People have a very poor understanding of why "hardcore" raiders need damage meters. And to clarify a damage meter is a tool, not a crutch. A crutch would be having an item in your bag that increases all damage you do by 10%. Essentially if you are against damage meters you don't want to learn how to fine tune your damage rotation, and get the most out of your character. Not having a damage meter is like trying to calculate your car's fuel economy without an odometer. You can't do it. People want to know exactly how much damage they are doing, where their damage is coming from (what skills do more) and understand what killed them, and where they are taking damage from. Having this information makes you a better player. Not having this information might be more "mysterious" but it isn't helpful in the slightest, nor will it make you a better player. If you keep dying randomly and you have nothing to tell you why, and to the best of your knowledge and the knowledge of everyone in your group you are doing everything right how is it fun, or engaging to keep dying like this? You are not learning anything, you're not getting any better, you're just confused and if you manage to stop dying it won't be because of skill, just pure dumb luck. Stop confusing the legitimate use of damage meters as a learning and tuning tool, with some idiotic notion that its a "crutch" for bad players and a club used by elitists to cull newbies from groups. This isn't hard to understand, at all. More information is never a bad thing, more learning tools are never a bad thing. Ignorance and a lack of information does not make a game better, or anything for that matter.

The 4200 is the entry-level card for the AMD 4000 series right?

It would be very foolish of anyone to blame the supposed "death" of WoW on any one feature or action. A server-based LFD tool wouldn't hurt the social aspect of the game in the slightest, if anything it would make more people want to group together and play together for longer periods because they would have a better tool at their disposal to keep the group going, and fill open spots if need be. As the OP said, sitting in a city spamming for a group isn't social, its annoying, and its a waste of time. What people tend to actually miss is running to the physical location of the instance, which reinforces the size of the game world and makes the whole experience a bit more involved. What people forget about is spending hours standing around spamming a macro into a fast-as-lightning chat channel hoping and praying that someone is watching it and will invite them. Its pretty awful. So I say, make a compromise system. Add the functionality from a LFD tool that will make forming the group quick and painless. But leave out the teleporting functionality so that people still have to explore the galaxy to get to the instance.

People who say that you cannot, or should not compare SWTOR and WoW are delusional. We are paying clients of EA/BioWare and we have every right and ability, and in some cases responsibility to hold these companies to established standards of quality. You would just be a really poor consumer if you didn't. SWTOR is having a very successful launch for an MMO because it has all of the primary features needed to make the game playable. It is missing a very large number of small features, but it isn't missing anything that will cripple it as a game. It has all of the big things it needs to get started, which is quite frankly good enough. Now then if we don't start seeing a lot of those small features that make life better for players in the next few patches, then I would start to worry. Little things like being able to sit in chairs, being able to customize the appearance of gear, the ability to decorate the inside of your ship, guild functionality, etc... Those things can and should be patched in as time goes on, hopefully with a high degree of polish. MMO's can't launch with every feature possible, it is literally impossible. You would spend so much time in development that your game would never come out, you would just be constantly building new feature while your game sits idle not making any money. Also It does not matter how WoW's launch went in 2004. The MMO market is vastly different now than it was 7+ years ago. WoW itself has increased the size, and the expectations of the market by such a degree that it isn't fair to compare pre-WoW MMO design and marketing with post-WoW MMO design and marketing.

There are a lot of fun mini-games that they could add to give this game more life and a lot more of a social atmosphere. But I wouldn't expect anything like this to be added anytime soon. Lots of big things to worry about. But I agree, it would be a nice addition. Right after they allow characters to sit in the cantinas.

Posting so that I can rate the thread. I don't have the time to read through 100+ pages of posts, but I'll assume there was good discussion had by all. OP's points hit the mark dead on and its one of the reasons no other MMO was able to hook me like WoW did. Once you have experienced that level of crisp animation and skill execution nothing else will do. Hopefully the dev's are having a discussion on this issue and come to some sort of a good compromise that won't destroy their efforts to make a cinematic combat experience, but will also make their game more competitive.

I literally have no idea why the Bounty Hunter is tied to the Empire. There should have been three factions, with 3 classes each imo. I'm playing through the bounty hunter story and my character keeps getting jobs to pretty much win worlds and kill Republic for the Empire. That is the job for a trooper class, not a bounty hunter. I have no incentive to help the Empire any more or less than the Republic and it kinda irks me that I am shoe-horned into such a close relationship with only one faction.

The Star Wars EU is pretty gender neutral (speaking as a woman), moreso than the two movie trilogies. I feel that there really are not many strong female characters to relate to in the movies. I mean Padme is kinda as good as it got, and even then she makes some really strange decisions and does not really seem all that confident, intelligent, or interesting. The Clone Wars animated series is pretty good, I think Ventress and Aurra Sing are more interesting and likeable than Ashoka. Boys and Girls look for different things, there is a lot for both to like in the Star Wars universe. However it is definitely marketed towards boys.

I'd like to see Madhouse make an anime adaptation of "I, Jedi".

Zahn, Stackpole, and Allston. The best of the EU (in my humble opinion) is the stuff written in the late 90's and early 00's. There was still a lot of back and forth between Lucas and the authors at that point, and there wasn't a mountain of "EU Lore" to trip over and dodge around when writing so the material comes off as cleaner and more true to the movies. - X-Wing series - Thrawn Trilogy - Spectre of the Past / Vision of the Future - Jedi Academy Trilogy - I, Jedi

I think it has more to do with the spotty nature of the EU then it does with the fact that it is a wiki. There is some amazing stuff in the EU, imo some of the greatest characters, some of the most compelling villains, etc... But there is also a lot of stuff that sort of stands against reason and seems to be nothing more than really terrible fan-fic writing. There is a trend of turning minor movie characters into super-powerful super-complex characters when there is no point. There is also a trend of bending the main cast from the movies in so many different ways that they lose all personality and charm. I have a pretty neutral stance on the EU, i love some of it, some of it I think we would be better off without. I think that star wars is so near and dear to so many people's hearts that linking the IG-88 wookiepedia page during a heated discussion of his actions during Episode V and revealing that he was the death star probably won't make too many people happy.

This game is designed for the following people: - Fans of BioWare RPG's - Fans of Star Wars - Fans of Theme-park style MMOs My biggest issues with the game are all centered around what kind of an experience I am looking for in a well-rounded MMO. So basically I am not quite in the target demographic for SWTOR. I think its a great game, it just does not really meet my needs fully. I think that further down the line it might grow into a more broad-base game with more features and aspects that will appeal to me. People need to learn to identify demographics and figure out if they hate a game because it is truly poorly made, or if they are looking for something that isn't there.

I am all for a server-only LFD tool. Honestly its the difference between spamming general chat while sitting in a city, or clicking a button to be added to a queue and not spamming general chat. People seem to have this unrealistic idea that life without LFD is social, interactive, and engaging. It isn't. LFD server-only is a natural upgrade from typical general chat spamming, it accomplishes the same thing without wasting the player time and effort. Cross-server LFD is only necessary if the host company fails to balance server populations well, or refuses to merge underpopulated servers. A server-only LFD is kinda pointless when your server is populated by 200 people, as opposed to a normal 10,000.

It is only in the game because its an iconic planet from the movies and it resonates with the non-hardcore star wars fans. Its the same deal with Hoth. Hoth is an utterly pointless addition it serves no purpose except that it is the only "ice planet" featured in the movies. Its a pretty common sci-fi trap to fall into, you have a galaxy with billions of solar systems, and yet we always play on the same dozen or so because they just happened to be featured in the movies. Its like creativity is rationed out for the sake of recognition.