I've bought into that game and I'm anxiously awaiting future updates. It certainly shows promise. Now, if you have a couple hours, let me sit down and tell you about ALL the MMOs that initially appeared to have promise and delivered far short of the hype ... But seriously, Cloud Imperium was founded in 2011 by Chris Roberts. For those that don't know the name, he worked on the original Wing Commander along with Privateer and Freelancer. Anyone who's enjoyed older space based PC games likely knows his work. In late '12 they started the crowd funding aspect. As of now, they have eclipsed $20m in crowd funding. The game is being built with CryEngine3. Currently what's available to backers is the "Hangar Module". You get to walk around your hangar and view and enter your ship. Current updates trickling in are allowing users to add certain items to their hangars. That's it. End of list. So far ... The dog fighting module is expected later this year. They are slowly releasing portions of the game as they get to alpha stages for the backers to play around with and help bug test. True beta of the game is not expected until late '14 if not mid-'15. So too Hazed, building a "complete" game in two years ... not quite. Nice try though. And again, they are developing for a specific engine they've selected. They are not taking something that has thousands, if not millions of little things that all interact in an existing engine and then trying to move all that over to a new one and making sure every single one of those things still works as intended. I truly hope Roberts delivers on everything he's been touting because it should be very fun if so. So ... CryEngine3 viable for a MMO? Sure. Does it change ANYTHING about the difficulty in moving an existing game over to it? NO.

Porting a game ... I don't it means what you're assuming it means. In reference to what you linked, it is the scenario say of making Half-Life 3 (*cough* you listening Valve?) initially for Windows platforms and then PORTING it to say Mac or the consoles. In no way does it mean switching the underlying ENGINE, merely going through the inconsistencies of how one OS/platform handles the Engine. It seems you're suggesting that switching the engine a game is designed around is little more trouble than using DOSBox to get a Win 98 game to run on Win 7. 1) That's hardly the case 2) If it were even REMOTELY true then there would be a plethora of developer studios lining up to do just that to their aging titles. Imagine if it was as simple as you suggest ... Warhammer would NEVER have to had been made by Mythic as they could have just dropped DAoC into the CryEngine2 (at the time) and BAM! (like Emeril) had a gorgeous looking, up to date version of their much loved PVP based mmorpg. And now today they could in turn be simply dropping it into CryEngine3 while continuing to add content and better tweak an existing game with an established playerbase. Just simply kick it up a notch ... yanno, switch out to the new Engine. Funny, while plenty of games have had "graphical updates" where they've improved on somethings like polygon counts, etc., I can't think of any MMOs off the top of my head (so I'm guessing it's rare, if it's ever happened) where they've completely swapped out the underlying engine to a completely new and different one post-launch. So yeah, it must be pretty trivial to do and seen industry-wide as completely viable and economical solution to issues they are confronted with staying with the engine a game is built around.

Pretty much agree. But then it's not really any different than the rules in their TOS regarding language use in game and what goes on nightly in game. If their code is semi-intelligent enough to place asterisks on words it thinks are bad, then logging who said it for later review should be a fairly simply step. It's not people are saying in general chat that I care about. It's the idea of what's the point of stating rules if you have no intent to enforce them.

So if you buy a car and the dealer tells the car being delivered to you will be all-wheel drive and have leather interior and when it comes in you discover without any forewarning from the dealer, it has 2-wheel drive and cloth interior, do you simply happily take the keys from them or do you question what happened from when you agreed on what was to be included and what you're being presented with? This is NOT a case where the OP and others simply feel that because they pay $15/mo they deserve more. This IS a case where Bioware said, "Hey, we'll have something cool for you soon" and never deliver on it. The first is a consumer setting false expectations and then disappointed because reality doesn't match what their dreamed up expectations were. And admittedly that happens a LOT on game forums. The latter is a company setting the expectation by their own communication but, when they fail to deliver on it or even communicate a reason/excuse/apology, some of their consumers get upset. And that is the case here. Personally, I'm back after nearly a year of time off simply to kill some time seeing some class stories to completion while I wait for Wildstar, ESO and further out, Star Citizen. So for me, I really don't care except to point out the fallacy of your attack on the OP's statement.

