One of the great video game mysteries of my lifetime, in my opinion, will be the question as to how so many former Mythic employees, many of whom worked on WAR which actually had decent and engaging OPvP, could fail so miserably at implementing OPvP in TOR. It's almost like they ignored one of the few things that WAR did well and decide to try to implement all of the things it did poorly. Also, why fight over Ilum? Sure, I get the whole Aedegan crystal storyline, which was pretty thin to begin with IMO, but why not simply create a new, separate area on a planet has a much more well-established importance to the war efforts for both sides, such as Balmorra or Corellia. This would also allow you to save a bit of time on development because you could reuse most of the preexisting textures/architecture and even allow to set the phase cap lower to compensate for the inadequacies of the Hero Engine. It's decisions and patches like this one that really cause me to wonder how much of their design team is outsourced to third-parties/individuals who have little to no experience of previous MMOs and mechanics that have proven successfuly in the past. Hell, if it weren't the massive Reknown grind and the class imbalances in WAR, I would still play that game over TOR because it offered a much more satisfying OPvP experience compared to this game. Even with a huge disadvantage from a numbers standpoint, it was still possible to have an enjoyable OPvP experience when it came to T2+ with superior tactics (feints, proper reconnaissance, guerilla warfare, etc). I almost wish there was a way to take the mechanics of OPvP/RvR in WAR and just mod in the classes/landscapes of TOR. I'd even pay up to $25 USD/mo if a game like that existed, but don't tell that to the suits in the EA executive suite or the decision makers at BioWare.

You can remove the overt trinity system if you like, but it will still be there. It's a staple of RPGs and, to a certain degree, of team-based FPS games as well (e.g. TF2). Players will always find a way to specialize themselves, be it through stats, gear, or abilities, that will allow them serve the trinity roles--a specialization that allows you to absorb damage or mitigate damage to others, a combat support specialization, and a damage output specialization. I don't think the problem that players have with the trinity is inherently borne out of the trinity itself. I think the frustrations stem more from overly rigid game design that doesn't allow for diversity within the trinity. One of my favorite examples of a game that did do this fairly well was FFXI. If you wanted a high-HP/heavy armor/low DPS tank you could grab a Paladin and tank around damage absorption. If you wanted a medium-HP/medium armor/high DPS tank you could grab a Ninja and tank around evasion. The tank type also allowed some flexibility in the healer role as well. A Paladin tank would usually need a White Mage pocket healer, but a Ninja tank could usually get by with a Red Mage (assuming the WHM & RDM were comparably skilled/equipped). TOR does seem to allow a little flexibility with the healer roles, although from my experience as a Shield Vanguard Smugglers/Operatives seem to have better tools at their disposal.

There probably are a lot of people dumping raw materials from Cartel packs on the GTN at low-cost because in their mind it's all pure profit from a credit standpoint--they paid cash for the materials, not credits, so any credits they make on the GTN are a net gain to their in-game wallets. Also, with the influx of new or returning players, you probably have more people harvesting the raw materials, which will also glut the market. There are also those people who will be leveling crafting alts, buy up a ton of raw materials, and then just sell off the materials they no longer need once they've moved on past that tier. I think a lot of these players will sell at cost or even take a loss just to free up inventory space and make some small amount credits back--sunk costs mentality. If the market is trending downward there is a pretty easy way around this. If you're taking a net loss on sending your companions out on crew missions to harvest materials, you can always go to a planet and harvest the materials yourself. Depending on the material, the planet, and your level, you will often gather significantly more resources in the same amount of time as you would sticking strictly to crew missions. You can also make decent credits if you have to kill trash mobs along the way. If you use this method, then anything you put on the GTN will be pure profit. What you're left to decide is what is the minimum credit cost of the time investment required. I use this method as a Scavenger with regards to Tier 6 materials, but the same principles apply to all tiers or raw materials.

The op-ed author missed the context of the first quote: The "interest" he's referring to is not interest from the gaming community, it's interest from investors. What he's essentially saying is that investors are focusing too much on TOR when it comes to evaluating the PPS value of EA's stock. The titles he mentions are titles that going to sell a number of boxes or digital downloads, probably in the 4-6 million copies range, and they're titles that can have easily have a bunch of DLC to them for even more revenue. Sure, TOR might bring in $15m every month, but the operating costs are going to be significantly higher for that title than all of those other titles. I bet a pretty hefty chunk out of every dollar earned goes towards a Lucasarts licensing fee too. That being said, I do agree with the overall tone of the op-ed piece. Like the news cycle, the MMO cycle is becoming increasingly shorter as time elapses in the genre. People often underestimate the emotional attachment with older titles/characters too. It's far easier to walk away from a game that may be more polished out of the box after 60 days than it is to walk away from a character(s) and relationships you've built up over the course of several years. Sure the content may be stale, but there's a reason why people look back on older titles with such fondness--emotional investment. TOR started strong, stumbled, and has yet to recover. Unfortunately, it may never fully recover. Personally, I feel a lot of the blame can be tied back to the decision to go with the Hero Engine and we're stuck with it until the servers go offline.

I've had this happen on Alderaan before. I even somehow managed hear a piece of the Hutt VO dialogue that occurs at the end of a Huttball match. Hero Engine 4tw.

