Actually, if we look at EA's chart in this article, we see that the decline started in OCTOBER 2011, two months before SWTOR went live. And furthermore, the October '11 peak reached the same level as an earlier peak that occurred in June 2011. Stock analysts would say that's evidence of EA testing it's upper-price limit and failing to break through. I think this price decline has little to do with SWTOR. The game's financials are still in line with their original market-share predictions. Even the "400k lost subscribers" figure doesn't surprise me. Consider the drawing power of the Star Wars brand. I figured there would be a large number of new customers sampling the game, and even sampling their first MMO, simply because of the Star Wars IP, and that a significant percentage of that initial crowd would balk at the thought of subscribing to the game beyond their first month. Even on the pre-launch forums, I saw many posts from people enraged that SWTOR wasn't a single-player "KOTOR-3" -- people who asserted that they would probably just play through the storylines as they would a single-player KOTOR sequel, and not resubscribe. We also should bear in mind that EA is an entertainment company, and entertainment companies tend to take big hits in recessions. That said, the continued strength of Activision/Blizzard is interesting. It seems they were bouyed by two big Blizzard hits, back-to-back: Starcraft-2, and Diablo-3. I'd look at EA's broader activity. There's got to be bigger reasons for the slide that started in October than one MMO. I'd suspect EA's been taking hits on multiple fronts. I'd also look for other strong performances from other product lines within Activision/Blizzard.

Well, it's also an issue for mailboxes. And I figure it's only a matter of time before some band of griefers tries to systematically block these objects. Given that there already is an in-game auto-dismount mechanism, I figure it would be a relatively easy fix for BioWare to add such zones around public tools like these. For now, though, as long as it doesn't become a large-scale, organized attack, it's generally best to simply mellow out and work around the offender. He/she/it's probably not doing it intentionally just to be a jerk. But you never know. One can always submit a ticket reporting the character for griefing if an incident is particularly egregious or disruptive. But hopefully the issue won't devolve into a problem of that magnitude. Still, it would be polite for players who want to show off their cool new rides to do so a few meters AWAY from public terminals. But I laugh at people who are constantly pulling out their rides every time they move. Even if it's to move just a few feet. It's like they can't stand to run slowly from Point A to Point B. Ever. Can't help but wonder, "Dude, you crippled or sumthing?"

I think the current system of moddable gear is a stroke of game-design genius. I'm really looking forward to being able to have the flexibility to choose whatever type of armor shell I think looks best, and have it bestowed with the stat boosts of the best gear I can acquire. This is pure win. HOWEVER, there is one element that troubles me. What about gear that just plain looks utterly inimical to the armor type the player wants to have? For example, the Slave Dancer outfit. Dollars to donuts that we will see a plethora of female Knight Guardians and Sith Juggernauts and Troopers and Bounty Hunters decked out in these outfits, fully modded out with heavy-armor inserts. Other examples will abound: heavy armor with light-armor inserts, light armor with heavy-armor inserts, what-have-you. At what point will this dichotomy just collapse under the weight of all the impending potential for silliness? Should BioWare allow any armor insert to be used in any moddable clothing/armor piece? Or would it be better to maintain armor-type similarities? Of course, there's a problem this game has to overcome before the system really reaches its optimum: there just isn't a wide selection of heavy and medium armors available yet. And the devs have stated that creating new armors is a tedious, exacting job because they have to troubleshoot all the ways in which character models poke out at odd places from armor models, so I understand that it will take time for a decent variety of looks to be available for all armor types. But converting skimpy outfits into "heavy armor," or bulky-looking armor outfits into "light armor?" My suggestion: Tread carefully, BioWare.

I'd offer a refinement on this point. I'm militantly anti-drug in real life, so what I would look for is story elements that de-glamorize drug abuse/spice abuse. That quest-giver NPC I mentioned on Nar Shaddaa is a good example. He's obviously a relatively young man, but he looks like a thin, gaunt 80-year old with horrible skin and teeth. One of the dialogue options when you converse with him is to mention that he looks a little rough, and he explains, "Yeah, signs of a rough life, huh?" And for my part, while I'm sure plenty of Smugglers jumped at the chance to smuggle spice in that one class quest on Coruscant, I relished the chance to have my Smuggler stomp on that shipment of "medicine." Stuff like that's almost as good as Obi-Wan Kenobi's line in the cantina on Coruscant during Revenge of the Sith: "You don't want to sell me a death stick." ("I don' wanna sell you a death stick....") "You want to go home and rethink your life." ("I wanna go home and rethink my life....") Classic stuff! If BioWare did such a system of spice consumption right, the "downers" would inherently de-glamorize the stuff.

