No, sorry, you have no idea what you are talking about, Bioware needs to immediately implement mini-golf-with-lightsabers in the next patch, Look at the success of Minigolf games for crying out loud! Bioware ignores ME at their peril!

^^ This. A location that is not terrestrial. A City in the Clouds; on and under the Sea. Something that requires unique environmental concerns to navigate. The ocean world/city from KOTOR I, or Cloud City.

This is me this last couple of weeks. "da*** did i just read? do these people even know what a sandbox game is?" People keep using EQ as an example of a sandbox game.... No, it really, really wasn't - and isn't. The current incarnation is much more theme parky. Because that's what most people want. SWG, pre-CU was a sandbox(ish) game. UO was a sandbox(ish) game. EVE is a sandbox game. Minecraft, is the very definition of a sandbox game. There's even a Star Wars mod for it. Go play that Or Second Life. Go buy some Star Wars textures/meshes and have a ball. I'm sure somewhere, someone on Second Life has created a Star Wars area. DikuMUD style gameplay: EQ, EQ II, LotRO, WoW, DAoC, WAR, DDO, and all of those are NOT sandbox games. They are DikuMUD style games. They have zones, with mobs (Short for 'Mobile' a MUD term, ever wonder where the term 'mobs' came from? Now you know. MOBile Object Code) to kill that drop stuff and give xp. You take the stuff and xp, which lets you kill harder, more challenging Mobiles, which in turn give you more stuff, and more xp to kill harder Mobiles, etc, etc, until you hit the wall where the devs stopping coding Mobiles and there's nothing left. Typically, each zone has it's own flavor and theme of Mobiles, some of which are attached to NPC given, pre-written lists of tasks ("Quests/Missions") This is the very essence of "theme-park" Game Design. It's like Disneyland. Tomorrowland, Adventureland, etc. It's just called Coruscant or Tatooine here. This is where the monkier of 'theme-park' derives from. Pre-designed, pre-written areas to explore, with a given theme. Some of them have certain Sandboxy elements, like player housing. Look how well open world housing worked out for SWG and UO. I remember camping a spot with a deed on UO, trying to get a spot to place it, do you? Not Fun. Endless ghost-towns in SWG. Good times. Do I want player housing in SWTOR, Yes. But something like EQ II. instanced, so it doesn't clutter up the landscape. Ship decorating and personalizing is a great place to start. Then maybe instanced apartments on Coruscant and Kaas City. Instanced Plantary Guild Halls would be epic. Land on a hidden moon (known only to the members of your guild) and get your secret moon base. Epic. Especially if the implementation is something like Base Construction on CoH (another well-done theme park setting.) But I'm patient. I'll wait for it to be done right. not demanding half-assed hurried implementation. People want minigames, Pazzak tables, swoop racing, off-the-rails space combat, spectator viewable Huttball leagues. Those things are great, I want some of that stuff too. But they are not sandbox game elements. They are minigames. Pre-scripted, pre-coded, boxed for your enjoyment. Probably placed in a zone that shares a similiar theme. (Like a Casino/Cantina). Just like an Arcade in Disneyland. Games within the game. Every other example of 'sandbox' style game play I've seen peopel propose in these threads is not "sandbox" at all, it's another flavor of theme park deign. Usually older, out-dated design; desired out of nostalgia, not because it's good design. Much of this is semantics, I know, but it's really starting to bother me. Most of you 'sandbox' camp people don't want sandbox stuff. you want more rides in your theme park. Which is great. I like rides too. but don't pretend that they are anything more than that.

Dark Side Jaesa vs Kira could be quite the light saber fueled cat fight. Light saber mud wrestling = the next Huttball? Though I think a more epic fight would be Bowdaar vs Khem Val or Broonmark. Though a Risha/Vette cross over story line would be epic.

I am certainly not a hardware guru, so pardon if this is a silly question, I honestly don't know. but isn't the fact that SWTOR is 32 bit vs a 64 limit the amount of RAM it can actively use? My system is not much different from yours, save that I only have 8 gigs of RAM, and I only have regular SATA drives. My load times aren't that much off yours. But it seems to be because of the 32 bit naure of the application, your excess hardware isn't even being used. Again, no computer guru, so I may be way off.

