i wasnt clear, the last place new players are gonna learn, is through premades that roflstomp an enemy uncoordinated pug.

Go ask Yoshi P. and I am pretty sure he want call the game a "primarily raiding game", hell most people even call the game an RPG more than MMO. Again you are using your false belief that raids are the ultimate endgame that you literally ignore the main point of the game, which from the start had been a game about the story and everything else has been secondary, which has pissed off quite a few raiders because they believe the devs should focus on ultimates and screw everyone else. Thankfully Yoshi P. realizes ultimates are not a priority, the casual solo content is. And more importantly in FF14 every 2nd patch gives catchup gear to everyone gets to be at almost the same gear level without raiders having special gear privileges. Again dont project your belief that raids are the be all end all of mmorpgs, they arent, and evidence for that is the simple fact that ONLY MINORITY DOES HIGH END RAIDS in any mmorpg. That unjustified belief is an example of pure entitlement because you unironically believe something that is done by only a minority should be the focus of a game.

We have many types of content in this game with varying levels of difficulty within them, more importantly the devs I would assume understand not everyone likes all 4 types and therefore the question that is asked, why are people forced through a specific type of content if they want to enjoy power progression, something most mmorpg players enjoy. 1) Open world questing, puzzles and chapters with master mode chapters being the hardest. 2) Flashpoints which go from solo to mastermode 3) PvP which goes from casual regs to ranked. 4) Ops which go from story to Nim So it is clear that within each type of content there is a difficulty scale which allows for progression to exist within them, one can argue that some content is easier than others and that is true, and if we were to rank those activities ranked PvP would be the hardest activity, solo master mode chapter boss fights would also be quite high in difficulty, so it is quite clear Nim raids are not the ultimate challenge in the game, there's many similarly difficult challenges and even far harder such as PvP. So why would in 7.0 the devs decide that OPS should give the best and moddable gear while everyone else is stuck with an inferior unmoddable 326 rating? We ve proved Nim raids arent the hardest content in the game so clearly it isnt because of difficulty otherwise PvP would give 340, why would the devs decide that people who want to progress their character's power should do OPS and all other content is irrelevant? Because my only guess would be they are simply following an outdated design philosophy. Of course, OPs players love that system and in preparation, here's the common arguments they use: 1) "You dont do the hardest content so you dont deserve the best gear" An argument easily destroyed by the fact that PvP is far harder than Nim OPs, by their logic ranked PvP should have the best rewards and every other content should have inferior rewards including OPS. 2) "You dont need the best gear" Again an easily debunked argument once you realize you dont need max gear to beat the raid, raids reward the best gear therefore by definition raiders dont NEED the best gear to clear the raid. 3) "I want my special raid gear progression" This argument treats the other forms of content as a stepping stone to the ultimate content which in their eyes is OPS, for these players OPS are the only thing that matters and the rest of the available content is just a chore to get to that. This is simply a wrong way to think about an mmorpg because the devs understand that different types of content attracts different types of people, not everyone enjoys all 4 types of content therefore not everyone is expected to do all 4 types yet by locking gear behind one type of content you are telling people who enjoy power progression to do OPS or they dont get to enjoy their power progression anymore. 4) "Gearing is too fast" That is one of the more reasonable arguments since due to the way gear rewards worked in 6.0, if you did harder content you would be drowning in loot and would easily gear in a couple weeks. That is definitely a problem I can agree with and the solution is obviously not to force everyone into OPS, it is to reduce gear rewards and possibly limit them weekly. For example let's say you can buy a piece of gear for 1000 currency, and you can only farm 5000 currency per week, and that currency can be farmed from all forms of content, so people who enjoy raids will get it through raids, people who enjoy flashpoints will get it through that, pvpers through pvp etc. That way, everyone gets to do content they enjoy and be rewarded for their time without ever being forced into content they dont enjoy just to progress their character's power. 5) Less of an argument and more of a historical point, how did most raiders often react when content that wasnt raids gave the best gear and it was content they didnt enjoy? Many times in mmorpg history PvP ended up having one of the best gear pieces. Did we see raiders argue that pvpers deserve the best gear since it was the hardest activity and it is ok that raids gave inferior gear?? No of course not, they complained that they were "forced" to pvp , hell we can even see in today's WoW raiders complain because they had to do casual activities like torghast! They believe they are above any other type of content with literally no evidence and complain when any other type of content happens, even by accident to have better rewards than the raids. So with all that in mind it should become pretty clear that this behavior is pure unjustified entitlement because sadly due to how they ve been treated in other and older mmorpgs, they believe raiders are special and more important than any other pillar of the game, and that is simply wrong and should be fixed by making all content have a path to max gear rating allowing everyone to enjoy power progression via the content they enjoy doing!

