To those leaving SWTOR...

I will be leaving swtor for GW2 and here is why

GW2 Features:
1. Expansive Achievement system with rewards
2. Fully fleshed out Guild system with guild rewards and achievements, guild emblems you can put on your armor, guild bank, etc... (guild halls to come shortly after release)
3. Dynamics Events that scale to the number of players participating in them. Events that span entire areas, events that actually change the game world around you
4. No traditional quests, "renown hearts" instead, gives you many different activities. Once I had to turn into a pig and dig up truffles, once I had to equip this bomb throwing contraption to knock things out of trees, no more just kill/gather quests like in TOR.
Combat:
5. No Trinity, you can just grab 4 players and do the dungeons, no more waiting 2 hours in a queue for a tank.
6. Different combat style. No more of the WoW/SWTOR just standing there and being beat on. Dodging, movement, ability combos, and skill are the name of the game.
Leveling:
7. No kill stealing, everyone that participates gets credit
8. Loot for everyone, you don't have to roll for loot against your friends, everyone gets their own assigned loot.
9. Flat leveling curve, each level after 30 takes as much experience as the previous, so you don't have levels that just drag on forever
10. Scaled zones. If you go back to a lower level zone you get down-scaled to the level of that zone so it is still a challenge. You also still get xp (slightly reduced, like 10%) and loot appropriate for your level. This has the effect that you always have MORE options with every level you gain on where to go next. In TOR if you are level 27 then you HAVE to level on tatooine, in GW2 there are over 10 places you could effectively level by the same time.
Exploration
11. Hidden puzzles all over the world, including complex jumping puzzles with cool rewards at the ends)
12. MASSIVE OPEN worlds. You never feel like you are on a path, you can literally go anywhere unlike the path planets of TOR
13. No long loading times. You can load into a zone in 10-15 seconds, not the 3-4 minutes it takes in TOR
PvP
14. WvWvW (Server vs Server v Server) MASSIVE PvP, fights of 100+ people, sieging castles, using siege weapons, defending keeps, guarding supply lines, best open world PvP i've ever played.
15. No Factions, so no faction imbalance.
16. Small scale PvP like Warzones in TOR, with multiple maps (Including an underwater one!)
17. PvP tournaments, with rewards
18. Fully ranked PvP system on release
19. Can PvP at level 2, as a full level 80 with full gear (that's right no gear grind, just skill)
20. Can still progress in PvP by earning better cosmetic looks for your gear

Well that's just a few of the reasons, but i'd say try and get a beta key and play this weekend (they are giving out like 500,000 of them)

I currently have no intentions of leaving SW:TOR, but I will say that I have friends that didn't start playing SW:TOR for one giant reason: crafting.

GW2 has real crafting. You can walk around, gather materials, and then *you* can use those materials to create different items. SW:TOR doesn't have that. In SW:TOR, you can only send your minions out to collect and craft. You can do a bit of gathering, but there is no option to go to a bench and actually make a belt or a gun or a lightsabre hilt or anything at all. That entire process is handled by your eventually faceless minions that you never see again.

Furthermore, gathering is more than just sending Forex/Aric/Tanno/Elara/Yuun/C2 over yonder to scan something with his or her fancy handheld doodad. There's mining, plant harvesting, and such to be done. It's a very more involved process and it's a lot more fun for someone who puts a great emphasis on that side of the game.

Doing things outside of combat is really where SW:TOR & BioWare Austin dropped the ball. Everything in SW:TOR is based on combat. There aren't any mini-games or things to do for people that don't want to do combat or people who are looking to take a break from slaying Imperial scum. For some people, that is the biggest turn off possible and Guild Wars 2 is more likely to pick those people up once it launches in late August.

Edit: I'd like to add that GW2 has a dynamic world. I watched a ten minute video yesterday on GW2 where the guy was just walking around explaining movement. In that small window of time, an event took place where centaurs starting trying to seize the land and started attacking everyone around. That small amount of change in the landscape is more than I've seen in hundreds of hours of SW:TOR play. The closest thing to that in SW:TOR is the rare AREA mission that one can stumble upon.

Pretty sure swtor already has this.

The PvE "reasons" listed really don't sound particularly impressive - more like design decisions which I'm sure will have as many negative points as positive - hardly anything groundbreaking.

The PvP features sound nice for those that like PvP.

Was probably going to give it a try but after reading that list sounds like more features that would annoy me than not in the PvE arena.

On the crafting front, im the opposite. I dont want to do all the dirty work myself. If i can go do X whilst my companion runs over to gather something i want, thats great!

If i want to craft X, i dont want to sit there watching a progress bar. That to me, is boring as hell. And i hate crafting in every mmo, for that same reason. Its boring. Gather materials, hit the craft button, watch progress bar, item appears in inventory. Repeat 10 million times.

If i had to add up the amount of time i wasted watching a progress bar - most of which i did whilst watching a movie - i dont even want to know how much time that was.

Swtor has relatively simple jumping puzzles that are made arbitrarily complex because of the abysmal thing they call jumping in this game.

Swtor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGuW3yvxws4

GW2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81mwQ4i_AwE

Only downside to the fluff items are the gems which you can buy for money and then exchange the gems for ingame money.

ArenaNet has put the MMO space under a microscope and looked at all the things that prevented players from grouping or made players not want to group and fixed them.

