I don't see how having 3 factions would solve anything. There will still always be a more popular faction. In DAOC Albion generally had as many players as Midgard and Hibernia combined on a realm. Hibernia generally always the lowest. And even the DAOC Mythic devs were incompetent. Yes they had a good idea with RvR, but anything related to class balance was a joke. Bandaid on top of bandaid, never addressing the core issues. They also tended to cave to the biggest group of whiners at the time. (Usually Albion) I had a Bard originally and retired her for a Nightshade instead. Assassins were the most balanced right at release (after you couldn't stay stealthed after a 1-hit kill. I agree that was unfair) Then all the successive changes to them only made them originally overpowered, then later on irrelevant as they just gave "Iwin" buttons to their counter classes. AKA: If you are wearing cloth and decide to walk around alone, you SHOULD die from a stealth attack. On the flipside of that, if the caster finds you unstealthed at range you rightfully get smoked by them. Instead you got stuff like Shadowmaster pets intercepting from-stealth attacks while they stand 30yards from their owner. (And later an ability to make them like L80 for 60 secs) Wizards getting instant root spells. Longbowman being able to trip you, then shield stun you and fire an aimed shot pointblank into you, then if still losing just grapple you until friends came. Meanwhile Assassin from-stealth openers went from taking 90% of a casters health at release to maybe 30% in TOA.

On a more relevant note about how players consume MMOs nowadays: People have this perception that if they aren't max level, or at the current raid tier, etc. that they are "behind" and "missing out" on things. For example: In WoW, if people joined the game later in it's life, chances are they never even bothered to go back and experience any of the earlier raids. They may have started with Ulduar or something, and never went to see Black Temple, or AQ40, etc. Their reply is "well that's old" .... but they haven't even done it yet. In EQ1's heyday you had guilds spread across a wide range of content. I quit during Gates of Discord expansion. But you still had some guilds running raiding content from Luclin (few expansions before Gates) while the bleeding edge guilds were in Plane of Time (last raid zone out of about 6-8 in Planes of Power expansion) and dabbling in the new Gates of Discord raids. (Although they kinda messed with guilds at that point, because it took around 80 people to clear Plane of Time, and then Gates introduced instancing and hard player caps of like 35 people. So suddenly you had to split into two raid groups and leave some people out)

I would ask you what you think was majorly flawed about my analysis, oh great veteran developer, but obviously you never read it. Thanks for your contribution to the thread. I'm sure you're a great asset to your team. (Besides the EVE part at the end, I admit that is a pipedream that will most likely never happen)

Don't get me wrong though, SWG was doomed to fail right from launch. I beta tested it and the level of incompetency the developers showed in testing and balancing leading up to release led me to pass on buying the game. They released the game several months early, had faulty balancing methods, and so I just didn't feel like supporting their rushjob. I really wanted to like it, but given the fiascos they had with NGE and other balancing over the years, I think I made the right choice.

You may want to use correct grammar when nitpicking someone elses. "There is NOT such word" Really?

Everquest1? I'm not sure. I think EQ2 is F2P now though, yes. Which is also honestly not a bad game either. Was just thinking about the first time I ran from Freeport to Qeynos in EQ1. I think that trek took me at least 2 hours.

Say what you want, Rift had the best launch in recent memory. The thing was very polished for launch. The UI was excellent and well thought out. It had the whole random rifts and invasions to spice up leveling. And they consistently release new content monthly. (I believe it's something like 3-4 major raids plus other 5man dungeons) You had a combat log, some macros, damage meter, etc. at release. As well as quad spec to make use of the interesting soul tree system. The first person to enter a dungeon could then teleport the entire rest of the group to the zone line. (And cross-server dungeon queues were added a short time later) Rift doesn't get enough respect. If you like WoW-style raiding with much better world pvp, I would check it out.

...you are welcome for the nostalgia trip A sand giant also stopped by to say he had great fun stomping your corpse into the ground the other day as well.

