Probably because in the original design, those locations served a purpose - one which got cut during development due to lack of time/funds, or a concept that never made it out of the design stage.

No. The whole planet of Coruscant feels like a bunch of shoeboxes taped together, and a lot of the other worlds feel the same way. (Taris was probably the closest to a "real world".)

Funny thing is that CCP (developers of EvE Online) have done a bang up job the last 6 months. Of course, the player base there had to force them up against the wall by cancelling about 20% of accounts (about 1/5 of all CCP employees were laid off). Which has done wonders for focusing CCP's attentions back on core game play and getting bugs (new and old) squashed within a few weeks rather then taking a year or two. I suspect EA/Bioware will not learn that lesson either until the layoffs hit.

It's okay... But it needs more random elements to be a long-term success. Even after a week or two, I can already predict exactly where and when various elements will show up to be shot at. I'm also disappointed that in the mid-levels, lower level missions suddenly only give +5 XP when completed, even if they are "blue" in the galaxy map.

Yep, just join the "lfg" channel and encourage others to do the same. Eventually, you'll get critical mass.

(or the green plane of blinding light). It happens a lot around the tall "power" pillars scattered around near the quest hubs on various planets. Such as the one in Kalikori village on Tython, or at the first speeder outpost on Taris.

More responsive dev shops will tell you whether the issue is still being researched, whether a fix has been written and checked in, or whether a particular issue has been deployed to the testing server. Basically, as a paying customer I want to know whether: - Has the bug been reported and acknowledged, or do they still need reproduction steps? - Has it been worked on at all, or is it part of something that will have to wait for a big dev cycle? - Is there a potential fix already in testing? - Has that fix made it to the test server so we can see whether it is truly fixed? - Did the potential fix not work? You manage expectations by constantly reminding people that no change is final until it changes on patch day. If something doesn't pan out, you admit that the issue was more complex and had some bad interactions, so it had to go back to development for more work.

There's more then a few of the missions with bad data. Low level "moderate" missions which net you more then a higher level "bountiful/rich" mission (which are higher difficulty). L3 Take the Money and Run (Moderate, 425 credits, 7.58 minutes) = ~1450 profit/hr L3 Droid Madness (Abundant, 460 credits, 9.70 minutes) = ~900/hr L3 Prince of Fools (Bountiful, 780 credits, 11.00 minutes) = ~950/hr L3 Arranged Accidents (Rich, 870 credits, 12.20 minutes) = ~2500/hr L4 Missing Probes (Moderate, 645 credits, 13.40 minutes) = ~1500/hr L4 Spy Droid (Moderate, 665 credits, 16.45 minutes) = ~750/hr L4 Be Careful What You Read (Bountiful, 1175 credits, 18.55 minutes) = ~950/hr L4 Pointing Fingers (Bountiful, 1250 credits, 19.37 minutes) = ~850/hr Someone at Bioware needs to learn math.

No way are you getting 1000 from a slicing box on Taris. Most of them are in the 100-300 credit range, and there are simply not that many of them.

Pretty much. In EVE, the NPCs do not sell ships or modules and CCP (over the years) has continually scaled back on items which are bought from NPCs. Special ships which are NPC-sold require that you not only pay ISK (money) plus LP (points from doing missions) but you also have to supply a base version of the ship hull (created by players). Plus, there's a huge demand for new ships/modules because they get blown up by mission NPCs or due to PvP activities. War is good for business when you're a seller of guns & ammo. And if you don't like your competition (who are attempting to drive you out of the market), you can hire mercenaries to interfere with their supply chain. On the downside, it's not everyone's cup of tea and it's a harsh universe.

Yeah, EQ's UI prior to Shadows of Luclin was pretty horrid. Spell gem slots; you could only memorize 10 different abilities for spell casters and it took 20-30 seconds to swap one out. Only having 6 or 10 "buttons" for all of your other abilities. TOR's UI is functional, but extremely frustrating in a lot of ways (panes that hide what you're trying to do, panes that close other panes, etc.).

When your potential pool of ninjas / griefers numbers in the thousands / tens of / hundreds of thousands or more, a personal blacklist does not work. It simply doesn't scale. Especially since you could only have about 50 people on your /ignore list. So even if you /ignore them - it has near zero impact on their ability to get future groups because the odds of you being put in the same group as them again (at max level) is a few thousand to one. (The other half of the problem is that MMO designers don't grasp that /ignore needs to be account-based, not character based and that you should be able to /ignore entire guilds.)

Once and done for the "unlocked" missions. Of course, with the nerf to slicing, don't expect to see very many of those mission offers make it to the GTN.

1) Flag yourself as LFG in the /who tool and put in the quest / dungeon and your spec (DPS, Heal, Tank) in the comment field. 2) Periodically use the /who tool and put "LFG" into the search box and see whether there are any other people at your level looking to do the same thing. 3) For general instances, join the "LFG" channel or hang around on the station and watch /1 (general) chat.

We ran Hammer/Athis last night - and it was very disappointing compared to Black Talon / Esseles. There was only one light/dark choice in the entire instance on both of those - with pretty much the exact same choice (kill the neutrals / civies for being naughty collaborators or let them live). Once you got the initial quest from the quest giver outside the instance, there wasn't anything else interesting until afterwards. It's so bland compared to Esseles / Black Talon. You don't get to "talk back" to the bosses before hand, or get much of a story except when you pickup the quest for the flash point.