I think a lot of us in SWTOR (myself included) miss the huge raids that occurred in WoW, where large groups stormed the capital cities of Azeroth. The biggest issue inhibiting such things in SWTOR, I think, is the lag that sets in when large numbers of characters converge on one site. I have no idea what BioWare's devs need to do to fix this problem, but until they do, our dreams of large-scale PvP will remain out of our reach. As things currently stand, I don't think this game can handle group sizes much beyond the 8v8 groups in our current warzones. For my part, I'd like to be able to toggle atmospheric effects off when I'm on Ilum. In my opinion, the floating wisps of fog that occasionally blow across my screen don't add enough in immersion to justify their load on my modest* system's frame rates. And every time I venture onto a certain plateau in the southeastern corner of Balmorra (Republic side), the large amount of blaster fire in all directions from NPCs drops my frame rates, as well. Another thing I think would help, particularly in large-group situations, would be to tone down the particle effects on our cast abilities. Yeah, all that Force lightning looks pretty when it's one Sorceror, and the visual WHUMP! of a Force Quake conveys a certain visceral satisfaction -- but all that eye candy has to be rendered in real time. * My gaming rig: Athon-XP dual-core 3800, 4 Gb of DDR-800 RAM, and a Radeon HD-6670 video card with 1Gb GDDR5 memory. Not a beast of a gaming rig, but it should have been adequate.

They already do this.

The music is there already. Personally, I think it's usage in this game is pretty close to ideal. Overuse can get on one's nerves. I shudder to think what it would be like to, say, have battle music fire up every time we shot at a trash mob. Personally, I think the music tracks in flashpoints gets a bit monotonous after a while. But the use of music in the in-game environnment is pretty good. The devs save the music for when we take on a particularly-difficult fight, such as when we take on a quest boss, or an elite mob or a miniboss or world boss, or when we trigger our heroic-ability self-buff. Overall, I've noticed that each planet and region does have its own understated music beds going in the background. I particularly like Alderaan's background music: lonely, evocative, and poignant. Nar Shaddaa has a sort of spooky, abstract theme that I think was played out on low-pitched marimbas. And so forth. Here's one idea for how BW might be able to improve the music mix. You know how, when you're exploring a world, your companion character will pipe up with some witty comment? For example, on Taris, when you're transiting through the pipe from one zone into the Brell Sediment region, Corso Riggs will mutter, "Agh... another sewer pipe. WHY, when we're on a planet, are we always travelling through sewer pipes?? JUST ONCE, I'd like to leave a planet smelling like a flower!" These comments are triggered when you traverse a certain spot. Maybe BW could add similar triggers for musical themes. Approaching a pirate camp? Trigger a music theme. A world-miniboss acklay appears ahead of you? Trigger a theme for that feature. And if they really want to impress us, maybe make these themes a two-layer music bed, with, say, a percussion track or instrumentation only focusing on the lower-register sections of the orchestra muttering away as the underlying theme with a second track containing an additional layer of instrumentation (cue the brass!) that additively cuts in as we enter combat, and segues out at certain beat points as we emerge from combat. And then, when you leave the area, the music theme fades away entirely.

Well, there's a quest line on the Republic side on Nar Shaddaa that features a former addict to rill who recruits the player to destroy spice labs in the Red-Light District, and there's another quest fairly early in the Smuggler storyline that places the player in the role of transporting "medicine" to a "doctor" deep in the seamy underworld of Coruscant, so this wouldn't be that farfetched. And one could make the case that an in-game spice-addiction mechanism would present the issue as a cautionary tale. If I were a game designer, I could see something like this: the player receives a temporary buff from a dose of "spice," with two debuffs following when the effect expires. The first debuff would be a short-term, violent phase of severe impairment, featuring things like greatly reduced stats and activation times, interspersed with recurring stun-like effects in which the character is doubled over as if in wracking pain for a few seconds. This short-term debuff would fade after a few minutes, and be replaced by a longer-term minor debuff -- perhaps a point or two off the character's base stats. Both debuffs can be instantly removed by another hit of the spice, but at cost of gradually-increasing severity of the long-term debuff effect. And various spices could carry a risk of an "addiction" effect, in which the character has a random chance of turning the short-term "withdrawal" debuff into a longer and more-severe debuff. And each time the character consumes the spice, his risk of an "addiction" result would increase -- perhaps greatly if he's dealing with a particularly-virulent spice. And the final element would be a system of diminishing returns for chronic spice users. In this mode, the character would get a smaller and smaller boost from the spice, while suffering progressively worse debuffs upon withdrawal. Eventually, the stuff would erode the character so badly, his base stats would be so low without the boost of the spice that he "needs" to consume spice just to even partially compensate for the losses incurred by chronic consumption. The temptation for players would be the opportunity for their characters to temporarily achieve semi-superhuman power, at cost of these future debuffs. In such a system, would your character take a taste? Such a system will almost certainly never see the light of day in this game, but it does pose the prospect of an interesting sociological study.

