I think a game should have both to be really successful but I feel gameplay has the edge. There's no storyline in Minecraft yet it's still fun to play and sold millions of copies. I've felt Bioware games are overrated for this reason. They make stories that are second to none but their gameplay is often lacking. Mass Effect is a good example, it has adequate gameplay but the thing that really drove me to finish it was to see how the story unfolds rather than actually enjoying the action.

No, having worked around a major disconnection problem Bioware seems unable to fix I am finding the game extremely tedious by level 35. My first impressions were pretty good until I realised basically just about every single quest in the game boils down to a) kill some near identical groups of easy mobs or b) click on some glowing blue objects. You are doing these 2 basic tasks for 50 levels which feels unforgivable for a modern AAA mmo. They must have spent more time recording the voice acting to introduce each quest than actually making the quest itself fun to do. A few on rails space shooter missions to break it up is not going to cut it. I could stick it out until 50 and do some Operations/PvP but I'm just not enjoying getting there and really can't be bothered to play the last 15 levels of tedium to get to what sounds like less than promising endgame. As with most Bioware games they got the story and character dialogue pretty good but forgot about the rest of the game making it feel dull, static, lifeless and linear. I know MMO are extremely difficult to make but I expected much more of a game with this budget and development time.

I really wanted to like this game but I'm level 35 and just freeing prisoners from about the 20th identical imperial prison I am starting to doubt I will see the end of my story. A shame because the story is great, the voice acting is good, the game is relatively solid but it just feels so grindy and boring. In between conversations for picking up turning in missions you have hours of grinding near identical packs of mobs who are standing around lifelessly in lifeless feeling worlds. Moving to the next planet I just think thank god finally a change of scenery! I am amazed how Bioware thought they could get away with not including more variety in the quests which 99% consist of kill x mobs or click on y items. It's so repetitive it's mind numbing, I can't bring myself to play for long anymore and doing it all over again on an alt is out of the question even if they do have a different story. I don't know how people can find this fun. Even with the narrative to drive it forward the rest of the game and the gameplay is tedious beyond belief. I'm not an ADD kid - I consider myself a patient player and I think even I will have bailed before I reach endgame. I cannot see many people actually keeping their sub past the trial month to be honest.

Mostly because of the time investment required in most MMOs. Unless you don't have a guild and don't play competitively at all you'll probably want to invest at least a reasonable amount of time just to keep up as it were. For me personally I tend to get really into one game at a time and lose most of my interest in others. Pretty sure I am not alone.

While I like and enjoy SWTOR I can't guarantee I won't desert to GW2 or simply play both. GW2 sounds so exciting, some things like large scale open world bosses where anyone can join in the fight, being able to play with different level guildies and get rewarded for it, dynamic world content, massive RvR pvp battles with hundreds of players, great appearance customization in both character and armour, dungeons that vary each time you do them, classes with a huge variety of build choices, a beautiful graphics engine are all getting me very interested. Some things might take getting used to like moving away from questing, the trinity and not playing the game for endless raid gear grind. Still if they deliver half what they promise - and most of the things they promise are already implemented in game and working - then it could change the face of MMO gaming. I don't say this lightly having witnessed many 'failed' MMO games that did not live up to their potential or promises. GW2 looks like it will be amazing if they pull it off.

Mmhmm lets make all our character choices totally meaningless shall we? Dark side, light side. Nah. We should be able to switch freely so we can use all gear! While we're at it why not let all classes tank, dps and heal? Playing dps and need a healer? Just go to a medical droid and have your DNA resequenced. See I chose a smuggler but I also like lightsabers but I can't be bothered to do all those generic quests 2 times - that takes like time and effort. Don't keep the game in the stone age! Give a blastsaber weapon to smugglers so I can shoot while making voom noises! Joking aside I see you support cross realm dungeon finder too. That worked out well in WoW didn't it? Never have to talk to another player again, just speed run instances anonymously for badges 24/7. Can't have that icky social interaction or responsibility for bad behaviour can we. I can honestly say if the game was like that I'd drop it like a stone.

I agree with this but many don't. I don't have the most nimble hands I can comfortably reach around 20 hotkeys then I have to start doing RSI inducing finger acrobatics to play. Some might say that some of the skills are a bit too similar, they maybe need to be fewer but more distinctive. Personally I would rather they gave you plenty of abilities but made you pick a maximum of say 2 hotbars that you can use at any one time (non combat abilities don't count). This allows a slight amount of extra customization in your character because not everyone would pick the same skill setup. I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed myself, I'd rather the game be about timing, positioning and using your abilities correctly than being about trying to remember what 50 hotkeys/icons do in the heat of batttle.

