I don't even know you, fool. Stop spamming the fleet like a gold seller. I'm gonna start reporting you for spam, because that's what it is - spam. The whole idea of those codes are to help out and encourage your actual friends to play. What you're doing is trying to profit from strangers and using general chat as a tool for your own RL gain. It makes you no better than the gold sellers who I have to take the time to report and ignore. Stop it. And by the way, stop spamming fleet with your stream info too. Why would I want to log out / tab out of the game so that I can watch you play? If you're really that entertaining or that talented of a player, I'll seek out your stream on my own. I got a link for you, son. http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/rulesofconduct Peep out the part about how fools ain't allowed to, "...messages for any purpose other than personal communication, including without limitation advertising or promotional messaging, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or other commercial activities." And how fools caint be tryin to, "...sell, transfer or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction) , or offer to transfer, sell or auction, or buy or accept any offer to transfer, sell or auction, any game Account or game Content, including (without limitation) game characters, character attributes, items, objects, currency, credits or copyrighted material, or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by the Services, or its our licensors, without first obtaining our express written permission, nor may you encourage or induce any other player to participate in such prohibited transaction(s)." Gregory Peck on that Atticus Finch full clip cashin in them wolf tickets, son.

My little sister, who's name is also Kimi (long story), said she may be stopping by the cantina event while she's at Star Wars Celebration. She's a Bioware fangirl and has had a deep crush on William Wallace and also thinks Eric Musco is a demigod. She's excited to meet Eric but is also curious about Tait now. When I found this out, I had to sit her down for a big sister/little sister talk. This is what I told her. Me - "When you meet Tait, he'll smile and be polite, but you'll notice what the industry folks call 'The Thousand Yard Stare.'" Little Kimi - "What's that?" Me - "It's what a grunt gets when he's been on the forums for too long." LK - "The SW:TOR Forums aren't that bad." Me - "No, not that bad. But he's seen too much. And what's been seen..." LK - "...Can't be unseen, I know. Why are you being weird?" Me - "I just want you to be ready. Be polite and don't be surprised if he gets a little jumpy if someone gets a text and their iPhone is turned up way loud. Tait may even grab a BioWare executive and push them to the ground to shield them from the text with his own body." LK - "You're hurting my arm." Me - "This new guy, Nick. He won't have the stare yet, talk to him, because in time, all community team grunts get it. LK - "Daaaaaaaaad!!!" Me - "Thousand Yard Stare, Kimi. It's real. Now go have fun and I hope you meet your heroes. Take care when fighting trolls, lest you thereby become a troll yourself. And if you gaze for long into the forums, the forums also gaze into you. " LK - "Can I go now? Ninjago's on." Me - "Eric talks to his keyboard, Cowboy." LK - "I'm not a cowboy." Have fun at Celebration, little Kimi. You may come back a changed kid.

The Howling Tempest Gang!!

