It was incredibly disappointing how little your class matters in this story. One character was his Wrath, is a force user, has worked for him before, the other character is some soldier, who fought him once on a planet, you'd think the first character would have far different interactions with the Emperor, yet he doesn't. The force users and non force users are treated almost exactly the same seems like a massive plot hole. The story is clearly designed for the Jedi Knight, and yet it works for the Trooper, who has no force powers, and yet is supposed to fight 1v1 against these guys, and fight off the emperor in his head, like really? Really now? I feel like Bioware wanted to make a new game, but they couldn't because of SWTOR, so they made it in SWTOR, and as a result it doesn't really fit either way. I liked the story though. But clearly it should have been delivered as a new Single Player RPG, running on Frostbite like DA:I, but of course playing and looking like Battlefront. That would have been one hell of a game, and I'd have paid $60 to play through this story on that modern engine with quality 3rd person combat.

Glad to see I am not the only one who went *** IS THIS???? I can only assume they did it this way to save on VO costs. But man does it suck. And they style of it looks really ****** too. At this point I dont care for any of the content after the story, so I think Ill just wait until they get another 9 chapters available, then sub for that month and play through that. Though truthfully, this seems wrong for an MMO. I'd rather they just kill this game, and make a new KOTOR using the Frostbite Engine (battlefront and DAI). As these game mechanics are not really well suited for doing this kind of story telling. It begs to be single player. There is nothing in this whole new expansion that calls for MP.

Asinine comments in general chat is like 90% the point of having general chat. Need to stop being so uptight and enjoy it for what it is.

This is a software product, and as a software product it can change rapidly and easily. Every other MMO and many other games have been able to overhaul their class designs, overhaul game mechanics, and especially over the course of 4 years. There are aspects of the game I quite like, but those are story based, and take about a week to experience, and then be done with. Yet this is an MMO, the point is to keep people beyond a one month sub, and to keep me they would need to clean up their class designs and game mechanics. And the very idea that liking things is a matter of choice is stupid. I am never going to like hitting an ability on a melee class that forces me to stand still while it channels. I am never going to like having a dozen almost pointless abilities. It's not going to happen, no matter how much I like the game's lore and story.

By "real issues" I am referring to things like the class designs, the game mechanics, and the many missing basic MMO features or utilities. I'll start with the class designs. Who seem to all share a design goal of having an asinine amount of button bloat. Button bloat being the numerous abilities that are barely different than other abilities or are so weak they are just pointless. My favorite new poster child for this button bloat is the Fly By Attack given to the smuggler I just leveled. Conceptually its kind of cool, having your ship fly over and bomb your target (though how that works indoors...). It is a targeted AOE. It does merely ok damage. So why would anyone use it over Sweeping Gunfire? Which is also a targeted AOE, but it does its damage immediately, and I'd argue a lot more damage (though without a combat log...), and there is no waiting for it to start. So what specific purpose was this Fly By attack trying to fill for the class? It makes no sense. This seems to be the norm with SWTOR class design. Each class has several abilities which are barely better or kind of interesting compared to other abilities. Be it additional attacks or rather silly cooldowns. When you level up a class and you get a new cooldown, only to read it and think, "When will I ever use this silly thing?", and then not bind it, that's not good game design. Cooldowns, abilities, they should be fewer, and far more powerful. Garbage cooldowns like, X ability now is a guaranteed Crit, 1 min CD should go. The 5th plain damage attack should go. In fact all the basic damage attacks that use resources should go. You have so many special abilities that they should be rarely used anyway, and a change to the resource usage of the special abilities can fix any gaps in rotations. Then there is the issue of just poor game mechanics which for some reason have stuck around. Like the cover system. Why are you making me hit a button to able to use Sweeping Gunfire, which I believe is the only ability I have to be in cover to use? Whats the point of this annoyance? It does not seem to really protect my character, it does not feel good to use, and the moving around the game into the terrain cover points is awfully buggy. It also only affects 1 (real) class. Why keep it? Or with the melee classes and giving them Long Channeled Cast Abilities. I quite like the warrior design, except for when I am waiting for Master Strike to finish and the mob walks off because its immune to being stuck in place. That is incredibly annoying and feels incredibly stupid. Yet somehow it still exists in the game 4 years later. Why though? Does anyone really find that fun? Then there is the lacking features in the game that are very frustrating as they are long time staples of any RPG and MMO. I'd be far far more likely to get into Raiding in SWTOR if there was an actual in game DPS meter so that I can actually see how well I do and can strive to do better and measure my progress as I gain more experience and gear. I'll sub again when the next story expansion hits, and play through it, but as soon as the story ends I am gone, as the class designs, the game mechanics, are bad, and apparently the Devs don't care to fix them.

