Complete speculation on how BW will implement transfers on the OP's part. *shrug* Blizzard initially had targeted servers. They would group 4 or 5 low-pop servers and announce this is your destination for a free move. Moving 1-1 low-pop to low-pop makes little sense. Allow a few low-pop to move to a new home makes more as you're more likely to end up with larger numbers on the target. But whatever, not too concerned. I play/group with my guild and rarely PvP. So aside from occasionally looking for the odd non-guild person to round out a group, my interaction with non-guildies is completely random circumstance of being in a same place at same time with same quest objective as a stranger and ask "Want to pair up to take down X?" As for other titles ... 7 years of WoW and since cancelling my account, I've looked at their forums all of two times and haven't considered buying MoP expac at all. Leaving behind ten 85s, one of each class. I think moving to this game broke the shackles of WoW. GW2 holds zero interest to me. The previously mentioned game means I've had my fill of fantasy based MMOs for a bit and if I feel a need to jump into a fantasy universe I've got Skyrim loaded that I'm only scratched the beginning of. TSW - holds a bit of interest but ... it's FunCom. I was not pleased at all with how they handled Age of Conan as it was one of the worst launches I've experienced. That's not to say I might not give that game a try but I won't be pre-ordering or getting in at launch. I'll be biding my time and see what folks are saying 2-4 weeks into the game.

So if it was free you'd log in to be bored instead of finding something you find more enjoyable? Not sure I understand that logic If you're going to be bored you're going to be bored. What you pay for it is irrelevant. I'll get up and walk out on a crappy movie in a theater just as quickly as I'll change the channel on a crappy movie on TV at home. There are lots of other MMOs out there and many times that amount of single player/co-op play computer games. Why the heck would you play something that is going to bore you when there's so much else out there? If you're having fun, play. If you're not, unsub. It's really that simple.

And it wouldn't matter if they phrased it that way or not. The ignorant portion of the playerbase, which is seemingly both large and growing, would see just two things in it ... "Server transfers" and whatever date they put in and INSTANTLY take that as a promise by BW that server transfers would be available on or before that date. And then get so much more negative press than they already receive because they missed that date. Since the days of Asheron's Call 2 nearly 10 years ago and through several MMOs in between, it is very VERY rare that the devs give any sort of target date unless they absolutely know on their end that it's when it's going live barring something catastrophic.

Found the quote I was referring to though it was in response to a different question ... "I’d like to allow any gear to reverse engineer for discoveries, but there’s a limit to how many recipes players can acquire. We’re looking at ways to improve that and apply systems more universally, but it’s not currently possible." That's from the latest Q&A, response to next to last question: http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-may-11th-2012

There was a dev comment someplace recently regarding there currently being a schematic limit that a player could learn. Part of the issue possibly (just a supposition on my behalf) is that due to the number of enhancements that a player with artifice learns, specifically the last three tiers of it, combined with the potential to then learn blue and then purple versions of them, may push our profession close to that limit. I know when I recently made the push from low 300s to 400 artifice over a couple of days that I was shocked by all the upper level enhancement diversity ... something like 46 of them I think iirc? And there's at least 2 if not 3 tiers of those you learn from the trainer. They didn't state what the cap number was in the post I read but, did say something about looking into ways for increasing it. Which only makes sense if they have any plans to expand crafting beyond its current schematics if players are coming close to the cap. Incidentally, Cybertechs I believe are in the same boat regarding this as artificers.