SW:TOR is on the precipice of being the first MMO in history to induce an artificial recession. It's complex in it's intricacies and while it's not so dissimilar from real life economics, a few things are different, some of which make things more simple while some make things far more complex. Basic Economics in Real Life We are all familiar with supply and demand. In fact, whether or not we understand it, we are a part of that facet of economics. Even if our resources are provided by our respective governments and our buying power is subsidized, we become consumers with the given resources. In real life our personal wealth is obtained from working a job, investments, tax loopholes and enterprise, among other ways. All currency is issued by our respective government's central bank or in some cases a regional treasury. The rate at which currency is issued and destroyed, the actual physical currency as well as the data representing that currency, directly effects the value of said currency as balanced against other economic factors such as, credit rating, confidence and supply and demand for goods and services. It's important to keep two things in mind throughout this post - There is no economic "free lunch." Resources generated = economic production. Basic Economics in SW:TOR We all start out with zero credits in this game. For this point to be taken in it's entire truth, you'll need to think of yourself, the player, as a single account, not a collection of characters on that account, ergo, your new character in game may have 10K credits in his mailbox shortly after creation, but it is likely your own money from an existing character from which that money came. Sure, someone may send us money on our first character, however we will exclude that for the time being and refer to that as "player-to-player subsidization" later on. With the previous point taken as a given, we can then contemplate where money actually comes from in our game world. Money in SW:TOR comes primarily from questing (looting money and items of value) and quest rewards (the items of value and the currency given upon quest completion). There are some nominal currency injections from cartel pack "credit boom" items which can't be overlooked. One can also gather crafting resources in world and convert them into currency by selling them to the game system or by crafting items and selling them to the game system. (Yes, we can sell to each other, but that comes later. For now just concentrate on actual currency injection via the game system). However, the major currency injection comes from the game system itself via questing and quest rewards. Currency is destroyed when we spend money on repairs, buy items from vendors and use travel services. Some of us even pay a form of a "tax" when we list items on the Galactic Trade Network. Keep in mind, when the currency is destroyed in such a way, it doesn't get reissued by the game system in a balanced way. In fact, there is no balancing protocols in place within the SW:TOR economic system. I.e, if everyone stopped questing and doing dailies, but however continued to travel, repair items and list items on the GTN, the rate at which currency was destroyed would far exceed the rate at which it was created. There would be no correcting action taken by the game system to facilitate a balance. Now For The Complex Bits SW:TOR has minimal money sinks. In fact, there hasn't been a new money sink (a way of extracting currency from the system and destroying it) for months. Here's the troubling part... SW:TOR is about to become the first MMO game in history to extract tens of billions of units of currency from it's game system overnight. No other game in MMO history has done this, not even games like WoW and Eve. Eve has a complex economy, however it's one that's actually managed a bit and has checks and balances. WoW's economy has declined, but it's been a slow, gradual and arguably a "naturally occurring" decline. Some may point to games like SW Galaxies as an example of an economy tanking hard. However, while that bust was indeed fast, it was still drawn out over time and for a time while the game was holding on at less than 100K subscribers, the economy stabilized. SW:TOR will however have what is tantamount to an economic crash. What's worse, this crash is actually 3 crashes which will occur 3 times over the course of a few months on 19 August, 16 September and 14 October. It will be a TKO to the economy unless we take steps ourselves to correct it. Why will the economy crash? Galactic Strongholds. Now, to be clear, my opinion if the impending game system is great. I love the idea, loved the experience and preview of it on PTS and I think the game needs these systems badly. However, our economy will suffer greatly for it. Overnight, tens of billions of credits will be destroyed as we pay for stronghold unlocks and guild ships. What Happens After The Crash? The day after 19 August, the wealthiest people in game will be down to their last 5-20 million credits. The middle class in game will be down to their last 1-5 million credits. And the average players, which tend to have at most, maybe 2 million credits, will be broke or near broke. Only a small percentage of players (those taking a break from the game and those who simply do not like spending money) will maintain their pre-stronghold level of wealth. And remember, there will be a lot of guilds who make obtaining a guild ship a priority and thus hitting the middle class very hard for their personal wealth. Remember, if just 5 guilds on each side on any given server purchase the basic guild ship, not counting unlocks later, it will extract :sy_auction:500,000,000 from the game. Lets give a low end estimate and assume that each server only has 1,000 players who purchase 1 million credits in stronghold unlocks. That will extract :sy_auction:1,000,000,000 from the game per server. So what happens? People will of course have less money. This money will, in most cases, be invested in personal luxury items like homes and guild ships. Guild ships will never pay for themselves under their current design. They are not investments, they are a tool. People with less money will now be looking for lower prices on items such as mounts, color crystals, R&R items and consumables, for example. Listing wars will ensue on the GTN. Cartel items from cartel packs will become cheaper and the rare items currently for sale will drop. However, those of you looking for a Crate-o-matic for cheap will still see them priced just out of reach for the average player. Still, prices will drop considerably. Except in one area - The price of guild ships and strongholds - and that is where the real problem presents itself. The crash will effect all of us such that our personal wealth will diminish as compared to current prices. However, it will indeed scale with the fluctuating, and certainly crashing market. You will absolutely see items which were listing for 100,000 credits fall to 30,000 credits and less if some people panic. 