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AstralProjection

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  1. Agreed. So you finally got your TOR/WOW character to look exactly the way you want with all your pretty shiny items and stats. What's there to do now? The answer of course: Nothing. By design. Ideally for the developers they'll have the next tier of gear out just before the majority of the playerbase is geared up. Maybe throw in a warzone every 6 months to a year in between cash shop updates. Hopefully 90% of the players stick around if they keep the so called "content" (new items) flowing, and only 10% realize the rat maze they're in and try to climb out- but after a certain number of cycles, the rats start piling up on each other forming cheerleaderesque pyramids to escape. That's the massive guild exodus you're experiencing. It happens when you're paying a subscription fee to play dress up with your friends, and you finally realize it. I love my guild, it's the only reason I'm still here, but man, they don't make it easy on us. You can lie to me and tell me games have to be like this because this is an industry, and they have to make money, but this only recently became a serious industry. The people working on games used to really want to make the best game possible, something that would bring their vision to life and everyone to love. You let corporate get their hands on a team with potential, this is what happens. The best games are still made when people outside that umbrella come together to bring an idea to life. Take minecraft for example. It doesn't need all the polish and the fancy hardware everyone wants to sell you on. I love good graphics as much as the next guy - but they've crippled what MMORPG's can be because the servers and computers running them can't handle all the particle effects of the MASSIVE part of the game. So they ferry you all into tiny 16 man cells and tell you you're fighting for the galaxy, and even though this is the 10,000,000th time you're going to fight this battle, THIS time, it's going to mean something. Yeah, right. I used to make my own content in these games. Those were the days.
  2. Agreed, that was worth the read!
  3. No it's not...at least it didn't used to be until WoW ruined this genre with the theme park, greed-based game. The point of MMORPG's used to be having some sort of lasting effect on the world you inhabited. Building either physical guild/player structures, or building renown for your guild and having a slew of rival and ally guilds to pit yourself against. You used to have a purpose in MMORPG's. Now Guilds are just a group of people that band together to get individual possessions for its players. Once people don't need the items they're running on the treadmill for, they stop caring, unless they're the most die-hard fan boy. Interacting in instances and posting screenshots of your warzone stats on forums will never hold a candle to real guild versus guild, realm versus realm struggles. Before WoW, PVP was the endgame of MMORPG's. Everquest built the coffin and WoW put all the nails in and sealed the genre up tight. The only reason to get the items before was so you could compete against rivals or valiantly represent your faction in combat. There's none of that now. We can't capture the worlds we quest on. We can't build anything to defend or attack. The guild system was at its most robust pre-launch, when we were fooled into thinking there was a meaning behind allies and enemies beyond playing on the same server. If you want to put the meaning back in this genre, there is no other way to do it other than including at least a modicum of what people have come to blanket as "sandbox" features. If you want people to care about your game, let them invest their time and energy into something other than playing dress up. It doesn't cut it for a lot of people. That's why MMO hopping has become so prevalent. That's why Eve's subscription numbers are growing even after all this time (though there's something to be said for multiple accounts there). Still, multiple accounts are another staple of "sandbox" games. The only multiple accounts people would care to make in this game are free to play ones for their kids. You can barely get them to pay one subscription fee for what they call "Massively Multiplayer" now. Ground War in Call of Duty is more massive than this game if you're a PVPer.
  4. As I laid out at the end of the post, some of us are still here because we love Star Wars or play the game with our friends, sometimes both as in my case. That doesn't change the fact that I feel completely cheated for what I paid for. Luckily I have disposable income. The same type of income that's keeping this game afloat right now through the cash shop. To the person dropping analogies of dealing with a whining child, you've dropped yet another internet analogy that has nothing to do with what you're talking about. If children bought services from their parents, your analogy might apply. It's not BioWare's job to teach its subscribers manners or life lessons, just to deliver what they've advertised to customers who have paid them for that service. Many people feel they haven't. Before the game was free-to-play most people voted with their subscription dollars, causing the game to go free-to-play to begin with. As I've mentioned, the only thing keeping it afloat now is Star Wars fans with too much money on their hands. I love Star Wars so until there's another game out there to replace this I'll probably be around on and off, but as an MMORPG this game is totally one-dimensional, and as a development team this company's done nothing but fail to deliver on their promises. We're over 17 months in now and half the content they've released so far was already in development or nearly complete when the game launched. A poster said games need money to grow - they got lots of money from box sales and subscriptions for six months before subscriptions plummeted sharply. They released content that was already nearly finished. Where did that money go? You can keep thinking Cash shop purchases are going to help make this game better, but most of that money isn't going to the skeleton crew desperately trying to keep this ship afloat. If they had an actual team of people working on aspects of this game it wouldn't take a month or more to get a bug like the OP is complaining about fixed. I paid my sub just like you, I have a right to my opinion. I'm not telling you what to think, I'm just stating why the OP might feel inclined to ask for something that costs the company nothing to dole out, and then giving him reasons why he shouldn't get his hopes up. History likes to repeat itself.
