I'm convinced Mr. E. is the next person on the chopping block (atop the lastest round of chops [eg. Vogel]) for the shortcomings of the game in delivering on expectations. As for story-based MMO, noting rollseyes in your quote of course, the story falls flat, as the OP leads into as the first headline - epic failure in story development via lack of an ensemble cast and recurring characters.

That doesn't change how my avatar appears to others, and it shouldn't appear to others. MMO failure at an epic level to not appreciate how players deem to convey their avatar to others in a social (MMO) environment - the very fundamentals of MMO design tenets, and akin to the epic surname failures. Further, it doesn't stop me seeing undead Troopers and zombie Smugglers in my groups. The hide corruption is an epic failure in addressing an epic failure - and that's not a redundant statement.

Another example of broken client(s)-server sync where everyone sees things in different locations (section VIII of OP): I tried to take a screenshot of this, but apparently screenshot isn't working anymore?!? I killed this mob in normal leveling, explosion makes it go flying as it is defeated. It has a quest item I need to loot from it, so it's got the bold golden beam shooting straight up in the air over the body. I walk up and click on it to loot it. Message on screen says, "Out of range, move closer." I'm right on top of the body!!! I'm sure this has happened to all of you. At this point, I tried taking a screenshot with the "out of range" message flashing while I'm standing right on it, no good. I move all around the body in circle, 5 feet out in every direction, keep trying to loot... "Out of range, move closer," 10 feet out in every direction ... "Out of range, move closer." 20 feet out in every direction ... "Out of range, move closer." ***?!? I'm saying to myself. I need to loot the quest item from the body! I'm standing there, finally try logging out and back in to see if the perspectives/locations are reset. Log back in, and voila, the body with the golden "loot me" beam is still there, but not even close to where it was when I logged out. It was just about at the very possible edge of "ranged attack" tolerance, lying on top of a boulder. I would never have thought to look that far away. Imagine the impact/chaos of this effect on PvP or raids.

Bit of an update: Seems more heads are rolling at Bioware again, and one more I can think of who's responsible for where we are today and was prominent in videos touting all that about superior (sacred cows) design. Still, while that's all unfortunate, not my monkey to bear, and given the points of the OP, the arrogance that has led to alot of dissatisfied and defecting subscribers, we're not out of the woods as developer or customer, both. Not by a long shot. - Things as fundamental to MMO's as the surname issues/disconnects in Section II of the OP. How do we miss that one so far off the mark? - I've recently been playing another alt, as I'm completely frustrated by endgame (5th Alt), and Section IV topic of companions, affection, and dialogue triggers is still completely a mess. Bounty Hunter, get a companion quest at level 24, while the quest is level 30? I figure that I won't see any more dialogues with Mako until that quest is done, and after days of playing and leveling, none do trigger. So, I go and do the quest well before level 30, and turns out there's no combat, so I get it done. I keep leveling, and getting more and more affection, and have made considerable progress towards capping affection, and nothing is being triggered. I just know that at some point like it happened before on another class, that a level will trigger all the "catch up" on dialogues and they're all going to barf up on me at one time, when I don't need any more affection (so will be wasted), and when the XP award will be minimal. Still broken. Still a big miss on the rare enjoyment from rare dialgues with crew that I'm not getting throughout the leveling experience. Hardly any, then barf em all up at one time, then hardly any more. Broken. These things are all not game-breakers alone, but man oh man, do they all add up. However ... ... stepping back, I came to another conclusion. I had originally cancelled 4 subscriptions for myself and the wife and kid - the latter who were playing only to please me - because I was fed up with the arrogance and disconnects plaguing the game. Instead of playing two accounts myself, I kept playing one of them until the time ran out on the cancelled subscription, then was planning to walk away, as I had from SWG, from DDO, from STO, from LOTRO. Goodbye. Then I realized a couple things. I was deceived ... by my own jedi mind tricks ... on myself: 1) I remembered how much I wanted to play another SW MMO, and how much fun it is to play one. It may not be worth 2 or 4 accounts, but I think it is worth 1 account while they get their house in order and see where development takes it - we're still in Year 1 of the life of the game. 2) I remembered how annoyed I was with waiting for the game and thinking month after long month, "no, it doesn't need to be perfect for me to play it, I want to play it NOW in whatever stage of development its in." ... Well, here I am playing a somewhat broken MMO from many fundamental standpoints, suffering some development leaders' sacred cows and silliness of design decisions, and I do completely the opposite of what I wanted to do, by canceling a game that wasn't ready. Oops, bad on me. So, I decided that for now, I'll continue with one subscription, the other three are cancelled. Let's give them some time to clean up the arrogance, the sacred cows, and start to refine a solid MMO. Let's hope.