I don't even get that, you'd laugh at the failure of a game hundreds of thousands of people enjoy as is? Are you that sadistic and spiteful that you'd say, "Haha, F**k you guys, you forced me to spend money on this game and it wasn't 110% of everything I ever dreamed it could be, burn in h*ll ***holes!" Seriously?

So, what is it about "The Sandbox" that has you guys so hung up? I loved UO, EQ, and SWG, as well, but the things I loved about those games had nothing to do with the mechanics of the game or the developers. It was the players. I love to RP, these days I do so infrequently, but I still love the idea of RP, so I'll often hang out in the Cantina on Fleet, or Nar Shaddaa and listen to people RP while I catch up on crew skills. At least on my server (Lord Adraas) the RP community seems fine. Just as many people as you would see on SWG or EQ. They seem to be going just fine in this theme park game. Maybe you have a bad server? I love to explore. During the last beta weekend, I took my highest level character and just roamed around and looked at all the detail. Found some holocrons, laughed at a couple of the easter eggs, accidently spawned the world boss on Tatooine who promptly ate my face. I explored all the time in EQ and SWG too in the beginning. But then I learned the maps, like always, and subsequent characters didn't do so as much. And there was plenty of nothing in those games too (The Karanas anyone?). SWG was always particularly empty. Even on 'populated' worlds, like Naboo. (Then player housing filled the map, and there was no where to explore - one of the biggest reasons I am against open world housing.) But all of that is independent of the mechanics of the game. You wander around, you find things, and it's fun. but then you find everything, and hit the edges, and you move on to other things. Do you expect it to be different on every character? Do you have any idea how much man-power that would require? I enjoy sometimes just mindlessly beating things up and getting my hack n slash on. Sometimes I'll farm commendations in a heroic area. It's not super efficient, but I've done it. Particularly if I managed to get through one planet while the next is still orange. I don't miss sitting down at treants in EQ on my necro and farming them for 2 weeks. At the same camp. Or dwarf guards. Or Fins in DAoC. Or Rancors in SWG (or any mission farming in SWG pre-CU. Don't get me wrong, I love classless games, but mission farming made me cross eyed in that game). So What, specifically, do you miss about those games that is not present in this one? Don't just say 'Sandbox elements' Be Specific. Not things you wish this game would do (Pazak, swoop racing, etc). Name things implemented in other games that you wish this one had. Because honestly, I am hard pressed to think of Anything I enjoyed about another game mechanically, that is not present in this one. People are so focused on the "on the rails story line" they seem to be missing that there is a ton of other stuff to do. (At least while leveling, I'll give you that End game is lack-luster. And even Sandbox games have that problem. Once you've decorated your house five or six times, or explored all the maps, what's left to do but farm? Or make up stuff to do with other players. But that's not a mechanics issue.)

If you want an Imperial Military story line, play an agent. If you want a Bounty Hunter who isn't an evil *****, try going with light Side options (I did) totally changes the flavor of what you do. Not perfect solutions, but I doubt they are going to take existing classes and retool their entire story lines to be 'more neutral' (they already are pretty much, not totally, but pretty much). If we get other classes in future expansions, I think you have a much greater chance of 'neutral' classes. Though I'm all for being able to switch factions once you've completed Chapter III. In class specific faction story lines.

