I'd say most find Empire more appealing aesthetically. Imp design in general is just very pleasant to the eye. Imp Fleet has pretty classy color choices going on. While Rep fleet is very..dark and yellow and orange and rusty. In general, entire Empire is coated with dat sweet Hugo Boss design. I recon people find it good looking, not " evul is cool!" Additionally and maybe more importantly, you pretty much live and breathe the Empire of the original trilogy when playing as Imp. Visually, it just is there. Everywhere. Ships, uniforms, structures colors. You are there. Empire of the movies is..present. Which translates to Star Wars being there, too. Rep side on the other hand has much more difficulties with it's hooks. Hooks that do try to tie Rep side as part of Star Wars universe in wider sense are either bit..ill chosen or rely on the prequel trilogy. Nobody likes the look of the prequel trilogy. These are very understandable difficulties, Empire is very easy and appealing victim for some visual cannibalization; Rebel Alliance is much harder a victim. It comes with less of a 'look.'

We are on Forums of a PC exclusive MMO. It is absolutely staggering you clearly put no weight to what people playing on PCs DO play on their PC in 2015(0r -14, or -13, or..) and, instead, put so much weight on angry birds, NES units and mobile games. Google "Steam Game Stats" at any given day and take a dive . Here is an X-ray of what kind of games people who buy and/or play PC games on their gaming PC play today. If you'd like to approach the statement of yours I initially quoted again, you are free to count how many story centered games there are Vs games with major PvP element. Then come back here talking about them niches. What PC gamers play on their PC today Vs Super mario sold 40 million units when packed wtih 8bit NES in mid 80s! One of these things is all kinds of relevant now&here. Other is not. Speaking of THE INDUSTRY where you happily pile up Angry Birds, mis 80's Nes Classics and core PC games in one and same pile is utterly futile. Nobody does that.If you deem PvP as "niche" activity because of Angry Birds and mobile Tetris, then I can assure you that anything Bioware Cinematic Narrative Experience oriented at all, in and according to scales you use, doesn't even appear on any kind of gaming radar to begin with.

.... Real cutting edge sarcasm there dude. Instances in any MMO are there for this reason, among others. - Isolated pocket worlds where devs have some freedom to do interesting things with mob swarms, their A.I and so on. As mentioned on previous page, it's not like this was something not done before in MMORPGs. Wildstar has at least one very memorable and interesting " Flashpoint" which basically plays 1:1 like a typical MOTBA scenario. I take it you are actually saying TOR mobs always being TOR mobs is actually favorable option to having some FP here, another there where you are getting swarmed all proper like?

^ You are even worse than me, lol. : D This person, who apparently has hired you as his aide and interpreter in forum wars, chose to use words that speak of PvP'ers in far broader context than TOR. So when responding to him, it is actually alright to speak of PvP as an activity, rather than PvP of/in TOR. Ok? Also, I really don't wanna talk or think about numerous similarities and differences between MOTBAs and MMos, It doesn't sound that exciting to me, I'm sorry.... .....But since we got there, you don't need to look further than Smite so see makings of a pretty interesting PvE instance/FP in any MMORPG of WoW-generation, TOR included. In general most all MMos, specially TOR would have so much to learn from the...mobility of mobs in MOTBAs. heh. I've not played much/many of them, but enough to see how they absolutely can make player feel like he is under a pretty vicious attack. Even if we remove the opposing player from picture that is. There is always ton of movement, stuff going on at each corner of map. Even common mobs under AI control makes an active element that..does stuff. In TOR, it is mostly 20 x same group of 4 mobs sitting in one place, waiting to see if you aggro them or not.It is pretty jurassic.

I don't think anyone was making this comparison to begin with; poster made a flawed statement according to which PvP'ers, as gamers, were some sort of a niche. Video games providing PvP make a pretty valid example in this context. That said, it absolutely pays to compare some elements of these games with TOR. Why not? I bet BW most def had their eyes on most profitable P2P games across all genres when scheming up TOR's model. Meanwhile, something like Warzone matchmaking..or even the match itself has much elements you'll find in Counterstrike. GSF on the other hand is 33% utter bliss, 33% world of tanks and 33% classic X-wing games. Talking Heads owes much to experience of watching a BBC newscaster who, in turn, is watching paint dry on a wall. One very remarkable Instance in Wildstar proved how an environment that basically works like a 1;1 typical MOTBAA makes a really fun PvE instance in MMORPG. And so forth. Many different elements of TOR borrow/could borrow from genres that are seemingly very different.