70% price fluctuations are normal, both in times of crash and boom. In fact, during a crisis such as imminent drastic weather such as a hurricane or earthquake, it's normal for prices to jump up 70% for basic necessities like food and water. However, a Porsche will always sell for it's MSRP, no matter if the weather is bad or good. The only time a Porsche will drop in price is when it's driven off the lot or if the demand drops considerably. The point is, things which are in inevitable demand, like life-sustaining goods, will fluctuate depending on crisis and boom as well as supply and demand. Luxury items tend to fluctuate in price based on supply and demand only. High priced items will only fall in price based on the confidence of the seller in the market conditions. One of those conditions is supply. With that in mind, understand that an ST-7 Walker will not become less rare from packs. However the purchase of packs may become less rare. Packs can only be purchased by cartel coins as a matter of market injection. They end up on the GTN only after cartel coins are spent. This brings me to the final points... How To Self-Correct The Crash BioWare doesn't seem to have a team of economists to consult with or else this problem would not be upon us. The problem we face is that the player based economy will suffer a crash while the game system economy remains stable. It's as if prices for guild ships and strongholds are based on current wealth and not the wealth of future players. After the crash, the 'Earn 10 Million Credits" achievement will actually be a feat for most people. To be clear, I'm not calling for prices of strongholds and guild ships to fall. That's another debate which I don't want to engage in. However, I do want to make some recommendations for us to take and use to stabilize the economy post crash. A lot of these recommendations focus on the middle class of :SW:TOR, or our "middle class" players. Like it or not, they make up the bulk of the economy so far as sustained transactions and more importantly resource generation. 1) Avoid Abuse of the Middle Class/Casual Players - I've seen guilds planning (and some already implementing the scheme) to charge individuals 1 million credits to join their guild so they can buy/recover the cost of their guild ship. Don't do this. Players will be seeking guilds with guild ships, it doesn't mean they can afford to pay for it, even a little part. The best approach is to make it a guild effort to work towards a guild ship naturally, not force taxes upon current and new guild members. Driving away the casual players with schemes like taxation for amenities will harm the economy. Casual players could tend to play less and production will suffer. Be good to casuals. 2) Accept Lower Prices or Accept Long Term Investment - First of all, don't panic. Understand that as your personal wealth diminishes, so to will the prices within the market fall. You will still be able to afford the basics and you can still save up for that flashy status mount or that cute armor set. But what if you have an item you are speculating on like a mount or armor or a color crystal which you've invested in by spending credits or cartel coins? The fact is that you will not be able to sell your Korrealis Baron mount for 50 million credits like you had planned. In fact, you may not even be able to sell it for 25 million credits post crash, at least not for a long, long time. "But I bought my crate-o-matic for 30 million credits. I'd like to sell it for at least 30 to make my money back. It's so rare!" Sorry to say, your investment was sound last quarter, but this quarter it's not such a good idea. You can wait until Q2 of next year and reintroduce your item at your pre-crash asking price and hope that the market is stronger, but for the time being you will need to accept the lower asking price which is more realistic. However, if you did sell your item for 15 million instead of 30 million, be aware that the prices on everything will have fallen and you can scale your wealth to the new market. 3) Maintain productivity - Do not lose confidence in the game itself such that you "take a break" in protest. If you compare your time spent away from the game in protest versus being in game and being active, your time is better spent remaining productive, questing, raiding and participating in Guild v Guild world events than it is in silent protest while you play Minecraft or Star Citizen. You won't be sticking it to TOR or BioWare, you will just be mismanaging your wealth and losing productivity. If you know there is a chance you will come back, then don't leave. Also, be supportive of the casual player so that they remain productive. The hardcore people may have more personal wealth and time to play, but the casual, middle class players, add up and can far exceed the productivity by volume of our hardcore players. Be a wise GM and Guild Officer, maintain your casual base. 4) Intermingle The Classes - Even the hardest of the hardcore guild should allow a corps of casual players within it's ranks. This will promote growth in the economy and stability as casual retention on our servers will not suffer as badly as they would should we make ourselves exclusive once guild ships are available. 5) Remember the basics - Remember that while wealth can be generated from the GTN, the injection of currency is manifested by the game system itself. Get out and quest. Level up some new characters, do dailies, gather resources using crew skills in world as opposed to send your crew on paid quests. Reliance on GTN wealth is perfectly fine, however do not ignore farming and questing as sources of income. Lastly, don't be afraid to engage in player-to-player subsidazation. Helping out your friends goes a long way to stabilize the economy such that we retain people within the economy and increase the chance for future productivity. It's not welfare, it's community. Nobody knows what will happen in the post-crash economy of SW:TOR, not even BioWare. It's not likely they will even acknowledge the issue. In fact, it's not likely that they have anyone qualified to acknowledge the issue in terms of pure economics. However, this event will be unprecedented and fascinating to live through. BioWare tends to have tunnel vision when it comes to some aspects of their game. If not, they wouldn't have a Rakghoul event going on during a real world, unprecedented Ebola outbreak. Maybe if it were in the US it would matter and thus cause mindfulness. The economics of their own game could have used review from a university economist. Things like arbitrage pricing theory, hot money (cartel coins to credits and credits to cartel coin artifacts) and consumer confidence would have been discussed and a possible market precognitive optimization scheme could have been implemented. It's too late for that now. Now, it's up to us. Thank you. - Kimi I'm Interested In Your Ideas Personally, just caring about the keeping the markets stable only, I would have liked an alternative method of obtaining guild ships like a massive quest line including tackling Ops content and so on. I would have also been happy with a cartel coin only method, however I like to buy cartel coins and I am in a "thriving minority" there. I also thought up an alternative currency for guild ships similar to tokens we already use as a stand alone method of obtaining guild ships. What do you think? Without resorting to bashing BioWare or getting into the tangent of RL politics, what would you have done to solve this issue, given that you acknowledged it in advance and saw it as an issue?

