I'm glad they gave us free respecs. It's far better than forcing us to pay 25k+ credits for those of us who respec often.

I run out of force much more quickly now since I'm so hesitant to use noble sacrifice. However, I get interrupted about the same as before since benevolence with a 1.2s cast is about the same as deliverance pre-1.2. My healing output is significantly lower with benevolence instead of deliverance, so I'm trying to use healing trance more often now when I would have just used deliverance before.

Yes, silly anonymous Internet forum poster, they're "tools" for having perhaps the most successful MMO launch in history. You guys crack me up!

Bad DPSers are doing some real damage to me now. I was okay when GOOD players could burn me down, but now everyone, regardless of skill, can out-DPS my heals. I did manage to heal 450k in a huttball today, but I'm sure 50% of those heals were on myself, hiding in a corner. I've been pretty supportive of Bioware so far, but 1.2 PVP is a pretty big mess. There are many unhappy players. Ranked warzones are out (for now), and then we learn that we need ~77,000 warzone commendations to pick up our war hero gear! If I lose and get 30 commendations, win and get 90 (we'll say an average warzone gives 60), I'll need to run something like 1300 warzones to get my full set. The thing that really gets me is that sage healers got nerfed, but in the same patch, PVP DPS was buffed. I think that pre-1.2 sage healing was wildly OP, but it's a little too difficult now, and not that much fun when I have to start kiting immediately. Smuggler healers, on the other hand, can kite to their heart's content.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you? Commando healers got nerfed big time.

Yeah, we need a much more thorough explanation than this, Bioware. I've been supportive of a lot of the changes we've experienced so far, but this is just stupid to change it at the last minute.

Yeah, I gotta say that maybe Bioware could disable solo ranked queuing for 1.2 but require a full 8 player op to queue up for ranked warzones. A lot of people are understandably unhappy with this, even if it is a rather rough system. Heck, even allowing a full 8 player group to queue up for NORMAL warzones would be better than nothing, Bioware. This is a pretty big screw up.

I love the game, but I want more - so, so much more. Here's the book I wrote for the "Your favorite Star Wars fantasy" thread though I unfortunately forgot to mention Slave Leia, and now I'm afraid that we'll never get to live out our 12 year old dreams. In its entirety: Where is the all of the above poll option, in addition to Pazaak, player created cantina bands & band music, full personal ship customization with different types of weaponry, armor plating, furniture, and crew members (on a side note, where do crew members cook, shower, relieve themselves, or even sleep since my sage's ship only has one bed?). I'd also like to see 4v4 arena type mini-games with 4 players AND their companions versus 4 players and their companions. How about dejarik (the game C-3PO and Chewie play from Episode IV)? I think swoop/pod/speeder racing should feature customizable vehicles along the lines of the Nintendo 64 game Pod Racer. In one slot, you can choose between faster acceleration or a higher max speed, and I'd like to see SWTOR move away from the current ship customization options in which you never have to trade off stats - you can only make them more powerful. Also, how about some type of holovid meta-game where you can pop on the old virtual reality visor and experience past events, such as Revan's routing of the Mandalorians over Malachor V. Continue giving us the classic locations we love and want: Yavin 4, Dantooine, Dac/Mon Cala/whatever you want to call Ackbar's homeworld, whatever happend to Manaan, Bespin, etc. You know when Anakin said he wanted to visit ALL THE PLANETS? I want to visit ALL THE PLANETS. And please continue releasing new flashpoints, operations, and warzones on a regular basis, but I'm sure you will, so I'm not worried about that. Fix Ilum, or create some other large scale PVP game. Warhammer: Online had FANTASTIC PVP (until they changed the max renown rank from 80 to 100). Give us keeps, NPCS, and tons of objectives to fight over. Optimize/refine/just fix the engine so we can have more than 30 people on screen at once without lag even if we have to crank our graphics down. Server merges and/or free server transfers from the least populated servers. This is a serious problem, one that I'd like to see addressed sooner rather than later. Right after launch, there were a solid 300 people on the Republic fleet during 6-11 PM. Now there are about 100. I'm sure 1.2 will bring some back, but anything less than 200 feels a little sparse. 300-400 is preferable. Cross server PVP/PVE matchmaking. Better cosmetic customization options with advanced primary/secondary color palettes. More companion missions to do what THEY want to do (instead of always being at your beck and call). The ability to flirt/kiss/do kinky stuff with your significant other whenever (just like in Dragon Age). Actual questions being asked and concerns being raised when my Sage MARRIES his padawan (I guess in this case, the Jedi Council's a-ok with this?). The chance to kill companions off yourself or have them killed by somebody else to give your relationship with them more meaning. The ability to change factions. A third or even fourth faction. More character races (why not droids? They can speak basic). More new locations and settings. One star destroyer is the same as the next. I want more unique settings and more breathtaking moments when I just have to sit back and gaze on a landscape for a minute. I don't want to feel, "oh great, another cave, building, starship, etc." I want to feel, "wow! This looks beautiful, and it's nowhere else in the game - just in this one location." Oh yeah, flashpoints which require companions, like that 4v4 PVP arena I described above. You put together a group of 4 players, and then you bring your companions along for the fun as well. I think I could go on and on, but just one more idea: legacy crafting. With high legacy levels, you can unlock some items which are bound to legacy. Maybe armor, weapons, stims, whatever. Maybe these items require multiple crafting professions to create. To fashion a helmet with great stats, maybe I need three different characters to craft bound-to-legacy biochem, cybertech, and synthweaving materials. Oh yeah, the ultimate Star Wars fantasy? Confront your alts. You're light side and you have a Sith lord father? Defeat him in combat and turn him to the light side. Make your legacy part of your storytelling experience instead of having 8 different characters merely connected on a family tree. I could continue spewing out ideas, but this seems like a pretty good start. Oh yeah, I pay my $15 a month, so I expect you to implement ALL OF THESE IDEAS in the next 12 months, Bioware.