X-Wing vs TIE Fighter pretty much was free space flight (aka not on rails). Heck, EVE pretty much works on the same premise. You just warp into each system or belt by clicking on their marker in your HUD. Being able to just point in a random direction and jump to lightspeed would be a great way for exploration. Then you could spice it up by being able to bump into random encounters while at lightspeed. Something like your scanners sense a nearby pirate base of operations to clear out (that would be instanced to you), or you get hit by an interdiction bubble by the enemy military and have to fight, etc.

EQ1 didn't really have sandbox elements, but it still felt more open. Especially when you add in the potential of illusions and raising factions with various places. I had an Enchanter and despite being a high elf I could illusion as Dark Elf, toss a temp +faction buff on NPCs and enter Neriak and do my banking and vendor stuff there, etc. And I think the market for EVE is small, not because it's a sandbox MMO, but because of how no-holds-barred it is. It can take you hours, days, or weeks to afford certain ships and you can lose them in minutes. There is also an inordinate amount of time spent just tracking down enemies to fight. If we had EVE-style open space universe for SWTOR with Imperial, Republic, and Neutral factions. I think it would be wildly popular. "Zero-sec" style large-scale warfare for people who want to side with the Imperials or Republic officially, but allow people to stay neutral for the purposes of just having a random station somewhere. Setting up their own mining/crafting empire, etc. Without fear of getting destroyed by a random gank-fleet, etc.

Greatest MMO ever to me IMHO would be the immersive voice-acting and music direction for the questing in SWTOR + SWG sandboxy kinda stuff and crafting + EVE space universe (except less brutal rob-you-blind-and-kill-your-puppy)

You're missing the biggest point: What is the selling point of this as an MMO? So it's Starwars. Okay. It's like KOTOR. Okay. People like Bioware's storytelling method. Okay... ... Bioware is known for single-player story-driven games that you play for around 60 hours and set aside. Maybe get more replay value with modding, etc. This is not a single-player game. Why should people stay subscribed for longer than a few months? It would be a different story if all the quests were unique throughout the entire leveling experience for all the advanced classes, but they aren't. After you level maybe 2 characters on each side you are going to be really really sick of spacebaring through the same dialogues over and over. And yes, at L50 this game is EXACTLY like WoW. Dailies. Heroic dungeons... excuse me hard mode flashpoints. And two 8-man raids... I mean Operations. (The 16-man modes have the exact same loot, but are exponentially harder) They are most definitely looking to compete/copy WoW. The choice of many is to quit entirely, or more likely, unsubscribe for a couple months and hope that Bioware actually patches in content that makes people want to stick around.

I'm curious as to how well DUST 514 is going to do when it releases this summer. For anyone that doesn't know -- DUST 514 is a console FPS game for PS3 that is directly tied to the EVE universe server. You join mercenary corporations and get paid directly by corporations and alliances in the EVE MMO to defend planets under their control and to attack planets held by other rival corporations. The money they give you is used to improve the equipment of your merc group and allow them to buy better ground transports and ships, etc. I think if there are ships in orbit in the EVE server, they can even intercede in the battle via orbital bombardment (I'm not sure exactly how that works though) There is obviously a very large potential market of console FPS players. The question is whether they buy into this more tactical and integrated system, or prefer the fluff braindead gameplay of COD. (Also the game won't be available on 360 because Microsoft expects all games to be intregrated with LIVE, which wouldn't work since they have to interface with EVE)

About the "theme park + sandbox" can't be done: With the amount of budget SWTOR had, if they had just voiced the class quests or part of the main planet storylines, they probably would have had plenty of money and resources available to add sandbox elements before release. It's their own fault for spending so much of their budget on a leveling curve designed to be under 8 days /played. Then everyone sits at Vaiken twiddling their thumbs.

There are two key periods when your escort gets hammered. The fighter waves when heavily inside the asteroid field -- you need to shoot those down asap. And after exiting the heavy asteroid field near the end of the mission. Now the thing to keep in mind is that what you do at the START of the mission determines if you fail the end of the mission. You need to strip those cruisers of as many turrets as you can before you enter the heavy part of the asteroid belt or you WILL fail at the end. Those cruisers from the start loop around the belt and attack you on the other side. So the more turrets you destroy on them before you enter, the better your chances of surviving on the other side. Because your line-of-sight is blocked from good firing angles on the cruisers at the end of the mission pretty much.