I think it was over two million people leaving within first 60-90 days actually. I'd be tempted to claim percentage of these leavers who had seen even half of the story content available was in 0.x% rather than single digits. Precious few are those who manage to blow through such wealth of story content in (less than) few months. I wouldn't say they left due to lack of end game as such though. Rather, people simply start finding reasons to leave once they run out of reasons to stay. I think this is ultimately how it always goes. You never have big enough reason to leave as long as you have a big enough reason to stay. 600 hours of Bioware Cinematic Narrative Yahoo was not a big enough reason to stay for a few million people.

I think most everybody likes to have their chars looking good, it is pretty universal really. If you mistake it as some storylovers privilege, you are mistaken. I think it is extremely difficult to evaluate who spends most money on this game, individual differences being so huge and all. I can think of three groups. Those who spend loads of time inside the game (inevitably it'll correlate to some degree with money spend here&there) , those who just like wasting money and those who have all the DNA needed to get hooked on gambling. Nothing in any of these groups is somehow exclusive or inclusive to those who love the story. League of Legends, DOTA2 and Counter Strike are the most played PC games at the moment. If you google about this, you'll find a very interesting ranking by Raptr, which provides list of games played vs / hours wasted. Steam's Game&Stats service is even better in keeping track of these things; despite obviously restricted to Steam Games alone, it is incredibly detailed and accurate in terms of data it does provide. Despite missing some games, and some players of games listed not showing up(like, great many play Withcher3 on GOG instead etc), it still ultimately provides a really good and interesting X-ray to what kind of games them gamers play with their PCs.

^ My post was a reply was to person I quoted, TravelersWay. He implied people who enjoy PvP (or raids for that matter) were some sort of a "niche element" in video gaming. I was all too happy to correct him in the matter. I honestly don't feel like starting some long epic convo about EA fiscals years around this, and will only settle pointing out that in TOR, it is CM lottery and buying bathrobes that wins bread to EA's table, not " the story". Since EA cares of revenue and we, apparently, mostly of things EA cares, then I guess we should mostly focus on talking about cartel packs?

People appear very eager to forget TOR&Bioware have attempted the same " bold move" earlier already. Vanilla TOR came with 600 hours worth of story. It was EA asking their audience one big 200 million costing, AAA coated question: " Will millions of people want to subscribe to an MMO with 600 hours of story content?" Millions of people said nope. SW:TOR was saved by F2P transformation and loads and loads of some good, old fashioned and hard core-MMO live devving. Instead of continuing on this road, BW is moving away from this. And asking people if they want to subscribe to 650 hours of story content.

I hate to interrupt your weird kitchen table psychology session by bringing the bitter flavor of reality to the mix and all but.. Top-3 most popular and played PC games out there are all PvP aligned. This is the case at the time of me typing this and it has been the case for several years now. Vast majority, maybe 7-8 of 10, of most played PC (or console) games out there are either PvP focused or at least NOT story focused as such. MMO that comes with, like, 20 times (twenty times) more subs than TOR has over a decade lasting history of investing heavily to Raids and PvP. It brings me some measure of glee to be able to point out it is - you- whose " preferred method of entertainment" is pretty niche. General section of TOR forums makes a very good hugbox for people who are under the impression Story and only story matters in a video game. Meanwhile, in real world majority of players do not consider story in their video game some be all end all. And many of those who DO consider story important do NOT give a single flying fig about Bioware Cinematic Talkign Head Experience.There are other ways to handle&deliver strong narrative in video games. Some of those ofher ways are much more liked than what BW does. Outside these forums, you won't find many who'd view TOR as some sort of a pinnacle of storytelling.

