I think your points are rather confusing. When I talk about the sense of achievement, I mean taking part as a group of equal-ish level taking on a challenge. Soloing something doesn't provide that, especially if you're too high for the instance. Secondly if we the players are the problem, then how come other MMOs don't suffer as much as Swtor in regards to this problem? I'll point out that player's experiences are server relient, therefore you might just be lucky to have a well populated server, however for me, our server is Light to Standard. At best you can expect around 20 or under players on some of the most popular planets. Even the Imperial fleet has less than 80 players at peak time. Most questing planets have 10 or under majority of the time. So server population is another problem, I think we can all agree on this. I was merely suggesting this level downgrade system to further help allieviate the problem.

Agreed, this seems like a practical way to impletent this. Would work for flashpoints too.

Well the major difference the way things are now is there's no sense of achievement for completing the heroic with a higher level char that's 20+ levels too high. If his/her level was brought down to the same as the group, then the heroic would provide more of a challenge.

Yes but if the ability was in the game to have high level characters help you without screwing over your XP rewards, you might have found it much different. Also it helps being in a guild, as guildmates will always want to help. I can't speak for every guild obviously. As a high level healer, I find I'm in an akward position between wanting to help and not wanting to screw their xp gain. The whole point afterall is to help them level up, whilst enjoying the content. Having a high level char "helping" when they're 20+ levels above the average mob for the heroic, ruins the entire experience.

Every MMO is guilty of stagnation. The majority of which boils down to a sense of "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" mentality. In games which rely on a level cap system, you're bound to get people who do everything end-game has to offer then inevitably complain about it until the developers kowtow and add more end-game. Without a sense of some form of living world, some sort of persistence, you’re left with a finite product. There are measures to alleviate stagnation, an example of which is events. The rakghoul epidemic was a fun diversion for many. Personally what I’d like to see is the game introducing a similar system that SWG had, the galactic civil war. Have cities that provide unique quest lines, which a faction can take control of, and will have to fight to keep it. Providing persistent opt-in open world pvp, which have real objectives that mean something to the players would get things moving again. (edit: I say "every" mmo, but I mean every mmo that relies on a level cap)

Yes you are quite right. I'm somewhat of a veteran so I know Guild Wars 2 isn't the first. I was merely using it as an example . I'm glad people think it's a good idea, maybe Bioware might listen. We live in hope. There again it is in their best interests to keep the game alive.

Article found here : http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/01/hyperspace-beacon-six-things-swtor-and-gw2-can-learn-from-each I was going to post this reply on that page, but I think it's best served here on the Swtor community forums. In regards to the article: The elephant in the room is the level downgrade system implemented in GW2. Essentially working like the PvP bolster from Swtor but in reverse, it allows higher level characters to take a hit on their level, downgrading their abilities, allowing them to quest with lower level characters in the party. This would be particularly good in Swtor, as it would help alleviate player population issues by letting anyone of any level group with one another to complete the swathe of Heroic +2s & +4s that the majority of players skip due to not finding a sufficient group on their server. As the bolster system already exists I can't imagine that this sort of alteration isn't possible with some clever thinking (and scripting). Personally speaking I find it quite disheartening to skip any quest, especially heroics, as someone would have spent weeks creating the content, and only a small minority would have seen it. If I were that dev I'd be trying to find a way to enable players to find groups to play that content. Being a guild lead, it's infuriating to not be able to help out lower level players without them taking a hit on their xp rewards. Having this system implemented would only be beneficial to the survival of the game as a whole. What do you guys & gals think?

What gets me about this issue is the sheer fact that Bioware has left out the option entirely to be used at our own discretion. Even if there were an option to scale texture quality to within a certain distance from the player, or limit high res textures to the individual player. That would be preferable than rather having muddy textures, even in conversations... (I’m looking at you, the bomber from the start of Operation Firestar). I’m sure within time Bioware will deliver the goods. I guess for the time being we’ll just have to not zoom in.

I've just checked the code redemption category under my account and they've registered my client without any key. Just booted up the client, accepted T&Cs and now I'm playing. Thought I'd point it out incase others are in the same situation.

Pre-order code registered 21st July, still no code . Wonders how people who registered since that date have access already.