I'm starting to wonder what the heck BW is using all their time on, don't they have hundreds of devs working on TOR? The critical LFG tool and server transfers sure is taking it's sweet time. TOR is slowly burning because of dead servers, lack of people to play with makes even more people quit. TOR can be turned around to grow but BW better get their act together.

TOR doesn't have pay per minute as WoW does in Asia. So if a guy spends a few minutes playing that gets counted as fully subscribed account along with the 2 million NA/EU full month subs.

Fully voiced is the only games I'll accept from now on. I can't see myself ever playing a text-quest based mmo ever again, it just plain sux in comparison. I'm glad The Elder Scrolls Online will be fully voiced as well, I don't expect TOR level of story but think I'll be fun.

I've said it many times, TOR crafting needs some inspiration from SWG crafting, that will make it alot more interesting. The crew skills idea is good it just need less static form and some things from SWG crafting can do just that. I could write a lenghty post about which parts would be ideal and how they could be implemented with the current crew skills but I would just be wasting my time.

Lol you know I was thinking the same thing, I like to believe BW reads some suggestions but I can't say I've seen any indication of that. Most likely just a place for people to vent, many really good suggestions there and no response from BW.

I don't raid either, servers are dying left and right with guilds following the trend so I just skip it til servers get merged or more populated from transfers. Once I get on a healhy server I will check it out.

Yes we need the option to change it, /support

Yeah great ideas, I've suggested some similar ones as well earlier but unfortunately every idea involving housing, sandbox and such seems to bounce off BW as a rubber ball on concrete. IMO this kind of content is a good way to reduce the effect of the content wall at 50 due to the linear theme park content today. It doesn't need expensive voicing or cinematics and can be set on land a little away from the content already in place.

I have to say it is a good idea an BW should consider something similar for TOR. A good way would be to select some servers in the same region, like 2-4 as "buddy servers" where the players can be pooled when needed to fill regions. It solves alot of problems with only downside of the typical cross server problems which will be mitigated by the buddy system. Since we allready get the downsides of instancing and following the WOW mold we might as well pitch in the upsides to it. Right now TOR is lacking many of the upsides.

I think I have to agree TOR is the only mmo at the moment worth the time and money. But that is fading fast with the dying servers and lack of LFG tool. Oh and just so it's said Tera and GW2 will crash and burn. Tera is asian garbage, GW2 is pay2win RvR with crap story aka waste of time. D3 is singler player cash shop which was fun back in the 90s but suck today.

An interesting statement from EA CEO. Especially that part about setting success criteria and people getting single minded and focused on one product in a large portifolio. Riccitiello: Investors need to “catch up” with EA, SWTOR “solid, successful, profitable” EA’s stock took a bit of a beating in the wake of its financial briefing earlier this week, but CEO John Riccitiello says investors are behind the times. “I think investors are eventually going to catch up with the company,” he told CNBC’s Mad Money. “We’ve beat our guidance on the top line, came in at the every high end on APS, and guided a 38% APS growth in the coming year, after launching a whole bunch of blockbusters. “So: Nothing to apologise for. I think it’s good now; [when] it gets better, investors are gonna see it.” Host Jim Craner suggested investors had become more excited about the success of Star Wars: The Old Republic than was justified, and are disappointed as a result, a sentiment Riccitiello agreed with. “When we originally started the franchise, our plan was to break 1 million subscribers. Our investment case was 1.2 million. We told the street yesterday we’re at 1.3 million,” he said. “We happened to have an earnings call right in the launch period, where we hit 1.7 million,” he added, ruefully. “We have an obligation to tell them the facts. Realistically, I think it’s a solid success.” Riccitiello reiterated comments from his the investor briefing in which he stressed that EA never planned for The Old Republic to ourperform its top five franchises, like FIFA and Madden. “Some people are treating it like it’s the only thing that matters. For what it’s worth, it’s a solid, successful, profitable franchise,” he concluded.

Do you suffer from selective reading comprehension or something? Over 500k and it's profitable, over 1m and it's very profitable. "We previously described to folks that 500,000 subscribers saw the game as substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing that we would write home about," he said. "[but] anything north of 1 million subscribers is a very profitable business." Source here

Heh, "transfers are coming", yeah, we've heard that a long time now. BW should have put every dev on the LFG and transfer systems, if there's no room for more then the other devs should make food, do the chores take the kids to school for the LFG/transfer devs so they could code all day. That's how urgent it us.