"Spoiled" might be not quite the right term though it's fairly close to me. Jaded with a touch of rose colored glasses is better, especially when you jump to a fresh, new game from one that's had years of seasoning. For whatever reason, many players as time goes by tend to forget the bumps in the road that most/all MMOs have in their beginning and rally around what was good. To me, while it's a fair comparison to consider what game A that's been out for 3, 5, or 7+ years to game B that just came out, I think it's an unfair criticism to belittle the new game for all that it lacks when what it's being compared to had as little, or even less, when it launched. Regardless of what it is that's perceived as lacking, it all takes time to design, code and test. We could have easily been just hearing whispers that beta would be commencing this Fall rather than playing a decently stable (note, I did not say "perfectly" stable) game for the past five months. But people come from other games where they take for granted certain features and then complain they're not in the new game yet. "WoW had dual specs, how could we not have them here?" - Didn't get added until first patch post Wrath of Lich King expac (3.1) ... April'09 or 4.5yrs after launch "SWG had space flight not on rails. How come we don't here?" - Didn't get added until the JTL expac was released ... 16 months after initial launch "WoW had cross-realm dungeon finder. Where's our cross-realm LFG?" - you may have been using it for two years in WoW before coming to TOR so it felt as comfortable as an old hat ... and you waited for 5 years for Blizzard to add it (patch 3.3) "WoW's auction house worked so much better with superior functionality. How could BW screw it up so bad?" - Blizzard didn't even include linked auction houses (something we've had since launch) until patch 1.9 in Jan'06 ... or more than 1 year after launch. Those are just a few of the comment laments I've seen on the forums since TOR's launch. Would it have been better, even great, if those things were addressed prior to launch? Absolutely. No argument here. However, if you think you'd be playing the game now instead of still waiting for it to come out so it could include those things and the many more that people give them grief about, you'd be luck to have been playing it by this Christmas. TOR isn't perfect by any means. Then again, no MMO is. People either find the game they get fun, or they don't. If they find it fun then they tend to be a little more forgiving of its faults and have some patience with the developers until proven not worthy of that patience. Some folks are at or past that point already. However, some came in with expectations so high it wouldn't have mattered what BW served up, those people still would have been gone after 30, 60 or 90 days.

It's one feature that is needed in it and I like the "tree" idea. The "strikethrough" I'm not fond of though. Personally I'd like the tree to be a clickable button next to an item that creates it in a pop-up/slide-out window. As to what Blattan suggested ... What if there was a column that showed X/Y next to an item so you knew how many in the "family" of that item had been learned? The OP has it in the upper right corner of the right side of the window but, I'm envisioning it possibly as a column in the list on the left. And to what the OP has suggested to go along with other folks, it needs some other tweaks as well. And sorry to use it as a reference but, I'm going to reference that which shouldn't be named. Sites for WoW like Thottbot allowed you to search for items in their database by level, stat, etc. Having a similar though maybe a bit more limited for spacing reasons, would be useful. Perhaps for level you could either choose from preset ranges grouped by 10s or enter a low/high number. Have two stat selectors (optional to use) so you could further say, "Show me ones with Defense on them" or "Show me ones with Defense and Absorption". Also have a rarity filter and a name search. With those 4 you could easily pare down the list to what you're looking for. And for the granddaddy of suggestions (imo) give us an interface window that easily displays character info server-account wide (+guild mates) like the WoW addon Altoholic. Across your own characters you could see: What was equipped In your inventory In your bank In the guild bank Quest (mission) log Auctions Mail (with about to expire warning) Recipes (schematics) known including required mats for the items Talent spec(s) (+ lots more that is more specific to that game like achievements, etc.) And with guildmates using the same you can see the schematics they've learned. All of this regardless if that character is logged in or not. And it allowed to search across your account and told you where and how many of something existed by mousing over. So in TOR as an example you could search for Quadranium and see a single listing stating you have 224 total and if you mouse over it, it might tell you that you have 20 in your sniper's inventory, 99 in your sniper's bank, 50 in your bounty hunter's bank, and 55 in your warrior's inventory. No more wondering which alt had what or if you needed to hit up the GTN. If you played lots of characters in WoW this addon was a godsend (imo and many others that I know.) http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/altoholic

This is partially false currently due to a bug that has not been fixed yet. Some/many/all "Rich" lockbox missions have been mis-classed such that you could drop 2k+ on a class 5 Rich lockbox mission and open the results to find <1k. The devs have acknowledged it as a bug but, there's no eta on the fix and nothing in the recent patch notes that I've seen.