The OP and I guess those feeling as he remind me of a very old Bloom County comic. It's a shame so many people walk around with a cinder block size chip on their shoulder, waiting for the slightest perceived transgression so it can be blown way out of proportion, and then play the victim. It would be laughable really if it wasn't so pathetic. If the statements made by the devs represent the gravity of things in your life that make you feel like less of a person and deserving of an apology then I feel sad for you and pity the children you may be currently or eventually raising. Because I have zero hope they'll be able to cope with the backhands that reality will dish out in their lives. Do us a favor and climb down from your cross, take the wood from it, build a bridge and get over it.

The only way those you're accusing are being actual "loot ninjas" is if the group leader made it clear at the outset of the heroic/FP what the expected loot rules are. If no one spoke up then you do not have a legitimate complaint as you and everyone else in the group simply assumed what was going to be the norm. And since you didn't state that the loot rules for the group were spelled out I'm guessing that didn't happen. To expect people to conform to your ideals without ever stating your ideals is a fool's errand.

For me it comes down to simply am I having enough "fun value" for the money spent. Sub-based MMOs, if they're a fun game with engaging content, enough replayability to allow me to be an altoholic and decent enough to attract enough of my guildmates to play, I'll happily pay. Even if my schedule allows me to only play it 10hrs a week (which lets face it, is probably a low average for many MMO players) would equate to roughly thirty-eight cents and hour. Even watching movies at a "second run" theater is more expensive than that. And if the game is not engaging with something making me want to come back, then regardless of business model I won't be playing it long. Case in point: I walked away from SW:TOR just over a year ago after having played regularly from beta up until then. Dabbled with some other things for a bit and sort of came back to MMOs with Neverwinter, a F2P game. Got one character to max, didn't see much else I wanted to do, ESO and Wildstar were still months from being released so I re-subbed to SW:TOR to try and finish some story lines I hadn't finished previously. And so far am having fun with that. *shrug* It's an individual call but, I think if players are going by the mantra of "Well, Guild Wars 2 is F2P so to heck with any other game that doesn't go with that model" are shooting themselves in the foot and risk not playing some fun games. But, to each their own. If you're having fun, $15 is cheap entertainment. If you're not having fun then free or otherwise, while are you playing?

Agreed with the poster above in that the others just become inactive. And you can toggle which are active/inactive. Not sure if there's a cool down on it to keep you from cycling through all 12 say to send companions on crew missions by toggling them that way. If you're a crafter though, the bigger inconvenience (at least it was to me) was being scaled back to just 2 crew skills rather than three per char. I'm back to being a sub after nearly a year off so I guess in their eyes the limitations work if it drives people like me to resub vs. just using preferred status.

This is a pretty good list. Since you hint at money not being a huge factor, you might want to consider a SSD OS drive. They've finally consistently fallen under the $1/gb threshold so having a 128gb or 256gb one as an OS drive with enough room for a favorite game should at least be a consideration. Echo another person's statement, don't buy from Best Buy. Someone else suggested looking at Cyberpower PC which is where my latest desktop came from. Decent service and lots of options. When you're researching everything else like CPU, GPU etc. do not skimp on researching your case. While there are plenty of cases that are decent, there are some that truly suck at good cooling, while others really excel at it. You don't want to just select a case on looks alone. A few good brands to start with for consideration are Antec Corsair, and Cooler Master. My latest rig is in a Cooler Master 692 and the previous one that's about five years old is in an Antec 900 (pre-USB 3.0 upgrade). Both have been excellent for staying cool. One that's a little easier on the pocketbook but a solid performer is the Antec 300. And if you go the route of ordering your own parts for someone to build for you (as opposed to a site like CyberPower PC) then do your homework and make sure your graphics card fits into your selected case. Some graphics cards are quite long and depending on the placement/orientation of the HDD brackets/cage can butt up against it or not fit at all. Happy shopping!