I agree. Whether the Consular story is "good" or "boring" depends greatly on your interests. If you like delving into the history surrounding the dawn of the Jedi Order, you will love the Tython section. The remainder of Act 1 does get a bit repetitive, but the core idea is still interesting. And the boss fight at the end of the Alderaan storyline is notoriously difficult, especially for Shadows. (It's much easier for a Sage.) And once you move on to Act 2, you are tasked with unravelling a diplomatic crisis, by reassuring a coalition of restive Republic planetary leaders that the Republic has not abandoned them. The catch is, it generally falls to you to demonstrate via frequent use of your own lightsaber that the Republic has not abandoned them. The history lessons continue, as at one point you find yourself learning first-hand a big chunk of the history of the Rakata, the vanished one-time masters of the galaxy. Can't delve too deeply into that element here without giving away the plot twists, but suffice it to say that if you like history and uncovering ancient Star Wars lore, you'll love the Consular storyline.

I wouldn't quite go that far, myself. In fact, out of all my characters, the Kira romance arc seemed to be the best of the lot. She hits all the right notes of spunk, sarcasm, empathy, and independent thought. By contrast, the Consular romance arc with the female companion is just awful. For starters, she doesn't even officially join your stable of Companion Characters until the 2nd-to-last planet in the game except for Ilum. You get a little bit of an intro to her via the Consular storylines on Balmorra and Quesh, but still, the story feels like it's over almost before it's begun. By contrast, my Knight had Kira on board halfway through Coruscant, and was still unlocking new story elements even after Corellia. The Trooper's female CC takes a while to crack, but once she does, she displays a wry sense of humor that still has me chuckling about some of the stuff she gets away with. And my Smuggler... well, let's just say he's a two-timing piece of space sludge.

No, it's not about expectations. I went into this fight cold, not having read anything about it. I pretty much instantly figured out that: ...but I kept dying because the Emperor would use his insane one-shot pushback/instakill on me while I was: Can't interrupt him if you don't have him targeted, and you can't kill the adds if you're wasting time trying to dodge the Emperor's attacks. This fight is just another piece of proof that instant-death mechanisms in quests are just stupid game design. The sad thing is, these devs know this. They've even written about it. But they did it anyway. And they STILL haven't altered the thing. And before anyone calls me a nub, I will point out that my Knight/Guardian is my 3rd level-50 character, following my Shadow and my Commando. I also have a level-43 Scoundrel and a level-35 Telekinetics-spec Sage. I fought my way through all the Consular class quests on my Shadow, so I know what a difficult fight is like. (HINT: That notorious fight at the end of the Alderaan arc for Consulars is a LOT easier for a Sage than a Shadow, but I digress.) This is far worse than "difficult." It's like being randomly targeted by an orbital laser while fighting other mobs. I know, I know... it's the Emperor, and he's lived for a couple thousand years, and he's supposed to be powerful -- but seriously? Do we HAVE to have a foe that has the equivalent of the finger of God? Even granting that he's the Emperor? It's just plain sad that so many players feel like they have to luck out by bugging the fight, or pushing him down the stairs, just to advance their class quest. UPDATE: I managed to kill the Emperor shortly after I posted this reply. And no, I beat him fair and square, no exploits or exotic maneuvers like Force-pushing him down to the first floor. Now, even though I beat him, I will say that I think this is the most poorly-designed boss fight of all the class stories I have played so far. The Emperor is basically an all-or-nothing opponent. Either he manages to blow you away with his instant-kill pushback shot, or he goes down like a house of cards. If the former, he feels impossible. If the latter, he feels anticlimactic, to the point that I understand why people were saying the fight felt too easy. So, to anyone who would like to know the approach that worked for me, here it is:

I lost one, but gained back the one I originally wanted for my main. So I actually came out better after the transfer.