Things that allowed players to negatively impact another players experience have been removed or revised

-No Kill Sealing, No Camping Quest Nodes, No Camping Boss fights
-The story happens to the players instead of being read to them.
-Open world player interaction
-The first truly Massive MMO since UO, with open world event systems that get players working together
….Hold a fort ….Save a Village …. Take over an Enemy Camp, Kill a giant Boss with dozens of other players.
-Encourages spontaneous grouping with open world Dynamic event questing
-Giant boss fights in the open world
-World vs World vs World PvP …. And fight with siege weapons
-No factions …play with anyone
-No Trinity – Make a Guild all of one class if you want
-All players can rez a downed player
-Crafting has an experimentation mechanic
-Skills that change up based on the weapon you have equipped
-Races that aren’t just human with a different color skin.
-Player Skill based reactive combat
-No endgame gear grind
-Start PvPing from Level 1
-The sidekick system means all content stays relevant
-Easy server transfer systom
-Free to Play…..

The list keeps going but the nuts and bolts of it is ArenaNet didn’t start with “LETS MAKE WOW but it going to be in the Star Wars universe

I will be leaving swtor for GW2 and here is why

GW2 Features:
1. Expansive Achievement system with rewards
2. Fully fleshed out Guild system with guild rewards and achievements, guild emblems you can put on your armor, guild bank, etc... (guild halls to come shortly after release)
3. Dynamics Events that scale to the number of players participating in them. Events that span entire areas, events that actually change the game world around you
4. No traditional quests, "renown hearts" instead, gives you many different activities. Once I had to turn into a pig and dig up truffles, once I had to equip this bomb throwing contraption to knock things out of trees, no more just kill/gather quests like in TOR.
Combat:
5. No Trinity, you can just grab 4 players and do the dungeons, no more waiting 2 hours in a queue for a tank.
6. Different combat style. No more of the WoW/SWTOR just standing there and being beat on. Dodging, movement, ability combos, and skill are the name of the game.
Leveling:
7. No kill stealing, everyone that participates gets credit
8. Loot for everyone, you don't have to roll for loot against your friends, everyone gets their own assigned loot.
9. Flat leveling curve, each level after 30 takes as much experience as the previous, so you don't have levels that just drag on forever
10. Scaled zones. If you go back to a lower level zone you get down-scaled to the level of that zone so it is still a challenge. You also still get xp (slightly reduced, like 10%) and loot appropriate for your level. This has the effect that you always have MORE options with every level you gain on where to go next. In TOR if you are level 27 then you HAVE to level on tatooine, in GW2 there are over 10 places you could effectively level by the same time.
Exploration
11. Hidden puzzles all over the world, including complex jumping puzzles with cool rewards at the ends)
12. MASSIVE OPEN worlds. You never feel like you are on a path, you can literally go anywhere unlike the path planets of TOR
13. No long loading times. You can load into a zone in 10-15 seconds, not the 3-4 minutes it takes in TOR
PvP
14. WvWvW (Server vs Server v Server) MASSIVE PvP, fights of 100+ people, sieging castles, using siege weapons, defending keeps, guarding supply lines, best open world PvP i've ever played.
15. No Factions, so no faction imbalance.
16. Small scale PvP like Warzones in TOR, with multiple maps (Including an underwater one!)
17. PvP tournaments, with rewards
18. Fully ranked PvP system on release
19. Can PvP at level 2, as a full level 80 with full gear (that's right no gear grind, just skill)
20. Can still progress in PvP by earning better cosmetic looks for your gear

Well that's just a few of the reasons, but i'd say try and get a beta key and play this weekend (they are giving out like 500,000 of them)

It doesn't cease to amaze me how many things TOR *could* have when it should amaze me at how many things TOR *does* have.

I currently have no intentions of leaving SW:TOR, but I will say that I have friends that didn't start playing SW:TOR for one giant reason: crafting.

GW2 has real crafting. You can walk around, gather materials, and then *you* can use those materials to create different items. SW:TOR doesn't have that. In SW:TOR, you can only send your minions out to collect and craft. You can do a bit of gathering, but there is no option to go to a bench and actually make a belt or a gun or a lightsabre hilt or anything at all. That entire process is handled by your eventually faceless minions that you never see again.

Furthermore, gathering is more than just sending Forex/Aric/Tanno/Elara/Yuun/C2 over yonder to scan something with his or her fancy handheld doodad. There's mining, plant harvesting, and such to be done. It's a very more involved process and it's a lot more fun for someone who puts a great emphasis on that side of the game.

Doing things outside of combat is really where SW:TOR & BioWare Austin dropped the ball. Everything in SW:TOR is based on combat. There aren't any mini-games or things to do for people that don't want to do combat or people who are looking to take a break from slaying Imperial scum. For some people, that is the biggest turn off possible and Guild Wars 2 is more likely to pick those people up once it launches in late August.

Edit: I'd like to add that GW2 has a dynamic world. I watched a ten minute video yesterday on GW2 where the guy was just walking around explaining movement. In that small window of time, an event took place where centaurs starting trying to seize the land and started attacking everyone around. That small amount of change in the landscape is more than I've seen in hundreds of hours of SW:TOR play. The closest thing to that in SW:TOR is the rare AREA mission that one can stumble upon.