I've been hearing that since DAoC if not before and it hasn't changed a thing. Keep stating the message though as perhaps one day it will be true. Plenty of people get their PvP kicks in non-MMORPGs be it in FPS games or RTS and mostly play titles in this genre as a way to do cooperative PvE on a larger scale than say something like Borderlands. Not everybody of course, lots of people look to mmorpgs for predominantly PvP. The problem is that developers seem to get only one of the two largely/mostly right in their games and the other takes a back seat. Granted, strides are often made to try and improve that which is lacking but, you're still more likely than not to have a game that only delivers one aspect being worthy of a monthly sub. DAoC may have been the last to get the balance down pretty well. GW2 may get the mix fairly right but, jury is still out on that. I've heard plenty of good things about it as well as concerns. IMO, what will honestly decide where TOR's numbers will likely sustain at is their hinted at big updates to space. No details are known to us on the outside so whether that means player PvP in space, co-op missions, off the rails - free form flight, we don't know. BUT, I think that is the one ace they have left to play that has a chance to make a significant difference in how this game's population ultimately hovers around. While they will continue to add content and polish, I don't foresee anything else having a huge impact on subs.

The devs confirmed the lockbox issue as an unintended bug. I've not seen anything in subsequent patch notes to indicate they've addressed it.

I've gotten augments all over the spectrum the past few weeks from running different class slicing missions. Everything from single digits on class 1 missions to 19, 20, 21 and 22s

Because developers create the split in the first place. Aside from the difference of AI vs. live player, PvE and PvP do not need to be different. But for several years now, creating differences has been at the core of developer choices ... different abilities, specs, gear, stats, etc. with aspects of these that favor one play style over the other. And then you have the inevitable nerfs to things that are commonalities between the two and folks who predominantly play one style of the other are miffed because their characters are affected by areas of the game they don't engage in. And last you have people that tend to avoid one of the two. Some PvE'ers will cite they dislike the general attitudes you tend to find in PvP content of the game. Conversely, PvP'ers tend to cite that scripted content is boring. *shrug* It takes all kinds and even if a developer came along with a game with perfect mix and design of PvE and PvP, you will have players that are largely playing only of the two types ... not because the other isn't well designed but simply because that style doesn't appeal to them. You can think of it this way ... Civilization V is one of the best strategy games every made for the PC. BUT, if turn based strategy games aren't your thing, you're still not going to enjoy it.

I would disagree with you about WoW in that I found it from day 1 to be an excellent leveling experience. However, there is a growing contingent of MMO players that for whatever reason see the leveling process as at best a hurdle and at worst, an annoyance, and are stuck on the singular thought of, "The game begins at end-game" which to me is dumb sentiment to have. But, I think there would be at least a niche out there for a MMO like: GEAR GRIND! No levels. You login from day 1 at max abilities. You just have some class choices to make, an allotment of points to spend and BAM! just like choosing a role in Team Fortress, you're in the game at the same power as everyone else. And the only purpose of PvE content is to acquire better/different gear. That wouldn't be the game for me as I'm an old school D&D player and I enjoy the leveling and exploring process. But, I also understand that not every game is going to be tailored to every person.

If the amount spent is irrelevant then why make it your seemingly star point in the subject line? Does voice acting cost more? Certainly. I think few would argue that unless you're arguing their voice talent is young and doing it as things like an internship where they're getting paid little for it and hopes that their work will at best be recognized and at the least be solid enough to use as references on resumes. But, I don't think that was the case with most or even all of the VOA in TOR so yes, it costs more from a development standpoint. And VOA, like any other feature touted and heavily invested in by a company, will have both its appreciative fans and its critics. You cite lack of content. Other MMOs have come before with as slow or slower content releases and done fine. You cite added costs for future development. Whether that proves worth it falls to what the break-even/reasonable profit line is regarding number of subscriptions and whether that line is maintained/exceeded. MMOs 10 years ago might get by with a skeletal dev group and 25k subs being profitable still. Today, depending on the game, it might be 100k-200k minimum for that to happen. With the VOA of TOR, it might be 400k-500k or perhaps more ... or maybe a bit less. Hard to say. Regardless of all that, I'm enjoying the VOA in TOR quite a bit. Do I use the space bar? Occasionally if it's something I've seen many times or repeated just recently on another character. I've been reading quest text in MMOs since Dec'02 and in computer RPGs for far far longer. It is a nice change of pace. *shrug* As stated before though, it's not going to be what wins everyone over. And with that, it's similar to other types of entertainment media in what one person finds awesome and a principle reason for consuming more of the product, others find a turn off.

