Quite a good summary there sir. It's very true that you have to look at the wider MMO market and iterations of the genre in order to understand the complexities of player response and what they're willing to subscribe to. I myself was a WoW refugee, willing to give up on the old guard of MMOs in order to start fresh in games like GW2, SWTOR, and TERA. What I've experienced over the last 2 years however have been nothing more than iterations to the MMO genre and nothing that truly utilizes all the new elements well into a cohesive whole. Instead they will wait for the next truly successful MMO to come along and combine all these elements into the next big thing. Meanwhile, Blizzard continues to innovate with WoW doing crazy stuff that nobody could ever think of and they take the subscription losses on the chin from players who don't like the changes as if they expected it to happen. The strong point of SWTOR has to be in the creation of an original character. Never before in an MMO have I been able to create a character with such a personality and personal storyline as SWTOR. It's all the little interactions in conversations, relationships, and countless little instances that may not have happened if you didn't do a specific thing earlier on in the story that really make it. Meanwhile combat is almost a bog-standard WoW simulation, only broken up by how unique the classes are and the world is absolutely static. GW2 got the dynamic world thing down perfectly, though it's story falls short being quite boring with a somewhat lame ending and no real player input. Combat also failed to innovate because it once again uses basic hot-key controls similar to WoW. The fact that it has no subscription cost and therefore can't afford to ever add meaningful content apart from holiday events definitely doesn't do it any favours either. Not much to say about TERA other than it has an amazing action-oriented combat system but a terrible story and static world. Surprisingly the biggest complaint I hear about it is that Western gamers detest the sexualization of children that is common among Eastern MMOs. FF14 has a bit of this too with a specific race but admittedly not as much as TERA. So in summary the big iterations we've seen in the MMO genre over the past couple of years have been dynamic worlds, enhanced character-based storytelling, and action-oriented combat systems. I don't even want to think about what kind of budget a game would need in order to combine the three as well as having a great customer service regimen, but all those aspects combined is probably the only thing that could create a meaningful MMO that actually lives up to the hype in the current market. Meanwhile Blizzard has already started factoring in those aspects to WoW in the latest patch which will probably ensure a stable stream of subscribers once again. Innovation breeds expectation. Players just want more from their MMOs these days.

Welp, thanks for ruining KOTOR for me.

Jorgan, come on the guy deserves it after all he's been through. I got married to Elara so it would look a bit weird if I gave my wife a promotion anyway.

Romances differ greatly depending on what class you play, what gender you are and most importantly the character you romance. Spoilers for Imperial Agent and Trooper below. So I wouldn't say they're disappointing. It just depends on a lot of different factors and a few class/gender combinations can be a bit dull. What? I flirted with her multiple times as a Chiss. I don't know if you mean it's not possible to get the the end of the romance options with her while being alien, but the flirt options were available to me.

That's pretty neat. The OP is in the first 77k to sign up and you're in the first 198k. Meanwhile I signed up in December 2011 and I'm way over the 2 million mark. Pauleh takes the cake being within the first 9k.

This mount is a good way to make money and a terrible way to breed trust among the playerbase. I have no doubt it will sell enough to make the decision to put it up worthwhile but it makes the people who run this game look like scumbags yet again. Much like a lot of other items on the cartel market. They STILL haven't changed the prices of the Grade 7 Starship Bundles even though there was a CM post a month ago saying they were looking into the pricing of them to see if they were reasonable. Those things are a travesty.

239 People at peak on the Dalborra republic fleet this evening.

SW:TOR has turned me off MMOs a bit. Essentially it is a single-player experience with MMO elements (gear treadmill, grinding, stat balancing etc.) attached which has reminded me of the true essence of MMOs, which is to make you do the same piece(s) of content over and over again just so you can look at shinier armor with bigger numbers on it. After six years of WoW and other MMOs this has really jaded me. I honestly believe that I won't ever play another "old style" MMO that follows the same formula as WoW again and that once everyone else gets sick of them too they will die off. I am however looking forward to other new and innovative MMOs such as TERA and Guild Wars 2 which shake up the system a bit.

The Rakghoul Pandemic event going on right now actually does the exact thing you're talking about.. Each day the virus is spreading and access to a new daily quest opens up with more to do and a new reward. See here: http://dulfy.net/2012/04/16/rakghoul-pandemic-dynamic-event-guideupdated-daily/

Except Guild Wars 2.

If you put armoring (and I assume hilts/barrels) in them they can be RE'd. However the issue is I can't learn any Orange schematics at all from REing.. This isn't normal right?

List of features not added: Rated warzones (duh) Augments for armormechs (simply not available in the trainer) New artifice crystals (simply not available in the trainer) Reverse engineering orange gear for schematics (for Armormechs at least, haven't heard reports from other skills yet) Using the shuttle to go to "Your Ship" from a planet is there but doesn't work.

I don't think they've been added. The new augments promised for Armormechs haven't been added to the trainer either. Also, don't try to reverse engineer orange gear. You won't get a schematic.

Update on the situation: All Armormech orange items with armoring in them can be reverse engineered for crafting materials and 0% chance of a schematic. All Armormech orange items without armoring in them cannot be reverse engineered. I sense a rollback in the force..

Okay, so I'm an Armormech have about 35 pieces of Orange Heavy Armor gear in my bank that I've collected over the course of leveling to 50. About 20 of these I'm still not able to Reverse Engineer after 1.2 and the other 15 I am able to.. But I'm pretty sure I was able to do that before the patch. I have reverse engineered 2 items: The first was a RD-13B Striker Helmet I was going to use for one of my companion's armor sets. This gave me no recipe and just the usual crafting item's I'd get from reverse engineering. The second was just some ugly boots, again with the same result. Is this normal? Are we only meant to be allowed to reverse engineer certain orange gear and not most others? Is there only meant to be a chance (not a guarantee) to learn the orange item's recipe when we reverse engineer it without any plausible way of knowing the chance? (None of my 15 items show any chance to learn the recipe when I select reverse engineer) Also, augments aren't learnable from the Armormech crew skill trainer. That's something I know is meant to be there and isn't working properly. One more bug too: Clicking on the "Your Ship" button from a planet's shuttle just doesn't work, at least on Belsavis.