I'm middle of the road on Nar Shada. It blows away Balmorra and especially Taris. Taris is just a terrible, terrible, terrible zone.

PvE, because MMOs will always be a sub-par platform for PvP compared to things like RTS or FPS. PvP balance shouldn't be completely discarded, but in a game like this, PvE balance should be a much higher priority.

Decent review.

I'm confused. What do you mean by "base stats"? Orange items have no base stats. All of their stats are a product of the mods put in them.

If you were DLing at 100kbps, something is VERY, VERY wrong with your internet. You should be getting at least 20 times that speed. There is no reason for you to be getting less than 2 MBps. I'd call your ISP. You're getting dial-up speeds.

I was wondering this too. I remember reading that the engine was capable of writing new content to the servers and streaming it to the client without ever interrupting service, or causing any issues...

I think this is an issue with your ISP. I've never had an update take more than a minute or so.

I played MMOs before WoW. I still have fond memories of DAoC. I can definitely appreciate the ways WoW changed the MMO genre, good and bad. For whatever reason, it's a very polarizing topic. Many "WoW haters" are completely unable to see that good things from that game, and many fanboys refuse to see the bad. At the moment, a lot of WoW players are ready for a change. They want a change of pace. They don't necessarily want a radical departure, but they want something that's new, and that doesn't have the things about WoW that piss them off. They also don't want it to lack the things that they like about WoW. It's something Blizzard managed to do very well when WoW was released that no one else quite has down yet. I think a lot of those same players would have a very difficult time describing what they do and do not like about WoW. "Too linear" has been one of the biggest complaints I've heard about both Cata and this game, which makes me think a lot of people are ready for something that's a little bit more sandboxish.

What people wanted was everything they liked about WoW, without all the stuff they didn't like. The reason WoW did well is because it took most of the stuff people liked about previous MMOs, evolved some of it, and got rid of most of the stuff people didn't like.

Yeah, that isn't a stretch at all... That's like calling everything in the fantasy genre nothing but a Tolkien ripoff *roll eyes* Blind haters are no better than blind fanboys, and if you can't see the reasons that Blizzard titles have nearly universally been regarded as the best in their genre on release, I think you probably fall into the blind hater category. They have been revolutionary and incredibly successful not because they completely broke the mold, but because they evolved a large number of things at once, and generally did away with the things that people didn't like about that genre and bundled it up into a very polished package that manages to be highly accessible while still having a very high skill cap. They make games that appeal to many different kinds of players with many different skill levels and play styles. Starcraft is not the most successful and enduring RTS of all time because the entire gaming community is composed of rabid fanboys. The same goes for Diablo and the various Warcraft games. No game will appeal to absolutely everyone, but Blizzard very consistently comes closer to doing so than pretty much any other major developer. Failing to acknowledge what they do right is not sensible.

I'm willing to call this quest the absolute worst writing bioware has ever done. Never before in one of their games have I encountered something so utterly immersion breaking, and character destroying.

I played WoW from day 1, and I think the LFD tool was one of the greatest innovations they made. The degradation of the "community" started when the game started to expand big time, and populations expanded. Older MMOs had a greater sense of community because they were tiny by comparison. When you're part of a massive swarm of people, it's kinda difficult to have much of a community. I really didn't see any appreciable changes to "community" when the LFD tool was implemented. Server communities started going downhill towards the end of Vanilla, when the game really took off. I'd say a couple months before Nax launched was kinda the turning point, and it was all downhill from there. EDIT: I just want to add, I hear many more "Ninja!" complaints in SWTOR than I do in WoW. WoW only allows you to roll need on stuff your class can actually use for the most part in random groups. TOR does not.

The lack of alternative leveling paths is kinda frustrating. This is the only MMO I've ever played that 100% locks you into a given zone at a given level range without even the slightest freedom of choice. The mindless, repetitive 2006 style side quests get real old, real fast. Generally the class stories and main planet stories are fairly well done, though I think bringing the quest mechanics up to at least Cata's level should be a priority (phasing, more than just kill/fetch for starters) for any future content. Still, they are quite passable, and generally fun. The side quests are atrocious. I'm still having fun, and I'll still keep playing, but I understand why you're frustrated OP.

Depends on how lucky you get. Maybe max, maybe low. Some people with top notch machines can't run the game maxed out. I have a mid-end rig, and run the game just fine on max settings.

I guess I should have gone to bed anyways, but the fact that they took the servers down on a friday night to make one minor fix is a bit annoying, to put it lightly.