As others have hinted at, for $600 you're looking at a re-manufactured/refurbished unit to get any kind of decent entry level gaming laptop. The other option is resorting to a graphics chipset instead of a dedicated card. If you end up going that route make sure you get the latest version of it as I have seen some reports that Intel is making some decent headway with theirs, and get either as much memory as you can (nothing less than 6gb) OR make sure there's a spare slot to upgrade later. The latter suggestion because the chipset graphics is going to share system ram for its memory needs. Going the chipset route likely means she'll be playing the game on medium settings at best to achieve any kind of sustained acceptable FPS in moderately to heavy congested areas. To give you an idea, Intel's HD 4600 according to testing at the site linked below will get you over 40fps in Skyrim on low settings but, drops to around 7fps on Ultra. The 4600 is not the latest Intel chipset mind you but, maybe a common one found at your price range. Looks like the Intel 5200 Iris Pro gets some decent results (for a non-card solution) in some games but, not all. It manages 30+fps in Bioshock: Infinite at high (not ultra) settings. Be sure to compare the resolutions those are at too as not many are listed at full HD 1920x1080. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html No idea how laptops with those chipsets in them are priced. And aside from refurbs you're not going to find much with a dedicated card until you start pushing the $800 budget level or higher.

You realize his initial list didn't have any SSD budgeted. My suggestions merely put him in at about the same price rig that will still bulldoze any game out there AND get him the benefit of SSD for an OS drive though with the savings on the CPU and memory I suggested he could likely get a 128gb one. Obviously if you can afford to then buy a large enough one to hold your favorite games or, at least the ones requiring heavy read/writes while playing.

Yes. But, I would punt back to an i5-3570 and 8gb of memory and with the savings add a SSD OS drive (like a 60gb) instead. You may also want to consider an nVidia 770 vs the 680. They're about the same price. http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-770-vs-GeForce-GTX-680

And in the end, regardless of how a class system is put in place, there is a subset of the playerbase that just loves to crunch numbers and use spreadsheets, combat logs, etc. to get what the best spec choices are . You can be unique in this game, three trees per advanced class, more options per tree than points to spend so place them how you want. BUT ... the only people who do that anymore are the so called casuals/n00bs who don't care about being the alleged elite players. And the only way you're going to avoid that is to remove things like combat logs/exports, training dummies, etc. Because as long as there are ways for those players to determine that putting point X into attribute Y rather than skill Z results in a more optimal character, the class system a developer puts in will be moot. Because the sheep that is so many players these days will simply flock to whatever site is supposedly boasting the best in depth class analysis and just copy what every skill/attribute/rotation the so called "best' are using.

Here's a site I've used when comparing notebook video cards. You can see benchmark results for specific cards as well as reported performance for several games at different settings. My current laptop has an nVidia 460m GTX in it and it played SWTOR pretty decent with the settings dialed back (core i7 1.87ghz, 8gb ram, 160gb ssd). And you're looking at a 650m. I would think from what I see that a 650m GT would play SWTOR okay on medium~ish settings. Usually the first thing you look to dial back is stuff like anti-aliasing and shadows/particles/ground debris. http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-460M.33612.0.html You can also use this page on that site to see some comparisons between selected cards. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html The older card in my machine is ahead on shader/memory speed compared to the 650 BUT, your overall 3DMark scores are a bit above mine so again, I think you'd be okay. What you may find more of an issue is good wireless speeds depending where you stay on your travels, especially if you're trying to competitively PvP.

While you can absolutely game well on a laptop, you're not going to be able to do it on a $600 budget as this time sadly. In most cases, the lower end of gaming laptops is going to start around $800 and go up from there. Something like the following Toshiba and Sager models is around the entry level end of gaming laptop systems. Toshiba - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834216541 Sager - http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_customed&model_name=NP4650 A company/site like Sager is going to give you a lot more options obviously than going through a place like NewEgg or brick-n-mortar like a Best Buy and buying an off the shelf laptop. Pros of a gaming laptop? Portability. If you are in need of frequently traveling and still wanting to get your game on, then investing in a good gaming laptop can be a worthwhile purchase. Cons of a gaming laptop? Short batter life, tend to run MUCH warmer and cost. Also, depending on HDD options, less storage. Any laptop you plan on doing any serious type of gaming with will require it to have a dedicated graphics card. As a result price goes up, as does heat output and conversely, battery life tanks due to the extra drain on it. I'm lucky if I can get an hour to an hour and a half with my Sager unplugged as opposed to others enjoying several hours of use on their non-gaming laptops before needing to plug it in. Also, unless you go with a larger 17" or 19" laptop (which further ups the cost but can support dual drives) you're going to have to choose between the performance and lesser space of a SSD or more space of a traditional HDD but, not as peppy. With a desktop, you can go the route of having a small SSD OS drive (like say 60gb) and then a nice fat 2TB drive for plenty of storage. I'm currently happy with my Sager (15.6", full HD, core i7 1.87ghz, 8gb ram, 1.5gb nVidia 460m, 160gb ssd) that is now a few years old. It played TOR okay during beta and early release. I've since got a new desktop at home and since I'm traveling less these days, probably won't feel a need to upgrade my laptop aside from upgrading the SSD in it to a 500 or 750 sized one down the road. Which brings up one last point. Your gaming laptop? You can upgrade/add more memory (providing the motherboard supports more than it initially came with) and you can upgrade the HDD/SSD and if need be, likely replace the media drive. Other than that, you're not going to be upgrading it to "freshen it up" in 2-3 yrs when that new MMO comes out you're dying to play and your laptop chokes on the reqs. TLDR - for $600, go with a desktop. You'll be MUCH happier with the results.