Why is it so important to disagree with me? If this is honestly your entire take-away in terms of what ain't right, would it not be a pretty decent idea to start considering if mayhaps what I'm suggesting wouldn't be such a terrible thing after all. Instead of trying to boot TOR with my work comp, I figured I'd direct you in caring arms of Eric Musco himself: You can also spend like 1 min in google. It results in couple of SWTOR forum threads and Reddit threads and whatnots of people asking the relevant wheres and hows and whys. Ding 55. Go to droid that says SoR prelude. Do stuff. You golden. Are we starting to approach a point where you have been proven wrong in the Internet yet? Even tho this ordeal isn't all that relevant, it has it's own value as evidence of impossibility in proving somebody wrong about anything in Internet ever. You say "You cannot start any of the story quests related to the lead up to SoR". As reply, you get a screenshot of a quest log loaded with things you literally just said were impossible. Does this for one second even make you consider admitting you were wrong? ofc not. It's all " ah, but you see.." Howbout we make a bet about this? 50 mils? I could use a guildship rep-side.No? Yeah. In a valiant effort to make the experience bit less boring, we did our utmost to two-man the SoR content (Rishi+Yavin) with a good friend. I'm pretty sure her Sin still hasn't finished the Inq storyline and most assuredly wasn't anywhere around C.3 around the time we had our cinematic bioware storytelling experience in Forged Alliance-Ziost. As I'm typing this, in a true " waaaaaaait a moment" fashion,I'm actually wondering if she actually was unable to see dat sweet 15 min class Q. Cause I could swear we both did it just fine. Can't be sure of this tho. As mentioned by couple of people in this thread, AC3 needs to be completed for that 15 min class mission. AC3 does NOT NEED TO BE COMPLETED to do rest of the SoR. Again this is not super important in terms of the actual point of this thread. Post you quoted had couple of questions and your answers to them would make a much more interesting read than this determined clinging to SoR starter quest.

^ His point was an inaccurate observation that "story is the game."

I feel this is a a complaint that belongs to a mouth of an EA exo who has yet to have anyone explain him how F2P is supposed to work. I don't think it a complaint a player needs to worry about. Here is why: From players POV, those warm bodies are an extremely valuable commodity to your MMO in and of itself. They join you for heroic quests. They queue with you for FPs and Ops. They fight with or against you in WZs and in GSF. They buy/sell you® stuff at GTN. They talk with you,compliment you, flame you. They join and leave your guilds. Those warm bodies have no immediate value to EA. For them, they are potential customers. Those warm bodies DO have immediate value for your fellow players. For them, they are not warm bodies but...fellow players. For you, they are life. For EA, they are freeloaders that make potential customers. FreetoPlay->Premium->"Fine I sub for month to get expansion whatever"->Long time sub->Person literally unable to stop throwing money at EA via CM. Neither this chain nor F2P as a model for any MMO, TOR included, could survive without those first steps. Firstly, Good job contributing in ensuring EA knows where them priorities remain. Keep buying them CM packs! I think you are absolutely right here; it entirely depends on what I call "value". How much or little Cartel Packs you want to buy each month is something that has no immediate, apparent value for your fellow players at all. Money you (or I, or any other sub/preferred person) throws at EA doesn't come with any immediate, apparent payoff besides the cartel pack you won. Rather, from customers' POV, it works approx like Red Cross charity. Your money might be a tiny trickle in a mass of wealth that buys schools and wells in Africa some day. Or your money might disappear. In pockets of some warlord. Or maybe the money goes to promotion of new Battlefield game. You never really actually know. However, guy who has spend 0 dollars in this game but does Fps, Wzs or GSF with other people, subs included, on the other hand has a very real, very tangible and very immediate value for his fellow players. He is the healer, or the dps, or the tank of the group. Or the dude who caps C in tight Satelite match. Or guy who scores in Hutball. Or a noob who does everything wrong and gets flamed. ;p Well, I for one absolutely hope you have the right of it in here. This is how I'd like to see average sub person sees SW:TOR.

If you are busy being insulted over these things in a thread that really has almost nothing to do with either as such, I can imagine being insulted is very busy work for you. I guess talking heads is an insult to the armada of NPCs in TOR you interact with. You insulted on their behalf too now? Would it be possible to focus on them posts, not on posters?

Me saying recent expansions had a poor writing is not an "attack to my fellow player". " Guys, hey guys. it is that Starfigh again lol!! Can't you see he is a TROLL!! Please let's not talk to him and let's all ignore him!" on the other hand is much more malign in personal level. I've no clue what you've found in this thread that would " ruin your excitement for KOTFE". I'd not think it such a fragile flower.