1) I wish people would stop posting inside my quote with funny colors. makes it more of a pain to respond directly. "So to summarize, you can't just say go do this it's as good as the stuff that's in your quest tracker. This is the same as saying go sit on your ship and pretend you are in PvP." No, no it's not. One is doing something slightly less efficient than following the clear path, the other is doing nothing at all. They aren't comparable. Just because you wrote it down does not make it true. Forum Logic ftw? "You tried to flip it and say that there will be malaise if people have to get random missions or dynamic content because they will be afraid of having to repeat the content? Really? The irony is heavy on that one" I said there would be malaise (I hate that word by the way, it screams, 'I am a vocabulary snob') if there was nothing but repeatable turn-ins for trophies. The only thing I said regarding dynamic content was that I know of no large scale MMO that has implemented it well. There was no irony. For someone who likes his vocab words, you seem unclear about what irony is. " I've seem multiple guilds fail already due to players leaving, watched server pops drop. The clarion call is "I'm bored." Glad youre not, but that won't fix the issue." And now we come to the real issue. People are bored, and the game population is hemorrhaging. The favorite past time in general is for people to Monday morning quarterback the reasons why. "The devs didn't listen to ME, I told them this would happen, because I know" Sure you do (and not you, the OP, or person I am responding too, the hypothetical general forum poster here.) /sarcasm I personally do not know why the population is falling off. I don't have access to the metrics that Bioware and EA do. And even if I did, I'm not a market or design analyst. All I have is my own experience, which is roughly fourteen years of having an active MMO subscription. My own theory is that people's expectations were too high. Too many people expected SWTOR to be magical, and some how transport them physically to the Star Wars Universe. But it didn't. It's just a game. It's a good game in my humble opinion. One that is head and shoulders above 95% of the MMO and video game market today. But lets face it. I have not been magically transported to Tatooine to begin my training as a Jedi, so it's failed me in that regard. I suppose I'll just have to live with that. My other theory is that gamers today (even the 'old school' types) have such impossible demands of gaming technology, that no game will ever live up to their ideas of what an MMO "should be". You have a game with several million subscribers. 30% of them want A, 30% want B, 30% want C, and 10% want Z, which is something that No game could ever do, even if the publishing company bought you your own super computer to run it. No matter which of A, B, or C a company focuses on in a given patch, they've still managed to piss off a million subscribers in the process. about 2% of which come to the forums and rage, and the rest just quietly move on to the next game that they feel will better address their particular Letter's needs. In other words, I think too many people are pissed off that SWTOR isn't they game they want, and that anger blinds them to what a great game they have. is there room for improvement? Of course! Absolutely! I am not suggesting otherwise. Give it five years and you'll barely recognize the game from what released at launch. All MMOs are this way. They evolve and grow. Like little pokemons. Me, I don't want the game to devolve. Back to the stone age, fourteen years ago, where the height of gaming technology was to sit around a spawn point and zap critters as they popped into existence. I want more from a game than that now, and I feel any move back to that is not moving the technology forward. My dreams are bigger than nostalgia. I don't want a game I had ten years ago dressed up in jedi robes. I want new stuff. Better stuff. If all you want is to recapture nostalgia, then I'm sorry, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

Amen. I'm baffled by people who bought SWTOR, which was pitched as a a 'Story Driven, Narrative style game play" and are now apparently upset because the game delievers exactly that? "Play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ and be the hero of your own Star Wars™ saga in a story-driven massively-multiplayer online game from BioWare and LucasArts. " "Choose from one of eight iconic roles and become the hero of your personal Star Wars saga—an interactive storyline with cinematic dialogue and full voiceover for all in-game characters." "Find a Spawn of womp-rats and farm them for their wings thousand and thousands of times!" Oh wait, no, I forgot the last one isn't there.

Sounds like your problems are a bad server. Not a bad game. How would your solution or "grouping up and camping stuff if I want too" help you if there is already no one to group with? Mechanics aren't the problem for you, population is. And there is an easy solution for that too. Just one you are unwilling (apparently) to do. Reroll on another server. You totally missed my point. Just because you don't feel the option is viable doesn't mean it isn't. There are no laws stating you have to do the missions. There are open world heroic areas you can camp to your heart's delight. With a friend if you need one, or a whole group. Why would you NOT want your 'grouping area" to be instanced? Do you WANT people to come kill-steal? Or harass you? What social benefits do you gain by a dungeon run being open-world? Outline for me, please. Do you gain ANYTHING that you can not get from something in the game already?

" By incentivizing one orderly path you lose any sort of ability to use random reinforcement in the leveling." To be honest, I am not even sure what the hell this means. I've read it like three times now and it still makes no sense to me. As far as losing satisfaction in the End game, that is far outside of what I was responding too. People were talking about 'choices during leveling' not "what do I do at level cap". And "real content"? what is "real content"? Are you talking about dynamic changes on the gaming environment based on player choices? Because I don't know ANY game that has implemented that well, outside of PvP/RvR style action such as in DAOC. but that was still very limited in scope. The Game world didn't change, just who controlled certain areas and rewards. I do not enough of any large scale MMO that has implemented dynamic, player effected change on a PvE system. if that isn't what you mean by "real content", then you're going to have to spell it out for me, because you lost me. "If more repeatable content was viable then there would not be as many subs lost to endgame/leveling malaise." Again, I'm not talking about End Game. And even if I was, I'd 100% disagree with you, endless repeatable content is what drives "leveling malaise". then "oh god I'm going to be doing this same thing for months, there is no end in sight" feeling. I'll give you the disconnectedness between space and ground activities. I would like to see that disparity fixed as well. however, that doesn't change their viability for gaining xp while leveling. And you can farm mobs in SWTOR, and you do so for the same reasons you do anything in SWTOR. To gain xp and stuff. The fact that you don't think it's viable because it's "not the best" only illustrates my point that if you provide nothing but repeatable content in a game, people will find "the best" and camp the hell out of it. Also, Schematics do drop from mobs. They are just rare. And if you are a Bioanalyst or Scavenger, mats also drop from mobs. Hell, my main source of metals and compounds are robots, not nodes. Turning in a quest is approximately worth 10-15 mobs of the type you killed for the quest (except for End of Arc quests, which tend to be 20 times). So really, it's comparable for time spent traveling to and fro. Most people just notice the quest bump more because they turn in 3-4 at once. I'm willing to bet if you did nothing but kill the quest mobs, it'd be a wash on a long time line (like, the course of your character, not one or two play sessions.)