The other thing I left out of my original post is peoples' base personality. With regards to PuGs (guild runs tend to have a bit more organization and predefined etiquette/rules) you have any mix of the following personalities: anti-social: they don't know you, don't care about you and are going to roll need on every single drop just because they can bitter PuGger: similar to anti-social but, rolls need in PuGs because it's happened so much to them that instead of bucking the system they conformed to the greedy Meek/Shy/Insecure: rarely rolls need for fear of risking offending someone in the group, even if they don't know them. Tends to roll greed on things they can actually use and passes on everything else Altruistic roll for active char only: Only rolls need on what they can equip at that particular moment. Passes on everything else. Typical roll for active char only: Rolls need for active char, greed for companion/alts and passes on everything else Altruistic this char+comp: Rolls need on just what that char/comp and use and usually just for favored soloing companion. Passes on everything else. Typical char+comp: Rolls need for active char and companion. May only need for most used companion. Greed rolls for alts and/or remaining companions. Passes on rest. Lazy (or just need the coin from sell off): Greed rolls on everything regardless if they, their companion or any of their alts can use There are probably others or some that are more a mix of those. Which between peoples gaming motives plus their own personalities, the variety of player you're going to meet can be great. Which is why the best suggestion for PuGs is still to always discuss loot before killing the first mob. Personally, I try to always ask before we enter and the roll accordingly. Barring that I tend to greed on most things until elder-game because there's little that drops while leveling that you either a) can't get an as good or better crafted item fairly easily OR that you wouldn't be upgrading again in the next couple days of playing anyways. The vast majority of leveling in this game definitely does not require in any way a character-companion duo decked out in mostly highest level gear they can wear. Most times I have items that lag anywhere from 3-8+ levels behind my chars level. Not everything but, usually several and have few if any problems while leveling. Elder game again it's a discussion first. Because to me, while I can feel right and just about what my views of fair are, I know they may not be everybody else's and to me personally, the most rude thing you can do to be me in an MMO is waste my time. And so in turn, I feel I should try not to waste others' time. That doesn't mean I look to only group with elite players. Hardly the case since I don't consider myself one. Playing with lesser experienced people I do not view as a waste of my time. But, thinking the loot rolls are going to be X and finally something drops that I've been pining for and someone else goes against the accepted loot agreement and wins it? Now you've just wasted my time. The caveat to that though is, NEVER ASSUME. Because I also believe that in that scenario if you did not at least try to discuss the loot rules at the beginning of that run, as much as you want to point the finger at someone else, the only person to blame is the man in the mirror.

But T7 says he+jedi = unstoppable What I usually find as the case is that someone goes from playing a pure dps class to one that can tank and get the feeling they are killing things slower and hence, the class is weaker. Those players need to realize that one of the balancing acts devs use is that if you can withstand more damage coming in, you likely won't put as much dps. It's rare in any game that the best mitigator of dps also tops the dps-out charts.

