To all those demanding for more story content...

As someone who flunked out of five different universities, I cannot for the life of me see how the term "horizontal", or "vertical" development would have any kind of practical application in, for instance, the film, music, or high-tech industries. I'm not trying to be cheeky here, I genuinely don't see it, and would love you to illustrate an example.

Umm, absolutely more content is the way to go. I've yet to see even a game hindering bug, much less a game breaking one.

I've been done with most of the content in this game for some time, so yes, more content. If they fixed every bug in the game, it would just be fixes to things I've already done. I'll deal with the bugs, I need more reasons to log in.

I sure HOPE they invest into expanding the existing class stories instead of making entirely new classes. I simply do not see the necessity for creating new classes, while I definitely see the advantages of expanding the existing stories. (for one, it's probably easier to get former players back with a new story for their character, which they can pick up right where they left off instead of starting a character from scratch again).

Creating additional Advanced Classes is something I can imagine though. The existing classes do give that room, and storywise, it'll be cheaper to expand the existing 8 stories than writing an entirely new story from scratch AND adjusting all existing world-arcs and flashpoints to fit in the new classes as well. Additional Advanced Classes simply don't have that problem.

Their fault not mine. Simple as that.

MMOs are a long term investment in both time and resources. Continual support, patching, content, security and gameplay over the course of several years are the nature of MMOs nowadays. They CHOSE to include aspects into their game such as VOs and class stories. To willfully include this into an MMO KNOWING FULL WELL in the future they cannot support it any further than from release is foolish and quite frankly embarrassing for the leadership of this game.

What's even more embarrassing and speaks volumes is that what we see now is exactly how Bioware and Electronic Arts wants it! They look at the state of the game and are actually pleased! They laid people off, downsized the staff, went F2P and programmed in a real money cash shop. They know the game has failed even their own expectations. Their trying to milk as much money from their current subscribers as they can before this MMO goes into retirement ala Warhammer Online.

EA issued a press release stating that they had high hopes for this title, it's fallen short and so it's been placed behind Tiger Woods Golf on the priority list. Folks, Tiger Woods's last game came out a year and a half ago. Shows how much they care.

So the expansion coming up is the biggest and most content you will see for 2013. You'll get nothing else mark my words in terms of progressive content. Bug fixes will be so few and far between unless it applies to the F2P -> subscriber conversion OR if it's to fix the Cartel Market. This is as good as it gets and it's only going to go downhill from here. Remember folks EA is driving this car and they wrecked the last one pretty bad.

Use the search function to look for "new classes". There are many, many threads pertaining to this issue.

I won't say no to more polish on what we have. There's so much more they could be doing to make the game we have more enjoyable.
As great as the story stuff is, some times I log in, I don't WANT to do Flashpoints or Operations, or the same Black Hole/Section X dailies.

I want Pazaak, I want better sitting animations, I want to go fishing (I know I know), I want ship customization, I want speech bubbles, I want all the things we've been clamboring for, and instead we get more Operations. More Flashpoints. More PvP arenas. I feel there is a demographic of SWTOR players that are direly being ignored.

I do think it is a shame they've given up on class based story.

It may have been inevitable, but it was SWTORs big strength and it is a shame.

I'm having difficulty applying the concept to film and especially music industries as well. Movie sequels are kind of vertical, except they're often made so they can stand on their own so not really.

High tech is a pretty broad term, but let's take a company that makes computers. Horizontal expansion would be introducing new models with different specs, each of which is a product on its own. Vertical expansion would be selling addons to existing products, like memory upgrades or software packs (note that I'm assuming a big brand manufacturer here, not an independent retailer selling generic parts).

Many tool and industrial machine manufacturers also offer options to enhance the functionality of their products. These are also vertical expansion.

All of these things get done for the planet quest anyway, which is many times longer than the class quest.

The class quests only really need a few voices and some cutscenes.