Thanks for the heads-up...I had been planning to take the mods out of my Columi stuff and put it into the Drelliad Jacket or something but if I'll lose my set bonus I guess I will stick with it. (Though I guess if I get all five pieces I could afford to swap one thing across.)

What?! Oh crud...I know Corso is not as good for gunslingers because of the harpoon but for scoundrels it was very useful. I don't know who will be my best tanking companion now - Bowdaar is a bit chaotic for my tastes (hard to keep behind mobs unless I turn most of his skills off), and Akaavi is too dark side. Has there been any reasoning/rationale or explanation given for this change?

I presume I fit the OP's definition of 'casual' (a fairly nebulous description at the best of times, but anyway), so: Do you currently find that end game is too easy? No. I like that it is not dauntingly difficult to start off with; time will tell if it presents enough breadth and depth of challenge to keep it interesting. Did you think the leveling was too quick? No. I was pretty thorough in doing quests but I leveled with another person (which made things faster), but played less days as a result (which made it slower.) I would say the levelling felt more akin to Vanilla WoW than modern WoW, as a comparison. Have you cleared all end game content on at least easy mode? No. I have cleared Eternity Vault and done the first two bosses in Karagga's Palace on normal so far. Would a more difficult lvling process have put you off from continuing to play? Depends on 'difficult'. Taking somewhat longer, no, not particularly. Making all the quests more frustrating to do or requiring more people, potentially yes. Is this your first MMO? Not by a long shot - started playing MMOs in 1999 and have max-level characters in three games at present (though one game's toons are basically 'retired' at present, because I don't really have the time or energy to play them all.)

Maybe I am being daft (that is always a possibility!) but are we sure that wasn't just a rhetorical example? I know I read something yesterday that had at least part of that quote in but then went on to mention a sawbones/agent healing buff and (I think) a bounty hunter damage nerf. Are there more definite specific plans up somewhere relating to upcoming patch changes for scoundrels?

I have been pondering this a bit more and I think along with the very good points made by people along the lines of 'once bitten, twice shy' (in terms of bad grouping experiences) and what seems to be a common desire for flexibility which is often lacking from grouping (eg getting up to eat, do laundry, deal with family as needed, proceeding at your own pace instead of keeping up with others, etc.), there also seems to be a nostalgia factor playing in. Like a lot of other people, I too have been playing MMOs for a number of years (starting with Nexon Dark Ages in 1999.) Now, I definitely agree and remember that there were some brilliant times and experiences in the old-school MMOs. When a raidgroup got together in EQ it was a bit like how I imagine being in a proper army is (with less muscle aches and trenchfoot.) Vanilla Alterac Valley, when it lasted all day, had moments when the whole faction would pull together like clockwork, and it was magic. When people were patient enough to set up siege weapons and fight together in DAOC, or band together to fight off a world boss somewhere, you felt like you were part of something bigger than yourself, while still being an important, heroic figure in your own right. And I can remember having loads of fun as a priest in Dark Ages just standing in a church giving a sermon, and then using a 'mass' skill with a one-week or so cooldown to give everyone there experience and a buff. All of those things were great. But as humans, we tend to forget some of the negative experiences as time goes by; because if we had to dwell on them all the time we would lose the will to live. Trust me, I know. And for every moment of pure old-school magic, there were how many others of being pestered mercilessly by new players begging for help or coin; people who would strip off their avatar and start rping/emoting that they were kissing or groping you against your will (and I saw worse than that, though thankfully not aimed at me); groups or raids where a few impatient souls would inevitably run out ahead of the party and start a trickle of people getting picked off one by one; fighting, and name-calling, and abuse, and refusal to accept classes deemed 'weak'. I remember hitting high or max level with characters and then not being able to do anything at all because I hadn't bought literally millions of gold or platinum with real money, had to go to work instead of farming or queueing all day, or didn't fancy filling out an application form and interview longer than the one for my actual paid job. I remember the tedium of spending an entire day running in circles kiting giants to desperately try to earn some coin. I remember the frustration when I'd been working towards an objective for hours upon hours, only to die and end up worse off than I'd been when I started. The thing about the good old days is that really, they weren't normally very good for an awful lot of people for an awful lot of the time. As someone else said, the game has changed now. SWTOR has explicitly been designed around an idea that you don't need to be in a group all the time, although some of the content, such as ops, are obviously out of reach for solo players until they considerably outlevel it (and potentially not even then, depending on fight mechanics.) Whether it's good or bad or both will be in the eye of the beholder; but I don't think it's fair to fault people for playing the game in a way which it is actually designed to permit, though not necessarily encourage or make mandatory.

I presume, working out things like, 'That big AOE damage thing happens every time the boss does this emote. I think we need to all run away when it says that.' Not so much number-crunching analysis, as thinking on your feet and adjusting as you go rather than having everything choreographed and rehearesed before you start the instance. Dunno. That has generally been how I've had things done in LOTRO (where there are no combat logs or parsers, but people still raid.) I presume devs can tune encounters to require that type of thing or not (ditto threat meters.) Maybe it's my years as a tank talking, but I never really used damage meters; for me there were only two 'numbers': "enough" or "not enough." And high dps wasn't always best, because high dps with no throttle could outstrip the tank's ability to keep threat (a bear only has so much rage, you know, and then it needs a nap), and a dead dps does no damage at all.

