@Tumri - I really don't understand you lot ... If you truly expected some ultimate hardcore raiding scene in SWTOR, well, then you simply allowed yourself to be an idiot. What is even more idiotic is expecting Bioware to implement some Raggy HC or Yogg zero lights in their first year of their first MMO. It took years for Blizz to start designing something more complex than the original Molten Core. Why would you even flee from WoW which clearly established itself as the alfa and omega of raiding throughout its 7-year span if you wanted nothing but that? I'm sure your raiding resumé is as impressive as you claim it is, but clearly you lack some basic foresight and have bizarre expectations. You won't see Raggy 25H-like encounters in SWTOR anytime soon, deal with it (or don't). In the first place, such encounters would require a much more complex UI functionality (provided in WoW mostly by third-party addons) and anyone with a half a brain would know that with the current UI/interface and class balance SWTOR doesn't even have the capacity for that. I'm finally raiding without any extra addons, especially DBM, it's one of the reasons I'm enjoying SWTOR a lot more, at least it doesn't look like I'm watching a stock exchange on Wall Street. I feel much more immersed in my character actions in SWTOR than any time in WoW.

However, what is needed is more content, of course, and anyone can clearly see that. To be perfectly honest, I hope they don't focus entirely on raiding, WoW could've been so much more if they simply shifted their focus a bit and not structuring the entire endgame for raiding. Themeparks are already the bane of modern MMOs with their "locus content" mentality, and raiding being the alfa and omega of pretty much the entire game only adds salt to the wound. Besides, with no attunements and gear checks it's practically impossible to design encounters that would provide months and months of content, players consume them way faster than the devs can keep up. It's been like that in WoW for years - when they removed TBC attunements and gear checks, they removed long-term progression and caught themselves in the web of content void. Unfortunately, Bioware uses the same philosophy and designs even easier raids.

You haven't really provided anything specific what makes GW2 as hardcore as Raggy HC, just some fleeting impressions from beta, which I have as well, but are completely opposite. The only thing that's been tested (and even that was half-assed) is the Ascalonian Dungeon, everything else is just a glorified zergfest in the form of public events, which I have no idea why anyone with your raiding resumé would even remotely consider just as difficult as Raggy HC. Blizzard could only implement Raggy HC-like encounters after years of testing and experimenting, I find it hard to believe Arenanet has all of a sudden found the formula and somehow magically tested everything to be super hardcore. If 5 man encounters can really be just as difficult and complex as 25 man/16 man, where are they? On top of that, the destruction of the trinity system leaves very little room for tactical encounters we all love and hate. This is basically Arenanet's first venture into designing encounters that revolve around the non-trinity system and they have ZERO experience in that.

So, again, you're being very narrow minded to expect T11 and T12 complex encounters in the first year of SWTOR, also very narrow minded to join a story-based Bioware MMO ... again, why did you move in the first place? Secondly, you have simply replaced SWTOR fanboyism with GW2, one false messiah with another. You're most likely the first person who's lauding GW2 as some ultimate PvE game with really tactical encounters, there's actually a reason why it's considered primarily a PvP game.

http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/

They keep track of older raids that were posted in World of Logs. They even keep track of when content patches are released. Unfortunately, the % numbers go down because people go back and clear T11 with T13 loot, etc but you can measure yourself against where others stood during timeframes. I was surprised they kept track of the old data, and was nice to see I still ranked in the 95+ % for multiple toons.

http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/

 

They keep track of older raids that were posted in World of Logs. They even keep track of when content patches are released. Unfortunately, the % numbers go down because people go back and clear T11 with T13 loot, etc but you can measure yourself against where others stood during timeframes. I was surprised they kept track of the old data, and was nice to see I still ranked in the 95+ % for multiple toons.

Raided on a hunter with Aptitude for T11/T12 while raiding with my Ret(Technically my main) in a semi-casual guild to play with an IRL friend. I think my rankings look pretty good IMO.

http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/stormreaver/poomanchu/

http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/stormreaver/pxxmanchu/

To be honest, guys I think Nightmare mode is one of the ideas that Bioware should probably move away from. It really feels like milking a small amount of content rather than putting in more ops content, which is what we actually want. Certainly with EV and KP Ops there is no real feeling of doing something significantly greater when completing HM or NM. Indeed, in an alt run it can be more fun doing HM and having fun with friends.

Nope, I think Bioware would do well to follow the simpler model of two difficulty modes in future ops content...and to make the longevity greater put in more content into them. EC is only 4 Ops bosses, how about 8 in future. That would be a big improvement.

To be honest, guys I think Nightmare mode is one of the ideas that Bioware should probably move away from. It really feels like milking a small amount of content rather than putting in more ops content, which is what we actually want. Certainly with EV and KP Ops there is no real feeling of doing something significantly greater when completing HM or NM. Indeed, in an alt run it can be more fun doing HM and having fun with friends.

 

Nope, I think Bioware would do well to follow the simpler model of two difficulty modes in future ops content...and to make the longevity greater put in more content into them. EC is only 4 Ops bosses, how about 8 in future. That would be a big improvement.

If Bioware are going to move away from the "3 difficulty" raiding that was started by WoW, They need to have their casual hand holding mode (so people "see" the content) and then make hard mode actually hard, by hard I mean Raiding before Wotlk hard.

There isn't much point in a game company producing content that only 0.1 % can complete. That's just a waste of time, I think.

No what we want is Ops with more bosses and challenges, and a difficulty that scales to a greater extent as you progress along. Problem with Denova is there are just 4 bosses in it, at the end of the day no matter what you try to do with it now it just seems like old hat or cake to most players in SWTOR.

