A lot of people have already answered this question in this very thread. Togruta anatomy, with the head-horn-tentacle things, is more complicated than Twi'leks... and Twi'leks STILL have clipping issues with headgear in game. Togruta would have considerably worse clipping issues with pretty much all headgear in game. Cathar don't have clipping issues. They're cheaper and easier and faster to implement.

So Bioware announces plans to implement a new race OUTSIDE AN EXPANSION - something MMOs simply do not do. They pick one of the consistent top choices for new races according to the community; a race certain to appeal to a lot of players. They pick a race that doesn't have odd clipping problems and one that speaks Basic so they can implement it more quickly and cheaply, which absolutely makes sense. And what happens? A goodly portion of the forum whiners moan and complain that they don't like this race, and therefore "nobody" wants it. Seriously, there's no pleasing some people.

I emphatically agree. Well said. It's terribly amusing to see the same threads appear again and again in every new game. The most vocal members of the same groups of people (hardcore progression raiders/PvPers) will announce the following, without fail: * The game does not have enough content. (NO GAME WILL EVER HAVE ENOUGH HANDCRAFTED CONTENT AT LAUNCH YOU IDIOTS GRRRRR) * Classes are not balanced for PvP. (Paper is fine! Nerf rock. SIncerely, scissors) * Many bugs continue to exist even after being reported in beta; clearly the company does not care/is unable to fix things. (Never mind how many bugs have been fixed; people like to focus on the negative) * Many features from game X are missing. (Those features were almost certainly not in game X at launch, but never mind that!) * New game Y is coming out soon and will destroy this failed excuse for a game. Mark my words. After the first dozen or so MMOs you play, you start to notice these trends.

If you didn't bother to read them, then you're in no position to judge them.

Um, no. Those games didn't keep all player types happy, not by a looooong shot. Instead, they were "the only game in town" and so players (myself included) put up with the crappy punishing design because we didn't have good alternatives. Take off the rose colored glasses; it's easy to say that gamers have become shallow and entitled, and claim that everything was better back in the day. It's easy, but that doesn't make it true. That is to say, I do agree that gamers have grown a bit more entitled in their approaches, but I regard that as the inevitable result of greater supply. We can afford to be picky now; we could not 13 years ago.

I don't think these are meaningful definitions. First, nobody knows whether they're going to be in it "for the long haul"; always in motion is the future. I think a lot of players get very enthusiastic when they start to play new games, but enthusiasm isn't the same as committing to remain in a game for any length of time. Second, those aren't much in line with the most common definitions of "casual" and "hardcore". Generally speaking, people either use "casual" to mean "someone who doesn't play many hours a day" or "someone who isn't very achievement oriented", while "hardcore" means the opposite of whatever casual means. Anyhow, thanks for the clarification. I think our views are closer than they initially appeared.

Congratulations! You're an outlier. Anecdotes aren't good evidence though.

This isn't likely to be a popular opinion, but here it is anyhow. I think the OP has things more or less completely backward. Hardcore players are the ones most likely to burn through content quickly, get bored, and move on quickly. Casual players are the ones who take a long time to level, and are often happy to play alts. They aren't as driven by achievement as hardcore players are, and are more prone to enjoying the game in small bursts or spending time socializing. From my perspective, what happened was similar to what I've seen in many other MMOs in the last 13 years or so. Immediately upon early release (i.e. even before launch), the most hardcore players started complaining vociferously. They wanted more content, and they wanted it NOW. They were upset that there weren't ranked warzones. They got upset about class balance issues. Note that I'm not saying that any of these complaints are invalid; only that these complaints were almost universally expressed by only hardcore players. Meanwhile, the casual players just played the game and had fun. Weeks passed, and the first wave of hardcore players had completed all the content, and started to get really anxious. They complained that the game wasn't designed for hardcore players (true), and they started to leave. PvPers and progression raiders formed the bulk of these disenchanted hardcore players, and once these groups started to leave, there was an inevitable ripple effect among hardcore PvPers and progression raiders. These people started to notice that the people they played with weren't logging in anymore, and they formed the (objectively false, but subjectively true) impression that the game's population was dropping. So they complained about the population, and then they left. "The population is dropping" became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile, the casual players just played the game and had fun. I know it's easy to hate on the people who don't play the game you do. It's natural to think that, whatever is going wrong, it has to be the fault of people who don't play like you do. But the evidence strongly supports the view that it's in fact the hardcore players who tend to make the most noise, burn through content fastest, and then leave in anger and frustration. That's not just a theory, but is empirically what happened here. Meanwhile, the casual players continue to play the game and have fun. In short, I think that making a game intended to appeal primarily to hardcore players is a very poor business decision. We've seen, time and again, that the most popular games tend to be ones with more universal appeal. Hardcore players like to think of themselves as loyal customers, but this isn't remotely true, when compared to casual players. Note: I'm not a casual player. I'm not defending "my" group here, just trying to be objective.

