of course..pc gamer and EA monthly gave the game incredibly high marks. I don't put stock in other people's personal opinions of a game but if you are one who does those 2 should probably rank higher than some blog by some guys. Still - you should probably figure it out for yourself(as should everyone). Some people don't like the game and then insist on screaming on the forums that the developers should do this and do that. I enjoy the game very much and have had the opposite experience of the guys who posted the blog and population has been great on my server. ....why am I writing this...it's stupid under any circumstances to read a blog/magazine and then make a determination on the game of it? the op wants to agree with them thats great he's free to find a game he DOES enjoy and play that one.

My post was solely about the data seeding of those websites. You suggested I was wrong about that. Factually I am not wrong about them. Again - I am making no argument on population gain/fall or the state of the game.

Thats nice for you. I have had the opposite experience. However I've made no argument that the server population is going down or up. These websites are not seeded with data that makes them accurate enough to judge population trends. So what I'm saying- you're still wrong about them even if you end up being right about the population.

and of course---those websites agree with every single thing I said. As one esteemed poster pointed out, I basically summarized their faq pages. Interesting that some people are so intent on trying to tear this game down that they will tell the people running those websites, collecting the data, and ostensibly the ones who know most about it, that they are wrong about their own data. interesting indeed.

enjoy this new response then. If you aren't playing, don't post Hope you're enjoying whatever games you're playing now - seems reasonable to stop playing a game you dont like, thats what I do when i play games I dont like.

I leveled 1-85 recently in WoW without ever joining a SINGLE group. Most of the time I never even saw other people unless I was in stormwind and I NEVEr chatted because all trade chat is in WoW is anl this and anl that and discussions about ra*e and child molestation. I mean....I've grouped more on swtor during leveling than I have the last 5 years leveling multiple alts in WoW

So what would be your explanation to someone who had the opposite experience of you? Say someone who s tarted a guild with a core of say 6 people. They did not advertise heavily but only invited people they went on heroics with and felt were not d-bags and seemed at least competent and by the end of the first month of recruitment they were up to 70 people? considering there was adds/rems joins/quits and no public advertising and there was 1000%+ increase in guild membership. I make this suggestion to you. Bioware has constructed a game where the core audience is not the relatively small hardcore group of players who only care about raiding end-game content. The first thing you listed was lack of end-game content(which funny enough there is more end-game content than most mmo's had at release the last 10 years...go check..you guys played them) I can only guess - and feel free to correct me - that end-game content was clearly the most important to you and your friends. You guys leveled to 50 fairly quickly compared to most other people who are experiencing the rest of the content - class stories, pvp without leveling to 50 first, datacrons, codex entries, map exploration, bonus quests etc. I am not judging your guild for having your particular goals and what makes games fun for you. You can have fun however you want - thats great! I don't play Modern Warfare or Battlefield whatever because FPS's are stupid(imo). I'm just saying perhaps what you guys find important is not the market for this game and you are having an experience that is similar to other more hardcore players. You have to consider though that without any hard evidence we have no clue about population and it is entirely possible that your singular experience(and those of your fellow hardcore gamers) is the minority and not the majority.

you'e already said you categorically do not believe anything Bioware says. So even if BW was coming out every 2 weeks with detailed reports on an increase in subs and population, you would be on here calling them liars and screaming that the population was dropping and the game's going to die. SWG sucked btw and you're the only one here who liked it, which says more about you than us.

There is not much you can really do in a game to make something that is supposed to be a challenge to get an actual challenge without doing something like/similar to difficult jumps when even minor lag could effect it. Your other option is to make it time consuming and difficult to figure out like magenta crystals but once everyone knows the method well it's not "really" a challenge, it's just a time sink.

I wouldn't say its contradiction. Perhaps he heard some of the story and/or played some of the levels. What it is indicative of is that he just doesn't like the game. Not everyone will. He just seems to think the reasons he states for disliking the game are universally accepted by everyone. Bloggers are known for their egos though.

Ah you are right - you don't have to put up with it. No one is putting a gun to your head saying this is the game you are required to play and forcing you to pay for it. Sometimes you buy games you think you're going to like, and end up not liking them. It happens. You're not entitled to anything except access to the game when you pay 15 bucks/month. The developer puts out a game they think/hope will be enjoyed by the people who choose to pay for it. If those people don't like it, they have the option in the case of mmo's to not pay for it and no longer play it. You have the right, this being the internet, to gripe all you want about a game. You are not entitled to have the developer listen to you and do as you say. If that means the developer ends up losing all of it's customers - thats the what running a business is all about - calculating risk/reward and making choices.

this is just a matter of opinion. What is fair is relative to different people along with what is valid. Let's say that PvP is removed from the game completely. Sounds pretty unfair I bet to people who like to PvP. Since I think PvP usually detracts from the game and draws in a type of player who I'd rather not associate with....sounds good to me! Not to mention the "problems" the blog posters have are problems other people don't have. shrug.

Well this one is just a fact of life.

Not a very interesting read for a few reasons. The biggest concern about the playerbase of mmo's I have is their focus on a lack of community. In this article they mention there is little interaction on a server-level. I can only assume he is comparing this to WoW where anytime you are in a major city the trade channel is constantly spammed with references to r*pe, pedophiles, anal jokes, mom jokes etc. etc.. Back in nov-dec I was leveling my Druid in WoW up to 85. I only ever saw people when I was in stormwind(rarely saw people in Darnassus and i just never had a reason to go to IF) When Cata first came out I saw plenty of people in the cata zones. This time around - I was regularly 1 of maybe 5 or 6 total people in each zone when I played through them. The chat channels were silent and I never ran into any of those people. Now - I rarely have an issue getting people to run heroics right now between my guild and just asking on the general chat(Pere Trade Routes). As for this stuff about community - For some reason there are people like those who made this article who have this fantastical vision of what they experienced in previous mmo's - most of which is just not true. Anyone who realistically recall Barrens Chat would NEVER confuse that with a "community" that should be emulated. A large number of people pre-lfd never grouped - let alone grouped with non-guild members. Pugs were the bane of peoples existence and drove many to just NOT do dungeons. Anyway - I'm having a great time in swtor. I've never been that into Star Wars but this game has been much more fun to play than WoW has been the last couple years.

I had never thought about this at all - of course I know jack about server technology To clarify for Gortezu though they are not manually shifting the caps - the auto in auto-scale would mean automated I'm assuming So it's an implementation of technology not a Bioware employee sitting at a console monitoring every server and going, oh pops rising BOOM BOOM CAP RISE!!!