I finally cancelled. I gave Bioware a free month subscription as I didnt play for 6 weeks. the new patch has actually discouraged me from playing. I dont have any interest in learning about some boring change to a flawed design. the emu is nearly complete for the star wars galaxies project. in its current state its better than the original already and its improving daily. I dont see any mmo getting me to quit playing swg emu until someone decides to actually develop the first true hybrid mmo

I havent logged into my TOR account in 6 weeks prior to today. With Star Wars Galaxies, I didnt miss a single day in the 2.5 yrs I played the game With TOR, when I did log in it was... 1. check mail, repost items on market 2. que for warzone 3. check mail, repost items on market With Star Wars Galaxies, when I did log in it was.... 1. check factories 2. post items on your PERSONAL VENDOR INSIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE 3. check to see if resources changed (they had stats) 4. move harvesters 5. hit a cantina to chat up some friends 6. craft a special order with another player's krayt tissue, nightsister shard, or giant dune kimo scale and if you werent a crafter (keep in mind, in swg crafting wasnt a secondary skill everyone had).... 7. go to coronet for doc buffs 8. go to cantina for mind buffs 9. go hunting.....there were many options and many reasons.... your armorsmith friend needs wooly hide and a great spawn just came in with amazing stats. so off you go to hunt on whatever planet the spawn happened you want a specially made FWG5 pistol, enhanced with krayt tissues. so off you go to tatooine to hunt krayt dragons. you want a rare armor set callled RIS and you need 3 specific drops from three rare animals. off you go to hunt 10. build and maintain a player city 11. go into space and enjoy wide open dogfights, hunt for resources, or just visit with friends on your ship 12. pvp, either attacking any enemy player or destroy player owned bases 13. explore, and i mean real exploration. worlds so massive, wide open, no forced paths,and no sharding 14. if you were a bounty hunter, go hunt player jedi...yes actual player bounties in the game 15. go hunt and tame creatures if you were a creature handler 16. trying a new skill. you didnt have to reroll another toon to try a different skill set 17. do quests, yes a sandbox mmo has quests but they are sometimes hidden. you actually have to explore 18. shop players vendors, looking for a variety of weapons, armors, food and drink, regular clothes, spices, etc I havent even scratched the surface on all the things you could do in SWG. in every mmo ive tried since, its the same boring game at the end. star wars galaxies didnt have an end

I just dont feel the need to log in anymore. not that Im surprised...theme park mmos while fun in short bursts just dont keep me interested for very long. I got my first toon, a dps shadow to 50. I didnt finish the last chapter on corellia, just got bored and found no desire to find out how the story ended. I got my 2nd toon, a dps assassin to 39. I skipped most of the quests only doing the bare minimum so I could get my love interest companion as quickly as possible. I purchased all her gifts and grinded her to 10k affection but again Im bored with her. apparently she wont marry me until I get further into the chapters. I cant bring myself to lvl this toon anymore I got my 3rd toon, a healer spec mercenary to 18. I completely skipped all quests once i got my ship. Im just doing warzones to level up but its painfully slow. I have stopped playing alltogether, even the latest patch wasnt enough to peak my interest enough to log in. the only solution i can ever see working (to keep myself and players like me) interested is to add sandbox design elements to the game. real housing non-combat classes mini-games such as pod racing new planets such as Dathomir and Yavin, easier to explore with tons of points of interest you must discover on your own (no leading me there via quests and dots on map) one day someone will finally figure it out...make a hybrid mmo, one with both sandbox and theme park features. until that day, I guess I'll have to dust off my copy of swg or maybe a good single player game like Fallout 1-2

of course there has been a mass population drop. and bioware itself offers the proof they announced early on 1 million box sales.... then they announced 2 million box sales recently.... no new servers were added since even before they announced the 1 million mark had been reached. clearly people are quitting faster than subscribers are being added. they sold another 1 million boxes, yet no new servers were added. not that this is abnormal. i read an article once on mmorpg.com where some industry insider stated that the average retention rate from a box sale is 20%. an incredibly successful game might be lucky and get 30% for a while but they all tend to average 20% assuming tor is normal, that leaves this game with about 400K subs...spread out over too many servers and sharding, it makes the game feel empty

most of the people I know who quit werent upset over the bugs. they are mmo vets and fully expect bugs to be there. it was the design flaws that drove them away (and likely me too eventually) sharding of entire worlds lack of a lfg tool UI that cant be customized character creation lacking more options open world pvp doesnt exist worlds arent really open, you are forced along paths ship - housing is disappointing space combat, why did they even bother crafting is pointless when npc vendors sell equal goods its getting harder and harder for me to look past all those flaws knowing most issues cant be fixed. I havent logged in for a week and feel no motivation to do so.

a personal log Im fine with. its a useful tool for self-improvement. what Im not okay with is a damage meter. these create a really horrid community

i read that but it doesnt really explain what a rated warzone is. it just says they will be adding them and that there will be seperate commendations for them.