Where is the all of the above poll option, in addition to Pazaak, player created cantina bands & band music, full personal ship customization with different types of weaponry, armor plating, furniture, and crew members (on a side note, where do crew members cook, shower, relieve themselves, or even sleep since my sage's ship only has one bed?). I'd also like to see 4v4 arena type mini-games with 4 players AND their companions versus 4 players and their companions. How about dejarik (the game C-3PO and Chewie play from Episode IV)? I think swoop/pod/speeder racing should feature customizable vehicles along the lines of the Nintendo 64 game Pod Racer. In one slot, you can choose between faster acceleration or a higher max speed, and I'd like to see SWTOR move away from the current ship customization options in which you never have to trade off stats - you can only make them more powerful. Also, how about some type of holovid meta-game where you can pop on the old virtual reality visor and experience past events, such as Revan's routing of the Mandalorians over Malachor V. Continue giving us the classic locations we love and want: Yavin 4, Dantooine, Dac/Mon Cala/whatever you want to call Ackbar's homeworld, whatever happend to Manaan, Bespin, etc. You know when Anakin said he wanted to visit ALL THE PLANETS? I want to visit ALL THE PLANETS. And please continue releasing new flashpoints, operations, and warzones on a regular basis, but I'm sure you will, so I'm not worried about that. Fix Ilum, or create some other large scale PVP game. Warhammer: Online had FANTASTIC PVP (until they changed the max renown rank from 80 to 100). Give us keeps, NPCS, and tons of objectives to fight over. Optimize/refine/just fix the engine so we can have more than 30 people on screen at once without lag even if we have to crank our graphics down. Server merges and/or free server transfers from the least populated servers. This is a serious problem, one that I'd like to see addressed sooner rather than later. Right after launch, there were a solid 300 people on the Republic fleet during 6-11 PM. Now there are about 100. I'm sure 1.2 will bring some back, but anything less than 200 feels a little sparse. 300-400 is preferable. Cross server PVP/PVE matchmaking. Better cosmetic customization options with advanced primary/secondary color palettes. More companion missions to do what THEY want to do (instead of always being at your beck and call). The ability to flirt/kiss/do kinky stuff with your significant other whenever (just like in Dragon Age). Actual questions being asked and concerns being raised when my Sage MARRIES his padawan (I guess in this case, the Jedi Council's a-ok with this?). The chance to kill companions off yourself or have them killed by somebody else to give your relationship with them more meaning. The ability to change factions. A third or even fourth faction. More character races (why not droids? They can speak basic). More new locations and settings. One star destroyer is the same as the next. I want more unique settings and more breathtaking moments when I just have to sit back and gaze on a landscape for a minute. I don't want to feel, "oh great, another cave, building, starship, etc." I want to feel, "wow! This looks beautiful, and it's nowhere else in the game - just in this one location." Oh yeah, flashpoints which require companions, like that 4v4 PVP arena I described above. You put together a group of 4 players, and then you bring your companions along for the fun as well. I think I could go on and on, but just one more idea: legacy crafting. With high legacy levels, you can unlock some items which are bound to legacy. Maybe armor, weapons, stims, whatever. Maybe these items require multiple crafting professions to create. To fashion a helmet with great stats, maybe I need three different characters to craft bound-to-legacy biochem, cybertech, and synthweaving materials. Oh yeah, the ultimate Star Wars fantasy? Confront your alts. You're light side and you have a Sith lord father? Defeat him in combat and turn him to the light side. Make your legacy part of your storytelling experience instead of having 8 different characters merely connected on a family tree. I could continue spewing out ideas, but this seems like a pretty good start. Oh yeah, I pay my $15 a month, so I expect you to implement ALL OF THESE IDEAS in the next 12 months, Bioware.

