MMOs demographics changed in several ways: - from "gaming companies" founded by (geek) gamers we went into the slimy world of "publisher mega-corps", where shareholders and NOT players, are the priority. - since money and not fun nor mental enrichment nor culture nor storyline nor fantasy are the focus any more, what you get is the typical television over-budget-shallow-crappy quality product. This attracts likeminded people who flood those modern games like lemmings and basically overhelm the previous, "thoughtful" old style MMOers (MMO players) into a niche. Niche = bad shareholders money = ignore them. - at the same time old and new MMOers grow older, with less time to commit to "have to think" games and less time in general. This, summed to the above, leads to the so called "casual friendly" MMOs, which are not really "casual friendly" but "baddie friendly". There are plenty of "casuals" who would love a challenge (even if a personal and short timed one) but no, we MUST provide 10000 "boosters" to kill whole battalions of NPCs who would die to a sneeze already. - at the same time we get the new generation of players, those who find difficult to hold a game pad in their hands. Give them a "Multi User Dungeon" (MUD) - a jewel of the 1990s - and they won't even understand what's to appreciate about it: enormous stories, fantasy novels, 100 step quests with little to no help and so on. Because they need an "automated assistant" even to type in their phone WhatsApp. But they demand with endless entitlement to be THE hero. Yeah, the guy who presses 2 buttons and earthquakes crack the soil below NPCs feets.

People always forget, Sorcs/Sages players, pay as much for their subscriptions as anyone else. Either bring them in line with anybody else or ask $2 less a month. After all if we are precluded NiM etc. it's damage done to us, and damage can be paid with money.

Apparently they need some groupthink mega-committee before taking any decision, a bit like European Union boureucrats. Once they'll have produced some 10000 pages (signed one by one by each participant) paper, then the fix is going to be made.

... and this is how loot works in other MMOs. Someone in the group is probably going to need what you found to be useless for you. Next try (an OP, a FP...) the OP leader could give you what you need. In current loot system, you can try how much you can, you are not going to increase your odds, nor be able to "trade with friends".

Well, I am lead analyst of a large software project which - unlike this - is going extremely well. I agree with you, I am happy to not be involved with these decisions too. My curriculum would be tarnished here.

I can't believe there still are some fanbois left. No, CXP sucks and WE all know that. Deny it till you grow purple tentacles, won't make it any different. No, there are no "chinese grinders" but there are Korean grinders and those grinders are called "Korean" because those players who like to farm for their whole life are well... Korean and pretty much peak there and the regions nearby. Chinese playerbases are smaller because it's a whole different world, even payments work differently. In example, there are companies selling game time like some cell phone companies do. There's also a reason why Korean grinders stay Korean and that is because Western players prefer achievement / objectives driven gameplay. The RNG element CAN be made "fluent" with objectives driven gameplay, actually it's close to 20 years I play online western games (and a couple Asian) with no CXP pain grips. Any proper raid boss holds a RNG loot table, but such loot table usually holds PROPER, ACTIONABLE drops. They have one gear drop per class plus a couple "offspec" and "exotic" drops (in example, the mythical +str / +agi rings in Molten Core) that are actually more sought after than regular drops. I have winessed 3 raiding guilds split because of a mis-assigned +str / +agi ring. And when you don't get your drop, a guild mate gets it for his class, so the waste is close to zero. Once many got their stuff, they can invite their alts. Last but not least, usually a boss only holds pieces for 1/2 different slots, so you know which boss to farm. THIS IS THE PROPER WAY TO DO LOOT. Compare with SWTOR "RNG" loot: - it's individual. So if it's useless, nobody else gets it, you don't even have the feeling somebody got something useful. - it's from an huge loot table. You can be lucky and get 3 pieces in a row, then turn unlucky and get garbage for 3 years. - every crate may hold any slot, so you (like I did) can get 5 x headpieces and ZERO anything else. Basically the "new" SWTOR loot system is embarassing. All it does is to instill frustration, it shows no feeling of progress because you never know if you'll get your next stuff today or in a year.

I demand a magic wand that shoots rainbows and unicorns! Since they are now worthless both in PvE and PvP, that would at least make my Sage and Sorc fun to look at!

I have been beta tester in ESO. It started in a most horrible way, they lost huge tons of players. Then they smarted up. This "smarted up" detail, hopefully is going to happen in SWTOR too. Hopefully before it's too late.

Because you cannot report to your superiors and tell "you know what? We wasted a year worth of budget into making a piece of garbage and now we are just undoing it and restoring the previous, functioning system". So, the escamotage is about inventing creative ways to basically deplete what you have done and sort of force in the old system - a round peg - into your new square hole.

The problem is, a player with "15%" minus is going to get this effect on him from multiple sources and the effect stacks fast. In example, if I am a tank and do my job, every opponent beating on me is adding his 15%. My health being 15% minus, is going to get multiple "+15%" hits on it. It sounds little but just keep a stream of +XXXX damage hitting you every second and you end up "gracile". With a tank down, an healer and maybe a DPS are going to suffer right next. I have studied this effect across PvP "enabled" games over the years, the "gimp" in a group is going to weight everybody else down, the lower the numbers in the match, the bigger the impact. In a SWTOR WZ all it takes is 2 guys with this disadvantage and your chances quickly climb to > 60% statistical probability to lose.

Cancelled the day 5.1 got released and we learned it had been just another betrayal. Screenshots

Yep. Unsubbing is a duty now, it's impossible to keep taking it into the face forever. So, here you go: unsubbed.

Let me show you a tell tale story: BW slowly removed community manager stopped answering in game tickets stopped chasing and banning cheaters and exploiters stopped rebalancing classes new content delivery slowed to a crawl and then stopped completely new content was made with copy and paste of previous content the last patches were about making the grind longer and more annoying: the less content they made, the higher the sense-less grind they impose, because it's way cheaper to make you grind 1 + 1 + 1 + 1.... forever than creating actual, enjoyable new content. slowly they merged all the servers until they had to switch off the last lights At this point you'll wonder why I am telling you SWTOR's story. No, I am not talking about SWTOR. This is what they did to their other MMO (which I played from beta to shutdown), Warhammer. Now, look at the points above and you read SWTOR's future.

Same here! 5.1 is the FINAL NAIL in the coffin!

Well... ESO PvE being challenging is a bit far fetched. But I liked it. To explain PvP in ESO to a SWTOR player: it's a bit like outworld PvP, but with much more stuff to do, objectives to obtain. There are small things (conquer a mill or similar) for small groups and huge things (big castles) for massive raids. It's a bit like Warhammer Online, more varied than Warhammer but I loved Warhammer lore / intellectual property and gameplay more. I posted 3 ESO pictures here: a character of mine doing PVE, a PvP map showing various objectives and who holds them, then a castle in the PvP world.