this seems to happen a lot with mmos. developers announce some feature in their mmo during development that after launch fails to match what we were told. I think what has happened is these projects have become too corporatized. frank honesty simply isnt profitable. public relations controls all info flowing out for the game. we are talking about hundred + million dollar projects, they dont want to alienate any potential target market. therefore LITERALLY every statement is analyzed and reviewed before publicly released. for example, a potential player asks "will there be open pvp in this game ?" even if the game doesnt really have what 95% of the mmo community would consider "open world pvp", the answer will never outright be no and most times will be a yes. they wont want to lose potential box sales. Bioware was asked many times, "does this game have open world pvp ?" the answer was always YES. of course the reality is The Old Republic doesnt really have open world pvp in the traditional sense. the design of the game just doesnt allow it. the worlds are sharded, many of the planets are off-limits, and Ilum is in reality just another warzone with objectives Belsavis and Taris are apparently switched between factions ??? I didnt learn this until i played the other faction and Taris wasnt a low level planet. no wonder I never saw any imps on Taris when I went there as a lvl 16 republic player. there is a safe zone buffer impossible to cross on Tatooine for each faction's main city. did ANYONE imagine that feature when they told us the game had open world pvp ??? Bioware was asked "does this game have housing ?" the answer was a proud YES ! however if you really look at their housing, well its not really housing at all. its merely a 1-man zone / loading area between shards. nobody else can visit your "house", nobody can see your house, you cant decorate your house, it doesnt even have its own storage space. nothing about my ship makes it a house. Bioware was asked "will the world be open ?" the answer was yes, the worlds are huge and wide open for you to explore. the reality is, this just isnt true at all. the worlds are terribly cut up. paths are forced, everything is sharded and instanced. you cant ever go off in one direction, obstacles are everywhere Bioware was asked "will crafting have a vital role in the game ?" again they said yes of course it will be. one second into launch and anyone can see it really isnt. you cant have a true player economy when npc vendors sell medpacks and stims which literally compete against player made goods. lots of vendors sell equal quality armor. heck, commendations can buy you equal quality item modifications. and i hear they are continuing to ruin player crafting by adding in highly sought after purple and white crystals to a vendor. this trend has been going on since world of warcraft launched. i simply no longer trust anything i read when following an mmo these days. yet surprisingly i see many others contuing to fall for these public relations' created hype statements. Secret World MMO is a prime example, lots of hype yet nobody seems to remember the very same hype for age of conan (same developer)...guess this time will be different ??? dont get me wrong, I like The Old Republic for what it is. but i will forever look at development announcements with jaded eyes.

I keep seeing references in threads to a rated warzone system coming. what is this exactly ?

I used to just announce "im a healer" for every warzone. It didnt seem to matter though

just not true from my experience. one time I was asked if i was a healer by a tank (so he could guard me)...once...thats it. tanks just guard and taunt off on anyone taking damage for the medals in my experience. I rarely get guarded. heck I rarely even get dps to peel off their target and come get the republic off me

I have a lvl 21 merc on this server, healer spec. I can tell you from my experience so far, healing in warzones totally stinks 1. you get way too few medals for doing your job. even if i do some dps sparingly, I cant get more than 4 medals most times 2. nobody protects you. I am constantly just stunned to watch dps over and over IGNORE the 3 shadows stabbing me in the back while Im healing them. couple nights back, Im following these 2 teammates into the east turret. there are 2 republics guarding it. one team member proceeds to attack the 2 republics. the other team member decides to try and capture the turret, a futile attempt of course with 2 republic members still right there. yet he continues to attempt to capture the turret. by this time, the other imp is dead and guess what...these two republics decide lets murder that healer (me)...my teammate CONTINUES to try and capture the turret (he is dotted) while these reps are killing me !!! and im sad to say this kind of stupidity happens on a nightly basis. I was so stunned. and Bioware wants to PENALIZE ME for bailing eventually ???? I got stuck in 3 more warzons with that moron later that night. I shouldnt be forced to play with such incompetent players 3. the dps dont have any clue on how to stay in LOS. clue folks...if someone is healing you, DONT run around a corner, dont sprint out of range, etc. I dont understand this one at all...i guess they just dont realize they are being healed ??? last night I was healing someone, they panicked and ran literally off the screen, behind the turret. I got so frustrated, I tried explaning to them that A. I was healing them...and B. if they were to die, they gasp get to rez and come back, which is actually much faster than fleeing away to get out of combat and self-heal 4. my personal favorite...lets leave the healer alone guarding a turret or door. yeah that makes total sense. i really have a shot at defending against 2 dps charging me. its a complete nightmare to heal warzones, on this server anyway. i have never seen such shoddy gameplay in an mmo.

100% agree Im not going to bother being the only player trying to win at huttball or the other warzones. Nothing is more frustrating knowing that the second I pop out of stealth Im going to get absolutely MURDERED by the other team. Im not going to stick around in any warzone and be an ego boost for some lvl 12 newb who scores a kill on me along with 5 of his friends. meanwhile my team is running around trying to collect medals and kills. or my personal favorite, the healer by himself stepping in and out of acid so he can self-heal I dont care what penalty they give us in the next patch, I'll still bail. ps. whats this "rated warzone" thing everyone keeps mentioning ?

agree 100% this is why I leave as well. I dont mind a loss if it was a good fight. but its incredibly frustrating to be the only person trying to kill a healer when everyone else is chasing a dpser. do people just not look up on a ramp ? do they not wonder "gee im doing a ton of dps but this player's health is still at 100%" ? do they not notice the healer healing the other healer while im the only one trying to kill him ? I'll suffer a loss any day of the week but Im not going to be farm bait simply because the other players only care about medals and that ridiculous ranking system at the end I've literally had players tell me "please dont throw me the ball" or watch them toss it on the ground so they can go back to killing. i should be forced to play with someone like that ????

oh please tell me they arent adding some stupid ranking system to the game ??? thats the last thing we need. we already cant get people to play warzones for a win because of the medal system is there any detailed info on this ? Im already guessing it wont benefit us open world pvpers who prefer picking off players in places like Voss