I'd definitely like to be able to set a default chat. If I could do so for each tab, so much the better, but at least let me do it once for all chat. I do not read the General chat. It's turned off on all my characters. I don't want that to be the default each time I restart the game. Let me force the channel to default to /say or /guild or whatever, so I don't have to literally change it every. single. time. Sigh.

Correct. I strongly expect that the Emperor's plans will continue to develop in expansion content, eventually leading to a storyline wherein EVERYONE works to take him down. He's the ultimate antagonist for literally all life in the Galaxy; it's us or him, in the long run. He's the Real Villain of the whole game, the Big Bad. To be very clear: he wants to consume all the Force in the Galaxy, which means consuming everyone's life force, as well. He wants to become a lonely God, after devouring all of us. He's already immortal, having done this on a smaller scope with a single planet a thousand years ago. This is HUGE in scope - much bigger than anything we've yet seen - and naturally the resolution will require a lot of time and effort on our parts. When we finally get a chance to TRULY defeat him, it'll be a serious affair, likely involving multiple flashpoints and operations; not a single event in one class storyline. Anything less would be really poor storytelling. It is completely unthinkable that the Emperor would just die offscreen, without most of us having any real idea what threat he posed, and without most of us having any chance to contribute to his downfall. To put it another way, the Rakghoul plague event brought us a live event for nine days, and also involved flashpoints and operations. The Emperor's plan to devour us all is a million times bigger in scope than the Rakghoul plague.

Follow the first link in Ranadiel's sig above for a full explanation of what happens in the JK storyline, and what the truth is about the Emperor.

This actually isn't as good an idea as it might sound. If your companions just kept running the same missions, a lot of people would log in to find themselves broke, with inventories full of stuff they don't need. Players would be furious, and rightly so.

Sure, it happens frequently in other games, and it happens frequently here. But that doesn't mean that there are game systems for this elsewhere, nor does it mean that there ought to be game systems here for this. In WoW, I know of no mechanic that allows for what the OP is requesting. Nor do I know of any such mechanic in EQ or EQII or LotRO or AoC or DCU or CO or STO or... actually, no games do that, that I know of. This is utter nonsense. If you engage in a trade with another character, and they somehow found a way to hack the game and force the trade window to cheat you... then sure, devs would step in. But if you get a random stranger to promise to make you something, and you send that total stranger some materials in advance, and then that total stranger rips you off... it's all on you. It's up to you to make sure that your trades are fair. That's not the devs' business, nor should it be. They have other things to spend their time on, besides mediating between parties in trades. The bottom line is always CAVEAT EMPTOR: "Let the buyer beware". It's your responsibility to ensure that you're happy with the details of the trade. And again, other than hacking or other explicit cheating, the devs have nothing to do with this sort of thing, here or in any other game. Hardly. I've played over two dozen MMOs in the last thirteen years. At no point, in any of those games, have I felt that it would be wise or prudent to send cash or valuables to a stranger. In all cases, I either dealt with friends, or over the AH, or arranged to buy a finished product (for which I might pay cash or materials or some combination thereof). And I've never experienced this as a problem; I'd do the same in real life, after all. I'm genuinely sorry the OP went through this. I'm not being callous; I don't enjoy the suffering of others. But the OP was foolish and the devs are not responsible for that. Sorry. Next time, please be more careful. That's all that anyone can offer you here: good advice, well intended.

They do so, every patch. Once they've determined what's likely to actually BE in the patch, they post the patch notes on the PTS forum. Those are then generally updated with each PTS build until the patch is ready, and a final version is posted. Why don't Bioware post the patch notes earlier? They don't yet know what bugs and design flaws will prevent things from being implemented, and gamers have proven conclusively that we cannot, collectively, be trusted with detailed advance information. Many gamers treat any insight into what a developer hopes to implement in the future as a promise hewn in stone, unalterable and sacred, and then FREAK OUT if anything doesn't make it into the patch. If you've ever had experience with shipping software products, you'll have learned that things change. Great ideas sometimes prove to be unworkable and flaws that nobody foresaw can become massive problems that block everything else. Generally speaking, in this kind of environment, it's best to underpromise and overdeliver, which is what Bioware is trying to do.

We do not know how the augment tables will work. We don't know if there will be any crafted components. We do not know what materials will be involved. We do not know how much it will cost. We do not know what limitations, if any, will exist in this system. But please, feel free to run around screaming, "The sky is falling!"