Of course it's a matter of interpreting the data... but having sufficient amounts of data to interpret in the first place is important too. EVERYTHING players post on these boards is mere speculation, but the devs running the game have access to information regarding nearly every aspect of the game and what the players are doing in it, going back to the first test runs. It's basically comparing "three blind men describe an elephant" to a biologist who is an expert on elephants. On the Guild Wars 2 forums, the economist who oversees the in-game economy has carried on extensive conversations about the game from time to time. He has demonstrated the ability to look up exact records for almost any in-game activity, such as the number of crafting mats gathered/sold/consumed per hour, the number of ultra-rare items spawned/sold per day, etc. Their jobs depend on knowing what's going on, who is spending their time doing what in the game, and what items/activities generate the most income. It's pretty obvious that while the hardcore players are very dedicated to playing the game, they are not a major financial pillar upon which to anchor the game as a whole. It also appears that there has been some change in management, and policies may be in flux and the game could go in a completely different direction over the next year. People are not perfect and don't always make the right decisions. But their decisions are based on a lot more information than any player has access to, even after talking to a dozen other players in general chat. It's amusing and baffling to see posts by people who think they know more about the game than the people who run it. You don't. Neither do I, but at least I acknowledge that the devs know more about the game than I do.

I read your post and answered it. I do not agree with you, and you are not required to agree with me. The point remains that the forums do not represent "the players" but only specific subsets of the players.

But in order to provide useful data, the poll has to include a sufficiently large and sufficiently random sample of the group being studied. The forums mainly consist of players who: are deeply invested in the game, are experiencing a problem with the game, and/or have a complaint about the game. While studying the opinions of these kinds of players can give some useful information, it does not provide a sufficiently large and sufficiently random sample of all players in the game. This is why there is rarely a response to most of the common complaints here: things like annoying (but not game-breaking) bugs, PvP issues, cash shop prices, PC race variety, frequency of content updates, and so on. While these things may be of concern to multiple individuals on the forums, the average player will not play more often, spend more money, or even notice when these concerns are addressed.

Enjoy. I'm sure everyone at BW will miss you.

Yep. When I was not much older than you and I got laid off from a job I actually had to go into the unemployment office, fill out forms and sit there and wait for someone to call my number so I could file for unemployment benefits. Now most of that stuff can be done online or over the phone so it's a little easier, but get used to it. You'll be sitting in a lot of doctor's waiting rooms and so on, and listening to "your call is very important to us, please stay on the line" for hours at a time that add up to a week or two of your life, eventually.

Are you a young'un? Much of life consists of waiting for other people to get around to doing something.

i would imagine that Twi'leks are not that popular as a race due to clipping issues and lack of headgear options due to the floppy head thingies (lekku?). It would be nice, but the list of things that would be nice if they happened is very very long. It's more likely the devs would focus their efforts on creating new races to sell through the cartel market or customizations that can be applied to several different races like hairstyles and eye colors. I'm sure more options for sith faces, tattoos for the green guys, etc. would make people happy, it's just that it doesn't translate into selling enough cartel coins to make the devs' bosses happy.

You're #152,843 in line, it doesn't matter whether it takes ten minutes or ten hours, there are a lot more tickets than CS agents right now. If it helps, think of it as waiting in the only line to check out at the grocery store. You're only getting two things, but the ten people ahead of you each have a full cart. Once you reach the checkout it will only take a minute, but the people ahead of you want to get out of there just as much as you do and they're not going to step aside so you can get there faster.

There's a "traffic jam" due to a lot of former players coming back to check out the expansion. And just like sitting in a traffic jam, if you don't want to wait you can always pound on your car's horn as rapidly as possible. Because the more noise you make, the faster the traffic moves. Yep, that always works.

You're doing it wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean, are you talking about items being bound to a single character? This is what happens in almost every MMO, once you "use" the item it is locked to that character.

No...

Both Jedi and Sith philosophies fall apart when viewed as something that can exist in the real world. They are storytelling devices created by a young man who smoked too much weed and read a book about Buddhism once.

It always was that kind of game. It seemed obvious to me at launch that someone at EA gave the order to turn a half-completed KOTOR 3 into an MMO as a money grab that largely failed due to the fact the developers had never created an MMO before, and many standard features were missing or poorly done. It doesn't matter what I think. Before creating KotFE, the devs looked at three years of data on player behavior and made their decisions based on what players *actually* do in the game, not what they should be doing. Most of the hardcore players rushed through the story to get to endgame, got bored, and left. Most casual players played the storylines multiple times, don't care about PvP, flashpoints or ops, and come back to check out the expansions or still play. So they did what every successful business does and gave their customers what they want. The only thing is, you don't want what their typical customer wants. They didn't make KotFE for you, so you're not going to be satisfied with it. Whether their target market is satisfied remains to be seen.

It helps if you learn how to speak marketing. Those kinds of claims are not coming straight from the programmers' mouths, its marketing-speak telling you what you want to hear. I don't expect that kind of thing because I know that eight different classes, sixteen specializations, and thirty-two dark/light sides later, everyone has to go from point A to to Point Z. Whether you visit Points B, C, D, or O, P, Q, you know that the story ends at Z and Z is the only place it can go.