This thread again? So, I have a question. How is is functionally different to have 20 NPC's accepting 20 different types of trophies (pelts/teeth/ears/blasters/medals/etc), for xp, than to have 20 different NPC's giving quests that range from killing 10 space-badgers to planting 5 bombs, to click on this glowie behind 30 guys guarding it? It isn't. It's doing tasks to gain XP. It is functionally identical. The difference is one encourages farming/camping, and the other forces people to flow through an area and limits camp congestion. The problem with Trophy turn in's is invariably, someone figures out "the Best one" and competition for whatever drops it becomes fierce. You end up with rampant kill-stealing, spawn camping, and related problems. Sure you're free to move on to something else, but lets face it, when you have limited spawn camps, you're going to end up with player congestion. Sure, sometimes "being on the rails", limits your "personal choice" (not really, since you can always chose to ignore the rails and just grind mobs the old fashion way, but w/e.) but what it REALLY does, from a zone designer point of view, is create a "flow of traffic" through a zone. You know you're going to have X number of people in a zone at any given time, as you have volumes and volumes of player metrics telling you this. So you create static spawn camps, a sort of "squiggly line of quests"; A-D leading players around the zone in a timely fashion, in order to maximize the number of people you can have in an area, without too many of them tripping over each other and interfering with each other's leveling time. From a designer's stand point at least, theme-parks are the way to go. They facilitate a timely, measurable, predictable progress through a zone, and therefore they can more accurately measure how long an individual (approximately) will spend on a given planet, how much experience (approximately) they'll gain while there, and there for, how many zones, quests, etc, a player needs to progress a character to the level cap. And if it were just that, I would agree that theme-park games are boring. But SWTOR isn't just that. You have PvP, not only can you quest for XP, you can take time outs and play PvP warzones - providing alternate advancement xp, AND alternative Equipment rewards. Plus hey, another thing to chose from while leveling. You have optional 'Heroic' quest areas, which encourage grouping with other people leveling in the area for good rewards. Plus they encourage "pick up groups" (IE, whoever happens to be also on that quest line, rather than just your normal social clique) which has the potential to increase community interaction. Also, hey, another choice on the leveling road. You have Flashpoints. See Heroic Missions, only these do focus more on having a stable group of friends to play with, as they are infinitely repeatable. There is nothing stopping you from leveling solely on Flashpoints once you hit level 10 if you want the "camp and group" play style. With the added bonus of them being Instanced (IE, not out in the world), there is no chance for player congestion/killing stealing, etc. Did I mention this is one of your alternative choices for leveling? Space Missions. Hey look, good xp, good rewards, and don't look now, but this is a great alternative to the "on the rails" questing. Holocrons, Codex item hunting, xp rewards for opening up a new area of the map, and Hey, there is nothing saying you can't just beat up mobs for xp and credits until the cows come home. Add all of these things together and you, the player, have more choices for picking your own leveling path than ANY old school 'Sandbox" game.

as if the market wasn't already barren enough without making it even Easier than it is to have 7 crafting mules. Log out and log back in. have the decency to put up with at least SOME inconvenience