2387th person pretending raiders get the gear beause they "need" it, how many times do people have to point out that nim gear rewards are not needed by raiders either since they are rewards. Or do you believe only raiders are special and should be "honored" with the best gear while everyone else is stuck with weak inferior gear. (While ranked pvp is the far harder activity that any pve raid will ever be so raiders arent doing the hardest content either and by your logic dont deserve the best gear)

That process is quite fun to watch, happened to WoW during the course of shadowlands. I am only hoping their 7.0 gearing experiment crushes and burn and by the time 7.1 comes max ilvl moddable gear is available to all no matter the content they enjoy doing, currencies have always been great for achieving that. Cuz at the end of the day I enjoy swtor due to: -Great bioware style story and choices -Star wars theme with animations that fit well with combat style fantasy -A huge open world with a ton of planets -One of the better mmorpgs when it comes to pvp -Great combat gameplay with good tab targeting classic combat, that being very important since both games like ff14 and guild wars 2 sucked simply because of this even if they are great in all the other areas.

Yes but that is the process of learning, there's many people who que into solo ranked, get deleted and slowly learn, you arent gonna be great at solo ranked in game 1 since it is a completely different game to regs. (And if you want my personal experience I ll say I cant really lose, either we win or I get to enjoy some people's rage so my experience had been quite fun at start either way xd) People definitely dont enjoy getting deleted, but I believe there's many people who will keep trying and learning from that, but for many of those, the constant moaning and toxicity in the chat is the reason they choose to not bother again, not because they got deleted the first couple of times they joined, that is something they have power over by realizing what they need to do the next time. The root cause is your own teammates screeching like that angry german kid video, so if that issue is dealt with, the solo ranked participation would increase and would pop more often which is what I want, I want solo ranked to pop more often throughout the day. Solo ques in any ranked game always worked differently, it is about the players ability to work in real time with others and take advantage of opportunities because you dont get to talk in voice comms or have serious strats or know each other well and how each other players or set up coordinated kills due to the lack of coordination that is only found in group ranked and premades. This is not just about swtor, but any game that has a solo ranked ques, solo ranked will always be a different beast to group ranked. But yeah, I dont know how much attention they are paying to pvp, I know 7.2 is gonna be more pvp focused so maybe we could see some changes hopefully because I want more people to do solo ranked

So people who have 330-334 can feel special, if 326 was just 1% away from 334 they would hate that because it would mean that number is meaningless since they dont have unfair gear advantages over everyone else. Hence why max gear ilvl should ALWAYS be attainable by everyone and through multiple ways rather than locking it away behind one specific type of content.

The worst part is we have evidence it will, Shadowlands launched exactly the same ways, it made loot even more scarce and hard to get and only mythic raids had decent loot. (Vault it just 1 rng piece per week) They also gutted all forms of casual content so their l33t raidloggers dont feel forced to do dirty casual content. The result? A huge exodus of casual players with only addicts and raidloggers remaining, WoW had record sales in shadowlands that from memory were at around 10 million, and the game now barely has a million and a half from most estimates. When 80% of your subs leave after the first few months because you chose to make only high end raids rewarding, it should be quite a clear sign that casuals arent gonna stay for this terrible design philosophy

What loop? the one that was proven to never work because casuals choose to leave a game rather than be forced to raid for decent gear? Countless games including WoW has been desperately trying to make casuals raids yet it continuously fail because casuals often choose to leave rather than stay in a game where all the decent gear rewards are locked behind raiding. The only people you are hooking are raidloggers which would raidlog anyway and they are a minority. If your entire strategy is aimed at a minority of players that cant keep the game alive financially, it is a terrible design philosophy. That is how the truth is revealed, when all the excuses are debunked you are realize this is about them having access to the best gear and everyone having inferior gear thus feeling special due to that fact. Obviously nobody can admit that, even consciously for a decent person so they have to invent ways to justify this feeling without openly saying the reason, even to themselves, which is why we had so many flimsy and easy to debunk excuses about them deserving the best gear and how everyone else doesnt and how this is totally not about them. The truth is when someone says they dont like that others get to have the same gear rating as them, there's an issue here because they care a lot about what others have, and the only reason to care is because it destroys their feeling of being special.

Tbh you could argue merc works the same way, just takes contracts and is distant from the empire but the truth is in the story you end up being pretty close with the empire, and even then as a non force user you are still seen as subservient to the Sith since there's no real non force users in high places, the dark council is completely force user based and they control the empire. Main reason i cannot stick to the empire with any non force using characters

You dont understand, this is not a solution to toxicity, this is a way to make solo ranked pop more often. Many people dont stick to solo ranked because angry emotional people keep raging at them, hence they leave, hence the que pops less often. And let's not forget the people who because they get tired of all the insults they decide to die early just to piss those people off resulting in an even worse experience for everyone but them since he at least gets to enjoy so raging from his angry teammates. The source of the problem in both cases is the chat I want MORE solo ranked to pop throughout the day, and the only easy and simple solution right now is to disable the chat so more people dont leave due to toxicity. And i wont bother with people who confuse "focus x" and talking to people they ve never played b4 as somekind of strat because they clearly never understood what solo que is and what pvp type it attracts.

