Interesting. If I am Bioware - I don't do this. 1) It will put pressure on them to allow AC switching - and even class switching. Sound crazy? Yes its not very nice to say but making some peoples characters MORE valuable does in fact make other people's characters LESS valuable. What this change would do from an economic perspective is change the valuation of the various AC classes in the eyes of the player base. Suddenly all 'hybrid' AC classes would have 'more value' then they did before. I think we can all agree on that. Now non-hybrid classes would want compensation. (We have seen this before in WoW). And because this change is happening mid stream they do have a case. Hey so and so gets to switch his role willy nilly - how come I can't now? That would be their argument and its indeed a sensible one at some level. Your telling them they can't have a value increase for their character because of what seems like a technicality.. Also people who 'suffered' through their charcter development via healing will feel their character is devalued. So this causes alot of trouble overall.. Anytime you screw with the valuation of character choices you get some angry people. Make Cybertech by far and away the best crew skill - and you will have alot of angry people often other traders pretty ticked off.. 2) As mentioned before it will limit a games replay value. Its only anecodotal evidence but one thing I heard about rift is that no one felt the urge to roll up an alt. That's not good for business. Is the gain you get from making someones life more 'convient' better then the additional money you might make by getting someone to play trhough more then once? I dunno. But its not open and shut.. Now personally I am not dead set against this like I am the LFD (cross server) but leaving this feature out might not be such an oversight. Did they have this in TBC? Wow hit 11 million in TBC. Overall I think its just a huge mistake to think all the social engineering changes WoW made is what made it a success isntead of great artwork, low bugs, polish, UI, sense of humour etc.. Take a mediocre game and give it 'random raid finder' and i still bet hardly anyone plays.

It's likely because large amounts of time were invested into their wow characters and now that feels devalued if people leave or they think it's not the best MMO. So attacking SWTOR makes them feel 'better.' So they come here and do that.. That being said WoW could well be the better MMO. But so far I have had fun playing this game. I was bored of WoW. My g/f wouldn't even play it anymore.

It's not so much that it converts people to something different - it just encourages what you would consider 'bad qualities' to come out. Its actually very interesting and based on several variables. The first variable is 'speed to gearing.' First off - and this is something that few people talk about - and people like you probably haven't even thought about is that a cross server LFD tool SPEEDS GEAR ACQUISITION. Why? Well less time wasted finding a group. Less time wasted traveling to said dungeon (in WoW anyway). And finally any difficulties that random people might have in dealing with said dungeon are adjusted away. (this is inevitable for psychological reasons from a game design perspective - you can't have people failing on alot of even random attempts and expect people to play your game). Anyway because gear acquisition has been sped up the designers will then seek to slow this gear acquisition via a token system which introduces superior gear and 'devalue' the dungeon drops. This allow the designer to carefully regulate the acquisition of gear. Once this has been accomplished - the end result is that players have to 'grind' instances. Because of this efficency in completing the instance becomes paramount. So 'extra' interaction is frowned upon and rutheless 'gear hunting' behaviour (like leaving after your drop does not come) becomes even more commonplace. You end up accepting a 'less then great' experience and don't bother to wait around for your friends because grinds take time but not the best crew... But that's just one variable. The second factor is what could be called "Game play feedback" As I have pointed out in another thread - 'community' is not the right word. When you form your own groups - little systems develop. People keep extensive lists of good players and players they like to group with. And they remember and ignore the ones who gave them problems. Good players are rewarded with easy quick groups - even if they play 'popular' roles like DPS. Bad players have to improve their game or group with other patient players. Sometimes you have to bring in 'unknown' guys just to get things going (much like a random dungeon finder does) but you at least know what you are getting into. Random finders - are well random. So all bets are off. Again this is something that most people don't really think about but the people in the random finder become immune to those pressures. There suddenly is no social system at all. The people you get are just random. It's not just about ninja looting or going AFK but about trying to become better players so you can get in groups quicker - or being more personable - or more polite. This pressure makes everyones experience more pleasurable because it works in concert with how most people would like to play. None of that works with a cross server random dungeon finder. If you are tank and want to bail after that first boss that drops your drop. No big. You can ALWAYS get another group INSTANTLY. And who cares actually you are a pretty good tank (you might say to yourself) they should be 'lucky' to have you. I could go on and on. But the tl;dr version is that cross server random dungeon finders/battle ground finders/raid finders end up actually FORCING people to group with random people who don't give a damn about them and who are under absolutely no pressure to play optimally. This makes for a rather miserable experience. And before you claim that Blizzard or any game "needs' such a thing - keep in mind that World of Warcraft hit 11 million subscribers during The Burning Crusade - when no such system existed and they haven't hit 12 million even now.. Also let me touch on the other 'excuse' people use - the just do what you did before theory. Ya know the 'its just a tool you don't have to use it.' it doesn't really work once things become a grind. WoW can't undo its screw up - they now have to cater to the LCD crowd who can't be bothered to try to play well. They have resigned themselves to losing the good, personable and social players to other games and have put in a system that rewards the anti-social grinder. But that doesn't mean SWTOR should follow suit and do the same thing. They likely thought the same way as did the OP. They didn't think it through - and I would have never imagined the host of negative consquences that came from it - so I don't blame them. But there are gamers who want to play limited time - but have extra special experiences when they engage in group events. I hope SWTOR remains that kind of game. You aren't going to have that kind of game with a LFD cross server setup. The kind of game you will get is formed by those mechanics. Ther eis nothing 'bad' about wow players. You match their mechanics you will get the exact same game experience and social enviroment. It's people that think just because this game has the name 'star wars' in it they can't have the same issues that WoW does.

