I am a MAJOR supporter...

I never was invested in those games.. Aion, STO.Rift. meh.

When I started WoW I had played 1,2 and 3 prior.. So i was vested there and is probably why I did stay so long. But after Cata i vowed to never get that vested in a game again. I can leave it if I choose and go onto something else... I quit drinking the coolaid of any game. As long as I have fun with the game I'll stay.. I'm having fun here for now.

if you say so.

After an expantion comes out. You just as easy starting over in WoW IMO, I understand if you still have current gear.


But i think right now a 50 geared SW:ToR toon is more current then a 80 WoW toon.

i think SWToR is a solid game and ive had a lot of fun playing so far but i do miss the distinctness of the character models and gear from WoW. The humanoid only races gives every single character the same silhouette and everyone blends together to me.

Gear is the same way. i cannot tell if somone is level 10 or level 50 for the most part and in some cases i think i look better in my levelling gear than some of the level 50s. One of the most compelling things to me from WoW was after launch seeing level 60s fly into crossroads in the gear from the level 60 instances to defend an alliance attack when i was level 15. i had never even been to ogrimmar at that point and i had to go there and i had to get to level 60 and try to get the weapons and armor i saw those characters have.

SWToR does not provide a compelling chase. You get cool titles as you level. You get a cool looking ship. You get a whole away team of companions. You cannot tell from glancing at someone if they have found all the datacrons, completed any of the end game operations or is a pvp expert. Players are not riding around on rare mounts that never drop.

say what you will about WoW now but it was the best game ive played at dangling a cool looking carrot in front of me and making it just achieveable enough i would want to chase.

imagine if your first ship was a clunker, your first companion was a scrub, your gear looked like a brown paper bag, you used a tech blade at the start and got a light saber in the end game. i think people would find the game more compelling. i know i would.

Congrats, HF playing with the other 10 MAJOR supporters a year from now.

Rakata gear, pretty distinct color. (together with columi distinct shape)
Battlemaster, pretty distinct color.
Karugga's mount, SOA's mount, ...

No pandas, clearly.

Well for me SWtOR does have a bit of a "thing" factor but the reason so few people are finding a "thing" factor in the current MMOs is that MMOs are moving away from immersion. The more a virtual world pulls you in the more "thing" factor it has. People say "but no way i don't even play on a RP server how could........" yeah but immersion still affects you anyway. People who don't RP still project in the games they play. Otherwise they wouldn't care about appearance/etc at all.

The more MMOs move away from this immersion and depth of world the less it will grab ahold of people.

For all the flak you are taking, I feel the same way. I like the game. I'd like to like it more. But I can't. I just dropped my subscription back to monthly while I consider going back to playing Rift while waiting to see what GW2 offers.

What bothers me? A few things...

• Legacy was a big letdown. Nice concept but what was actually executed was a little toe in the water. Plus, was really put out that the best way to get legacy levels is to focus on running your high level toons. Seems like it should be as viable for folks who like alts (like me) to have legacy XP tied to time played rather then fraction of XP (meaning, why can't I get as much legacy XP for five hours on my level 20 as I do for 5 hours on my level 42?)
• WOW taught me that I hate endgame raids and daily quest grind. Was really hoping SWTOR would do something different for the end game but sadly, it was not to be.
• Was also really hoping SWTOR would do something more than the very stale "kill this/fetch that" quest. Spoken dialogue only makes up for that so much.
• Years of MMOs have also taught me that aesthetics matter to me. The character gear is mostly ugly and boring, especially on the republic side.

On the plus side, I like the crafting system, the spoken dialogue does make for better personality and back story, the companions are a nice addition. Certainly getting to play the rich world of Star Wars is a blast. But in the end, I'd have to chalk up the game as "does not meet expectations". Was hoping to enjoy it for at least 12-18 months but I think this one is going to be a 4-6 month one. If I do drop it, I'll keep an eye on it in case they make material improvements but just not what I was hoping for.

I think its the difficulty of the game. SWTOR is really really easy in general. You can go 1-50 without wiping essentially. EQ or DAOC was hard, you died, and when you got some gear or did a hard quest you felt some sort of pride. You had to explore just to explore, that sort of stuff.

There's a lot of truth to that. You can never have that first time experience again.

And yet... SWTOR could have been a lot more. Some of what is missing can be added over time but the stale endgame mechanics and fundamental quest structure (kill this/fetch that) would be very hard to fix; that needs to be designed in from the beginning. I think they made a big mistake not advancing the underlying game play.

Someone will address these issues eventually, until then, MMO companies can expect a big early influx followed but a steady loss of players.