Because people do not play solely one way in a game. Solo/group, PvE/PvP, craft, explore, etc etc etc. This discussion has been going on in this game since beta. Some people view their companions as an extension of their character. Neither you, nor anyone else, is going to convince them that they are not. Nor is you asserting that those people are wrong in their thinking going to do anything but further drive the wedge in. There is no rule that states your companion is not a part of your character. In fact information about the game tends to point in the opposite direction. However, some people get all bent out of shape when they lose a loot roll to someone who is going to use that item on their companion. Worse, if the item is not bind-on-pickup (BoP), there's nothing saying the person might *gasp* mail it to an alt. Oh the horror. Add to that some player's view of being a completionist is getting their companions geared as best as possible. Nowhere in the game does it state the only way to gear a companion is commendations, vendor bought gear or drops outside of FPs/OPs. The ONLY player that "rule" exists is in the minds of players trying to better their own odds at winning a loot roll. So, with the fact now established that different people are going to view the companion issue differently, how should you proceed? There are two courses of action that will help you dramatically reduce the issue of a "ninja". 1. Join a guild that has similar views on looting and do FPs/OPs only or primarily with them. This tends to yield the best chances. 2. Before starting a pick-up-group (PuG) run be sure to state in group chat what the intended loot rules are. If you're not the leader and they say rolling for companions/alts is acceptable, leave the group. If you are the group leader you can dictate the rules you like. If someone breaks them, add to your ignore list. Bottom line is, if the game/developer itself dictates what overall loot rules are OR even goes so far as to suggest what "proper loot etiquette" is, then people losing rolls to folks defying those have a gripe. I've yet to play a game where, outside of actually hacking, a player could defy existing coded in loot rules. And I've never played one where the developers stated any sort of "loot etiquette". And since your subscription is only for your own account, your telling someone else what is right/wrong when it comes to playing the game within the developers guidelines is akin to peeing in the wind.

In my opinion, Blizzard did it both very right and very wrong in their mechanics for add-ons. What they did right: Essentially created a language in which they controlled what aspects of the games data the players could access and display in the add-ons created. Why this is "right": Because it puts the developers in direct control of what can and cannot be displayed in player created add-ons. In other words, if they discover a particular series of player created add-ons is trivializing content they can simply remove the data items from the available list which in turn breaks the add-on. What they did wrong: Too much combat-centric data was made available to utilize in the add-ons which resulted in many being created to make combat (either PvE or PvP) easier What that is "wrong": Because they can give unfair advantage to those using them over those that don't which, if Blizzard wanted everyone to have that functionality they should have just added it to the game themselves. And it also creates a culture in many guilds of "You must be running X, Y and Z add-ons if you want to raid with us" which is simply stupid and lazy (again, in my opinion.) As well as it can trivialize a good amount of the PvE content. So to me, things like Deadly Boss Mods (DBM), Healbot, etc. should have had their data ties neutered to prevent them being able to be created at all. On the flip side, add-ons like Altoholic, Gatherer and Enchantrix/Auctioneer are exactly the kinds of Quality of Life add-ons that should be allowed to be created. Again, for me it all starts with the developers taking control of what tie-ins to the API the modders are allowed access to and being both smart and judicious about choosing the data the modders can in turn, display in their add-ons. To paraphrase the old knight guarding the Holy Grail in the Indiana Jones movie, "They chose poorly."