I vote that you stop spamming about this on the fleet. Enough already. So tired of seeing the OP spamming in fleet chat for people to come and support this thread. If people actually care enough about their class to read the forums, and of course their respective class forums, they will find this thread and make their opinion known either way. I understand the desire to affect change and make things "better" from one's perspective. However I think that spamming and basically advertising your thread in fleet chat constantly is annoying. I finally muted you. With that said, someone has to be really, really annoying or repetitive to get an ignore from me. I don't even put most of the credit spammers on ignore. You've made your opinion known and you've gotten your thread some attention. I think the work is now finished. Let it run it's course or simply, for the sake of people who don't care, stop spamming about your thread in fleet. If everyone promoted their threads in fleet chat we'd have nothing but people basically #ing their threads to get eyes on them. It's just bad form. Sorry.

Really constructive post, OP. Glad to see someone putting some thought into things before they post. Now, with that said, my first reaction to your thread was to kinda giggle to myself at the suggestion for us to be able to write ourselves an RP bio in our profile. The reason why I giggle is, as a former SWG player, it seemed like bios in SWG were pretty much a waste. Why is that? Well it seems that the bulk of them started like this... "Orphaned at a young age...." Yeah. They really did start like that. SWG was filled with orphans and people who didn't really have much artistic vision. If we get player bios, prepare for a genocide of fictitious parents in the Old Republic. Oh the virtual humanity.

Get on my level, bro.

I have 2 simple solutions to your problem. 1) Be productive in the Galaxy, jump in for the big win and....get a space job. 2) Go back to Alderaan.

I believe "swagga" is the state, station or condition of an individual being imbued with the overwhelming and conspicuous qualities of being rich in wealth, attraction/attention gathering of the opposite sex, being a high-quality example and also the outward appearance of overall superior status. Those experiencing the blessings of swagger often report having,"mad game" and "gettin all big budget up in here." I was told that "swagger" starts small. It can manifest in such ways as not having a key to start your car, but rather a push-to-start button. I believe that if a key start is used, "swagga" can only be made manifest if the key is a "switchblade key" such as can be found on the Mercedes E Class or the BMW M series. This is to say that a normal key start would indicate a "normal" vehicle. A "baller" starting device would thereby indicate a "baller" vehicle. There is a phenomenon where cars such as the Prius, which is in no way a "baller" vehicle, are said to have or exhibit, "tryin to be on point and [stuff]. This is do to the push-to-start of the Prius, which doesn't make up for it being a "low budge" vehicle." In TOR, a "baller" vehicle would be the Cartel Recreation Skiff. The "swagger" lends itself to the cost and rarity of the vehicle. A very "baller" vehicle would be a rare drop vehicle like the tank mount. This is a "baller" vehicle do to the inherent difficulty of obtaining the mount through combat and the association with such a team who could obtain this vehicle. A "trying to be on point" or "low budge" vehicle would be pretty much any vehicle purchased from a normal planetary or fleet vendor, with the exception of the collector's edition vendor or PvP vendors.

Update: Post expansion - "Swagga" intact.

But do you have swagger?

First, a poem. Hey hey, hey hey hey. Buy cartel coins erry day. I won't bore you with the minutia of the control groups and the test subjects, I'll get right to the findings. My experiment has found that cartel coins greatly increases one's swagger. This swagger can be augmented by the items contained within the Cartel Market. One test subject reported,"Fools know that I don't have to ask my mom to play this game, SON. I drop swagga bombs like a B-52. You know this." This is to say that by being a regular cartel coin purchaser, the station of being as such greatly augments social status and thus affords the purchaser the ability to live, as one test subject put it,"...all big budget, like a James Cameron movie, SONNNN." Cartel coin purchasers seem to realize that idle time, such as hanging around in the fleet, which is a significant portion of time spent in TOR, can be just as important as raiding or doing daily quests. One more successful player reported,"I'm spitting mad game at [female players] up in here, son. There ain't no weather effects on the fleet....until I make it RAIN, B. I got so many rocks on my holocommunicator that I can't see who callin me." On particularly high female population servers such as Prophecy of the Five, cartel swagger seems to be most profitable. One of the preferred methods seemed to be obtaining a recreation skiff and toggling the run/walk so that a "slow roll" could be achieved. Once embarked on this "slow roll" through the fleet, test subjects experienced greater swagger-to-hollah ratio with a notably positive outcome. "Yeah...it's like I can't even raid anymore. Shawties be all like,'oh daddy send me a XP boost' and 'daddy when you gonna drop the Malgus, I needs to train' yeah, dog. It's like totally changed my life. Even my lightsaba's iced out. Powerful cartel coins, son" I highly recommend buying cartel coins. It's not enough to simply be a subscriber anymore. If one wants to "spit mad game" and "buy wolf tickets" then cartel coins are a must.

I appreciate your points and your views, Trooper. I think one thing is clear to us all, no matter what angle we approach this conversation from - something needs to be done. Sooner rather than later, mind you. Thanks for posting.

I know. You're are absolutely right. And that's what makes me feel like I'm "holding fast" and not simply being patient. I think being patient would be the posture to take if I knew this stuff was on it's way , firing those golden bullets in rapid succession. However I just don't see that fire mission coming down. As it stands right now I feel like I'm holding fast until the game falls down around me. TOR will never "fail." But my friends will leave and I will become some kind of raid logger for raids that may or may not happen. Then that shiny new game comes along and I'm the moron for not playing it because "OMG IT'S SO FUN, KIMI." It's like that right now with Diablo 3. I don't even own it yet. But I ordered it this morning. That's how it starts. I appreciate your comment.