Wonder if she could be a sister or a relative of Malgu's twi'lelk

Yeah that is why casuals especially have been leaving in droves in the xpac launched. Blizzard gutted all forms of casual content rewards because raidloggers complained, WoW has become a raidlogger game with any other activity in game being absolutely worthless and a waste of time so not many people are left these days.

Solo ranked always suffered population issues but not due to the population of the game, due to the fact that many people there are incredibly angry, emotional and toxic which leads to them pushing people away. Their self destructive behavior has hurt solo ranked participation heavily so why not try to fix this problem so solo ranked pops more often? It is clear that most western companies wont ever bother hiring enough GMs to punish ToS breakers unlike eastern games like FF14. So the next best solution would be to disable the chat. Yeah people can still rage whisper but people can easily ignore them, and a whisper is very different than a public chat that is visible to all. So simply disable general and group chats in solo ranked arenas and that could help a lot with ques popping more often. Some angry emotional people will rage and fume but they wont be able to do anything anymore And if disabling the chat proves hard you could always temporarily turn off player’s chat rights until the arena ends And let's be clear, solo ranked is rarely ever about coordinated strategy, solo que arenas are a different beast to group que arenas, in any game, in solo ques it is less about planned coordination and more about how quickly can the people of the group take advantage of opportunities that arise and coordinate in real time, no voice comms, no plans, it is mainly about the participants reaction time and understanding of classes. So losing the chat isnt going to harm solo ranked at all, if anything it doubles down on the skills needed for solo ranked which are different to group ranked.

That sadly has never stopped them from feeling entitled to it simply because they see raiding as superior to every other mmorpg activity even though there's another activity that requires way more skill and effort. For anyone who has been in the mmorpg space for a while, they have witnessed how raiders acted when pvp happened to have the most optimal rewards, without even being intended by the devs, pvp just happened to have the optimal gear piece raiders wanted. Cries in forums about how they are forced to do PvP and how it is wrong cuz everything they want should come from raid, you dont see them saying PvPers deserve to have the best rewards because they are doing the harder activity, hence the hypocricy becomes clear.

That is why i stopped bothering, it becomes pretty clear certain raiders just want to receive special treatment and will invent a ton of asinine reasons as to why they deserve to have the best gear rewards while everyone else should have inferior gear to them. Or invent opposition arguments like "oh you just want to login and get everything for free" because from their perspective, anything that isnt raiding is a joke that doesnt matter, only raids are special and deserving of good rewards even though multiple people have mentioned pvp is far harder. Yet always they return to how raids are the ultimate and most important thing while all other content is easy and a joke that doesnt matter and thus shouldnt give good rewards. And the funny thing is if raids were so great and important, everyone would be doing them, yet that is never the case because many people dont enjoy raids. But then if you dont enjoy raids according to them "Too bad, you shouldnt have the best gear if you dont do the content I consider hard and relevant"

If you check a bit after the area you highlighted you will find this Why would they add this specific section if what you highlighted included this?

They literally start the statement with "pre-7.0 Force characters" and literally say you need the opposite alignment on those pre existing characters for the option to even APPEAR. The dark/light 5 achievements were specifically mentioned when it comes to restrictions, restrictions in what combat styles you can have as a 2nd combat style or the restrictions when making a new character, as long as you have those achievements you face no restrictions in these areas while new players will.

Same goes for raids, if anything a lot less people do OPS than they do PvP because pvp is easy and fun and can be done by just queing for a warzone, no effort or social barriers on the way, just solo que in one. And I highly question those stats mainly because swtor is known for being one of the better pvp mmorpgs out there. But OPS clearly do? You see, when you keep finding reasons to justify why a specific group should be treated as special and everyone else should be treated as 2nd class citizens even if they are doing harder content aka pvp you kinda start sounding hypocritical. Which is not surprising, if a group of people has been treated as special over the years in many mmorpgs they get surprised when things are fair and balanced and everyone gets to have the best gear. What is fair and just looks wrong and unjust in their eyes because they benefited from unfair privilege for all those years. Nobody should be treated special, everyone should have access to max gear rating by doing content they enjoy.

This is mainly a question about force users. If the Jedi guardian who often talks with other Jedi masters chose to become a Sith Juggernaut, I feel it could be useful if some master or NPC notices that they "fell" to the dark side in terms of immersion. Obviously this cant be acknowledged in earlier story but after 7.0 it might be worth just giving a nod that others realize what you ve done. Same goes for light side Sith becoming sages, a Sith npc could mention your character's jedi like tendencies and question it but no further. This actually feels like a weird situation, because I feel the current Empire would be a lot more ok with a light side Sith since they mainly care about power than the Jedi council would be with a knight who has literally fallen to the dark side, I am feeling the Jedi could be a lot more hostile with a friendly dark side users than Sith with a friendly light side user.