The end of the arguement. Is SWTOR in decline? Can it be saved?

About that whole "no one will miss you" thing. Next time you notice your server is a ghost town, don't complain about it.

About less than a year later for Rift, SWTOR has been up for 5 months. How many Heavy or Very Heavy servers do you see during prime time? I'm counting like 5, out of how many? After 5 months?

You can't "blow through" WvWvW.. that alone is worth the purchase cost of GW2.

There are 8 class storylines in SWTOR, and they largely are unaffected by any decisions you make. Yes, you can save someone or let them die but even if you save them, they'll likely never show up again anyway, maybe you'll get an Email. The effect of that decision is minimal. I can think of only a few key decisions that had any effect whatsoever aside from companion affection or morality points.

GW2 has 3 main storylines per race (5 races, that's 15 main stories, potentially more if the other choices alter them to a large extent), that are altered by a few other decisions in your character Bio (haven't figured out to what extent yet), along with branching choices that are NOT based on a morality system, IE my Ash Legion Charr Thief had a story somewhat like the Imperial Agent line, I infiltrated a base in disguise discovered the enemy's plans, and freed a prisoner from the Blood Legion. I questioned him and he said his entire warband was wiped out. So I had a chance to recruit him or let him go become a Gladium (a Charr without a Warband, which is shameful in their culture), to recruit him I had to pass a speech check, charm, ferocity or dignity, which you can fail. Now you don't recruit him as a companion (those don't exist, thankfully), but every time you go back to your home instance, he is there, small change, but a person you saved is permanently there, rather than just a mail. Then I told of the enemy's plans to my superiors, and had to make a choice.. which assassination target would I protect? The other would be protected by a Rookie with no field experience. I didn't finish this one yet but I'm predicting that I will succeed and he will fail, and it will branch my story.

There's also the fact that for at least up to level 30 (we haven't seen higher level zones yet) there are multiple areas to level up in. This is compared to SWTOR's linear level progression.

Explorable mode dungeons as well, 8 base story mode dungeons, which you go through once, after that, when you go through them there are say, a way you can knock a hole through a wall and discover a new catacombs system with different bosses (and much much harder than the story mode), there are multiple explorable versions of each dungeon.

So I see GW2 taking longer than a few weeks.

I still don't understand why alot of people are raving about GW2 like its already the only game in the world left to play... Yes videos, press releases content leaks can all hint to what the game will be like but that doesn't mean you've played it and it doesn't mean it's exactly what you're expecting.

Now this is the same for SWTOR I was expecting something totally different and new and whilst there was certainly different aspects of the game that made it "new" such as the storyline in the long run it hasn't turned out exactly how I expected it to. Thats not to say i'm not enjoying it.

We will see when GW2 is released if it is the "game to end all games" but as with just about anything released these days I personally don't think it will live up to the expectations some people have for it.

Oh and yeah, Star Wars is the main reason I play this game

I snuck in on a stress test and played GW2 last Friday.

It was exactly what I was expecting with a few pleasant surprises to boot.

Well obviously i'll give it a chance, is there another beta?

you'll be happy to know Tera's open beta started today. My first looksy showed a built in LFG tool... go figure!

Why not. It's need a playerbase to start with and i'm sure all the coddled players who need the game developers to form their groups for them will flock to it.