I didn't mean the clothes in Episodes 1-3. I mean the lack of plot and everything that made Episodes 4-6 fun.

Yeah, the gear does look pretty terrible. Then again from watching Episodes 1-3, you'd think that George Lucas had never seen a Star Wars movie either.

And I mean that. Xfire says I've logged 974 hours into The Old Republic over the past four months. My biggest gripe with the game so far isn't that end game content is a little light (and it is, but the game's new, and I know a ton of content is coming). It's that Bioware created too many servers for the game's launch, and now many or even most of them feel sparsely populated. I'd say condensing the current number of servers by half would be a pretty good start in addition to cross server PVP. I'm also looking forward to Guild Wars 2. Crazy, I know right? I hear a lot of people complaining that this game's boring, but I just don't see it. They say this game is boring, but they're not saying which game is better. If they could, they'd be playing there. I feel that many people are just burned out on MMOs. Perhaps they never really appreciated the genre to begin with. My favorite complaint to hear about is that this game's repetitive. Have these people never played other games? Starcraft, Counter-strike, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Age of Conan, WoW, Civilization, literally every single video game ever produced is "repetitive." It's pretty much been the same formula for the past three or four decades now. Look at first person shooters. You aim your gun at people and shoot, over and over and over and over, for hundreds of hours on end. How different! Yet I still enjoy a healthy dose of FPS regularly. But enough about other people's complaints, valid or otherwise. What DO I like about this game? It goes without saying, but SWTOR has one of the best atmospheres I've ever played in. The Lord of the Rings and Age of Conan are the only other two MMOs that come close, and they're both built on old, popular fantasy settings. This game gets it right in quite frankly a way that neither of the two KotORs ever did. SWTOR feels like Star Wars, helped in large part by the fantastic soundtrack. When I go to Corellia, I can picture the birthplace of Han Solo. Hoth, Tatooine, Coruscant all drop me right in the middle of the Star Wars universe. Leveling up is also a highlight, featuring generally strong voice acting and some really strong mission/class stories. Even the "find x number of items" missions feel mildly important because an NPC with a voice tells me about it. I also enjoy the two raids even after completing them what feels like a hundred times in nightmare mode. I just enjoy grouping with solid players to clear difficult content. I didn't really like the numerous bugs so much, but I don't see 95% of those bugs anymore. PVP can also prove rewarding and fun (unless I'm solo queuing, then god help me). Ilum was always a bit of a problem child, but I still have a blast in warzones, even though I'm pushing valor 80 now (I don't PVP too often on my sage nowadays since my buddies have taken a 1-2 week break until 1.2, but I still queue up for at least half a dozen warzones daily in the pre-50 bracket on my guardian). I hope they continue supporting the companions with additional quests, dialogue, and other content down the road, but it's off to a solid start. Basically, I'm personally very pleased with the game as it is now, but I also expect plenty of new content from Bioware every 2-3 months, and I expect a higher quality of patch since we're nearing the 6 month mark and they've had time to work out all of their launch issues by now. Go ahead, tell me why I'm wrong and why the game has ruined your life. Better yet, tell me what you like best about this game. I feel like my 6 month sub was a great purchase, and if Bioware had offered a $200 or $300 lifetime sub option, I would have gladly picked one up.

