Why rise of the Hutt Cartel is a failure

I cant really agree with most of your views, but appreciate your candor.

That is not meant to insinuate that there is not room for improvement, nor that the expansion was a home run....but it does have, IMO, many features that were unique and should be moved to the rest of the game...like the beginning sequence.

Every first visit to a planet should be like the intro to Makeb.

In WoW, in the Lich King expansion, there is a choice to make, and you make it and fight and change the terrain. And if you group with people who didn't, they don't see the changes and they don't see your avatar. It is possible for things to make a difference, it's just likely beyond the curve of Mythic Devs.

Are you talking about the phased zones?

You either progress further in the phased area, or you do not. It is as simple as accepting a quest and completing it or postponing the quest/not doing it at all. All you get is an illusion that your choice made a difference. All that has happened is you went from one scripted zone completed it, and moved on to the next. If you think about it, phased zones dont even make sense. You are questing with some of your friends and you get to certain point, and you kill the dragon turn in the quest and all of the sudden you cannot see your friends? and they cannot see you? yet you are standing right in the same spot in game? but in their phased zone there are still a bunch of undead roaming around, but in your phased zone in the exact same spot there are a bunch of argent crusaders standing guard?

As advanced as the technology is today, it isnt advanced enough to give us the kind of flexibility we would hope for. There have even been articles written stating that the tech still isnt good enough. It is much easier to write a story that only has 1-2, possible outcomes. The phased zoning that WoW has is pretty much the closest we have come so far, but its a long way from having each one of your dialogue options changing the rest of your storyline.

Yeah, except you don't actually change anything depending on your choices because there are none. Every single person will have the same landscape at the end of the quests. You're completely missing the point.

The problem, as I personally see it, is that everyone keeps comparing SWTOR to some other game be it KOTOR or WoW or what have you. It's perfectly okay to like those games, there is a lot there to like. I just think a lot of people are unable to get passed the reality that this is it's own thing. It's not a Star Wars version of WoW (like some keep pushing for) nor is it a remake of KOTOR. It happens to occur in "the Old Republic" and has some basic lore in common, naturally, but SWTOR is it's own specific thing. The best way to enjoy the game is to STOP comparing it to other games (within Bioware or out) and take this game as it's own entity separate and apart from others. If, after doing that, you find you enjoy the game for what -it- is, great! If not, then move on to a more satisfying gaming experience elsewhere. If you decide the pro's outweigh the con's and you continue to play SWTOR, then threads complaining that it's not like some other game seem unproductive, imo.

Well op is mostly right. They designed a 5 to 6h questline. (3h in double XP weekend) and made it as linear as possible.
If they wanted to make it a different and better experience they should have branched the whole storyline. Even if they collapse it down to one end the journey could have been way more interessting if they decided to bring in some decissions that really make a difference.
Not to be rude but after 7 years of programming and building worlds with kill this, collect that, they could probably fill a 40 hour questline within no time.
I guess they didn't do it because they fear the consequences. If it ever turned out to be great and that most people like it they have to stick with it and heaven forbid that they can't deliver the same experience with the next expansion.
What was indeed really good was the focused storyline. If really felt like you are there for this one reason even you had daily and at least one additional quest. If felt less like on the other planets where you one of the future greates sith take credit and a green item for mowing the lawn of a farmer on balmorra. ( i don't think that this questline exists but often it feels similar to that. )
So storywise it was not bad. But linearity makes it even harder to replay it several times.

Correct me when I'm wrong, but if they do no longer see each other, even though they are at the same place, how is that still considered "playing together" in an MMO?
Sure, phasing can be used to make changes visible, but you essentially cause the community to turn into splinter cells of different "state of the world"... which in my opinion goes against the core of a MMO (just like instancing does).

How lovely would it be, if we wouldn't only need to try to find someone to help with a H4 quest, but we would also need to say something like this: "Looking for a tank for final H4 of (XY) mission chain, must have choices 1,2,2,1,3 made",,, or else they cannot see each other and thus not play together... That might be better for a single player experience, but it got no place in an MMO in my opinion.

The only problems I have with Makeb really are that there is a quest there that is very long and repetitious and I nowadays hope to hit 55 before that by doing ops etc, so I don't have to do that particular quest.

The bad thing about it is that it keeps me from finishing the story line on my alts because I don't want to do that particular quest.

The second thing is the mob spacing. There are too many mobs on the Makeb islands and more importantly, too close together. It makes Makeb tedious. In fact this could be a major contributing factor to my first gripe.

The bad thing about the mob spacing issue is that even though I liked a lot of things on Makeb, I go there as little as possible. That can't be the aim of a new planet...

It's just a shame that the class specific intros were the best part of the quest line.

I have 6 level 55s, only one has completed the Makeb questline, primarily because that character is part of a static team that wanted to do it.

The other five levelled 50-55 mostly through Black Hole/Section X dailies (one hit 55 before completing Corellia thanks to 2xp ). I guess I ought to drag at least one Rep character through to see the other side of the story, but it just wasn't that interesting.

Class specific stories in the next expansion please!

Have you played WoW or read the WoW forums? The Blizz devs are in love with this phased concept. In WoW they have 2 seater aerial mounts now...guess what happens when the rider and passenger fly through a phased area and both those people are at different stages of that phased area? I remember when they did phased areas in Icecrown. I would fly down to a ore node and i would be mining it, but it would glitch out. IT wouldnt let me loot it, and each time i tried to retap the node the ore stone quantity would change. Come to find out that somebody in a different phase from me was tapping the same ore node and taking the ore.

Stuff like that along with fragmented zones are just a few of the problems with phased areas. I believe they fixed the issue with the ore node, but the mount issue was fairly recent within the last few months.