I think modern MMO's have fine communities. I also think that during the early days of EQ the community was just as elitist, snobbish, and exclusive as the good communities are today. I should know, I was part of it. We were young. We were also jerks. I was 22 when EQ hit the shelves. I was in college. I was a jerk. I had a necro, I also had a bard. and a druid. And a rogue. I never, once, found a problem getting a group with either my bard, or my rogue, despite the fact that I pissed off many people. The worst it ever was, I told an entire raid guild to piss off and wiped the raid because I was upset they snubbed me. Two days later I had an invite to a group run by one of the officers of that guild. Neither of us mentioned the incident. Whether his memory was that short, or he gave two ***** about what his guild thought of me, I never knew. (BTW, I am sorry now. I was 23 years old having a drunken temper tantrum. Like I said, I was young, I was a jerk.) So I don't buy any of that 'You had to have a good rep" nonsense. I had a terrible reputation. I did just fine. there were hundreds - thousands of people to play with. Because 50 of them hated me had zero impact on my ability to play the game. Nothing has changed. Community is there. Just like then, you have to go out of your way to participate in it. Just because you don't see it or feel it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

If you're talking about Project 1999, then the last time I looked (about 8 months ago) they were averaging 300ish people during peak times. Which isn't bad I guess, but also remember, free. How many of those people would be playing if they had to pay for it? I know at least three guys (the three that told me about it) that wouldn't. I agree, btw, that SWTOR has too many servers. The player base is spread to thin. It's being addressed, and I appreciate they aren't panicking and throwing open the transfer gates without looking at how to do it properly. I play on a pretty strong server, and I don't want to log in tomorrow to find that half of SWTOR is now on my server . On the other hand, i can sympathize with people wanting to gravitate to high pop ones. but that's a topic for another thread.

like the game or not, you can not claim WoW ruined the MMO genre. For one, the genre is doing better than ever. There are more choices for MMO style game play than any other point in video game history right now. Nine years ago, one person could claim to have played every MMO on the market extensively. Now, I'd be hard pressed to even NAME them all without google's help. MMO's make up a substantial market share of computer gaming, with no end in sight. Game publishers are pumping more money into MMOs than ever. Development teams are larger and more experienced than ever. In 2000, there were maybe three or four places on the internet to get your MMO news. Now, there are dozens, perhaps dozens of dozens; maybe even thousands if you count gaming blogs. The industry is as strong as it ever was, and stronger. Just because you don't care for the current trend in MMO development, does not mean the genre is failing. Far from it friend. And the current trend is SWTOR to a tee: face paced leveling, stream lined - action-oriented game play, with focus on the individual player being self-reliant, deep lore and back story, an evolving game environment, and a variety of ways to enjoy the game. The fact that SWTOR also has also focused on highly entertaining, immersive set of class stories, and fully voice-acted missions is icing on the cake. If you don't enjoy those things, I'm not sure what to tell you. When Adventure first came out on the Atari 2600, I played the hell out of it, and loved it. But once Final Fantasy III came out, I never looked at console RPG's the same way again; and I believe we're at least up to that in the MMO genre. In the coming years the industry is only going to evolve and get better. I for one am happy to be a gamer right now. I have a lot of choices, and I'm only going to get more, better ones, as time goes on. Is SWTOr perfect? No, no one is saying so. Do most of us want to take a step backward in gaming, and go back to the first few years of the industry? I would say no, and the market would seem to agree with me. If you don't think corporate marketing teams have a damn good idea about what the average gamer wants in an MMO, you're high. If you think a company would invest 200 million clams in a game without looking at market research, you're Keith F**king Richards. The MMO genre is not dead my friend. But it has evolved. Personally, i think for the better.

Completed the Sith Warrior, and found it to be epic. I agree totally with the above poster that it very much feels like you are an iconic part of the universe. I watched my friend go through Agent and spectated quite a few missions and was not as impressed. completed Chapter 1 on inquisitor and it's pretty good, as well as Trooper, which, not being a fan of war movies, i was kind of 'meh' about. By far though, my favorite is Smuggler. just finished Act II, and it's aMAZE-ing! *sing*. Exactly what I was hoping for with a Star Wars game. little Bit, Han, little bit Lando. Best lines in the game (see my sig) imo. Now if only the Scoundrel was up to par PvE wise with my Juggernaut, Sorcerer, and vanguard (but that's another thread, and i strike it from the record of this one.)

