LOTRO lag has improved a bit but this varies a lot person to person. I still find it too annoying to spend much time at all there. The one notable exception is the subscriber-only progression server - but this has low population and won't get to current content for quite a few years since it is on a very slow progression rate.

Several of my favorite MMOs went into maintenance mode, either while I was playing or after I had mostly left. Vanguar - may it rest in peace. Age of Conan. Rift. But many games last indefinitely. SWTOR is popular enough that I believe it has years and years of new content left. Heck, LOTRO is going strong with new content long after getting to the end of what Tolkien wrote.

I agree. One of the first things I do as soon as I can is go to the alliance base and ask for my old companions back. One can do this in Chapter 9 of KoTFE but one can also just go to the base outside of the storyline and do it without waiting. Sadly, one cannot use the old companions for very much while going through KoTFE and KoTET but one has them for other purposes.

Maybe I was lucky. Maybe my memory is going ...or gone. Maybe the other MMOs I was playing at the time were a lot buggier so by *comparison* I was impressed with SWTOR. Most likely my expectations for a launch of a new game were rather low given what I had seen in many other launches of MMOs and so when SWTOR had some bugs that interfered with some storylines but was mostly playable and didn't crash very often I graded it as way above average for a MMO launch.

I still agree with what you say - but I also still would give SWTOR good grades for quality compared to LOTRO and EQ2 and DDO and Rift and ...well you get the point. Probably because I shrug off things like erroneous mapping and screwed up cutscenes more than you do. You are, of course, right about those things existing. My crashes tend to occur at entirely unpredictable times and on average 2-3 times every 8-10 hours of gameplay. There can be two in a row or none for a day. I have gone to great effort to identify and eliminate background programs that Windows 11 foists on us and that has helped a bit. But there are still crashes and the loading screen still pops-up now and then quite annoyingly. I have reduced graphics quality two levels yesterday - no crashes since but that may be coincidence. I note that while SWTOR is running I frequently get freezes if I alt/tab or cntrl/alt/del to do other things. Crashes I never get with the game totally closed. SWTOR was extremely well behaved before I got a new desktop which came with Windows 11. So it isn't the game itself. Today, LOTRO is as stable as ever, EQ2 *always* crashes within 1-20 minutes and SWTOR is ...less well behaved than it was. I could say I miss the days of Applesoft and DoS and I do but even I have to admit that Windows is better in general. But Windows 11 has been a curse.

Pirana is partly right and partly wrong. Mostly right but "unfinished, buggy pile of doo" is extreme hyperbole at best and nonsense at worst. The launch was exceptionally smooth and the game had almost no significant bugs. They spent a lot of money on the game before launch and this was obvious in the performance. On the other hand - SWTOR was immediately dubbed "the best single-player MMO ever created". The stories were wonderful and the paths to 50 very good - and there were 8 of them. But there were few choices - every character of the same faction did the same planets in the same order and not much was different. Worse - the crafting system was, and is, one of the worst in any major MMO. It was, and is, widely believed that they tossed it in just so they could say the game had crafting. Worse yet - there was almost no endgame. A few things to do at one difficulty level then another then another. This would not have been so bad except it was so easy to get to the endgame quickly and so little to do once one got there. These were the days long before Conquest or Galactic Seasons or other events supplementing the basic storyline.

Tantala - I too go back to the original Everquest and even The Realm and Yserbius which pre-dated Everquest. I find it amusing that we have such different experiences. To me, and by far, the major problems I have in SWTOR are crashes to desktop. I don't do operations at all - it is the storyline quests that I find less buggy than I find things in the typical MMO. Quite likely we focus on different aspects of the game so that bugs that bother you a lot I may not even notice.

New origin story would be fairly useless. A lot of work to cover a level-range that many people race though in a day or less. Some value to experienced players that have done all 8 origin stories already but there is more than enough there already for newer players which is more important in terms of the health of the game. New combat style - yes that is equivalent to what other MMOs mean by "new class" and many of them add new classes now and then for excellent reasons. Off-hand I cannot think of anything very different that would be a big attraction but I might well agree with your suggestion if you actually fleshed it out with details.

Reading that there would be a charge to repeat missions horrified me at first since I could justifiably have a legacy title "Alts 'r Us". Then I thought about it a bit more. I think the question is whether old Galactic Seasons are considered as regular content or more akin to a festival. It would be beyond terrible if new characters could not do the existing content. Starter world, capital planet etc. all the way through whatever content was current. On the other hand - there are many things new characters cannot do and can never get. Old festivals, old events such as the good versus evil event that provided hugely rewarding xp boost items. Is the fact that a new character cannot get everything and do everything that a character here since release had and did a bad thing? Not to me. Clearly Broadsword or other decision maker is treating the old Galactic Seasons missions as more of a "one-off" festival type event than regular permanent content. I am not sure I agree, but I also do not take this as a sign that they are hostile to alts or are changing the basic philosophy of the game.

Arunav - I don't disagree with anything you say. But I have heard the same complaint in many MMOs over the years and I would rate SWTOR as above average in this category though not nearly as much so as in the initial years.

We *need* yet more companions? <contemplates the distinction between the phrase "I want" and the phrase "We need">

I mostly solo. Doesn't bother me in any slightest way that there are some things that I cannot do that way.

My experience matches that of DWho.

SWTOR is in maintenance mode because one particular reward that many people didn't even want isn't in one piece of new content? Exaggerate much?

I don't entirely disagree about the story though I do not see this as a recent development. I do feel that SWTOR had one of the least buggy releases in the history of MMOs and I have seen a *lot* of releases over the years. It has remained well above average in terms of having many fewer bugs than typical major MMOs, and less serious ones.