Alright, well since the OP is entirely too ignorant and foolish to read and comprehend before making completely false assumptions, and since all he'll ever here from any poster is: "Waah!, I'm right and you're all wrong. Bioware and everyone else is against me for no good reason!" Since this is the case, I'm going to break this down for you, real simple-like. 1. Software developers do not work for free. They have families and bills to pay just like the rest of us. 2. If you don't like the product being offered, you are more than welcome to not use it. 3. Because you made false assumptions about what you "think" you're entitled to, your case has no bearing. You will NOT get a refund. 4. Period.

You already have lots of good advice up there, but I'll make this short and straight to the point... Unless your guild is actively paying your subscription fees and has direct access to log in your account, you play what YOU want to play... period.

Ok, here's the thing... I've been playing this game since closed beta and have learned this important fact about the game. The companion system makes "cookie cutter" builds entirely optional in this game. Yes, you can go with the most efficient, fastest to kill, least buttons to push, most damage soaking, "whatever" build you want to; if that's the way you truly want to play. With the multitude of choice and general usefulness of each companion, that "cookie cutter" build is ENTIRELY optional. You can succeed in this game with little to no real frustration, using any companion and with any build. It was a well thought out design and the stories for all the companions give you good reason to explore each option. Ignore the loud mouths who think they know everything...because they don't. Play what's fun for you...period.

Sounds like a great idea. I'm in.

We absolutely have our own opinions and I welcome yours as I would welcome anyone's. You don't have to agree with me to make me happy. Thank you for posting.

I'd like to address this one since your depth of intellectual feedback is astounding... This is not a "waaahh, this game sucks, I quit" post. As stated before, I really want to like this game and think it has amazing potential, but lacks a lot of features and core design to keep MMO players paying and playing. There are a lot of things Bioware did right and have made a very compelling story-driven game, but for everything they did right, they seemed to produce an identical thing done wrong; which is baffling. My opinion is my opinion, like it or not (and if you don't, simply disagree and move on). I offer valid points and constructive criticism for both the players and the developers. Any smart company will take stock in what their customers think of their product.

I have no doubt they'll expand on these things and I look forward to seeing the changes come along to improve the overall game. After all, a game has to expand to compete, it's inevitable. My concern is the direction the expansions may take. I hope they branch out more into the open-game environment with things and time-sinks that players enjoy that keep them coming back for more. I hope they don't keep everything single-player story based because that keeps people very independent and very lonely in an online world.

I'm pretty sure I left out all kinds of things, but I was writing from memory and trying to put together a cohesive summary that made sense and wasn't too long; although it may have gotten long. But yes, I agree with you here.

I understand what you're saying here, but from what I see, this is a short-term perspective. What happens a year from now when you've tried all the different class/race/sex options just to see what they say? What you're left with is the EXACT same gameplay from start to finish and I think even you would get bored of that pretty quick.

I didn't post it to compare it to many other threads. I posted it to show "my" view and how I see it. Other people may see the same, different, or just have something to elaborate. Also, for any devs that may be reading these boards, feedback is always helpful. They may take from all these posts an insight to what the players are seeing and feeling. Let's just see where it goes.