  5. Not that I really care about getting CC or anything, but the nice thing about having their own fake monetary system is that they create it out of thin air, just like the Federal Reserve. I think maybe the OP is suggesting a courtesy move that would go a long way to making players happy. Still, if there's one thing I've learned about the new post TOR Bioware having played this game fairly faithfully since Beta, it's that they don't give the slightest iota about making customers happy, only money. They've spent the most money on the most sub-par MMORPG ever made, and managed to keep it on life support with a cash-shop that lives on the strength of its IP alone. The expectations for this game have fallen far indeed. Don't expect new content, if it does manage to pass as content, don't expect it to be good, and you REALLY shouldn't expect it to work right out of the box. I was going to say it's too bad smaller businesses can't survive like that, but as a consumer, that's kind of a stupid statement. Getting treated like garbage by companies I do business with isn't something I regularly seek out. Best way to do something about it - vote with your money. Or keep playing because you like Star Wars or your friends like the rest of us.
  6. The highly regrettable Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978.
  7. People complaining about cat people with the word "cat" in their racial moniker...in a universe where giant squid men had the word "calamari" in their name and are considered canon despite being conceived of after the cat people....If you hadn't noticed yet, Star Wars is cheesy...always has been. There's better stuff to argue about folks. Move along, sir.
  8. The poster above me is right. BioWare didn't create the Cathar. I can't believe people are complaining about something juvenile and childish in a George Lucas mythos. it doesn't get much more campy than that. I'd rather see a million other races but I'll take what I can get to see the game improved in a direction it should've went a LONG time ago (read: at launch, when we all complained about it in Beta). Also, to the poster who said you can only play recolored humans in MMORPG's, what about SWG? The game this replaced let you play far more alien races like Ithorians. It's very possible. Most people would accept hiding pieces of their armor to get an iconic race into the game, they're just using armor as an excuse to not do the work that people want.
  9. It's really not all that hard to sync queuing in Vent/TS/Mumble and get into a warzone with your buddies. I'd say it's around a 50/50 shot if you queue at the same second, maybe more. Especially during the day when less people play.
  10. Being born into privilege and opportunity isn't exactly a Darwinian struggle against ones own genetic traits. Your comment makes it seem like over half of the first world wouldn't die in a heartbeat if asked to fend for themselves, which is a total farce.
  11. And let's not forget that some of us are old farts that are lucky to have time for our dailies most days ; ) I think the trend for most decent players is PUGs yield a 50/50ish win ratio, and premades yield a very high one, no matter which side you're on. Lately my PUGs have been pretty good, it's probably higher than 50/50, so I'm not complaining either. Would still like to see some meaningful reason to be one faction versus the other in PVP right now, because I think a lot of us who have been running warzones since launch are semi-sick of the same four maps, and end up playing around with alts to pass the time after our dailies are done. I know I'm enjoying my evil impling right now if I do get a little time to play at night. I wish my Jedi could've resolved every cutscene with /kill.
  12. As long as teams of lolsmashers aren't roaming the warzones in hordes stunlocking people until they unsub, there's nothing to see here, folks.
  13. So true...I'd take it one more step and make beards mandatory on all player characters, regardless of species and gender.
  14. Back on topic...while most of the things posted in this thread aren't gamebreakers, they ARE excellent explanations of why the theme-park grind game is completely mediocre and one-dimensional. While my game isn't broken, it certainly fails to capture my interest because it lacks so many things that much smaller studios have been able to accomplish. All evidence points to a staff of about five people working on the Old Republic at present time.
  15. I agree completely, been saying that for a long time. It's one of the things that makes this game seem so pointless. Being in a guild is just permanent group chat, there's nothing to do as a guild or faction. Sadly though, I think Hawk is right. We probably won't get anything like that for years, and when we do, it'll be a purchasable unlock from the Cartel Store. I would be happy with some outposts that one faction or the other could capture on each world map, but we'll never see that either. Capital City raids will be missed sorely.
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