Anyone who doesn't think that NA/EU subs haven't taken at least a slight hit are wanting to ignore the 800lb gorilla. My guild launched with about 20 subs. After March we now have 6 who are active. Now, with that being said, I do not proclaim the sky to be falling. Even if the analyst prediction is correct and TOR settles in at just over 1 million subs, that still represents at least $13 million in revenue every month, which is more than enough to keep the game healthy. After 7 months of playing (3 of testing), I have come to the conclusion that TOR will never be quite what I hoped it would be, but it also will never be quite as bad as it would seem judging by forum posts. While disappointed, I can live with that because I enjoy playing with my friends and family. Unfortunately, I feel that the MMO genre as a whole is trending towards mediocrity, just as the gaming industry in general has done over the last 5 years or so. As a side note, I couldn't help but laugh this morning when I read that Electronic Arts has been named as the worst company in America by Consumerist, beating out Bank of America by a 2:1 margin. When you beat BoA that badly in a worst-of competition, you know you have some major PR issues.

The only datacron a body type 3 Republic player cannot access is the Presence datacron on Corellia. Since it requires that you walk along the ledge between two structures with a protrusion in the middle of the path, you can't even use any kind of pull/client lag method to do this. You can still get the Alderaan Panteer Castle datacron solo by lagging out the client while trying to run through the crack. I always wondered how things like this made it past QA, but then when I read that BioWare outsourced half of the art for this game it all made sense; cloud-sourcing 4tw.

Tried this, didn't work for me. I'm stuck on 8/9 of the weekly and 7 consecutive wins have not counted.

Won a Voidstar tonight on The Twin Spears where Republic had 14 players versus the Empire's 8, and yes all 14 were in the Ops group simultaneously, and received credit for the victory in both my daily and weekly PvP mission. In fact, this WZ completed my daily for me.

Not discrediting the population imbalance, it's well known (I'm a Republic player too), but if you're basing the 5v8 & 6v8 on your ops frames, you can't since they are STILL broken and have been since September. If you're not getting the popup system message about Warzone shutdown sequence, you have the same number of players, you just can't see them. The problem is that whenever someone "enters" an uneven Warzone it aborts the sequence even though it may take 60s for that player to actually load into the WZ and then another 30s to sit and wait for the ridiculous barrier to go down (Huttball/Voidstar).

There are a number of head scratching design choices with TOR, but the biggest one of all for me is why the Western Shelf of Ilum doesn't have WAR's objective style PvP/RvR, especially since BioWare has a number of former Mythic employees on staff who worked on WAR. There's absolutely no meaningful reason to go to Western Ilum except to get you daily/weekly mission done. That's it. Nothing to fight over unless you like watching dropships bring in three new walkers/APCs. There needs to be something(s) to attack/defend with meaning. This would even help negate the population imbalance just a little bit. In WAR, from Tier 2 - Tier 4, each racial pairing had at least two keeps/castles/fortresses to attack/defend. If you were you were significantly outnumbered, you could still hold out for a good bit on defense. If you were outnumbered and attacking, you could run up to one castle, attack the door to "light it up" so that the defenders would start their 15 minute defense countdown, and then you could run off and take the other castle while the d-tick at the other objective was still counting down. The best part of it was that you receive meaningful material rewards for attacking/defending in the form of equipment upgrades or barter tokens. It gave you a reason to venture into the RvR lakes, even if you were severely outnumbered. As Ilum currently stands, it's pointless to be there once you finish your daily/weekly, which also undermines creating any sustained and meaningful PvP in the zone. How BioWare completely missed the boat on this one is something I will never understand. Just like there being no point in attacking the opposing faction on any planet other than Ilum, which has essentially turned every PvP server into a PvE server. For example, last night I was on Belsavis hunting Rakata Energy Cubes when I came across a level 50 Imp who was trying to get the Aim datacron. I could easily have got the drop on this person, but there was no point other than to be an *** and maybe get a little chuckle out of it. Now if there was a chance that I could get something like a Mercenary commendation, or 100 Valor, or even have that kill count towards my PvP mission score, then that would have made the encounter a lot more meaningful and interesting. It's sad that as broken and unsatisfying as WAR was, it's ability to give fun and meaning to PvP was light-years beyond anything TOR has right now. Even the Scenarios at launch were more varied and fun than TOR's current Warzones.

Someone may have answered this already, but if not, the person probably plays on a large monitor. I play on a Dell Ultrasharp U2711 and my UI is sized the same way as that of the video in 2560x1440 resolution.

If this is true, it doesn't make sense for it to work like this since it runs counter-intuitive to the scoring system it shows on the victory/defeat screen. The only thing that could account for this would be that your team is awarded 2 points for making it past a door instead of one. But then again, I would have to question the logic behind awarding 2 points instead of just 1. However, there are a lot of completely mind-boggling design choices in this game, so nothing would truly surprise me.

Did you get equally as far in terms of the bridges/shields? I've noticed that when one team makes it all the way to the datacore, the winning score is always a 6--3 points for each set of doors, 1 point for the bridges, 1 point for the shield walls, and 1 point for the datacore. I still haven't figured out exactly what the tie-breaker system is for equal progression. My guildmates and I used to think it was time-based; i.e. if the other team advanced to the tie area faster than you did, you would lose. However, a few days ago I was in a Voidstar where we cleared the first doors and the bridges in about 2:30 but could advance no further. The other team took almost 6 minutes to get the bridges extended, yet we still lost. My new theory is that as long as the attacking team in Round 2 advances as far as the attacking team in Round 1, regardless of the time, it's considered a win for the Round 2 attackers.

This exploit does exist and it's being used by both factions on my server. As someone mentioned above it seems to be a graphics bug where people become partially protected by a phantom wall. You can still interrupt the planter with AoE attacks, at least Neural Surge and Explosive Surge work for me as a Trooper, but if you try to use any single-target attacks you get the "cannot see target" error message.