Am I spoiled by my previous MMO?

You are spoiled in a postive way. I am too, by both LOTRO and Wow. To some extent also Rift though I personally hold it to be the lesser of the three. My overall feel of TOR is about the same.

LOTRO was the biggest WOW cookie cut I had ever seen.

I have seen alot of great points being made in this thread, and I can understand why I could be accused of wearing rose-colored glasses when I look back on LOTRO. Since I am an avid Tolkienist, who revere the works of the professor, the game had to meet really high standards to please me, and now I am not talking about raids or PVP or anything that could pertain to a Great FPS - I am talking about Ambience, the feel of the game. It felt...open. Middle Earth is a very big place, but still just on a single planet. There were, at launch, an enormous amount of locations that did not have anything to do with questing, they were just there because they were, and although "useless" in the eyes of gamer less enamored by Middle Earth, those places were great for the rest of us, as they were rendered beautifuly. I could sit on a high slope in the hills outside Bree and just take it all in, knowing that wherever I saw, I could actually visit by riding there, or walking if I preferred. LOTRO catered to the roleplayer in me and it gave me a feeling of being a flyspeck, albeit a very important one thanks to the Epic Quests, in an enormous world.

OK, off with the glasses then

So, since I am a classic nerd who loves both Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars (and Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, wich I still hope they will make an MMO from.... one can always dream.) it is natural that I expect BW to love the SW universe as much as Turbine loves ME - and plagiarism is the highest form of love there is in the MMO world. I wanted the same feeling in SWTOR as I got in LOTRO from Day 1. I did not get that unfortunately - not saying that SWTOR is not a fun game, it really is, but I want more than fun - I want immersion. In LOTRO, there is life in the taverns, like The Prancing Pony in Bree or the Green Dragon in The Shire, people plays music together, drink and talk - in SWTOR there are alot of cantinas and they are gaping empty, all playing the same tunes no matter what planet you are on or wich faction you belong to, the bartender sells the exact same thing from identical bars lined with identical barstools that you cannot sit in (yes, I know it is coming...but it should really already be here, that is my point). Have you looked at the people they have placed in the cantinas? It is almost scary - we are talking identical twins, triplets and quadruplets everywhere - and they dress identical too - no matter what cantina you walk into, you find the same people frequenting them. It is surrealistic.

But now I am nitpicking, I know - but for me the Game is in the details. I do not know what limitations the HERO engine has - perhaps people are right in their critique of the choice of using it, I do not know. If they are, though, BW can only be accused of making a bad choice and not for not loving the SW universe as they are only making the best they can with the tools they have.

Uh, thats Bioware's fault no-one else, they're just some old school single playing games devs, see what happened when EA gave them MMO project, they were absolutely clueless, you cant teach new tricks to old dogs. For example go to Rift, you will see one of the most amazing communities ever, I bet we get same kind of community in Elder Scroll Online too.

Personally if I get a random group invite from someone I don't know I instantly decline it. If they message me first to say "Hey wanna group up for these missions?" then I'll either say sure, or politely say no thanks I'd rather the more XP for solo-ing it.

Sorry, but I disagree. Those that are truly dissatisfied move on. They provide feedback that they aren't satisfied by not continuing to spend their money for something that does not satisfy them. If the product or service improves sufficiently, they will return. Their return provides feedback that they are no longer dissatisfied.

Those that choose to stick around while hoping that the product or service improves should recognize that the fact that they continue to spend their money does not mean that company A is under any obligation to improve their product or service. With regards to providing feedback, there is a huge difference between "Your product or service could be improved by providing X, Y or Z." and "This is an outrage. X,Y and Z should have been included from the start, give them to me, or else." IMO, one is constructive feedback, and the other is that entitled attitude I have mentioned previously.

While I agree that some expectations are indeed unrealistic, I don't see how the most recurring complaints on this forum are related to unrealistic expectations.

• Server Mergers/Transfers - Most people that play MMOs do so to play them together with other people. It's not unrealistic to expect a massive multiplayer game to have a healthy population. Being able to transfer players from one server to another with out it interfering with your game design should have been taken into consideration from the get go.
• GTN - Being able to effectively trade/search for items is a key element of any in game economy. Now given the fact, that all of us have probably had experiences with some form of online trade platforms. We all have reasonable expectations of what system like that should be able to do. Bioware missed the boat on this completely
• LFG Tool - Again this is a multiplayer. While I have no quarrels with whispering people I run across or using general chat to ask for a group, it's clearly not the most efficient way. LFG tools are not some thing unrealistc to expect to be available from launch. Almost 6 months in it's still not available.
• Endgame content - sure there can't be the same amount of content as in long running games, but offering something more than a repetitive grind should ALWAYS be on the developers mind. It's not unheared of that people rush through the available content and become bored if there is nothing interesting to do. Sure, that's subjective, but you can't blame those that feel this way for expecting to be entertained even after the reached lvl50.

The way I read this, your issue is with the way the feedback is provided and not the content of the feedback. Correct? Either way the root of the problem remains the same. Both are constructive since both adress the same problem and offer the same solution.

What infuriates me are the people that pretend that there is no problem. Regardless if you enjoy the game or not, you must notice that the population is in decline. Does this spell doom and gloom and the end of the world? Certainly not. But from my experience with MMOs, things can go south VERY fast if the developers don't adjust their game.

Yep, agreed. As the saying goes, hate the game, not the playa Dont blame players for the game's imperfections....Were paying customers...taking that into account, if I dont feel im getting my moneys worth - im off! No excuses and no explanation required. Blame BW for the shortcomings....not players! 20 Years ago a lot of cars had manual window winders....now a lot of cars have electronic mechanisms....seemed the obvious route to take right? Why BW havent supplied some of the most basic of things which are included in other MMOs which have been running for years, into this game from launch is beyond me! Ppl can say its unrealistic to have these expectations but whichever way you look at it, the expectation is there and its obvious what happens if the expectation isnt met....as we can see right here.

You are so uninformed it's not even funny. The devs on the BioWare Austin team came from UO, Warhammer, SWG, and a few others. You know, MMOs!

Also, please stop with the Elder Scrolls online campaign. Your join date is this month, when TESO was announced, and almost every single one of your posts has mention of TESO in them. I'm already starting to have trouble taking you seriously...

You leveled 30 characters? Who wouldn't be bored with storylines after leveling 30+ characters?