Thanks for the continued support, folks. Cleaned it up to be more concise. Added a couple notes to existing elements as suggested by PM's. Thanks for the contributions which fit and make sense.

I don't think that's what is said at all. It's only natural for customers to compare offerings to best of breed and established standards. Kudos OP, points are spot on, with special mention to the length of raids. Anything beyond the length of the average Flashpoint is really pushing it. Break it into parts if need be, but shouldn't be needed. Most raids in Star Wars (EU too) are fast and furious. Who's got time to make TOR a career? Gear grind, gear grind, level cap increase, more gear grind... No thanks. Just looking for teamwork and accomplishment in a fun gameplay experience; not a perpetual gear grind and a career.

Updated some issues to account for update 1.3, which were hardly noticeable to the list.

And I'm leveling my other factions alts on a different server I'm stuck on, because now that it matters (Legacy, trade), I can't transfer them or benefit from them to the server where my mains are, and play with my guild.

Added additional Suggestion in Legacy / Surname section - regarding recent sever transfers and related player impacts, diligence, and outcomes.

Made some refinements and updates to present state/issues.

Added Section IX, Gear Grinding Does Not Equal Successful Endgame. I'd also add that Bioware needs to get off their high horse and abandon arrogance, and start engaging their customers MUCH more, MUCH better. To not respond to major themes and players who take alot of time to state issues on these themes, falls significantly short of good service, leadership, relationship or business development, or communication. While somehow, though, they find time to respond at least 3 times to a thread called "props to Bioware". Truly absurd. Parsecs off from being effective in engaging their player community.

Planar - Fair observations, though I cant blame players when Bioware has not listened to players at a fundamental level to address fundamental MMO issues, so how can players be responsible as Bioware continues to plow ahead doing what Bioware wants to do - rather than the things players of MMOs find satisfying. Case in point, many players did not want their guild communities and many players did not want their participation split into multiple guilds based on faction, knowing full well, in this game of alts/stories more so than any other MMO, when a flexible approach gives players and guild's the self-determination for their faction approach. Given if it were done differently, such as was the case in other MMO's, that a guild could have avatars of both factions on their roster and using guild chat, rather than being forced into other hurdles and guilds, how many guilds today would have avatars of both factions in their roster, and better see who's online, communicate, participating, presence, etc., etc. Most would. Even if one would argue, "not most, but many", well... Why limit the way people want to enjoy their MMO experience as a player or as a guild community. They knew better... Or thought they did. Arrogance in the face of MMO best practices and flexibility. Flexibility that is fundamental to MMOs, because different players and different guilds have different preferences and needs. When a Dev design leader sets a narrow mold that every one has to fit into, they exclude and drive off many's enjoyment and satisfaction. That's on them. Bioware didn't do server transfer because players demanded it, they did it because of mass attrition and the undermining of the game experience from dying servers. Customers expressing dissatisfaction is a symptom of the attrition and server conditions. The attrition and server conditions are an outcome of failed satisfaction. Failed satisfaction is an outcome of design, service, and performance failures. That's all on Bioware's leadership. ------------------------------- Switching up- As for the grind, they're on a broken fundamental. This game can never thrive unless they deal with that, even if they got everything else right (and they're clearly not). To expect players to play 80 hours a week to have time for grinding dailies, for grinding warzones levels of gear, for grinding levels of Ops gear, all to enjoy the top line endgame - is like running on a 30 mile per hour track to chase an objective that's moving away at 40 miles per hour. You will never be satisfied. By the time any significant number of players arrive at the ability to enjoy endgame with full gear, they raise the level cap and start you chasing the grind again. It's a broken model, it's a bad model. We should find satisfaction and enjoyment in end game, not chase it as a perpetual carrot. Going on decades ago, players found great satisfaction in multiplayer combat and group combat, in games such as Quake, Counterstrike, Tribes, etc, There, you weren't chasing gear in those games to get to the fun parts of teamwork and victory, you were playing it right then and there. Teamwork, victory through teamwork, communication, and skills. Here, we're kept on a gear treadmill in all things. The rub is also that inevitably with most of these broken MMO approaches, that they raise the level cap and start you all over again grinding to the next max, before a vast majority of players even got to enjoy or beat existing content. So the minority of players maybe spent some time on such content, but the majority wanted to and didn't for a myriad of reasons, often significantly due to time and opportunity. So, failure for most. So, instead of giving us enormous grinds expecting us to play 80 hrs per week, only to see level cap increases, how about making them more accessible, less gear dependent or less grind to get same gear, so there is more participation. With that, give us enjoyable content that we will look forward to participating with, more teamwork (voice for pugs) to enjoy, more satisfaction and achievement that isn't just gear oriented. Where gameplay itself is challenging and fun. I didnt log in to CounterStrike every day for 2 years because it gave me gear - it was fun. Get us geared up for the toughest content without the endless grind, and then turn us loose to enjoy it, and progress through levels of difficulties. Ok give us badges and banners and other perks to mark our progression, along with bragging rights, but get us off the gear grind to be more accessible to team fun, group fun, and actually enjoy the ops and warzones, rather than see them as a grind to chase a carrot, and chase it again to the next level without ever getting off the grind wheel. And with that, give us more content, maps, environments, and commensurate badges and perks, without it being gear grinds. The difference there is in accessibility. When we're all chasing gear, we rarely "arrive" to a participation level where we can all enjoy together and employ our skills against various levels of challenge. Whereas if the gear grind is over MUCH sooner, we can engage content suited to our skill level progression much better, with more focus and clarity, and more flexibility. More focus, in that we're working as a team to hone our player and class skills without layering on alot of gear variability, to master various challenge levels. More flexibility, in that with a MUCH shorter gear grind, we can gear alts and be a more dynamic guild. Today, we run into "don't have another tank that's geared for that challenge level". Where we want to be is, "let me switch to my tank and we've got a team".