When I say something about how good content is, I mean: VO, cinematics, the story behind it, the objectives I had to do, how challening I found it, did it manage to capture my interest in the moment, how different it was from the other content, how fun it was, yes "fun" is very difficult to determine, but if I found the sum of the encounter to be entertaining, then it is fun for me. All mmo content is in it's basic from Kill, Click, Collect, the different is how it is dressed up and TOR beats the rest of the mmos out of the water.

From your perspective perhaps, I've been around the block a few times and TOR's content is better than anything any other have ever made. (IMO )

If TOR has proved ONE thing it is that a pure themepark mmo won't cut it anymore, despite the superb quality of TOR it just won't cut it. This is because players will burn through content faster than the devs can make it, especially so in TOR where content is so high quality compared to the rest of mmos. The only solution to this as I see it is to make end-game heavily sandbox inspired, with that I mean: - Conquestable land, some "RvR" or some incarnation of it . Owning land gives you resource income, bragging rights, status and all that, which is needed as incentive to take land from others, it can be other players for PvP or raid mobs for PvE, preferrably both - Owning the best PvP land takes guilds to cooperate, PvE land can be a "poor mans" land for getting some low quality land . With those resources you can produce houses/structures/skyscrapers/siege weapons, whatever to consume said resources - Crafting lends itself to the sandbox way, let players specialize in components other players need to make stuff - Crafting needs to be heavilty customizble, craftng in TOR today is very static, every artifact shield generator I make I know someone else makes the exact same thing and will probably just undercut me. I hate to bring up SWG (it's dead, John) but it's crafting was good. Eve crafting also is good, too complex for most, but good inspiration I like TOR, I want it to do better, but the LvL 50 Wall is too much for many, we need to empower the player at end-game, of course in addition to a few raids, flashpoints and warzones as we find them today. The level up experience as it is now is very good and fits well to learn the players the game, mechanics and lore. One thing about the combat I think could make it more fun is less skill hotbars, more positioning and tactic, GW2 and Tera are doing quite well in that regard and I think it could work well for TOR. Have few base skills that combined with uprades under certain conditions give increased effects. Just my 2 cents on the matter.

Is this one of those forum cliques where people go by first name basis and all that? For us that don't have time for such please post a tl;dr

Lol that's your asian grinder #24587 Doesn't matter what customization is like, the graphics style craps all over it

Yeah, LFG tool and server transfer need to go out right now, and by right now I mean 2 months ago. As for other things, I wonder, don't BW ask themselves why around a million players stopped playing TOR since launch? Clearly something dramatic needs to be done. Is it EA that's forcing them to take this road? Judging by the stock price; TOR is a complete writeoff and EA's got nothing positive in the future.

24% drop in subs bump, perhaps you will listen now?

Now is a good time to post this: "At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing we would write home about," EA CEO John Riccitiello said in a Gamasutra-attended conference call accompanying EA's third quarter fiscal earnings report today. "Anything north of a million subscribers, it's a very profitable business." So yeah

Oh yeah this one! Makes it so!

Yeah many just eat anything the internet hands you. As for the OP, lol I see lots of unfounded speculation around, but that has got to be one of the worst, I can't believe an "analyst" would resort to such means and still be called an analyst. First, he uses an unreliable source to make a guess. Scratch that, a useless source for any kind of accurate or significant estimation. And he "gleans" it rofllol, the only thing TORstatus can say is a very rough estimate of concurrent players, which also BW have stated have dropped. Second, that Creutz guy is the only one who post these kind of guesses and he seem to me to be overly negative over time, which suggests he is in a short position on the stock market, which would after the last months EA decline have given him a good profit. EA got lots more games than just TOR but every thing adds up and TOR is a significant part of EA. And third, all those news blogs just regurgitate the same "news" to get ad hits, negative news always draws more peope than positive news, that's due to schadenfreude

First the plague event was good, it's things like that that makes mmos feel alive. - Maybe something involving crafters as well could be fun. Like dropping limited use schematics instead of tokens and have the crafters make the rewards with dropped loot parts - I'd like less focus on standing in aids groups on fleet tough for tokens. - Something to help players get in on the heroic world bosses, I only got one of them and it was very hard to figure out where, when, at what stage the action was at if you have limited time on your hands. - Some space action would be fun too as a part of the stages. Reserve some drops for the space parts.

The most important things for me is: - More hotbars (or better yet less abilities but... yeah) - More separation of buffs and debuffs, especially debuffs and short time sensitive buffs which is good your are working on, in addition: - Less focus on the hotbar and more on the fight, I want to watch the nice animations not a boring timer. A way to notice buffs and timers without being forced to watch the bars would be very nice - Stealth bar (pops up when in stealth) - Social bar (pops up when not in combat) - Heroic Moment bar (pops up when in a heroic moment) - Stance bar could be nice too