Some random points about your allegations ... Your laptop? Was new? With what you call a higher end graphics card? And the game was unplayable? My 15" Sager laptop was one year old when TOR launched and had one notch down from best high end card AT THE TIME of purchase (nVidia 460 mobile) and it played TOR with no problems on mostly high settings getting 25+ fps everywhere but congested fleet and in most cases 40-60+ in low-to-moderate pop areas. My desktop that ran it fine was bought in the fall of 2008 with a pair of nVidia 260 GTX (orig, pre-Fermi) in SLI. So I 3 yr old gaming desktop and 1 yr old gaming laptop didn't have a problem OTHER than their graphics optimization which they improved on. And that 3yo desktop (now pushing 4yo) was running 4gb of ram, no solid-state drive and a Core 2 Quad (Intel 9400). Not exactly really flashy hardware when TOR launched. The simple reality is this. If you're going to play computer games you are at times going to be faced with either upgrading or out right buying a new rig. Unlike an XBox 360 or PS3 where the graphics capabilities are locked in place for the shelf life of the unit, PC hardware is constantly improving. Graphics cards with more capabilities, faster CPUs, faster and larger quantities of memory, faster access hard drives, etc etc. Developers are going to take advantage of these things to provide better visuals in their games. And unlike a stand-alone game where developers have MUCH greater control of how many things are being rendered on a screen at once, MMOs have a much more difficult time of this. Consider this: A large guild in a MMO could have 100 members or more descend on a single location for a guild meeting ... when was the last time you had 100 npcs/mobs in Skyrim rendered on the screen at once. MMOs already cut some corners graphically to make situations like that work ... through things like lesser graphics than what you see in some single player games, instancing, etc. Now personally I found TOR looking much better than say WoW. HOWEVER, I don't think TOR could have released with 7yr old WoW graphics just to appease those who can't buy even a decent 3yo computer. As for grouping and things like WoW I find it amusing how everyone assumes that a) if it was in game X before it has to be in every new game and b) just because it existed in a game previously means the source code on how to implement it is freeware just out there waiting to be utilized. Now then, some would say, and I over time became one of them, that this game is too much like WoW. Fun leveling experience and then a rinse-n-repeat of end-game content for the gear grind. Insert *yawn* here. I spent 7 yrs at that and many folks coming to this game spent several years doing that. We were hoping for something a bit different. What we got was decent voice overs to some engaging character story lines ... and then WoW with light sabers. People complain about it lacked a group finder. Actually TOR had one, it just wasn't the most intuitive and feature rich. As opposed to when WoW launched ... NO group finder. People complained about the GTN interface. When WoW launched the auction houses in different cities weren't even linked but that worked just fine. Took Blizzard 6yrs+ to allow players to wear the gear they wanted look wise with the stats of better gear. Was addressed MUCH earlier by BioWare. Was TOR perfect? Hardly. But then, no MMO is. But I don't think the things you're harping on are the nail in the coffin you think they are.

Each style has its merits and each has it's potential pitfalls, especially when done to nearly the exclusion of the other. People interested in RPing in a game tend to gravitate towards wanting a sandbox game or at least a plethora of sandbox features in the game. And by RPing I do not mean simply that the game is a RPG where you assume the role of a hero or at least a large supporting role to the heroic movement of the side of the story you're on. By RPing I mean people who want to be able to delve into the game and feel not that they're just passing through a living, breathing world but are actually part of what makes it a living, breathing world. It's the difference in being the warrior coming into town and there's plenty of hustle-n-bustle of NPCs going about their daily lives and you can interact with some/most/all of them OR, the warrior coming into town, going into his/her house and swapping out their adventuring gear for perhaps a costume and instrument to go perform some place in town, or swapping into crafter's gear and plying their trade when they're not off somewhere bashing in skulls, setting them afire or keeping the rest of the folks doing that healthy. That whole RPing style of gameplay does not appeal to everyone though. It can be similar to discussing favorite authors where one likes a writer that takes time (and a lot of pages) describing in great detail the backdrops for all the plot that takes place in the book. Which usually results in the story moving along at a slower pace. Meanwhile the other person favors the author that keeps them on the edge of their seat from one point of action to the next in a book. Or if it's movies, one where a lot of attention is paid to character development while the plot slowly unfolds around them while the other is an escapist joyride of near non-stop action, car/ship chases, explosions, shootouts and decapitations. Neither view is wrong. Neither defines what is considered entertainment. Both sides are simply what people favoring them are willing to pay for to be entertained. Back to games, when one comes out that heavily goes down only one path, they tend to isolate those players hoping there would have been more of the other. It's exactly how I felt in SWG. There were certainly some cool aspects to the game BUT, after only a month or two I felt there was absolutely nothing in the game that I wanted to do. There wasn't much of story/plot points that I hadn't seen and what little the devs were putting in was consumed extremely quickly. Meanwhile, while it was fun (for a bit) to invest in a robust crafting system, decorate my houses or just hang out fishing with guildies, it also became very quickly "been there, done that, what's next"? And that's just it there was no "next" And the same accusation can be leveled at most theme park games. You reach level cap, defeat each of the end game instances once and then what? Oh yeah ... gear grind for ... For your gear to get "reset" by an expansion and rinse/repeat the whole hamster wheel again of gain a few levels then repeat "end-game" instances to get gear. Don't get me wrong. Some of the artwork and what not can make those instances a lot of fun ... the first couple of times. But, like the fishing (or dancing, instrument playing, crafting, house decorating, etc.) it can get old fairly quickly. And in the case where only one of those is really fleshed out in a game, you reach that "it got old fairly quickly" point and there isn't the other aspects of the game to invest your time in. Which leads to burn out, seeking other games and eventually unsubscribing. Themepark aspects of these games at least tend to serve a purpose, even if the purpose isn't always the best idea (ie. revolving gear grinds.) They tend to advance a story line or at the least, result in equipping you with some decent gear you can use in the next instance. Sandbox elements sometime though do not have a purpose. To SOE's credit, at least many of theirs did. Player housing coupled with merchant skill options provided a means for players to sell their craftables beyond the means provided by the auction house. As opposed to some games where housing is just tacked on because the developers hear that's a feature a lot of players like but, aside from a player being able to say I have a house, it doesn't serve much purpose. I think there is a distinct opportunity for some developer to really do it up right. However, I think we're destined to see many more doing it wrong first before someone comes along with the right formula, at least my idea of it.