Planar, you're entitled to your opinions and observations, good show. Consider a few things: - you fail to acknowledge that the reason we suffered the recent forced migration is because of a mass defection of players, loss of subs... Whatever you want to call it. Why is that? I think I know, but do you? I'd be interested in your response to my Definitive Issues thread which lay out the short-comings of TOR in both the OP and post #79 of that thread (specifically the grind and level cap comments). - the transfers themselves were poorly executed, with needless impacts to players that could have been avoided, could still be remedied and aren't, and reapproached before even more players are impacted and driven away as a result of continued leadership failures impacting player satisfaction and enjoyment, and still are not a strategic solution to getting players on the servers where they want to be, with their avatars of different factions on the same server to realign with Bioware's flip flop to now encourage multi faction approaches, such as motivated now by Legacy and trade (huge redirection and impact). - Bioware arrogantly made decisions - and continues to do so - based on sacred cows that limit choices needlessly, needlessly impact the satisfaction of players, because they apparently know better than we do, know that guilds should be single faction instead of leaving it up to guilds to decide, know how we should restrict such MMO fundamentals such as surnames (see Issues thread), know what we should want for features, how things should work such as gear and interfaces, etc. the arrogance and restrictions have been absurd, extremely impactful to MMO enjoyment of MMO fundamentals - that should provide wide ranges of options to cater to wide range of player preferences (such as guild actions or surnames, as good examples off the top of my head) - and have thrown the misery index off the charts at various times. Now today, we all lose our name needlessly, another MMO fundamental failure, and can't reunite our faction avatars to the same server to align to Bioware's latest "ah-ha", or what I've said all along when confronted with the absurd faction bifurcation per-launch, "no duh" - to something that in their arrogance to limit our choices, was a no brainer that it wasn't the correct "flexible" decision. - and then, there's the grind issue, the story issues, the endgame issues... See Issues thread and post #79. Bioware's leadership, I'm afraid.

Have, too. Specifically stating what should have been done prior to launching transfers (and why), what was requested for them to do now (and why), and what they should do before they introduce any more transfers/destination servers (and why), along with impacts, consequences, and gaps to performance. I shall not be going in another circle with you. You remain all wet, I'm afraid. . You're wasting my time... no more. Maybe a good exercise of your Listening Skills and Critical Thinking, would be for you to repeat what you have heard me put on the table, to verify that you're actually engaged in a dialogue, and before you attempt to refute "me" again in circular arguments, when you should be debating "points" instead. I suspect you'd be unable to play back my points in a logical manner and would butcher them, because thus far, you have not demonstrated that you've read them and are responding to them. I'm starting to feel very foolish for falling for your circular bait, and consider yourself on Ignore. Edit... There actually is an Ignore feature in the forums. Who knew? Never desired one before. So now, no need to consider, it's a factual Ignore. Best of luck. Also, happy to report that Bioware has an Exit survey when you unsub, received 4 of them yesterday. Look forward to providing detailed answers today. May they'll listen there with the loss of $$$$-kaching, because as demonstrated in the Issues thread and elsewhere, they make no effort to acknowledge, respond to, and respect the time and feedback provided in thoughtful threads with any semblance of customer appreciation or communication. I note, however, they can find the time to respond thrice to such threads as "Props to Bioware". Absurd.

Ok, just a word of advise. Trying to advocate calm for a discussion is not accomplished by making accusations of B S arguing, dramatics, and inflations. As for a PR action to evaluate griefers impact, that would be... griefers OR out of control policies regarding countless name reserving level 1 alts across all servers... cause its one or the other, or both. Both preventable, both an opportunity for remedy, and both a learning moment for Bioware's management of the process and policies. Regards,