- Real world RvR, with a real impact on the world and rewards accordingly. Like DAoc Right? Where the relics gave XP bonuses, and opened up a PvE/PvP leveling zone with great rewards? Where one faction would control the relics for years, until the devs reset the server? (Bors, my DAoC server, Hibs controlled the relics for 2 years, until Albs hit a population boom and still control them to this day to my knowledge. My last contact with anyone on that server was 2 years ago.) - Public high level heroic / raid areas that require cooperation to achieve Like world bosses? I've done a few of those. On Coruscant, I got a nifty purple earpiece for my 15th level commando about 3 weeks ago. - at a smaller level, scalable events that will give an incentive for grouping instead of soloing Like Heroic Missions? Doesn't every planet have 4-5 of these, that are repeatable every 24 hours? And I was the best armorsmith on my SWG server. Because I also was a Master Smuggler, and sold my armor pre-sliced for reduced HAM stats. And yes, I know i was the best, I did comparative shopping constantly to make sure I was on top. and no, not everyone knew me, i sold out of a merchant friend's shop (because I had no skill space for the merchant tree) and had a few regular clients. but to this day when i talk to players who played on my server, no one remembers me. And I always had to pay nercos and in EQ. Because all the ones on my server were jerks unless you were in their guild. I was married to a 65 cleric with her water sprinkler. So i didn't need to shop around. I'm not saying that impact on a community isn't rewarding. I'm merely saying it's not on the devs to provide avenues for it.

Yeah. WoW looks dead to me. Man, I can't believe how it's instancing and lack of death penalties killed the MMO genre. Don't look now, I think there's some stupid kids getting on your lawn.

I get what you are saying. And I'll grant you the game is easy to solo. But I disagree on the lack of community. First off, even in the Hay-day of Everquest, the only community you had was one the players made for themselves. The game or devs did nothing to encourage or discourage it. Just being a player in EQ did not guarantee you access to the community. If you were introverted and didn't talk or socialize, you could still progress in the game by playing the right class, and no one would ever know you existed. I had a druid who's sole purpose was for me to solo when I was feeling anti-social. Got to 55. Never grouped. I also had a bard, who was 65, and grouped all the time. You had to activally participate in the community to even notice it was there. Using outside game resources. There were no 'Official' EQ forums, not at first anyway. You had to go to other, fan crated, sites to participate, or belong to the right channels (once they added channels) to be a part of this 'grand Community'. And even then, most servers, and I'll be yours was no different, were basically the same few dozen people. Organizing, chatting, putting the alliances together. Few dozen. Maybe even as high as 50 people on a high pop server. They were the ones organizing everything. Everyone else went along for the ride. Sure maybe there were a couple hundred people total in your alliance, but most of those people came and went unnoticed. Every server had a core group of community leaders that held everything together. Players. Not Devs. Not game mechanics. Players. Flash forward to now. SWTOR, WoW, maybe the next great one, ESO or something. They all have (or will have) great communities. But you have to know to look. You have to go out and participate. Being on the server doesn't guarantee you access. Most of them are using unofficial resources to organize and stay in touch. Fan sites, facebook pages, twitter, in-game chat channels. Just like old times. Players. Not Devs. Not game mechanics. Players. Players drive the community, and if the community sucks, it's not on the devs. It's on the players. If you don't think your server has a community, go out and look. Get involved and build one worth having. Keep your blackball lists if you think those make such community builders (they don't). Make a chat channel for guild alliances and flash point LFGs. Make sure other people know about it. You'll find the community is there. Regarding 'Your story is a predefined path from which you can not escape longer than a couple of lines in the dialog.". How is any other video game any different? Either you're a grain of sand in a sand box, and the only impact you have on the game is the impact on the community (see above), and not the game itself. Or there is plot that you can follow, and while it feels immersive to you while you are in it, you know it's not unique to you, because everyone else is doing the game thing. At least the later offers you the illusion of impacting the game (See the end of any Class's story line). big sand box games offer you no chance to impact the game world. Just the community. (Which again, is on the players, not the devs.) Video games are lines of code executed by machines. You're never goign to get a personal story unless you have a personal coder. At which point, go grab a case of beer, a few bags of chips, some dice, and some pencils and paper and invite some friends over for DnD night, because that's what you are really looking for. Skip the video games.

