You know, I didn't even notice that you can't post pics, but always felt that something was missing.

Trying to tank as a Warrior in TERA.

I guess it should be noted, that when you say "come back" - the reason for you leaving in the first place should be noted. Did you leave because you didn't want to play it anymore for whatever reason (bored, friends leaving, don't like the game anymore)? Couldn't play it (time, money)? Or did you just want to try whatever new game was out?

Yeah, I usually do come back to try new out new content - but only if the content intrigues me enough. I think though, that a lot of gamers usually have a "home" game of sorts. It's the MMO you feel most comfortable playing. The one you come back to if you have nothing else to play. Usually it's either your first, the one that you played the longest, or the one where most of your friends are. WoW, EQ/EQ2, DDO, heck even City of Heroes/Villains. For me, it's LoTRO. I go back to it even if there's no new content - because it's the world I feel most comfortable being in. Being that it's a social/RP friendly game also doesn't hurt.

Aren't they using the same engine as SWTOR as well? Not so sure about this one, but it's what I remember reading.

IMO, it depends on why they leave. If it's to try new content, they usually do come back to their "home" game (or at least I do). But if they felt disappointed, then probably not. I wonder if this game falls into the "home" game for a lot of people, or is it just the new kid on the block that people tried and decided they didn't like.

I wonder if the people getting laid off will play SWTOR in their spare time in-between jobs.

I know. This is way too entertaining to read. And sadly, even more fun than actually playing the game

The question now being, do they have the tech to do that?

Here's the way I usually do it in this game though. I don't skip the dialogue per se. I read the subtitles at the bottom while the dialogue is being voiced so I have an idea about what they sound like (emotion and everything). But as soon as I finish reading the dialogue myself, I space bar thru it to get things going. For the main story quests I do try to listen to the whole thing. Works pretty well actually. I may not agree with having everything in the game voiced, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate them. They are done very well.

For one thing, reading it is faster. I can think and comprehend faster than the VA can speak the dialogue. That old RPG argument ties in here as well. You know, the immersion thing about reading and having an idea in your head about what he should be and sound like? Like how when you're reading a book you've never seen or read before, you have an image in your head about what it's like. As opposed to, say, reading a book after having seen the movie version of it.

From that other thread, but voice-acting (and everything that goes with it - animation, lip-synching) may also be one of the reasons holding them back from making more exotic races playable. There's lots of them in the Star Wars universe. But the only ones we have here are pretty much those that can speak Basic.

If the voiceovers are part of what makes this game excellent, why not just make KOTOR 3 with 8 different campaigns and be done with it? I've also heard one of the reasons they grouped up classes together by 2 was so they didn't have to develop 16 stories instead. May just be a rumour, I don't know. I appreciate it don't get me wrong. And it works really well in groups so they got that part right. But there's more to MMOs than that. Don't you think it's telling when the best part of an MMO is the single player experience? Something that Bioware does well, yes, but I don't think it translates well into making a massively multi-player consistent world game. And there are other ways other than Voice to make stories more engaging. As fail as it was, FFXIV actually handled it's main storyline well. Too bad there wasn't a lot of it. And I don't know about you guys, but I actually read those text boxes.

Just because other MMOs do it that way doesn't mean Bioware has to follow it and just leave it like that. Besides, they have the SW IP to work with and like people said, they have many ways to go about it. TERA's Stamina is a very interesting way of doing it. It's basically a health/mana buff (among other things) that only goes up when you stand either near a campfire/rest area of some sort. There are buffs that you can only get when it's above a certain point. It goes down when you fight things, and goes down a lot when you die. And puts a debuff on you when it goes to 0. I find interesting though because when you go to a town, more often than not you will people hanging out by the local campfire, usually at the center of town. It's a nice way of getting people to socialize around a certain place.

You know, I've been trying to find it but I think Music is precisely the reason why SWTOR failed to draw me in like LoTRO did - which is another MMO based on an very established mythos. Shadows of Angmar music was excellent - it was one of the things that made the Shire so good. I'd go there just to hang out and do nothing but admire the atmosphere and music. I've always appreciated good music. People look at me weird when I say Music is at or near the top things I consider in games. I want to hear the music of SWTOR, but it doesn't loop so I barely remember any of it aside from the Cantina music.