This is par the course for BioWare's marketing team. Waiting for the pre-order window to run out before releasing concrete information about the product? That's right up BioWare's alley. -Macheath.

If BioWare makes promises, if they make statements about upcoming content and changes to the game, I want them to keep those promises. That's what I wish from BioWare in 2013. -Macheath.

...Because they specifically they told people they would? I don't know, honoring your word used to be a good enough reason to deliver on promises. -Macheath.

SW:ToR's space game isn't even as good as Star Fox, at least not Star Fox 64 (which came out in 1997.) Notice what Star Fox 64 brings to the table that SW:ToR's space combat lacks: - There are obstacles to avoid. Your ship can speed up or slow down to avoid these. This feels far more responsive and engaging that ToR's obstacles, which are a complete joke. - The ability to adjust your speed, as well as loop-de-loop, means you can react to "Enemies on your tail!" instead of just sitting there waiting for them to enter the screen. - Your fellow pilots need rescuing, and failing to rescue them has consequences. - There are upgrades and bonuses within the level to hunt down on-screen, including hidden bonuses. - There are boss battles. - There are alternate paths to open up. Now the big 3: 1. - Dynamic enemies. Look at the first set of "butterfly" ships in this video at 1:25. They dart and weave around, as opposed to flying in a straight line like in ToR. Look at the snakes that come right after. Look at the enemies that come at 2:30, that you need to target while they are facing you, because their backs are immune to damage. Look at even something as simple as the enemies that pop up at 3:20. First, they fly straight up, but then start spiraling towards you, forcing you to adjust your aim. The spiraling guys that come right after. The ships that fly in a criss-crossing pattern to set a damaging trap for you after that... this video is full of unique enemies that keep the experience from getting repetitive. This is what made Star Fox fun. The total lack of any of this is what makes ToR's space combat the opposite of fun. 2. - 3 words. All. Range. Mode. Yeah, that's right. Star Fox had free-roaming space combat. 3. - Star Fox Had multiplayer PvP. It's unthinkable that an MMO would include something like space combat without giving players the ability to play together. What do they think MMO means? In short, Star Fox 64 went to great lengths to make their rail shooter everything it could be. BioWare offered us a bare-bones skeleton 15 years later that doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Star Fox. -Macheath.

That would be cool, but realistically I don't think it's reasonable to expect that. The beauty of Freelancer was it's simplicity. Freelancer's system of combat was simple, and had no real hiccups (everything worked smoothly, and worked as intended, as far as I could see.) That's what makes it such a great model for BioWare to look at when thinking about free-roaming space flight. If they attempt to emulate more complex systems, what we'll end up seeing is a complex system... minus a bunch of key features which make those sims engaging for the player. I foresee a garbled mess of half-implemented complexity, which could be disastrous. That's not a knock on BioWare. I understand that it's incredibly difficult to make a complex ground game alongside a complex space game. STO tried, and IMO, it was a giant failure. SWG succeeded in getting both into the game, but look at how buggy that entire game was. They couldn't manage to successfully polish up either the ground or space game. If BioWare is realistically going to implement a quality free-roaming space experience, simplicity is the answer. Freelancer was simple, but still incredibly fun. -Macheath.

Yes, of course, SWG is the only game to ever feature free roam space flight, right? I see just as many references to Wing Commander and BF2 as I do SWG in these discussions, honestly. There are a lot of people who never played SWG who want free roaming space flight. I myself only played SWG for all of 1 month, and it didn't take. When I think of cool space combat, I personally think of Freelancer, not SWG. -Macheath.

The real question is, could we trust further details they provide about Makeb? Can we take their word that even a single feature they advertise will actually make it into the final release of the xpac? When everything BioWare says is suspect, has to be taken with a grain of salt because they constantly flip flop, I wouldn't believe the details even if they were provided. Personally, I'm waiting until Makeb releases to buy it, if I do buy it. If it's a full expansion, then it will be worth $20. If it's full of more broken promises, then not only will I be glad I didn't pre-order, but they'll be losing my subscription as well (no point in continuing to play if I can no longer reach level cap.) Either way, I'm not pre-ordering. -Macheath.

If their plan from this point forward is to make the stories faction-specific, as opposed to class-specific, then I see no problem with this. There might be some work to do to design some brief quest chains to justify each class's decision to swap to the opposing faction, but beyond that it would be business as usual. -Macheath.