Let me preface this by saying, I am a fan of this game; not sure how big a fan yet, but I think it has some serious potential, but it misses some key things that I fail to understand the directions taken. Also to preface, I have over 16 years MMO experience as both a consumer and tester. I won’t name all the names, but that should give you some perspective. So lets get to it. I want to love this game, I really do. I’ve been following it for many years and was very excited to begin my beta testing so long ago. As I’ve tested, commented, suggested, and documented many things; I feel there are some fundamental inequalities about this game that baffles me as to why the choices made were made. Game Mechanics At its core, this is a single player RPG game with some grouping options, no way around this. It is a VERY GOOD single player game, but single player non-the-less. The need to group for anything is completely non-existent. You can group if you want, but from level 1 to max, it is not needed at all. The instancing and sharding of map areas is completely out of hand. It makes everywhere you go seem very empty and very quiet. It’s like this; say you have a planet with 100 players on it, but you segregate them into 10 different instances, be it a city, spaceport, ship, building or whatever. When you adventure around, you may only ever see 2 people out of the “maybe” 10 people in your entire instance area, making everywhere you go seem very empty. Now that is just a small sampling example, but you get the picture. The chat system is very archaic for an MMO whos purpose should be to bring people together. Along the lines of instancing, your ability to speak to other people is crippled by the instance you happen to be in. You cannot chat to anyone on another planet or in a flashpoint or anything for that matter unless you speak to someone directly (/whisper) or you are in their current guild. This again makes the worlds seem empty and too quiet. It’s very surprising to me to see such old or completely left out features like UI adjustment, LFD tools, trade-skill disparity (or usefulness), GTN (auction house) interface and sorting; there are many others people have mentioned, so no need to list them all again. Now some people don’t care for some of these things, but that doesn’t excuse the absence of them for a game of modern MMO production. These things are meant to bring people together, but as they stand, they only further separate them. Space. What can be said here? Although I sometimes enjoy the little arcade shooter they’ve come up with, it quickly becomes boring and predictable to the point of taking little to no interest in it. I really wish they went with a better system for open space combat (maybe in future expansions). I also wish they went with the idea that your personal spaceship was like your home, with the ability to design and decorate the interior, display personal trophies earned in the game and things like that. Although housing is not necessary in a game, it does add a lot of personal satisfaction for people and keeps people coming back for more, even if only to decorate. The dynamics of the game world vs the story don’t seem to matter at all. For example, you can complete a mission that has you take over a facility or re-arrange the aspects of an area, but as soon as you exit that instance, everything is set back to the way it was before you ever got there; as if nothing your character just did made any impact on the story. I don’t understand why the use of phasing technology was not employed here to actually change the story to your perspective but leave it alone to others. Which brings me to… Replay-ability I think this game has a massive vacuum in replay-ability as its designed; here’s why. The 8 stories as presented are great and do a good job in getting the player involved in the character. The problem is, once you’ve experienced the grand story, your character is basically done. There is nothing left to do but enter in the raid or pvp game. Now this is inevitable for high level characters, they will eventually run out of content to immerse themselves in, so to alleviate this, making alts should be a fun experience to see something different. You won’t. Aside from the one story line of the new alt, you will experience exactly the same missions and planets as any other character. There is no alternate route to take, no different plants with same-level content to see. You will follow the same linear path and do all the same things you just did. Which brings me to… Game Production I cannot believe how much money this game cost to make, time involved to make it, and state it is currently in. Now I know the plan here is to make money, that’s what a company is for. What I can’t perceive is why the direction of this game was taken to such a single-player experience when it was released as an MMO. Let me explain. It seems to me like way too much money was invested in voice acting and story. Now I love the story lines and think they are very engaging, but I feel having full cut-scenes and voice over for every single mission interaction was a waste of time and money. Since your are forced to go through the exact same content for every character, I feel the main story arc and possibly the heroic missions (flashpoints included) should have had the full production value of cut-scenes and voice over, but not the standard missions that basically have you kill “x” amount of creatures, push “x” amount of buttons, etc.. This brings an interesting problem to future content because of the current design. Because it takes so much money and time to populate a planet with voice acting and cut-scenes, it’s going to take an extremely long time to add new content; and I don’t mean a new flashpoint or pvp arena, I’m talking entire planets or anything of that magnitude. Now because your characters story basically ends at 50, in order to keep sending you on more missions to exceed the 50 level limit (talking future here), you need to create entire new story lines for 8 classes simultaneously. I believe real content is going to come very slowly. Unfortunately for many players, it will be too slow for them to wait around and they’ll quickly become bored. My worries are many, I know, but justified. I really want to love this game, but I feel my interest in it may only be temporary. Because of the direction the core mechanics of this game has chosen, I feel it may quickly fall into the “niche” market and not go too far into the competitive MMO market. It’s a wonderful single-player game, but it may never get out of that state. Here’s hoping SWTOR can turn things around and really dominate in this market. I’ll be watching closely, but probably from the side-lines. Happy adventuring to you all.

It's not your computer, it's the game engine combined with higher populations and graphics patches that aren't really helping things. This game ran smooth as butter before launch and during early access, but once the populations increased 100-fold and the patches started rolling in...well, you know the rest.

Your processor and memory are good; hard drive space is irrelevant. What will hurt you here is the imbedded graphics chipset. Like the previous poster said, it's not meant for high performance gaming, just basic video imaging like watching movies and such. With that said...yes, you can run SWTOR, but you'll need to set your graphics to low quality, disable shadows and expect some serious lag in very populated areas (to help alleviate this, look down at the ground when moving through these areas). Good luck to you.