There is a difference, between arguing opinion vs opinion, and disagreeing with someone's opinion and resorting to insults. I may disagree with your (and those who share your opinion) but I didn't resort to insults. I was responding to a post that said the way I like to game makes my brain smaller; so yeah, I was insulted. I never said anyone was wrong. I never said anyone was stupid for liking one or the other. Calling someone out on their opinion is not the same as calling them stupid for their opinion. You started this discussion on an open public forum, don't be shocked when people disagree with you. And as I pointed out in my original response, and subsequent ones. Your apparent preferred style of gaming is freely available whenever you chose to avail yourself of it. If you chose to ignore the quest lines, you may do so. There are mobs. Go grind them. Find some friends who wish to do the same and hit a heroic area. Plenty of world bosses out there for you to have open world raids against if that's what you want. Get my point yet?

I find this demotivational to be relevant to this thread. http://verydemotivational.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/demotivational-posters-misfortune.jpg 50% of my EQ time felt like being the guy standing in on the sidewalk.

Wow, are you so far off track I don't even know where to begin. But I guess if you can't understand my point, calling me stupid is the way to deflect.

Nostalgia is fine. I enjoy being nostalgic now and then. "Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. " (From the "Wear Sunscreen Speech") That seems to me to be what people from "Camp #1" are doing. Picking the past up, painting over the ugly bits, and presenting it as more than it's worth. Sure EQ1 was fun - for it's day. So were MUDs, the things EQ copied from. Everquest's core mechanics were taken whole cloth from DikuMUD code. It even had some of the same error messages. Which is fine. I loved MUDs. I ran up huge bills back in the mid 90's when CompuSERVE and Delphi still charged for internet access by the hour. Good times. And so was EQ, good times. Back then. Do I have fond memories of it? Sure, even some of the bad ones make me laugh now. Time and distance does that for all things. You gloss over the bad, and remember only the good. We're human, that's how we work. But would I want to play that way again now? Hell no. Does that make me a carebear? Uhm, no? I PvP all the time. I've put in enough hours to make War hero if only i could stick to a single toon. (but alas, I am too much of an alt-whore). Carebear = not PvPer in my understanding of the term. But I think you mean it to mean "doesn't like things to be too hard." Which is also not the case. I like hard encounters. I like figuring out how to do hardmode stuff. And unlike an encounter in EQ, you can't just add more people to a tough encounter in this game. You have to figure out a better way of doing things, or get better gear, or probably both. Or maybe you mean that I don't like exposing myself to the chance of other players deliberately spoiling my fun. If that's the case, then I'll agree that I don't like that. I don't think the virtual equivalent of being dumpstered, 'enhances' the 'good times'. I have plenty of good times without being forced by game mechanics to deal with jackholes. Defeated a tough boss is just as rewarding in an instance as it is in the open world. I don't need the added 'fun' of three or four *********s getting off on ruining twenty people's evening by abusing game mechanics while we're fighting the boss. You seem to be under the impression that having a detailed, linear story 'takes away' from the leveling experience. I disagree with your premise. I think having Eight highly detailed, rich class quests gives infinity more replayability than siting at the same camps your previous characters sat at, doing the exact same things. EQ was merely about the math. XP per hour. anything beyond that was something you the player sought out with other players. And that is something not dependent on the game, that's on you. You think there is nothing to explore in the 'theme park' zones. I disagree; and the presence of holocrons, codex lore items, and the like would seem to agree with me. I don't remember EQ having rewards for exploring a zone. Best case scenario, you found a new camp to sit at for a few hours. Worst case, you lost your corpse in an unknown spot and spent the next few hours looking, or paid off a necro to summon it. You seem to think that going afk in a zone and getting killed because someone brought a huge giant over to you adds to the fun; risk factor. I guess you've never had to go afk because a child or pet threw up on the floor, and came back to find a corpse and the last 4 hours of xp work undone. That's not fun, that's adding insult to injury. You seem to think that Quality of Life enhancements detract from the game, and once again I have to disagree. I think quality of life features are just that; they improve the quality of my game life. I've made the run to the shuttle port once already, now I've unlocked the flight point, I don't need to make the run EVERY time now. Once is enough for me to experience the thrill of exploration. Everything else is just a time sink. TL;DR. I like horse back riding too. but when making a road trip to Powell's books in Portland. I like doing it in a couple of hours, with my iPod hooked into the car stereo and the AC on. I don't need to take a week long horse back ride through the wilderness, with no electricity or indoor plumping to enjoy the journey. And frankly, I just don't have the time for it either. I'll keep my car. You can keep your horse.