It's the best MMO for a while and although lacking some features they have a solid base for improvement. I'd like to say yes, but bugs are killing the game for me. I'm talking some game breakers like guild/party chat not functioning, target switching lag, and UI suddenly becoming unresponsive to all mouse input. Then annoyances like certain keybindings not working, missing required UI functionality, memory leaks degrading performance, companion abilities deactivating just to name a few of a very long list. Finally there is the error 9000 frequent disconnect issue which plagued me since launch - I have now worked around it using a VPN connection but it's still wrecking the game for many people. The fact it's been happening for 2 weeks with no resolution doesn't fill me with much optimism. For these reasons I have my account unsubscribed and will decide whether to reactivate it depending on how hard Bioware works on moving their game out of beta state during the first month.

Me an thousands of other people in the same boat find the game unplayable due to broken network infrastructure at Biowares end, judging by the support forum this is the most common issue people are having. That isn't my number 1 complaint though. Bioware in all their infinite wisdom haven't been able to fix it or have ignored it for well over a week. No ETA of a fix, no mention of compensation in missed free playtime, no nothing. So my complaint is Bioware support staff are incompetent.

It has the graphics options of a console port anyway.

Yeah you were in the queue for early access to queue for red eclipse. Queueception!

I concur.

Their staggered launch was a bad idea. Feels they were so scared of having massive queues on day they put everyone in a massive invisible queue. Smacks of bad preparation. They did a stress test beta weekend for what? I thought the idea was to stress your servers for stability testing and so you know exactly how many servers to launch with. Guess they forgot the second part. Don't get me wrong I like the game a lot and enjoy playing, but people are gonna look back and say remember SWTOR launch? All that drama in the forums? To me this has been the most memorable launch since Anarchy Online and not in a good way. They were not prepared.

I have a problem with it because the sub fee should cover the cost of minor items like that being developed and they should be earned in game not with your wallet.

Nay... not in a subscription game, keep that for the F2P games.

Nov 12th not in yet if not next wave something went wrong...

3pm and no sign of my box. 'Express' delivery my ****.

Me! My gf is staying with me for 2 weeks starting on the 23rd. I'll get to play a little but I will spend a fair bit of time doing stuff with her too. She does not like swtor she is a Skyrim girl. Still I get to play other games

The way I see it you're right the developers aren't starved for innovation but they are forced to make WoW clones by the guys with the big bucks who are scared to take any risks. Perhaps rightfully so? But that is another debate. I don't see that players themselves are resistant to change or innovation. Most innovative MMO games have failed for other reasons than being innovative. Lets take Tabula Rasa as an example, has the potential to be a great game but was changed so many times in development it ended up as a half-finished mess. Same could be said for a lot of MMOs which released incomplete, unpolished or both. I made this point before but when was the last time someone tried to make a big budget sandbox MMO game for example? Meanwhile Minecraft and Skyrim one pure sandbox the other with heavy sandbox elements are selling millions of copies. There's some hope in the form of GW2 which is doing away with the kill 10 mobs questing and Boeing 747 cockpits of modern MMOs in favour of a more action driven dynamic experience. Who knows if it's a big success it could spawn the next wave of GW2 clones. Other than that there's a few other developers who are thinking outside the box with projects on the horizon. Also I'm extremely curious to know what Zenimax's big MMO project is.

C because of poor backend infrastructure design causing staggered launch. Doing the best with they can with an outdated design though.

Mine hasn't arrived yet, better have a damn code in it!

OK this is reassuring thanks...

Sorry I know there's several threads on this but I cannot find them with no search function Just wondering for those who preordered from game, how many has actually received it? They supposedly shipped mine at the weekend with next day delivery but I still haven't got it. Might have to get on the phone to them at this rate.

Amount of gamers goes like this Asia>Europe>US. Not sure why US is always catered to first, although it's improved a lot over the years. Used to be only NA peeps would even get to beta test.

They seem to have failed to achieve their goals with the wave system anyway. I'm hearing reports of large server population imbalances. Also overcrowding of the noob zone is not an issue in a game that has instanced zones. There could be 1000 people in the start area and you will only be playing with 49 of them. In fact there is no reason for them to have servers at all with that system, they should just have a massive rack of computers that dynamically allocates resources where needed to each instance as EVE does. All in all the goal was achieved if the goal was to give some people an advantage, split up groups of friends and frustrate those waiting to get in. I am getting in to play today. I won't forget about this launch though, it went exactly to plan. Problem is the plan was bad.