It kind of amazes me that anyone who chose to play a dialogue-centric game like this would ever get ticked off at someone watching cutscenes. In my mind, it'd be kind of like going to a museum with friends, and then getting impatient when your friends wanted to read the placards about the exhibits. I can kind of see it if you're a high-level group going into the Esseles to grind social points, but other than scenarios like that, the cutscenes are part of the game. I just always expect whenever I go into an on-level flashpoint or op, that someone will want to watch the stories. I like them myself, so my mindset just doesn't make it an issue. At any rate, that's one of many good reasons I appreciate my guild. Good folks, with patience and a general abundance of good grace towards one another.

I can answer that, and I can point out that BioWare has given the same answer. They want players to EXPLORE the gameworlds they have so lovingly created. Once the game's been out for x amount of time, the devs' assumption is that players will welcome the convenience of a groupfinder. Unfortunately, there is always that faction of players that insist on powergrinding their way through the game, reaching the static repeatable content at the end ahead of everyone else. And then they insist on whining and screaming as loudly as possible, like the bloodsucking plant in Little Shop of Horrors, "FEEEEED MEEEEEE!!!!" World of Warcraft gives us an example of how the game boils down once a groupfinder with auto-transport to all instances is implemented. Players simply piled into that floating city in Northrend, and waited for their instances to launch. Here in SWTOR, the Imperial and Republic Fleets are providing similar functions, except we still have to travel to the flashpoint/operation portals. Groupfinders are going to be implemented soon in SWTOR. But I for one will still miss the ritual of at least travelling to the portal, at least to some degree.

I'd say it's definitely re-invigorated the game for our guild. We're a PvP-active guild, and the first people to log in on Prophecy of the Five reported that they warzone entries were popping up instantly every time they emerged from their last one. The Galactic Trade Network is FAR more active than it was on our old server, and people are having no problem finding groups for flashpoints and operations. And open-world PvP seems to be picking up as well. A handful of Saints went into the Black Hole zone on Corellia, and found some 15 Imps arrayed outside the Republic base. They allied up with another Republic guild, and proceeded to clear the Imps out. Fun times have returned!

Let's not sip the kool-aid, okay? There's a huge continuum between "no microtransactions" and total prostitution of their game in which MMO makers screw up their game via RMTs. Trust me on this one: once the devs take their hit from their RMT crack pipes, it's only a matter of time before they're selling "convenience" items to speed players along on grind-type in-game elements, from things like "bonus" items to enhance in-game XP gains, to resource packs for crafters, or extending grind elements to ever-more insane levels to create artificial demand for microtransactions. And before long, you're buying permanent stat boosts, or "must-have" enhancements for end-game gear. And all along, the MMO publisher will swear up and down that they will NEVER do that to their Valued Customers. HA!!! This is exactly the progression that motivated me to give up on my once-beloved Lord of the RIngs Online in disgust. I do NOT want to see BioWare take even the first step into RMT la-la land. Ever. AT ALL.

Real-money microtransactions are the MMO developer's equivalent of crack.

I have two consulars: a 50 Shadow and a 32 Telekinetic-spec Sage. On my Shadow, I used Tharan Cedrax pretty much exclusively while levelling, and I still use him for tough solo content. On my Sage, though, Qyzen is great. I keep him geared up in at least Prototype-grade gear, and I keep his Regeneration (tanking) stance active while I do the ranged DPS thing with my Sage. As for the techblades, he does get a moddable techblade in at least one midlevel class quest. Not sure which one, but watch for it. It is easy to miss, because the icon for the blade is green instead of the usual moddable item's orange. And in the new system in which schematics occasionally drop from crew-skill missions, there are Armstech schematics that occasionally drop for Custom Techblades. One's a level-20 blade, and the other is level-50.

If Tharan's not summoning Holiday in combat, pull up his hotkey bar. One of his commands is "Summon Holiday." Check to see if its autocast indicator (the small white box inside the command's button) is lit. If not, right-click on the hotkey to toggle the autocast on.