WoW is the anomaly that pushed out the curve in that it, like every other MMO, has been losing subs since the day after the free month ends BUT, has gained more than it loses for an extended period of time more than previous MMOs or even ones since, have enjoyed. Your typical MMO goes something like ... Launch --> Growth --> Peak --> Brief sharp decline --> plateau --> slow decline For many/most MMOs that growth to peak time frame can occur anywhere from within a couple weeks of launch until around the first 6mo-1y. Again, that's typical, not necessarily the case for all. WoW on the other hand kept building and building despite the losses. Whether it truly peaked with WotLK expac we won't know until we see the numbers from MoP. My gut says their true sub peak is behind them now and while MoP will likely bring a bump up, the slow decline will continue. So TOR seems to be falling into the typical niche. Of course, all of those looking for reasons to post hate for the game and that it's failing will rally around the 24% loss and scream "See?!?! We told you!" Meanwhile, those of us who enjoy the game will keep playing. TOR still has a couple aces to play but, when and how they get played will be key. Server transfers/mergers are a must at some point in the near future. No two ways around that and they know it. If they can make that happen in the next 30-60 days it will help. Next is their rumored update to the space portion of the game. All we have heard is something like "excited about the ideas" or "big things coming" etc. Nothing concrete. Not even a sniff of a ballpark ETA. The reason I say this is key is if they hit this out of the park, it could well spark a revival for the game. If you start making a list of sci-fi/space themed MMOs that are (or supposed to be) a AAA title, your list gets fairly short. EVE, Star Trek and TOR are about all that really come to mind. EVE is hardcore, sandbox style of game. By it's design it's not going to appeal to the large casual MMO population. Star Trek, while boasting being F2P, was done poorly (personally i think it gives Age of Conan a run for its money on crapiest launch) and is only satisfying a niche crowd ... think SWG for the past couple of years. So that leaves TOR. I think BW knows they need to improve their game. Unfortunately, the typical MMO playerbase is an impatient and fickle "female dog". They continue to take meaningful strides I think they'll be boasting at around 1m subs for a decent amount of time and if the space additions are great, possibly even rise above the current 1.3m. Then again, they could just as easily be looking at 500k-750k in the next six months. *shrug* Time will tell. I'm certainly not writing the game off yet by any means and will be here as long as I continue to have fun.

Nope. And you should have also underlined the previous sentence by Olson as well as consider there are more than one way to take what was stated. "You're going to see so many changes and additions to the Star Wars Universe, it's going to be impressive. We have our Update 1.2 coming in the next week and then after that it's going to continue to roll out month after month. It's exciting." I read that and get that we're going to see changes and additions continue to roll out month after month. Like they have since the game launched. Every maintenance patch brings changes to the game. If you or anyone else is expecting content in the scale of 1.2 on a monthly basis then you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

So PvE can be trivialized by he who has the bigger wallet and PvP becomes simply a matter of who has the most amount of disposable income? No thanks.

Wholeheartedly agree. It's the same mentality game after game. And people wonder why developers tend to stay tight lipped about anything still at the discussion/possibility/planning stage. Crap happens. Plans change. What sounded like a viable idea when being discussed can just as easily turn into development nightmare that becomes not worth the investment of resources.

They exist. You need to run the lower class slicing missions to get them. My main is a synthweaver with 400 slicing as well and he's been supplying my other chars with Armortech, Armstech and Cybertech with augment schems ranging from things like Redoubt 2 to Alacrity 22.

To an extent ... with this and every single MMORPG I've played since I first started playing them in Dec'02.