I stopped listening to (and never cared) what Gamebreaker has to say a long, long time ago. Everything they do is artificial and staged or dramatized. They manipulate their audience and do a lot of give/take pandering. They will do whatever it takes to get attention including, but not limited to, manipulating polls (ask Darth Hater about that one), pandering, fabricating facts and passing them off as "inside information" and even latching onto rumors for the sake of traction with the community. We all know TOR kinds sucks right now. I didn't need Gamebreaker to tell me that. But doomed to fail? On the off chance they are right, it will "validate them." When TOR doesn't fail they will just glaze over it and move on to their next proclamation. That's how it works.

I try very hard to see things from the developer's point of view. I feel like the developers try hard to see things from the player's point of view, so it makes sense for me to afford them my consideration. I'm very happy with what BioWare has given my peer group with TOR so far. Thanks to story we've enjoyed the leveling process which I typically do not enjoy, no matter how much I have enjoyed the overall MMO title. I've enjoyed crew skills because it makes so much sense and is so very efficient. I've enjoyed running flashpoints and operations, normal mode through nightmare mode. While I feel that a lot of fights were not worthy of being called "hard mode" or "nightmare mode" fights, I feel that every single fight in operations were fun. I feel that class design is very well done. I play an Inquisitor/Sorcerer healer as my main. I was just fine with and agreed with our "nerf" (not having infinite resources) and felt that it made the class more interesting. I'm a master of my class because the class was created masterfully. It's easy to play because everything makes sense to me and the tools I am given are such that they allow me to manage the situations my class is balanced against. With all that said, that is why I am staying with TOR. I played World Of Warcraft for years; from day one actually. And I stayed with WoW, from day one, even though it was rife with problems in it's first year or so. And not just technical problems but actual gameplay issues and lack of content. I stayed with WoW because, like millions of others throughout the years, I felt WoW was a super high quality game. I feel strongly that TOR is the same kind of game. However it's in it's first year and is just bound to have some sort of issue. It's the natural progression for an MMO title. I am happy to stick it out with TOR. I'm not excited about TOR like I once was, but I am committed. While I intend to stay and to keep on investing my time and a negligible amount of money into TOR, I could sure use some things from BioWare to not only keep me excited but to hopefully regain lost ground with the MMO gamer community. I believe excitement about a game matters. D3 has clearly taken attention away from TOR. Playtime has shifted from TOR to D3 among my peer group. I strongly believe that this is due to a combination of a loss of excitement about TOR and the excitement over D3 manifesting at this moment in TOR's life cycle. So what is it exactly that I'm asking for? 1 - More Story When I was waiting for TOR, all I heard was "This game has story." I could care less about BioWare's puny story. "Show me the game," I said. As it turns out, they showed me a great game. And the story was a huge part of that. I was so wrong about story. It really does change everything and it matters very much to me now. It would however be really nice if with each content patch, I got a continuation to my class story. It seemed like my story stopped just when it got good. It's like reading Game of Thrones but only getting a few chapters and not the whole book. The story has just begun and I want to see it evolve. I'm unhappy with the idea that for my story to continue I have to wait for an expansion. That won't do. Even if all of the other parts of the game were "fixed", I would still be very excited about story if it was available. As it is now I have to play other classes to experience story. And that's fun to see, but I am still anxious to see what happens in my main's story. Potentially, I am just going to be equally frustrated about the stories ending for any other character I level to 50. Giving us more story for the classes would go a long way to excite my peer group and myself. I know it's a huge deal to produce story content. I know I am asking for thousands of man hours and a process that is long and difficult. However it's really one of the best things about TOR and it causes me to be invested into the game that much more. I think for the common MMO gamer it would keep them coming back if anything else. 2 - More Grind As MMO gamers, we complain about things being too grindy, yet remove the grind and we complain about the lack of content. It's the type of grind that is key. I'm a hardcore player. I farm, I grind, I level and I raid for hours and hours beyond what is called for. However I feel that my casual counterparts also grind their fair share. Both my peer group and our casual friends benefit from the right sort of grind. In TOR we have dailies. It's sort of grindy. We can grind out dailies for commendations to get gear. And that's fine but it sort of falls into the gear treadmill grind. And that's great. WoW did this and I appreciated it on behalf of my casual friends. It afforded them a way to get geared. I got the added benefit of being recognized for "earning" the gear through raiding rather than "welfare." But it worked out for everyone in the end. In TOR, we don't have content that is hard enough to warrant an alternative "welfare" grind option. So while I appreciate the current daily grind, I could really use more and varied grinds. Rep grinds are conspicuously absent from TOR. I would like to grind for vanity items (remember the Party Bomb?), very *different* mounts (not just the same mount with a different color scheme), gadgets that do fun things (again, like the Party Bomb in our game or like the light of elune in WoW) and access to schematics for the professions. I know there is a sort of grind for mounts. However it's not quite right, or at least, not enough. Remember bear mounts in WoW? Or trying to get the Baron mount in WoW? How about the Gladiator mount? Or specific achievement mounts? That is a very complete mount grind. Right now we just have a very weak grind for mounts. All we have to do is run flashpoints and operations in various modes to obtain the mounts. And they are merely just different color schemes. And don't get me wrong, different color schemes are just fine. However we could use more varied mount models and flair for each model. The problem with that is that right now one of the easiest mount grinds requires one to complete flashpoints that nobody ever runs. Directive 7 is extremely difficult to get a group for right now, let alone complete successfully with a random sample of the current player base. Try to get into a Lost Island group as a ranged tank or DPS. I really like gadgets in an MMO. I liked the little lantern in WoW that produced the little orbs that were used to cast a light down from above, the "Light of Elune" I believe it was called. I liked the little RC tanks and all the various little pets. My peer group would often go out and grind this stuff out because it was not only a different grind (it was not the loot treadmill grind), it was for a really run reward. I know there are a few schematics in games from daily vendors. And that's a good start. However we could really use more and varied schematics and not just from daily vendors. But to