BioWare does have a 7-day trial program for friends of subscribers... http://www.swtor.com/info/friends?intcmp=eaint709

There are. Even iPhone apps like Snoopy vs. The Red Baron are better than a railshooter. There's even a free-flight space-combat MMO (that's NOT EvE), that supports Windows, Linux, Mac-OS, and Android, and still manages to be better than this game's railshooter. I think the announcement of "Space Combat" as a railshooter was this game's first major disappointment. I still remember how the old SWTOR forums lit up in a white-hot fury for weeks, with the front page of the General Discussion forum covered with threads on the topic, even with the mods ruthlessly locking threads on a constant basis. Hopefully, a recent survey posted by the Community Manager on James Ohlen's behalf that asked us what feature we most wanted to see them develop will be a harbinger. It asked which of four major new features we most wanted: guild-owned capital ships, vehicular combat, free-flight space combat, and something else I don't remember. And free-flight space combat was the winner, by a wide margin. And I would also point out that anyone who tries to argue that space combat was only a small part of the movies aren't quite seeing the issue clearly. The thing is, the bulk of the Star Wars movies is taken up by dialogue. But the action sequences are divided pretty much 50/50 between terrestrial combat and space combat. You could just as plausibly (in other words, implausibly) argue that lightsaber combat or blaster combat are only a small part of the Star Wars experience. Hopefully, BioWare will restore the star wars to their Star Wars experience soon.

Any thoughts, folks?

There are people who hate PvP or raiding. Should they be allowed to veto the inclusion or improvement of such content, just because they happen to dislike it? I think your statement falls into that category. Be that as it may, what about my other ideas?

1. LOTRO had a MUCH bigger subscription base than that. 2. Turbine was releasing new content for LOTRO at a good pace for years, right up until Warner Bros. went into serious negotiations to buy out Turbine. THAT was why content development came to a halt. It was frozen while the terms of the buyout were in negotiation. 3. The issue is most assuredly NOT this game's subscription model. It's all about QUALITY. If this game met the needs of its target audience, the last thing BioWare/EA would need to worry about was the game's subscription model. They'd have MILLIONS clamoring to get in. 4. I think the real issue with this game is that it's not a balanced experience. Story is great -- but that seems ALL the game offers. And the game suffers for it. For more of my thoughts on this issue, feel free to visit my newly-created topic in the Suggestions Forum: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4530041#post4530041