As far as I am aware there is no mandatory ordered list of likes and dislikes to which everyone in the human race must adhere. So no, I reckon you're fine. As long as you're not hurting anyone, go nuts!

I don't know really, the propensity for grouping has varied amongst the MMOs I've played. Personally I don't generally group outside of my guild because I've had too many bad experiences with people being abusive, time-wasters, entitlement issues, and so forth, but I am happy to group up with people I know are sound, or for specific objectives when out in the field (e.g. two people clearly going for the same champion bonus series boss, makes sense to group and can then disband afterwards.) Possibly some of it is just that people have been gaming in MMOs long enough that we've all accrued some horror stories that have put us off, combined with some games making things more solo-friendly to suit lower server populations, levelling of alts and so forth. Sometimes it can be fun to party up, but sometimes it just gets irritating.

Please tell me smuggler gets to donate dirty kick to all her virtual offspring. "I am a noble and pure-hearted Jedi Guardian...but I'll still boot ya in the fork if you don't agree to help me save orphans and droids and jawas and kittens and junk."

Because capes cover up my fine booty! *waggle* I really hope they bring in some kind of cosmetic gear overlay or expand the modded-gear system, because really we should be able to pick whether we want our smuggs (or jedi, or whatever) in flashy capes, or dirty dusters, or piecemeal renegade gear, or civvies, or pilot flightsuits, or whatever fits our character's personality best. I suppose the only class that would struggle to justify more customisation would be troopers on the grounds they are military, but even there it seems they have different armour styles for different combat/military roles so I'm sure they could work round it.

Ha! I like Helen Waite, I may have to steal that. (Hey, I am a smuggler after all.) I agree with your point about adapting IP for different mediums. I am a pretty big Tolkien-nerd, I love the books, I love the films, and I love Lord of the Rings Online. Now, there is no question that both the films and the game take pretty significant liberties with the source material. The film left huge chunks out (Barrow-downs, Tom Bombadil, etc.), drastically changed Faramir's character, changed Glorfindel into Arwen, and so forth; the game has been pretty faithful for the most part, but has expanded on things only tangentially mentioned in the books (such as specific types of ancient evils, and the ice-people of Forochel) and added in the rune-keeper class, which is...a stretch, at best. Now, part of me wishes they could have kept things more strictly to the books. 'Rune-keepers don't belong!', a little voice in my head says; 'What did they do to lovely Faramir?? (And why is he blonde?!)" But ultimately, I have to appreciate them for what they are. As fun as it is for me to join in the speculation on just what the heck is Bombadil's deal, it would have dragged the movie out to an unfeasible degree to have his chapters in there. Yes, Arwen should be Glorfindel at the Fords of Bruinen, but there are so many characters in LOTR that keeping track of them all in a film, where you don't have access to indecies and footnotes and glossaries, would be almost impossible for all but the most hardcore fans. And in the game, well, holy-trinity based MMOs need healing classes, and if there isn't a mechanism for that in the book, the developers have to invent one, through the healing power of song and carved magic rocks. The upshot is, while I see the point that in the films there is a general red/blue split, it's a lot harder to justify and maintain in a gaming setting, particularly when our characters are de facto meant to be exceptional rather than ordinary. And I'm a smuggler, so nobody cares what colour my gun is and it barely even shows up, so I have no dog in this fight - before someone accuses me of just wanting a funky lightsaber to be a special snowflake.

Because people in a privileged group don't want it, and are uncomfortable with it, and they are used to getting their own way to the exclusion or detriment of anyone else. To people with privilege, equality feels like oppression. :/ Put me down as someone who may well never take advantage of SGRs in SWTOR but hopes Bioware come through on their promise of putting them in, because it's respectful and inclusive and the right thing to do, when so many games and other media just ignore huge segments of society entirely (when they're not denigrating them).

Laurelinde the elf champion from Gilrain here! Our kin has expanded and is now active in both LOTRO and SWTOR.

Interesting! (Though I don't know why he trotted out the sabacc bit, I beat him at that too.) Boy am I glad I didn't play my gal as a flirty type though! (Well, except for Numen <3)

By the sounds of it, a free pony and a date to the prom, or something. The new additions sound reasonable so far, although I do like the suggestion made up-thread about a small xp buff so that you can play through the storyline quest while skipping some of the more annoying standard quests you've already done once. As far as GW2 goes, I don't think anyone is 'scared' that it is coming - personally I'm pretty interested, I've signed up for the beta despite currently having raiding/ops characters in two different MMOs already at present. Even with WoW, it's not like every other MMO in the world disappeared when it got released, because that's not (normally) how a free market system tends to work. Some games died of old age or loss of subscribers, and some have retooled their systems through F2P or expansions or cornering a niche market. But it's not like MMOs are Highlander, and as soon as another reasonably-popular and successful game comes out we all have to quit and move whether we want to or not because 'there can be only one.' Particularly with sub-free MMOs, there's less onus to play a certain number of hours a day/week to justify the fees, so it's perfectly possible to dabble or drop in and out while playing other games, going on holiday, etc.