It cracked 300k back in a day when sustaining 250k meant you were doing things very well and anything close to 1m or more was unheard of except for Lineage. DAoC predates WoW (yes people, this genre existed prior to that 6000 lb. gorilla in the corner) and until very recently, Lineage 1, Lineage 2, WoW, Aion and Runescape were the only MMOs to boast more than 1m subs. Your comment would be like looking back at the businessmen during the mid to late 1800s in the US and asking "Is that why they're no billion dollar companies?" Plenty of successful businesses during the time but, having one worth of $1B+ didn't happen until the formation of US Steel in 1901.

If you visit frequently it does not ask you every time you visit. I get bugged to do this it seems every couple of weeks or so on the forums. Not a huge issues. The security key is tied to the account and tied to login access both tor the game itself and the website. Since posting requires logged in website access, the key, if you have one, is also required. Now, COULD BioWare have tailored the website login to grant you different credentials? Sure. Essentially you're asking for: Credential 1: Forum privileges access meaning you can post/edit on the community pages Credential 2: Secured access for account specific things like updating billing/credit car information, etc. To separate takes more work, more testing and adds an additional layer where things could go wrong. Personally, I don't mind the added layer of security but, then again my security app is on my smart phone and I keep it with me.

It may depend on the nature of the microtransactions but generally, no. The only time I've considered a F2P mmo is where the first X% of the game is F2P and after that requires a sub ... sort of a free extended demo. A hybrid system may have some appeal ... ie. you can play the game F2P but, those who opt for the month sub fee have access to additional perks OR end up paying less than if they bought all the additions through the MT shop. However, the moment any game goes to offering an in-game combat advantage to items found in the MT shop, I put the game on ignore because I have no desire to play "Keeping up with the Jones" in a virtual world where the size of your RL wallet is king.

Got to love how anonymous people jump to quick judgments of others without knowing them or the circumstances AT ALL. And people wonder how as a society we had the Salem witch hunts or the Communism hunts of the McCarthy era. "Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand. Ignorance and prejudice, and fear walk hand in hand." Mankind, doomed to continuously repeat the idiocy of the past without pausing to reflect and learn.

Compare numbers both in peak active subscriptions, total box sales, etc. and you'll see Theme Park games have been FAR more popular. You can even remove WoW from that analysis and the result would be the same. The problem I've seen with sandbox games is they go so far sandbox that only a niche crowd ends up staying for the long haul. Even EVE to an extent though one could argue their the sandbox-anomaly that WoW is to theme park games. Take SWG as an example since many seem to Oooh! and Aaah! over how great it was at being sandbox ... and for many people it was boring as hell. Minimal content to do and what little was being dropped in by SOE was usually completed in 1, maybe 2 evenings by even the most casual of players. Empty worlds that you tended to come across more player harvesters than you did mobs, static number of the same missions out of the mission terminals (ie. picture side quests that you could essentially turn around and repeat once you turned in the current one) etc. Player housing and cities? Done fairly well except, aside from players RPing a merchant they served little purpose outside of being a glorified warehouse you could decorate. Player cities added a couple minor conveniences. Crafting? Probably one of the most robust systems I'd seen in any game. Problem? The mechanics of producing anything in even limited quantities could be carpel tunnel inducing. Classes/Leveling? I'll give SOE credit that they utilized a different system of sorts. However, it was still leveling just in a micromanagement way. Instead of leveling a Sith Warrior to gain better offensive skills, you selected an offensive skill and my using it, skilled it up (ie. leveled it.) Yes, there was more variance of things you could mix together but, it wasn't that far removed from selecting talents. And of course the worst was SOE's stupid limitation of 1 character per server per account. You could have up to (iirc) 10 characters but no more than one on any server unless you bought a 2nd account OR unlocked a force user. So SOE gave you a sandbox but limited toys. It would be like walking into a 1 acre sandbox in RL and having a single Tonka truck and toy shovel to play with. Sure you can have fun for a little while and maybe, if you're one of those super-imaginative folks, you can find that little nugget that keeps you having fun. But many others are going to look beyond that sandbox and go, "Oooh there's the ice cream shop, and then two doors down is the arcade and after that the movie theater is on the corner before crossing the street to grab dinner at the restaurant. The true answer is there should be elements of both, close to the 60/40 50/50 ranges. Sadly, nobody has really come close to pulling it off and many likely consider it too much financial risk.