I like having third party applications to view logs in real time across a raid. If you can get everyone to install and use Vent/TS/Mumble for a raid, it shouldn't be difficult to set up one of these programs with everybody. Just take five minutes before the start of a raid, and everyone can connect to the server.

I can't think of a single MMO ever that was able to keep my attention 100% for more than a month or two at a time. Xfire says I've logged 919 hours in SWTOR so far compared to 3700 for LotRO. The difference is that LotRO's been out for nearly five years now and SWTOR's been out about three and a half months. I sure hope it lasts ten years though I'm not sure how long they can keep on coming up with new content when .

Yeah one of the 1.2 teaser videos said that the family tree would probably play an important role in future updates, which we can assume to mean stories. I'd love it if the actions of one of my characters impacted another, or if there were a story instance in which I had to confront my Sith lord father, or something like that. The ultimate *** awesome/terrible moment would be choosing to kill off one of your characters, though I think some sort of faction change for characters could be plausible. Not that Bioware's mentioned any of the above - I'm just musing.

I don't think the ball carrier should be able to sprint, force leap, or get rescued by other sages. I would really hate it if this ability were usable in 1.2.

And let us all hope that they never put macros into the game. Easy mode for the loss. : (

Also, when did I say that all the CC was unbalanced? Oh that's right - I didn't! I will reiterate the main point of this thread. PVP doesn't unbalance the game. I just find it far less fun because of how much there is in SWTOR. Every single numbered point I made pointed out an aspect of the game that contributed to this overarching problem. Yes, if Bioware released a "fix" for each point, they will probably overcompensate. However, if they address one or two points to lower how often CC can affect you, I think the game will be greatly improved. I'll repeat. Resolve doesn't work as a way to mitigate the effects of CC. It's like saying my car "works" when the brakes function 80% of the time. It's effectively broken, even if it "works as intended" half the time. I also can't imagine that Bioware planned for the CC spam currently in PVP. Another point about CC, which was brought up by another poster or two in this thread, is that the short CDs and overabundance of CC abilities allow teams to spam CC like there's no tomorrow. Let's just look at sages for a moment since that's the class I'm most familiar with. Force Lift: 7s duration, 1 min CD - optional 45s CD and/or 2s stun when broken early Force Wave: AoE knockback, 20s CD - optional 5s root (breaks from damage after 2s) Force Slow: 50% slow for 6s, 15s CD Force Stun: 4s stun, 1 min CD - optional 50s CD Forcequake: 30% slow over 6s for all enemies within the targeted area, no CD (optional) Weaken Mind: 20% slow for its duration (15/18/21s depending on spec) (optional) Sever Force: 2s root (optional) Force Armor: optional 3s stun So in the span of 2 minutes, I can cast something like 15 different CCs, more if I spec out additional skills. In that time, I'll be able to break CC once. Sure, the different factions are "balanced," but PVP leaves a lot to be desired in terms of just how fun it is to play when you're up against that kind of CC. The most fun my friends and I have in PVP is when we're not getting spammed with stuns, slows, roots, and knockbacks (and for myself, interrupts). Do I deal with it and cope? Yes. Do I find it particularly fun? Not really. I'm hoping that Bioware tweaks CC mechanics in this game so that they're still useful but not spammable. Why? When warzones and Ilum are relatively balanced, the game is extremely fun and satisfying. When CC prevents you from being able to play your character during a match, it's decidedly less so.

Dear Bioware, The big elephant in the room when it comes to PVP is the utterly crappy resolve system. It just doesn't work. 1. Why is there any CC that ignores a full resolve bar? 2. Why does every class have 4-5 different types of CC? 3. Why are CCs on such short CDs? 20s AoE knockback, 1m complete stun, short CDs for slows, etc. 4. Why is the CC break skill on a very long CD? 2m default CD is way too long when you can get CCed 5-6 times a minute. A rough suggestion (open for tweaking) - make the CD break skills on a 1m CD and/or provide 5s CC immunity. 5. Have a full resolve bar drain more slowly. Draining in 15s is too fast when it means that you will face another 15s of CC. Sure, it's "fair" as far as those things go. Both sides can do it (besides obvious imbalances like sorc stuns working through full resolve), but Bioware, it just isn't any FUN at all. That's a very important distinction we need to make. I'm sure a lot of us have seen videos detailing PVP in Guild Wars 2. The one thing that looked immensely more fun was the fact that there was, or at least appeared to be, far less CC. While I haven't played too much WoW (gave up at level 25 or so), I have played PVP in LotRO, Aion, and Warhammer Online. Aion was distinctly the opposite of fun because of endless CC and vast class imbalances. LotRO PVP had far less chain CC because of diminishing returns. Warhammer Online had some CC, but there were generally too many people for it to make a difference. So yeah, my point isn't that PVP becomes unfair because of CC, but that it just becomes less fun when you can only use your skills 50% of the time.