Absolutely. I made reference to this in my earlier post as well. This needs to be emphasized - because lots of people don't get this. They aren't used to thinking form the developer perspective. World of Warcraft is a fantastic example of this phenomenon. They recently introduced a random raid finder. Well how easy to raids have to be made so 'random' groups of people can be succesfull. Well CRAZY easy.. and they can't give great rewards. It's the same deal with LFD dungeons. Because you want random groups to succeed much of the time you have to make the dungeons easy - but the grind long. In this way you slow advancement AND you allow random people enough success. At first they tried to slow advancement by making the heroics hard - but it turned out that the failure rate was too high and frustration levels were massive. So what you end up with its lots of people running trivial content non-stop. And of course even when the trivial content was originally kinda tough when you have run through it 100+ times it becomes pretty easy. What's worse this is a big part of the 'rude' behaviour. The grinders feel a 'pressure' to get their 'runs' in. And thus they lash out and the poor fool who isn't on his 50th run. You might think you can chill out and have a good time - and explore part of the dungeon. But for the grinder this is just one of 10 more runs they need to run that day.. And they can't 'afford' to waste time on one run. People like to think that people are naturally 'good' and that the so called "bad" community has nothing to do with the mechanics. But I'd argue the opposite. The so called awful community is a function of the game mechanics. The people playing WoW are just acting like how any population of players would act exposed to the mechanics they are.. Developers should not excuse 'bad community' on just bad luck. They effectively create and control the community to a very large extent. Implement a cross server random dungeon finder and watch the community structure become greatly altered.. OTOH I am totally fine with a more obvious enhanced way to find people on the same server -as long as some interaction is required to actually put the group together.. I'd also be open to even more radical ideas like server merging. It might be that Bioware screwed up a bit and a 'full' server isn't going to have enough low level players to run flashpoints. I think the real solution to this is bigger servers not group mates you will never see again.

The problem really is the word 'community.' in this argument. It's take to mean some kind of pollyanna where everyone helps everyone. True. World of Warcraft never had THAT kind of community. But they DID have a community where good sociable players could find groups very quickly and bad selfish players couldn't find anyone to bring them with them. This is the main problem that cross server dungeon finders caused in WoW. In short - it doesn't matter if you suck. You can just queue and go again. In fact a tank - considered the pinnacle of skill can requeue the fastest of all if they suck. So they can easily 'group jump' to find a healer/dps to carry them. And as someone that played in WoW before and after the Dungeon finder it really matters.. You want from PAGES of friends on your list to almost none because no one bothered to group manually anymore. Of course this is just the start of the problem from a game designers perspective. The REAL problem is that a cross server group system speeds the forming of groups and lowers the quality of said groups. Thus you have to weaken your dungeons to compensate (people do not like repeated failures) AND make your players run them over and over..(you cannot have your players quickly out gear your content). I'd rate this as equally bad if not worse then the side effects that ruin the community.

^^^No. An opt in program for cross server would not work - and does not work. Here is why: Cross Server Dungeon/Flash Finders speed the average rate of advancement. You make finding groups faster - you finish instances faster. The gearing speed of the people that opt in increases. As a designer you do NOT want people to finish your game too quickly - especially those people who don't take the effort to form groups. To compensate for this - the game designers inevitably either have to make the instances more difficult (almost always unpopular) OR they have to make you grind more instances. This is what they have done in WoW. I had a guildy who ran a new instance 100 times.