further explain this I need to move on to my next ask.... 3 - Achievements I feel that achievements can solve a lot of problems for the missing grindy content. It could also reward activities that people partake in currently which are not rewarded or yield any sort of perk other than spending time in TOR. Things like exploration, profession mastery, completing specific feats of skill in game, gaining a reputation level with a faction in game (rep grinds) and so on, can open up a lot of possibilities. Achievements can yield some great vanity rewards as well as open up access to useful schematics and even, as far as TOR is concerned, unique looking orange gear. For example, the orange gear to make our characters to appear as Sand People is available via a social vendor. I think this should be available as a reward from the Sand People themselves after completing tasks for them and completing a short Sand People story arc. And other things should be available from a Sand People rep grind. Perhaps a special emote (You know the Sand People iconic raised weapon yell?). Maybe a unique orange gear rifle for snipers and troopers. There could be a Womp Rat pet. The possibilities are many - and this is just for Sand People. I know we have titles in game for completing some hard modes within particular time constraints. However it would have been nice if there was a unique vanity reward for it. A "Minesweeper" title should have came with a "lay mine" emote or even a little mine layer pet. We all have our own factions, Republic and Sith Empire. It would be fairly easy to complete tasks for our factions and grind out rep within our own faction. However the rewards for such could be so awesome that it would stimulate activity. What if a top level faction rep reward as an additional, but not overpowerd, companion. I would like an Imperial Battle Droid. You know the little tri legged and quadraped walkers that look like Droidekas? How fun would that be? 4 - Profession Gadgets and Profession Reconsideration This one is silly but within my circle of friends it seems to yield a lot of satisfaction. We really liked the little gadgets from past MMOs. Consumables that caused your character to look like a ninja, smoke bombs and so on. Little toys really make a profession fun. And as it is right now from the perspective of my peer group, many professions are boring. Aside from augmented items, which take quite a bit of investment and are arguably not worth the investment versus the potential profit (after the long process of trying to sell the item), there is no real viable money maker for professions. For my more casual friends, investing the resources to attempt to proc an augment is just not viable. I think that additional consideration needs to be paid to professions. I think it's unfortunate that some of the past best-in-slot items, from Artifice for example, were restricted to the creator via a Bind on Pickup restriction. One the one hand it makes a lot of sense to have some items be restricted to the character that created them, infinite use med packs for example. However relics from Artifice would have been nice had they been BoE. It would be really exciting if more best in slot or even really fun gadgets items were BoE. The schematics could drop of bosses, trash, come from rep grinds and social points. Reconsidering the professions would go a long way to exciting myself, my peer group and my casual friends. 5 - Arenas and Group Space Combat I know that ranked warzones are coming and I'm optimistic about it. However I feel like it falls just a tiny bit short of what PvP needs to be fun again. Right now PvP pretty much dies at level 50 unless one was among the few people who exploited on Ilum and are now reaping the benefits. If you are on a server like mine where one faction drastically overshadows the other, PvP can be very painful - and not in the way one would probably guess. Being on the majority faction, I find it hard to queue with decent players or players who can stand a chance against the minority faction which, statistically speaking, has a better chance at being filled with better and more accomplished PvPers. No matter how "good" I am at PvP and regardless of my gear, I will nearly always take a loss because my peers and I can not carry the whole team. Arenas would be great and would allow advanced players like myself to congregate and form a team. It would also allow less "skilled" players a chance no to be locked out of advancement due to the fact that they could also form a team and because they would play together regularly they could form a strategy. As it stands currently, even if you queue with your friends, you are still not able to fill out an entire team in most cases and are still at the mercy of the rest of the Warzone team - people quitting before or during the match, AFKers and poor players all contribute to the pain of current Warzone PvP. I would also be very excited about group space combat. Space combat ceases to be fun when one has beaten the new level difficulty of the same mission. Adding the group aspect to the Space Combat featured content would be very welcomed by my peer group as well as by the rest of my friends. I know all of this is a lot to ask for. It's very "wall of crazy" heavy. I could have asked for a number of other things like Pazzak, Pod/Swoop racing, Guild Capitol Ships, Fleet Based Player Housing, and so on. But I chose to focus on the things that would be the most effective in generating excitement and cause my peer group to invest the most time and therefore potentially yield the most retention of that group. I only left WoW because I knew TOR was coming. Now that I'm here I'm going to stay and stick it out as long as I can. I did it for WoW and it turned out to be a great gamble for me as an MMO gamer. It's far too early to judge TOR such that the call needs to be made to leave or not. However that's my own feeling. I think a lot of people have left TOR for sure, but I think it's just temporarily. I feel that this game just lacks a few things to generate every day excitement. I know flashpoints are being tuned up a bit and will hopefully become more difficult. However at this point there is no magic bullet for TOR to win back the players it lost. I feel it needs to be a small magazine of magic bullets fired in rapid succession. I think it's totally possible for TOR to win people back if it locks and loads accordingly. I will close with a thank you to BioWare for a really fun game. This post is not about me making demands or trying to tell you how to produce your product. I'm just a gamer. I have very little idea of what it takes to produce a monster like TOR. I merely have a desire to see my favorite game become a little more of what it already is and to regain lost ground so that I have more people to share it with and so that I am not forced to abandon what could potentially be the best MMO ever created, simply so that can play the game everyone else I know is playing. I just reluctantly ordered D3 online. When it arrives at my home I will install it and play it. It will take time from my TOR playtime. I don't like that. However if I want to play a game with my friends instead of doing dailies by myself or waiting for the raid that never happens, I will need to install and play D3 or whatever flavor of the month game is in fashion. I'm not ready to give up on TOR. All I have to offer is 15 USD per month and my thanks. I ask for a lot in return. So I understand if the things I ask for don't happen. Thanks for the best Star Wars experience I've had outside the films and for validating my decision to leave WoW. I'm holding on as long as I can. - Thanks for reading - Kimiko