What Determines SWTOR's failure is simply playing it and the obvious failure it is will ring true with anyone who is not a mindless fanboy. The combat is a failure due to being based around animation not the players input and the boring class designs that use artificial resource limiting to create monotony in the rotations, the UI is terrible for being stupidly rigid, the targeting system is downright broken and the auto target nearest mob fails as often as it works, the galactic trade network is such a horrible failure you have to scratch your head in wonder at how anyone could think that was a good interface, they copied a dozen other things from WoW why didnt they copy the auction house instead putting in that abortion, the server only pvp is a failure with the faction balance being awful, Ilum is probably the biggest failure in MMO PVP history, they didnt even bother to put in such simple things like Target of Target or a combat log or a dps meter, but then you have the fanboy player base who suck so bad they cry in fear of being found out by a dps meter; then there is the class balance failures of stuns and knock backs and spam spam spam and no rated pvp but then the fanboy player base crys about keeping that out for fear of having to actually play well to get full gear instead of show up. The Map is a epic failure that has pointed me down a staircase only to point me back up that staircase for the same quest!!!! Multiple times on Nar Shadaa! The Space Combat is a failure being on rails and pretty pointless; and really no space combat pvp, how epic would that have been! Then you also have the never ending bugs, for everyone they squash 2 appear! The only thing about this game has that is not a failure is really the story quest elements, but that is not even truly good because the timing of that story is a failure due to having to play it MMO style with long periods of grinding 20 Mob X and 30 Mob Z and looting Y 10 times before killing Mob Q.

"you keep clicking on nameplates then cursing your mouse for not working"

These forums have so many bad players on them its scary. Combat Log is a basic feature that is obviously necessary, and it will be put in. If somehow players use it to find out how poorly you are performing, then hopefully you either stop sucking or are kicked from groups.

Needs to happen. Any server where the Republic or Empire fleet has less then 100 people on it during peak hours should be merged; as anything less then 100 players really fails the Massively multiplayer part of MMORPG. It seems that almost all standard servers are in that situation now. Some of that though is the horrible faction imbalance where the Republic side would have 50 on at peak, while the Empire 150-200. If that is the case then merging enough servers together to get Republic numbers into an acceptable range could cause too many players overall. So Bioware along side Server Mergers also needs to open up Free Faction Transfers and create some incentive for players to roll Republic.

I am having a hard time understanding how Bioware could prioritize the animation over the combat. By this I am meaning that animations for abilities, like my Vanguards Mortar Volley last far longer then the actual cast bar, and the animation dictates when the target takes damage not the player. I hit an attack and I watch my character attack instead of hitting an attack and instantly seeing that attack register. It is very unsatisfying waiting around for an ability to finish or start because I have to wait for my character to slowly wave his arm around or lean back or jump up or some unnecessarily complicated animation. Mortar Volley is such a terrible ability due to the animation. It should work like, I hit the button, Damage 1, wait, Damage 2, wait Ends with Damage 3. It actually works like I hit the button, wait, wait, wait, wait, damage 1, wait wait wait, damage 2, wait, cast bar ends, wait wait wait, Damage 3. Another Example would be my Vanguards Explosive Round, it works well, I hit the button, and the damage pops up almost instantly, yet on my Bounty Hunter's version Missile Blast the exact same ability outside of name and animation, I hit the button, and I wait wait wait for the BH to raise his arm then the missile to fire then slowly make its way to the target, then I get the damage. Many other abilities suffer from the same problems, and I really wonder why the developers would think having some fancy animation to watch is better then having the combat actually work well. When you hit a button you should immediately see damage, or healing, or a stun or knock back or CC break. All animations should be built around making the combat work as fast and as fun as possible, not the combat being built around long cumbersome animations. Does no one at Bioware understand how to design the combat to be fun?

It just shows Bioware does not have any class designers who understand the MMO combat system they put in as they decided to drop auto attack only to put it back in as a button you have to hit over and over again. The artificial limiting of the resource does not make it more challenging but rather tedious with the use of a completely uninteresting attack like Hammer Shot or whatever stupid name they give the ability on the class you play. They would have made a much more fun combat system by dropping the basic attack and having you do a rotation off of 3-4 primary abilities the use of which depends on procs and debuffs on your target and their CDs. As opposed to having you just use 3 specials, then 2 basics, then 3 specials again. I play a trooper, and I have an ammo mechanic which is just retarded because I cant hit my reload ability in combat. It makes 0 sense. In fact I dont even really use ammo as my main attack Ion Pulse is some sort of short range lightning bolt. If i dont use hammer shot 1/3 of the time I run out of ammo and it takes forever to build back up. It is not difficult to right click. It is just boring and stupid.

I'd assume it has something to do with Bioware designing the classes around each having a single player story, with areas of every map that are designed for just them, and how that story ends at max level and does not really connect with any group activities. This game should not have been an MMO to begin with. The Bioware style created a good single player story experience that they put in with the leveling; but a mediocre at best MMO with class designs hurt by the cost of the story setup. Why anyone would play this for the MMO parts is beyond me, they are terrible.

SO *********** TRUE! I remember that part going to the fleet for R&R just to click some npc by my class trainer and be told nothing then head all the way back to *********** coruscant. Where I cant use my mount in the space port or the senate hall, even though you got dick lvl 50s on low riders riding around the fleet! The amount of ******** running around in this game is epic.

The reason is Bioware spent all their money on voice overs and decided to use the exact same models for different races to save the time and cost of creating differently shaped races that require different animations and gear fittings.

Whats the little elephant faced race called? I love those little bastards. The ones on Hoth? The Republic just needs some cool races, Yodas, Ewoks, Jawas.