It's not just that they're the same voice actress, but that she does pretty much exactly the same voice on both of them. Albeit not nearly as well when it comes to the trooper.

Yeah, really hoped something would happen between my Smug and her.

It's kinda funny, but most MMOs I've played have had horrible tedious time sinks for traveling around on release. And strangely enough, over time they've all gotten rid of most of those timesinks, added faster travel, more locations you can port to and so on. So why can't any MMO devs just look at other games, realise that travel timesinks are not what people want, and get it right the first time?

Yeah, there are a few companions that you really should be able to get rid of. For example, as a BH, I think it's a nice twist on the story, but it should be optional, as it's totally out of character for my BH, who does what he was hired to do, no playing around. And given that this is supposed to be a RPG.... They should let us kill them, albeit with a big warning that comes up and says "you will never be able to undo this". To be honest, it's not really surprising. Bioware have been forcing companions on us since KotOR at least. God, I long for the days of BG where I could take only those I wanted to (and the rest would stay completely out of my business, not sit around my campfire/ship and interfere with the story - IIRC, with one exception in BG2, you would never see them again unless you actually went to find them), and if someone annoyed me, I take them out to the basilisk area, get them turned to stone, and leave them...

My issue with Tracer/Grav is not that it's too powerful overall - yes, Mercs/Comms are perfectly beatable - but, particularly in team based situations where they can get decent support from others are are hence more likely to be able to keep attacking, it's too powerful compared to the amount of effort needed to...press one button repeatedly.

I haven't done a huge amount of tanking in ToR yet, so take anything I'm saying with a pinch of salt, but in some ways, it reminds me of playing a tank back in EQ. Obviously, there are differences, but things like having relatively few out and out aggro tools (as opposed to aggro through damage), multiple mobs being best dealt with through CC, no info on things like threat and so on give me that old-skool feeling. And, I like it

Yep, I've got the second one too. Are there some issues? Sure, but they're nowhere near gamebreaking, and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself.

Definitely go Powertech - you get to set people on fire, then punch their head off. What more could you ask for?

Something similar to the 1st issue seems to occur on UK keyboards too - the " ` " key left of 1 doesn't do anything at all and can't be bound.

Meh, we the gun ain't that important when fighting, and a pistol is far cooler for executions, so... More seriously though, while I wouldn't use a rifle, I see no issue with letting others do so, thus I'd support them being added.

It really depends on what you want to be doing - if you want to tank then yeah, ST is brilliant. But if you want to be killing stuff yourself, stick with the Pyro, they kick *** too

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the proc that finishes Rail Shot's cooldown and makes it free (prototype accelerator IIRC) - you can generally ensure the enemy is always vulnerable to RS, but you can't be sure when you'll have a RS ready to use on them

The fact that jumping is so important in those things is exactly why we like the "nerf". Having to jump around like a crack addicted rabbit in order to be competitive is not a good thing.

I see this kind of post all over the place, and while I don't work in the games industry, so I can't be exactly certain how it is there, in everything I've had experience with, the people in Bioware's position would've had significant input into the deadline, and they would've agreed that they could make it - and if they thought they couldn't, they should have said so right away. If you fail to make your deadlines, provided they weren't unrealistic to begin with (at which point you should never have accepted working to them) it's your fault, not those in charge.

If they did a pet based class, I would really hope that it was one with multiple pets. Just having the one out at a time is not really any different from the companions we all get. Instead Bioware should model it on the Mastermind from City of Villains, which, once levelled sufficiently, used six pets simultaneously. Was one of the most unique and enjoyable MMO classes I've ever come across.

Another thing to note, and I am aware this might seem anathema to some tanks, but you don't actually need to hold all the aggro, just themost dangerous. Even in the absence of CC, you can afford to let some of the mobs attack other people - say, if you're fighting 3 golds and 2 silvers, you keep aggro on the former, and let the latter attack others. Firstly, no (properly geared) character in the game is that squishy that they can't take a few hits, and secondly it can often be easier on the healers, even relatively early on. All three healing classes have access to efficient healing abilities that don't stack well, if at all, on single targets (such as the rune type shields of the Cons/Inq [unstackable], or the HoTs of the smug/IA [which stack once]), but can be readily applied to multiple targets. Trooper/BH healers even get access to an AoE heal pretty early. Overall, a good tank is not one who grabs all the aggro and holds it regardless of anything. A good tank it one who understands how his group works, what abilities they have, what they're capable of, and adapts his playstyle to this. (well, a good player in general is this...)

