Who Swtor was made for.

No one bad apples spolis the taste of that apple, apples from another tree can still be nice and juicy.

Horrible misinterpretation of the phrase...

http://voices.yahoo.com/popular-phra...g-2718025.html

The words "casual" and "hardcore" are almost entirely without any concrete meaning. Mostly they're used as derogatory labels.

And going through life expecting the worst is a self fullfilling prophecy, you expect to see the worst and you will mainly see the bad.

Yes. That is explicitly what I'm saying. It's a TV show where I have some control over it.

Many players who wanted this to be their new hard raiding game have moved on, and it isn't clear they will come back. Meanwhile the average players have been able to complete content labeled 'hard' and 'nightmare' and feel that this is their game.

So what happens when the designers start making 'hard mode' actually hard and 'nightmare mode' something that only the most dedicated players in organized guilds can complete?

Will they be able to get the players who wanted this level of challenge come back to consume the new 'hard' and 'nightmare' content?

Will the players who have completed 'hard' and 'nightmare' when it was easy continue to have success, or will they get frustrated with the difficulty?

And for a preview of this, just look at the posts whining about the healing nerfs and medpack changes coming in 1.2, and this is before anyone gets a chance to see if the new content is more difficult than current content.

Heck many of the post already have some variant of 'I am a hard / nightmare raider and with these changes the content will be impossible'.

I don't envy the balancing act the developers will have to perform to keep from alienating various segments of the games population as they move forward.

In fact, if I were them I'd just focus on several broad segments and not try to please everyone, especially the small niches.

Excellent observation. I m one of these players. Spend a lot of years playing games/content that required 110% focus/skill - what you call "challenging" and "real" hard modes. Life & maturity taught me that I was just wasting time. Figured out that having pressure & anxiety for a game is moronic - my whole daily real life is full of it, why I'd want to add more (especially now that I have to keep in mind the stroke/heart attack danger due to age). Now all I want is to relax while playing. Heck on single playing games I always choose the easiest mode.

SWTOR at the beginning was awesome on that part - I could play it without reading guides/min-maxing my spec/gear, being focused 100% on the game. Felt like the BWL runs that we did being overgeared with AQ to sell epics to ppl with no chance of being in a raiding guild - we used to run them with 31-34 ppl, 10 of them totally ignorant of the place & the mechanics & I was still able to chit chat on grp chat while playing, or even to be drunk during the raid. I still havent experienced anything remotely relaxed as these moments while our grp was RP'ing @ Chrommagus (instead of fighting) or just "nabbing" around, making life difficult for the others - ofc, this wouldnt happen every time, it was 1-2 grps @ the most every such raid, different each time, so noone would feel like he "carries" the others all the time. Imagine a tank being in "silly mode" and pulling without stops -> made all the raid play to its very best. E.g. in such cases we found ourselves fighting Broodlord + a gazzilion of whelps that hadnt died because tank was running. Ofc, you ll get wiped sometimes but noone will care because if you decide to play "right" you ll do it easily.

I played the PTS for almost 10 days now - game feels different, more hostile & unforgiving. The healing nerfs, the medpack nerfs & the overall increased difficulty alienate me. Who could expect anything else? They listened to the guilds at the summit, not the casual player. Guilds always wanted harder content than the avg player. Hardcore/elite guilds want even more difficult content. Casuals, dont have time or dont want to pay money to go to a summit, the vast majority of the attendants are hardcore ppl.

Whats saddens me is that they advertised a whole different kind of MMO, a story-driven MMO, not a challenge or gear-driven and that means that we shouldnt focus on these to progress & see every twist of the story. Its the story that we are after and gear, challenges and mix/max gameplay shouldnt be essential for us. All I want is an "easy" MMO, thought that SWTOR would be it - 1.2 tries to prove me otherwise. So far, I felt that this could be my game for the years to come, now I ll possibly quit after the 6 months are over.

P.S.: No, WoW & the others arent easy - at least as I mean it. Easy is to be able to clear content with 60% of the ppl attending/knowing what to do (avg people, not pro's). Easy is to be able to play non-optimal specs with success and still clear everything. Easy = much much tolerable towards mistakes, non- optimal rotations, non-optimal raid groups. SWTOR was the first MMO that was close to this, feels like it wont be anymore. Well, back in looking for such a game.

P.S. 2: As you have understood bragging about having xx gear / yy achivements / zz ranks means nothing to me. Want challenge & something to brag about? Come and try to survive in my real life - the 12h+ work/day & with money just enough to pay the bills - and to save some responses, MMO's are the cheapest entertainment, thats why I play them.