I want to preface this by stating that I have no allegiance to BioWare. I'm not personally invested in this game anymore than you are, save for the people who didn't buy the collector's edition. Which I did. I'm also not a fangirl. I've always been tough but hopefully fair with my views on BioWare and their products, more specifically SW:TOR. And lastly, I'm an adult with a few years of gaming behind me. I don't know as much as some people, but I know gaming. Just like you, I don't have inside information, but I do have some common sense and experience in dealing with game development houses as a player. It's clear that lots of people are very, very upset about a hand full of problems. And these problems range from "no duh" wishlist things that should be in the game, to things that don't work but should - no excuses, to things that make the game unplayable. Regardless of the reason we say we will stop subscribing for a while or leave the game, our reasons usually have a strong undertone of the feeling of being personally insulted and abandoned. No matter which side you're on, you can't troll someone just for feeling insulted or abandoned by BioWare. Those feelings are real. Some of us are louder about those feelings and need to be heard to make ourselves feel better. But even those people, as "whiney" as they may be, deserve to be heard, provided they don't cross the line. I've seen a few reasons people have stated they will suspend their subscriptions or cancel outright. Many of them make sense from the point of view of the person expressing that frustration. However when we look at these reasons with a little wisdom and common sense at hand, it can go a long way to calming us down and even, dare I say, having BioWare's back on this. Reason 1 - "Since day 1 this game has more problems than any other game I have ever played." Does it really? And before you answer that in your mind. Think about all the game launches in your experience (and hopefully you have a few to reflect on) and try to think of an MMO that had as smooth of a launch day as SW:TOR. In fact, the game has done pretty well until recently as far as bugs and problems. Now, of course TOR has it's problems but comparatively, the amount of problems that make this game unplayable compared to other MMOs at the same point in it's lifespan is not even a fair comparison. And even the smaller bugs are minimal compared to other MMOs. But they are still *there* you say. Which leads me into the next reason... Reason 2 - "BioWare has done nothing to fix the problems and when they do fix something it's not XYZ bug/issue." Remember that old poem, "Footprints" about a famous prophet carrying us when we only saw one set of footprints in the sand? That's kinda what we have right now with BioWare and SW:TOR. We may not see BioWare working to solve these problems, but common sense would dictate that they are. And when our issues finally get fixed it's not because one of the doctors *finally* called someone in the middle of the night to come in and fix some code. It's not like some coder will walk in around noon, or whenever (s)he feels like it and, after a McDonalds "big breakfast," finally get to coding the bug fixes. From my experience, MMO production houses will have several people on these problems in little task forces day in and day out, sometimes around the clock, to fix these problems. Reason 3 - They are taking their time fixing the bugs because they don't care and it saves them money. A kid fresh out of M.I.T. who now writes code for google once explained coding, and more specifically, fixing code, like this. "Imagine a piece of glass with a line of BBs on it. Each BB is a bit of code. Each line of BBs is a *line* of code. Now, imagine that there are several hundred plates of glass each with a line of BBs on them and the plates are stacked one on top of the other and they are just sorta floating there about 1' apart from each other. You notice a line of BBs that isn't perfectly straight. Boom, there's your bad line. But then, you sorta bump another plate as you fix the plate you are working on. So you have to go and fix that line too. And by fixing that line you have now spilled all the BBs off the plate. You finally get everything sorted out and you sit back and congratulate yourself. And you think how wonderful you are that now that you have managed to make a mob in an MMO fall on it's belly instead of standing still when it dies. And then you realize you have spent 6 1/2 hours fixing this bug." MMO production houses sacrifice a lot of money on payroll to fix the bugs and loss of retention for people effected by the bugs. But it takes time. And if you believe times is money then this next reason should be easy to dispute.... Reason 4 - "BioWare got their money and now they have turned their backs on us!" It is absolutely in BioWare's best interest to retain as many players for SW:TOR for as long as possible. In fact, not only do they want you to keep playing the game, they want your friends to *start* playing the game. They want people in countries outside your own to play SW:TOR. They