I've not played WoW recently, but surely the issue is not with the LFD tool but the content? I, and everyone I know, plays what's most fun (for whatever their definition of fun is). Thus, the fact that they're playing instances would indicate that the outside world just isn't as fun...

Overall, I do agree with the OP. I've been playing MMOs long enough (EQ circa-Kunark was my starting point) to know what it's like to have a completely user-unfriendly game. And it sucks. I play games to have fun, and these things, like easy access to mission groups, dual specs (within AC!) and so on make the game more fun. The only thing I'd be wary of is the implementation of addons. I certainly think the UI's appearance should be freely customisable - not just moving things, but changing the graphics (personally, I love a minimalistic appearance where I get the needed info, with no fancy borders around each element or other "pretty bits") - but I'm not convinced for the need for the game to provide us with any more information than it now does. However, there is one thing that posts in this thread raise in my mind: Some of the replies here regarding the LFG system interest me. Now, I've not played WoW for a long time, so I can't really comment on how the community has developed there other than to say it would amaze me if it were worse. I can understand how making the system cross server would hurt, and I wouldn't support that, but people are saying that the fact that everyone just goes straight to the instances and doesn't do stuff "out in the world" as it were is bad for the community too. The thing is, in my time of playing MMOs, by far and away the best community I have ever encountered was in City of Heroes. For those who haven't played it, essentially, the entire game takes place in instanced missions. The world outside, while fun to wander around at times, is really there just to provided context to the missions, and to house things like quest givers and markets (this wasn't intentional, the devs expected people to "street sweep", as killing groups of monsters outside is known, but the missions were just more fun, so over time, they became the focus). Travel is also very quick, particularly once you get to a moderately high level and have access to all the various teleports, so probably 90+% of your time, on average, is spent in an instance with no more than 7 other people. Despite this, as I said, the community is brilliant. It can seem a little empty for a newcomer, but once they connect to some of the various global chat channels, and get involved, it's easy to make friends, it's easy to find people to play with and so on - conversely, if you piss people off, you will be remember as doing so, and get ignored. The reason for this, I suspect, is those global channels - you're not just stuck talking to people in your zone or guild, you can chat to everyone in the game (well, everyone who's joined a major channel). So putting in something like a non-cross-server LFG system doesn't have to harm the community.

Just something to note, the last bit of your OP hints that you might be under a misconception that I've seen around: that ranged attacks have some kind of minimum range. This is not the case (thank god). While you do have to use both ranged and melee attacks to put out a decent amount of damage, there's nothing to say you have to keep moving in and out of melee range. You can just use your ranged attacks at point blank range... Even as a pyrotech, the least melee centric spec, I still stay within melee range most of the time. It's just that if someone tries to run away and I can't catch up, I can still hurt them

Nope, definitely a melee class. Even as a pyrotech specced PT, the most ranged of the builds, I'm finding myself in melee pretty much all the time - though I only have a couple of specifically melee range attacks, said attacks are good, particularly rocket punch, so if I'm not up close and personal, I'm not operating to my full capabilities. Sure, I can step back to 10m range and still be decent, but, unless there's a specific reason not to be in melee (eg a really nasty PBAoE), then doing so is pointlessly nerfing myself...

If I advertised for a healer and got a Sage that refused to heal, then yes, I would kick them. Otherwise, well, if you've been kicked for not healing when you didn't join the group under the understanding that you would, then consider yourself lucky, as anyone who would do that is someone you don't want to group with... As an aside, I'm really enjoying healing so far. The only issue I have is that companions don't appear on the op frames, so if I'm in a non-full team, I have to revert to the crappy group window...

The thing about the whole "it's easy", is that the vast majority of people still won't do it - people juct can't be bothered to do crafting. I played a lot of CoH, and the crafting there is trivial - anyone can do it, no need to skill up, all the ingredients and recipies easily available on the market. By crafting your own stuff, you could save 75%+ of the costs compared to buying finished stuff, and it took about 30 secs. Yet I still made an absolute killing by crafting up enhancements and selling them to the thousands of lazy people who didn't want to spend that 30 secs. Here, it takes a lot longer than 30 secs to get to a position where you can make good stuff. Sure, there'll be a fair few max level crafters, but there'll be a hell of a lot more people who aren't.

Setting people on fire, shooting them, then punching em in the face. 'Nuff said.