That's funny. You can level to 75 in LotRO (the original cap was 50) faster than you can hit 50 in SWTOR. I kind of like that there's too much PVE leveling content at the moment. When I was leveling my sage, I skipped Nar Shaddaa, Quesh, Voss, and Corellia (except for the class missions), nor could I complete the Alderaan or Hoth bonus missions. I'll visit all those planets I skipped on my guardian alt and probably skip Alderaan and Hoth this time. In a way, even though I'm still playing on the Republic side, I get to experience completely different stories. If I don't like an area, I don't have to play through it. But when it comes to how long it takes to level up, it's just a difference of opinion, and there's really no point debating it. I thought roughly a week of playtime was acceptable for hitting the level cap (I did not hit the level cap in Aion for three months because 1) that game sucked all the joy out of MMOs and 2) you completely ran out of quests about level 48 and had to grind mobs for the last two levels, a process which took about a day of playtime by itself). But for players who wish to take longer to level up, maybe Bioware could implement several options concerning XP gains. Option 1: completely disable XP gains Option 2: disable XP gains on mobs/missions beneath your current level Option 3: a sliding scale where you can choose, from 0-100%, what percent of XP you'd like to receive from mobs/missions (an alternative would be a "half XP" option, which would be pretty close to requiring you to experience all of the PVE content to level up) Option 4: normal XP gains

I'm not sure if TOR will ever reach 10 million subscribers (it's not out of the realm of possibility in 2-3 years), but I can easily see it with 3-5 million subscribers. I also can't imagine this game going under for pretty much any reason other than a dimensional gateway opening up, offering millions of Star Wars fans around the world the chance to be transported into the Star Wars universe itself.

Every game released continues to have bugs. What games don't get patched post-release? I think we're going to see extensive patches coming in the next two or three months to fix many of the issues that have been brought up. Some of them are quite pressing (Ilum memory leaks, Ilum PVP in general), and others less so. I'll eat my socks if most of the big issues in the game aren't fixed by, let's say, April. Well, not really, but I'll still be very surprised. Some other thoughts: don't say most of the hardcore players have gone back to their previous games. My guild came over from Rift, and only a few people out of dozens have stopped playing in the past month. Many of us are enjoying KP and EV hard & nightmare modes, and even Ilum & warzone PVP can be very exciting at times, at least when its balanced. Since we're expecting a total of 5 level 50 operations by summer, I think we're all going to have plenty to do. At this point, I'm okay with the current level of content and very pleased with the upcoming patches (1.2-1.5). As long as Bioware addresses (at least) most of the bugs, I'll be very happy with the game for at least the next year.

You can't blame a single healer when your raid has four of them pumping out heals. If a player dies, quite frankly, it's that player's fault and nobody else's.

This game is sexy. The engine runs like crap on Ilum, but the graphics are impressive for an MMO. For everyone saying GW2 looks like it's "made in 2012," I actually remarked to myself about how sharp, clear, and smooth SWTOR's graphics were the first time I ran through Coruscant. The low resolution textures leave much to be desired, but the overall graphics engine is capable of some pretty stellar scenes. I'm sorry if your computer can't handle SWTOR, but I'm glad you can still enjoy the cherry picked screenshots found on GW2's website. And with that said, I will very likely try out GW2 myself. As for the original intent of this thread, I see some people leaving the game, but at least an equal number joining it. Many people didn't want to join right away since they expected bugs (unlike the players who felt that game should have been flawless upon release), but they're still looking forward to playing the game after a few months have passed. And there's nothing to do at level 50? We're raiding three nights a week, and I still have plenty of PvP and dailies to do (I'm really lazy when it comes to dailies). Considering that we can expect three new operations in the upcoming patches, I find that I don't have very much time at all to even play an alt. Then again, I'm not playing all day every day any longer.

Sorry about your bad luck and/or terrible skills.