want people who don't play MMOs to play TOR. And to help make this happen, they will do what successful MMOs do - invest time and money in producing expansions. But, before that even happens, they will make sure they have the retention and growth they need to justify those expansions. This means providing customer support, marketing, content patches and.....fixing bugs. While the doctors and many of the team at BioWare are obviously as geeky about Star Wars, gaming and MMOs as the rest of us, BioWare and it's parent company EA, are in the creating art and entertainment for profit business. Which makes the next reason so much more intense when people go to it as their reason for leaving.... Reason 5 - "It's like they don't even listen to the community. They don't care about us and they don't listen to us." Trust me, trust the veteran gamer in your guild, trust someone who has been around the block a few times, go ask someone who knows better but please ask someone and discover this truth - They know. They hear us. The doctors hear us. The people who CS for the game hear us. The programmers hear us. The Live Team hear us. The Lead Coffe Go Getter guy hears us. The Executive Producer of Making Things Not Suck hears us. And take a step back for a moment and put yourself in their shoes. This is a project that hundreds of people have poured years of their lives into. This is their baby and their names are *literally* on the product. I don't know about you but if my name is on something I want to be proud of it and it effects my pride when that something is not the best. You must assume that these people at BioWare want the game to work more than you or I do. Reason 6 - Bugs aside, the game just sucks. They don't even have guild banks. I can't even use the auction house without screaming." This one is pretty hard for even me to dispute. Do people who have been following this game for years remember "the wall of crazy?" OK, now pause for a moment and remember back to WoW where there literally was no end game for a while after launch, something that Blizzard touted from the start of it's awareness campaign. Sure there was BRM, but not "end game" as we now now it and as it was intended to be. And then think back to SWG, there weren't even mounts....for months. In fact the G4 review of the game focused on the Wookie walking across Tattoine, and walking, and walking until the player got to a town where....nothing was happening. You have to hand it to BioWare; all the important stuff is in the game. Important in that people are able to level and progress their characters normally. The terrible auction house will be fixed. There will be guild banks. The legacy system will mean something. How do I know? The same way we all knew that Blizzard would give Pallies and Shaman to both factions. The same reason EvE changed combat areas. The same reason SWG allowed character re-customization; because we wanted it and it was reasonable. Reason 7 - "I'm not going to give them my money for another day when I can play XYZ game which is better!" Really? Gonna go back to WoW then are you? OK, I can see that happening. I love WoW too. But why did we come here in the first place? Some of us came here because it was Star Wars. Some of switched because we were tired of our old MMO and needed a change. Whatever your reason, switching back to WoW, for example, just helps you feel better. Like when we punished NetFlix with our mass exodus. Or like when we left Everquest for taking us for granted. We will feel like we did when we jumped ship from SWG and posted our scathing goodbye posts on their forums. It felt good for us to tell them how it was and then deny them our 15USD a month, leave them with some "shame" and help build WoW into the success it became. But, SW:TOR is around a month old. It's too early to tell how BioWare will treat us now that it matters. If you can play the game (if your computer can run it reasonably), sticking with it should be an option that is not off the table. Sure, going back to a game like WoW will be like going home. But we have a really great opportunity to be the old schoolers in this game. The people that stuck with it when it mattered. And then there is the progression to think of. Getting behind now when the community is smaller than it likely will be down the line is blowing a golden opportunity. Still, this is a very hard one for me to dispute fully. But it's still not the best reason to leave at this point. - And there you have it - In the end we realize that we are just way, way upset about things and we feel personally insulted, abandoned and ignored. But when we think of the lessons from the past MMOs, we should know better. And sure, there are those MMOs that failed horribly for these very reasons. In fact, one of them had Star Wars in the name. However, just as we should know better from the lessons of past MMOs, so does BioWare. And that, in and of itself, is why we should take a breath and weigh our options with a clear head, rather than jumping to conclusions based on our strong opinions on things we don't fully understand.