Same story, different game. Same solution ... Brief conversation before the run commences can eliminate the vast majority of drama in an instance run unless you're saddled with a jerk who's just hellbent on causing drama. But, for whatever reason, no matter how many times they get burned themselves or read about it happening to other players, people still tend to want to assume that everyone else plays the game exactly the same way they do and utilize the same logic/common sense/utopian vision for loot rules and general conduct.

And that may be part of TOR's problem. Release with numbers rivaling some of the big boys BUT, may end up having numbers where their true peers are ones that have been out for ages. Keep in mind that added content for TOR with the voice acting is likely to run a higher bill than typical MMOs of the past. Which likely means their threshold population of what's maintainable to keep things running is higher than others unless it gets condemned to just being in "maintenance mode". And nobody here knows what that minimum is ... 50k subs? 100k subs? More? Less? How many justify the overhead and ongoing development? Oh and add Asheron's Call 2 to the list of past games saying "Hi" from beyond the MMO-grave.

Having just pressed [Cancel] a couple days ago, whether they go this route or not may be moot for me. I haven't written off returning but, no set plans to. If they went F2P, I may return to see the end of my class stories but, that's about all I'm interested in at the moment. And that aspect of the game plays like a single player RPG and I have Skyrim and others in my Steam library I haven't finished, or some I haven't touched, to satisfy my desire to play something in the genre. As for F2P models in general, since I'm not a person who likes being nickled-n-dimed with bunches of separate fees, the ones I prefer are ones that offer you a "premium" type service at a monthly fee like current subs OR f2p where you then purchase the additional content on an as-need/want basis. As well as the premium style might contain additional perks like 1 or 2 more char slots, etc. What I will never play in a F2P setting is real-cash-for-in-game-advantage system. I don't play "Keeping up with the Jones" in RL with my money and I'll be damned if I do it in an online game.

SSDG Same *stuff* Different Game This discussion comes up in every game with a similar loot system. A few things to keep in mind: 1) Regardless if you think them greedy, a jerk, antisocial, or any other adjective you wish to throw in there, not everyone is going to necessarily define "need" and "greed" the same way you (that's a general "you") do 2) The OP called it "the honor system" but, it still boils down to one person assuming others are going to play by the same definitions of things that they do. If you truly want less drama and/or hurt feelings over loot issues there's one simple rule ... NEVER ASSUME. 3) Which leads to point three. If you join a run and nobody, including yourself, discusses how loot is to be handled prior to the first mob (or boss) being dropped, then before you think of blaming someone for rolling need on something you think they shouldn't have, look in the mirror and realize you could have said one or two simple things at the start of the run to potentially change that outcome. You chose not to, you take your chances. 4) Last, there are jerks out there that no matter if everyone is in agreement at the beginning of a run, they still might "ninja" something. I use the term "ninja" for those instances when a player has agreed to roll for loot one way and then opts to roll differently to benefit themselves. I do NOT use the term when nobody has said a word about expected loot rules for the run and somebody rolls "Need" to simply strip out mods or sell it to a vendor. As I started out saying, your definition of "need" isn't going to be everybody's. Last two word reminder ... Never assume