The biggest turn off for my friends from the "good side" is the nature of the stories. The bottom line is, if my friends aren't killing epic enemies within the first 5 minutes, they lose interest. My friend literally tried the Consular for 5 minutes, and after the first conversation with a holocron, re-rolled a Bounty Hunter. I'd wager it's the same for a lot of people. That's today's culture. I'm literally one of only two people I know from real life who actually wants to play the good guy (obviously I've met others of my own faction in-game who are happy playing good guys) and it's all about the perceived "boring" stories (which I would call "more thoughful," but to each his own.) Not to say it's all sunshine and roses on the dark side, either. Dark options are often cliche and predictable. But, when push comes to shove, my friends would rather play the most cliche homicidal maniac than almost any kind of do-gooder. -Macheath.

Then the community is already ruined, because multi-speccing already exists in SW:ToR. You can already respec in ToR. The question is how convenient they wish to make it, not whether you should or shouldn't be able to do it at all. You already can respec... in the field... for free. You're telling me that allowing me to save a template of my hotkeys is going to suddenly ruin the community? You're arguing a moot point. If allowing a single character to perform multiple roles within a group depending on their spec ruins the game, then the game is already ruined. We can already do that... by respeccing. The difference between respeccing and multi-speccing is as simple as being able to save a template of your talent points and hotbars. That's it. This isn't a change that shatters heaven and earth, people. Multiple specs on a single character already exist, and you are free to switch between them. It's just damn inconvenient right now. -Macheath.

Heh, still no official response to this thread, but BioWare did create their own thread about what armors we'd like to see in the cartel shop. Not to worry, though. BioWare assured us that they weren't holding out releasing new armors in-game just so they could put them in the cash shop. *cough* -Macheath.

A BioWare representative said that a certain feature was in the works? Well, I guess we should take them at their word, like we did for all those other broken promises. I'll believe the "Super Secret Space Project" exists when I see it actually make it into the game. Until that day, I will assume BioWare has little if any intention of moving forward with the project. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, given their track record. -Macheath.

The next time someone from BioWare pops into a thread to give us some feedback, we should all remember this post, and roll our eyes. No more benefit of the doubt. No more, "Thanks for chiming in, BioWare." We don't owe BioWare any of our patience, not anymore. They responded in February to this thread; responded, and then did nothing. Take a good look at this post, and remember that BioWare's public statements cannot be trusted. BioWare's words are not backed by action. This thread deserves to remain on the front page, a reminder of all of the empty promises made by this company. -Macheath.

That's simply not true. While some MMOs do release content patches of significant size for free, that is not "typical." In fact, $20 ($10 for subs) is cheaper than most "content patches" of this size. You're hung up on the semantics. BioWare made a mistake in ever calling this a "content update". Even at the time of the old interview announcing a free Makeb, "free expansion" would have sounded better than "free content update." And really, we don't even know the full size, yet. People are getting ahead of themselves, complaining before they know the details. From what little we do know, it sounds like Makeb will be a smaller expansion than the average WoW expansion. We also know that it is half the price of a WoW expansion, so that may turn out to be a perfectly reasonable pricetag. Furthermore, a point that not many people bring up is that we don't know the relative size of what Makeb used to be, back when they announced it was going to be free. They may have added more content since then, enough that they now feel Makeb warrants a pricetag. The point is, we don't know. -Macheath.

Well, actually, Guild Wars 2 doesn't have any long duration CC. When a character "CC's" a mob, they are really interrupting the mob, or stringing together multiple short-duration CC to provide a longer overall effect, and/or applying debuffs to the mob to help mitigate damage done to the group. In ToR, CC generally means what you say it does. That's not necessarily the way it is in other games, though. I could name others. "Long duration" CC in TERA is only 10-15 seconds, and only a select few classes have access to those abilities. Most CC is stunning mobs for only a few seconds at most, knocking them down, or interrupting their abilities with taunts and interrupts. WAR also features no long duration CC. And if I remember right, Age of Conan did not have the standard "Sap" type abilities which can mez for 60 seconds, either. Then there are non-MMOs, like HoN and LoL, which use the term "CC" for shorter duration effects. The list goes on for many other, lesser known, titles, but you get the idea. There are many games you could come from and not know that "CC" means "60 second mez." In fact, there are only 4 MMOs where I've actually used such tactics; Everquest, WoW, Rift, and ToR. CC has always meant any form of movement or action impairing effect, including the standard stun, mez, knockdown, but also snare, silence/disarm, charm, and fear. The term has also evolved to include certain types of taunts, teleports, levitations, pulls, and even debuffs (depending on their nature) in games which offer such things. It's hardly "always" been used "exclusively" to mean long duration stuns. In fact, in a game like WoW you'd specifically refer to that type of stun as either "Sheep" or "Sap," because those were the two specific abilities in the game that had that effect. I was never asked to CC anything as a Rogue, but I was repeatedly asked to Sap. -Macheath.