PREFACE: I think we can all agree that SWTOR got off to a thunderous start, with millions sampling the game. Yet now, many are questioning whether the game has "legs." In other words, will it KEEP its subscriber base? For my part, I see abundant reason for concern. Within my circle of awareness, player populations are down -- not just by a percentage, but down by a significant majority. For example, where once my guild boasted a couple of pages' worth of online members at any time, and while it grew to the point that our leaders decided to spin off a second guild, these days the main guild generally sees maybe 10-12 guildies online during peak gameplay periods. Planetary populations are 'waaay down, as are populations on Carrick Station. Opinions abound on why this is the case, from frustrations with buggy gameplay to abysmal frame rates on PvP-centric planets such as Ilum. However, while each of these have their adverse impacts, I think the deepest issue is a fundamental design decision: BioWare's executive decision to rely seemingly entirely on Story to drive their game's success. I think we are seeing the limits of that decision manifesting itself in terms of in-game population. And so, in an effort to persuade BioWare to broaden the gameplay, I submit the following set of ideas that I think would help move SWTOR towards the direction of feeling more like a 'virtual-world environment' and less like a linear game.... Ideas for a Virtual Star Wars Universe 1. Better PvP - Open-World Open-world PvP got off on a bad note initially, with griefers exploiting the opportunity to seal off spawn sites and transport destinations with a handful of Sorcerors and AoE'ers, who would continually bombard these static sites so heavily that anyone who ported in would die instantly. This was recognized as un-fun. But I think the recent Rakghoul Plague event opened the devs' eyes to some possibilities, and to the potential popularity of open-world PvP events. Events that bring players out and away from spawn sites for their PvP seem to be a winner. As long as the numbers don't grow to the point that hundreds of characters are on-screen at the same spot at once, bringing Client software to its knees trying to render them all, that is. - Warzones Here's where the HERO Engine seems to be running into some trouble. It seems that an inherent limit is being reached that keeps large-group warzones from being feasible. Hopefully, this issue will be resolved one of these days. SWTOR needs an Alterac-Valley-size warzone, with 40-vs-40 fights that last for days, and players able to shuffle in and out as time allows. Not sure what the issue is with the engine: overly-ambitious particle effects? Too-detailed character models and terrain? An inefficient engine? 2. More Toys A. Pazaak It would seem like a no-brainer to fabricate an in-game interface window for pazaak matches, that can be activated by two players clicking on a pazaak table in a cantina or guild hall or wherever. I can envision all sorts of emergent activity: player-created tournaments, player-created web pages for rankings for their server, etc. B. Organic Mounts To this day, I still miss my mount-trained kaadu from SWG. I also miss my flying mounts from WoW. I think BioWare missed a golden opportunity by implementing a "Sprint" feature at level-14, rather than some sort of organic mount. It would have added a great deal of fun to the landscape of Taris, or to Dromund Kaas on the Imperial side, to be able to navigate the undergrowth astride a lore-appropriate steed. And for Hoth, it's sad that they didn't hold to the established lore, and consider the climate too cold for conventional transports. And the varied ecosystems of each planet seems like a great excuse for planet-specific mounts. And let's be honest: who wouldn't want their own thranta? The benefit of organic mounts is that they can be another in-game collectible item. And collectible items are a Very Good Thing in any MMO. C. Planetside housing -- IN CITIES All those big buildings in places like Castle Organa on Alderaan or Anchorhead on Tatooine? Yeah -- just what are they there for, besides decoration? Why not put them to good use, and turn some into rentable apartments for players? I mean, who WOULDN'T want to live in Anchorhead or in Organa City on Alderaan, or a posh apartment in Coruscant or Corellia? Maybe adapt the technology for quest portals or starport entry portals, and create a multifloor elevator inside the portal, with multiple rentable apartments per floor to give the locations a neighborly feel while not bogging down the general-game environment... I think it would convert these often-barren midlevel cities into hubs of player activity. Especially if the following idea is implemented: D. Flexible item placement inside houses One of the big things that made housing in SWG so popular, and housing in LOTRO so lame in my opinion, was the two games' different treatment of housing interiors. In SWG, you could place pretty much any object in your inventory inside your house, and it would be visible. And, you could move it around freely, rotate it, move it up and down or side to side, and position it exactly how you wished. In LOTRO, you had predetermined boxes where you could place certain objects at preset locations. And some objects could not even be placed in some locations. I doubt that having in-game artwork for every piece of trash loot that shows up in our bags would be a good idea for this game, but flexible object placement inside homes is HUGE. It would foster nearly-endless player creativity. And if it's set up in instanced areas that make for manageable server loads while still retaining eacy access for players, I'd think it'd be a winner. This is why I am advocating the idea of establishing apartments inside major city-type quest hubs such as Organa City or Anchorhead or Coruscant. Could the technology that creates green doors for phased quest-dialogue areas and starport hangars and elevators be adapted for such apartment areas? E. Trophies! One of the big benefits of player houses and guild halls is the opportunity to display decorative items. Sometimes crafted, sometimes won through in-game challenges, these "trophies" are a huge way for players to show off their accomplishments. And if the devs give us the flexibility to place objects freely inside our spaces, their value is greatly enhanced. The downside, of course, to free object placement in houses is that "player creativity" is often channeled into the direction of creating displays that suggest pornographic objects -- a phenomenon so common, game designer Raph Koster even coined a tongue-in-check metric term (which I won't repeat here) referencing the time it takes players to come up with a way to display objects in a pornographic fashion. But for every idiot that thinks it's the height of creativity to arrange blaster barrels in a suggestive manner, there are hundreds who pull off genuinely amazing feats in home decor. I would opt for the creative opportunity. F. Attackable hometowns? Here is where player choice in home destinations can offer players choice in gameplay mode. Players who want the thrill of defending their hometown in open PvP can choose to rent an apartment in a city that's accessible by the enemy; players who prefer a quieter home life can choose a city that's NOT accessible to the enemy, such as Coruscant or Anchorhead. 3. Free-Flight Space Combat I lobbied long and hard for this in SWTOR's development phase. I simply could not believe they'd give us a railshooter as "space combat." But to me, rail-bound gameplay is the antithesis of the freedom of movement that's a fundamental element of MMO gameplay itself. Be that as it may, I get the hunch BIoWare has a major expansion of the space element in the works. There was a recent opinion poll posted at the request of dev James Ohlen, asking which of four ideas were most-wanted by the player base, and 3D free-flight space combat was the winner by a wide margin, over even such elements as guild-owned capital ships and vehicular combat. Regardless, if BioWare took our starships off the rails, a LOT of new content suddenly becomes feasible, including guild-owned capital ships and space stations, and space PvP. I'm hoping this will come soon, in the form of a major expansion pack.