This was seriously a lot of fun, and I regret I didn't remember to record video of it Thanks for the impromptu kill/die fest

I assumed "we" were talking about it when you said "But to reference your example".... maybe that means something different than I assumed. The choice of engine is far more complex than people make it... as an engine is basically what you make out of it. The engine isn't keeping them from implementing guild features. In fact on this point you are spot on. That that are not investing the development time to do the guild options now is surprising (although nothing I know of has said they aren't developing it even as we speak). My point was that people assume that game X came out with feature Y after several years of development, it should take game Z not time to do it. Even if they observed the "clamor" for cross-realm in the WOW forums under the normal self-contradicting noise in game forums four years before it was even implemented by WOW; even if they were able to determine that it would translate to a need in their game, it would have taken them more development time than they had. Resources are finite. Comparing a game that has had 6-7 years of development with one that has had probably over twice that amount of time (announced in 2001, so probably a year of coding before that) is folly because most of that time is actually spent designing and coding. It isn't wasted time waiting for the playerbase to come up with an idea. With the amount of time they had they wouldn't have been able to implement some of the stuff that was "standard" in WOW. They had to make decisions on what features to focus on and which ones to consider adding later. All games do. If they had tried to put everything in they would have had to delay at least two+ years... and name one franchise ever that has survived a delay of two years to their announced release date and not been a laughing stock for it.

Yes but we were. The line you quoted was specifically referencing cross-realm. You even referenced "But to cite your example, still not an excuse." where my example was cross-realm.

Cross-Realm isn't "industry standard"... it is starting to get there but at the release time of SWTOR only one other game had it and had only had it for a year. That isn't "industry standard", that is expecting the game designers to have a staff of psychics to try and gleen what features are going to be emergent in four+ years.

That doesn't change the simple fact that you have a given number of manhours that you can put into development based on staffing level and other factors. The feature you are talking about would have added years of development time they didn't have. Now an MMO created and started coding after the invention of cross-realm not considering it in its initial database design, that would be a travesty... but this had already been being coded and designed for 4 years before anyone else did cross-realm.... to add it at that time would have been a monumental mistake. And SWTOR has innovated (name one other fully voiced, story driven MMO), they just didn't predict this particular feature coming out of nowhere. That doesn't make it a bad game in any sense of the word.

Do you have any conceptualization of the level of complexity that a cross-shard system requires? The database interdependence, replication and inevitable race conditions alone are enough to give a database programmer nightmares. That isn't even mentioning the protocol/network/server design necessary to make it usable. People see a feature in an MMO and assume, well that must have been easy to code. It can take years just to work out the kinks in a system like WOW implemented. Heck, WOW hasn't finished working out the kinks in the system it implemented. And it isn't like they share code.... so the SWTOR folks would have to do it all again from scratch. Remember that SWTOR was announced 2008, which means it had probably already been being coded for around a year or so before that. Cross-Realm grouping entered into WOW (and the rest of the world's nomenclature) in 2011. By that time the server model and database model were locked in because to change them would be to change the entire game and set the release back several years. It isn't about re-inventing the wheel, what you are talking about is scrapping and redesigning the whole car after you are already close to production.

This one has always made me wonder... I remember the early days of SWG. The SWG release made SWTOR's release look like perfection. Massive bugs, whole parts of the game missing, constant server crashes, etc. Even when it equalized the game was incomplete. Never mind end game, whole sections of the whole game were missing from SWG. It took them nearly a year to put space into a star wars game. When they did complete things (the Jedi holocron grind that defined AFK and macro grinding to the rest of the industry, the CU, NGE, etc) they ended up doing the wrong thing almost by rote. Don't get me wrong, lots of people loved the game, and it had its charm, but people need to compare SWTOR with what it is, a MMO entering its third year. They are inevitably comparing it against WOW which is in its what 10th year now? The examples people point to and say "this is a failure since every MMO should have X" are forgetting how things are in MMOs. It took WOW 7 years before it added cross realm grouping. Now, does this game have its issues, hells yes... but people need to stop comparing it with rose tinted glasses pointed at the other games.

http://www.torparse.com/a/594102/5/0/Overview 5/5/36 Lethality Sniper: 3503.8dps I <3 this new mainhand (78) - Gear almost all 78; reusable stims/adrenals.

Interesting... I will have to give it a try... I always thought the damage went up not additional hits... but the log bears out what you say so I will have to play with that. Thanks!

The cull gets boosted by the two dots tho prior to being buffed by the WB.

*LOL* considering you are taking time out of your day to help me, I wouldn't call it lazy I wonder how much of it can be attributed to the 2 piece PVP set bonus (which is apparently being nerfed to hell next patch)... If i had the PVP gear I would run a test and compare.

Ok... I am getting more and more stumped. I do tend to squeeze off the end of casts and pre-cast things for this reason. Going purely off of the "core" rotation of CG > CD > WB > Cull > Takedown > SoS > (1 GCD filler, usually RS) > Cull > Takedown Optimal APM is 30 So I am thinking my overall core rotation is off if people are doing 4 APM higher without alacrity. What are other lethality snipers or DF gunslingers doing in terms of core rotation?

It is my understanding that you should delay WB till Cull to maximize the return since WB returns a % of damage and cull is the larger damage WB is optimal right before a cull instead of "wasting" it on just CD or CG.

Need some help on lethality. So I have Thexi up to 3200 dps... but I keep hitting a brick wall. First brick wall was realizing that due to a weird bug a lot of the times I was applying my DOT it was being replaced by the weakened version of it anyway right away (if you try to reapply it right as the previous one goes weak it will be replaced by the weakened version anyway)... so nuking lingering toxins raised my dps 150 or so... and now I am looking for things to do to up that dps level. Video of a run http://youtu.be/fYglovVEiEk links to log/etc are in the description of the video. Aside from one short section where I kinda went off rotation, it seemed pretty clean to me now I just have to figure out ways to squeeze some more in (tried things like throwing in explosive probe but always end up nuking my energy when I do that, etc). Any thoughts?

Thexi finally broke 3k (same gear/build; full lethality sniper) Parse: http://www.torparse.com/a/541305/1/0/Overview By time: 3018dps, by TORPARSE's reckoning 3012.4 Probably would have been higher but ran into energy issues right near the end.