This. Grinding EC all over again with maybe 1 new mechanic per boss would be very boring. I just want a new OP that is drastically harder than EC HM where it might take the top raiding guilds in the entire game a few weeks to clear.

While I second the 'sooner than later' demand here, you do realize that even one seemingly unimaginitive mechanic more can alter any fight rather drastically. And adding some simple ones that make fights a lot tougher is pretty easy ... DoTs to dispell and manage (think Wrack) or additional Adds on Bosses like the twin tanks or some malicious interactions between the colonel and his two adds and turrets could bring a lot more heat than you might imagine.

There isn't much point in a game company producing content that only 0.1 % can complete. That's just a waste of time, I think.

 

No what we want is Ops with more bosses and challenges, and a difficulty that scales to a greater extent as you progress along. Problem with Denova is there are just 4 bosses in it, at the end of the day no matter what you try to do with it now it just seems like old hat or cake to most players in SWTOR.

There's where you're wrong. You're assuming this content will be WoW difficulty hard so you're using the mythical .1% strawman argument. No, even if nightmare were to come out, it would be 1% of guilds clearing it the first couple nights and 10% within two weeks. Doesn't matter what difficulty they come out with in this game. Content is small and content isn't hard. If they want to gear it towards casuals, that's fine. But they will continue to hemmorhage subscriptions from both the hardcore and casual crowds. As the hardcores leave due to lack of content and the casuals leave because they're causals.

However, this game has FAR greater issues still than difficult raiding content. Just makes me sad that it's gotten to the point where I've had to cave and cancel my subscription. I just can't keep living a lie with this game, I don't find it worth the money I'm putting into it.

There isn't much point in a game company producing content that only 0.1 % can complete. That's just a waste of time, I think.

If you are talking about clearing in the first few days/week of release... assuming a 1 mil player base you're talking about 1,000 players clearing the content in the first week. About 60 16 man guilds or 120 8 man guilds. Not that far off what cleared HM EC in the first week or so I'd guess. So they actually need to make content that LESS than .1% of the player base can complete in the first week it is released.

Using the WoW model that so many compare to, the .1% or players is 10,000 players. Or about 400 25 man guilds. Look at http://www.wowprogress.com/post/83_Heroic_Ragnaros_vs_Heroic_Deathwing

More precisely, here are amounts of guilds that killed the bosses within 4 months after the first kills:

Deathwing 25-man: 605

Ragnaros 25-man: 317

Hmm.. ya. catering to .1% (or less) of the player base on heroic content is OBVIOUSLY a bad idea. BTW, if you go back and lock at H-LK, Yogg+0, Kil'jaeden, etc. ... I'd imagine you'd see similar (if not smaller on some of them) numbers. HIGH end raiding has been successful when calibrated around the HIGHEST caliber players/compositions, and provided as a carrot, rather than just an automatic reward for logging in and doing things remedially well. And none of these "well known" end raid bosses were killed within hours of release.. much less by multiple guilds on their first day of attempts.

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/star-wars-the-old-republic-mmorpg/forced-out/

Hope content comes out soon, or there won't be anyone left making content lol

There's more people in my vent playing day-z, TSW, CS GO, and diablo 3 any given day at 3 oclock in the morning than there are that show up for raids in SWTOR anymore.

"Do we really have to kill these bosses again? *whine*"

We're not lasting much longer. Looks like you'll beat us this time CKN. ;-)

There's more people in my vent playing day-z, TSW, CS GO, and diablo 3 any given day at 3 oclock in the morning than there are that show up for raids in SWTOR anymore.

 

"Do we really have to kill these bosses again? *whine*"

 

We're not lasting much longer. Looks like you'll beat us this time CKN. ;-)

Provided we have tanks this time around. 1.2 we had 1 tank, me. The other 2 quit during PTS testing. So with any luck, we might have a chance as our raid team seems pretty good atm with regards to still logging on.

How long will that last? Not sure with the lack of communication from this Dev team.

To the Devs: "Soon" doesn't cut it anymore. We need an actual ETA to keep people interested in this game, and the legacy fluff that should have been implemented with 1.2 won't keep us playing and subscribing. While I will give you Kudos for making a social game for the most casual of casual players, I know a few friends that have also unsubscribed, and they were extremely casual.

To the Devs: "Soon" doesn't cut it anymore. We need an actual ETA to keep people interested in this game, and the legacy fluff that should have been implemented with 1.2 won't keep us playing and subscribing. While I will give you Kudos for making a social game for the most casual of casual players, I know a few friends that have also unsubscribed, and they were extremely casual.

Yes, agreed. Having a specified timeframe would help a lot.

Maybe they did say it in the 2nd BW post, just that we still lack the ability to see it (again...).

A very strange thing that only affects this thread or this topic, it's a ....

If they would just say month x we plan to release Explosive Conflict Nightmare and month y we plan to release the new operation / patch 1.4, that would make a lot of people happier.

They won't do that because if they miss a deadline the community would go apesh*t. MMO developers NEVER give even vague deadlines to the communities.

They won't do that because if they miss a deadline the community would go apesh*t. MMO developers NEVER give even vague deadlines to the communities.

EQ, WoW all gave vague deadlines of when things plan to be released for content patches. They were also mostly communicative. Look at the recent Dev Tracker, its mostly a ghost town with an occasional post here and there where they are responding to something. I don't count posting maintenance windows as communicating with the community perse. Go back several months, and what do you see? Lots of communication between the reps and information was being given out.

My prediction: we have 1 more content release cycle that extend the game's longevity for 2-3 more months and then it is over again and more subs will drop to the point it becomes a Free 2 Play.

A level increase is planned in the near future, maybe as early as 1.4 doesn't bode well.