Still looking for a game that offers what that one had, although I imagine it will be difficult to find....not just un terms of a lack of games that use that style/set-up but also because of the immersiveness the IP gave the game (people are very familiar with star wars and come into the game with knowledge about the setting and feelings about the storyline....ex.: there was something to base the choice of faction on other than reading a "background" off a website..... plus star wars had a known environment--familiar planets/cities/places of interest, known weapons, known clothing, known armor, known music, known "professions," known species, known animals.....nearly everything had a familiar element to it so the player stepped into a world they recognized and they were able to be a part of that world).

Because I have not found anything that replaces it, I still find myself missing it from time to time and wishing there were a way to get it back.  I seriously don't think Old Republic is going to be the answer.  It may be done better but I think it will be based on the same premises that got us NGE.

Replied before reading through all the other responses.  Another memory hit me.....my first encounter with a fambaa.   Was still fairly new and had been doing most of my grinding on Tat (2nd account that I got 1 month into playing, guns and ch toon).  Another person and I decided we wanted to try another planet.  We go to Naboo and get missions.  I think it was dark when we got to the fambaas.  I see the thing and react in a "what did we just get ourselves into?" manner.  Those things were huge to me at that point (I'd prob seen a krayt by that point and I knew the power of those things) and I figured the power of them would match their size.  As critters went in SWG, fambaas weren't exactly the weakest but they weren't exactly the most powerful things either (strength didn't really match up to size).

One of my favorite creatures was the woolamander as a bio-engineered pet.  I still remember the one that belonged to the first BE/CH I ever knew in SWG.  Captn Howdey was his name (the woolamanders...don't remember the characters name).  I liked the way he looked and as a noob entertainer/musician (on my first toon) he seemed powerful to me.  I like monkeys so on one of my CHs (yes, one of them...I played on 3 different servers during my time in SWG and each one had a CH) I had a "monkey" collection including a few woolamanders.  Another favorite of my pets was a rather large monkey type character I tamed on Naboo.  It wasn't easy to find (it didn't spawn in massive quantities).  For a master CH, it wasn't very high leveled but I had fun with it because of the size of the thing.  It's foot was as large as the bothan that owned it.  It was taller than the shuttleports so I loved to have that thing pace back and forth in front of the towns shuttle and get people's reaction in guildchat (or other chat channels) as they landed.

Considering the cover story for PC Games I'm surprised there isn't more in this forum about it.  Maybe I just needed to go to next page of posts to see it.  I figured there'd be tons of "told you so"s and opinions about the new Bioware MMO.  Maybe it's in the general SWG forum.  Well, according the the exclusive, SWG will continue to exist alongside Star Wars Old Republic.  The way people will become connected with good or evil sounds interesting.  Not sure if it will be anything I'm interested in compared to the original SWG but will continue to keep eye on it.

Depends on the design of the game and how housing is handled.  In a leveled game, housing does not make as much sense except to provide extra storage for a player who is willing to travel back to the area they have already outleveled in order to access storage.  Instanced housing is also not that great.  Player cities in a skill based game can be great.  They help with the feeling that you are living in that world.  I loved player housing in pre-cu SWG.  Player cities had the possibility of providing everything one needed to develop their character.  Sure, many player cities were like ghost towns except for a few vendors but there were also very active player cities with people always running in and out making purchases, getting heals and buffs, running missions, getting training, crafting items, defending bases, and roleplaying (in roleplaying I'm including all player driven activities that were not needed to advance in the game.....parties, guild meetings with avatars all in same room, weddings, etc.).

Some people did not like player cities because they felt it spread people out to much but I always found people in the major server cities.  Others felt that it took away from PvP but I figure if people wanted to engage in PvP they would go to places where they knew PvP would occur (server cities especially those with lore faction alignment....Bestine and AH).  Plus, player cities meant players could place bases and protect those bases (want real PvP? engaging in guilds versus guilds battles over bases was a good way to do it, or is it that their definition of PvP was one shot killing a noob with TEF before the other player could even see a red dot? because that was the only "PvP" that was lost by the implementation of player cities).

The thing I find funny (ironic) about #1 is that, while that was given as one of the reasons NGE was "needed," the game seems more complicated now days.  When someone post how something in the game doesn't work right, how many times has Obraik or one of the other current players responded with "if you would....that wouldn't be a problem" type posts?

Let me see:

-- if you would read forums....

-- if you would use mods.....

-- if you would change your key mapping....

-- if you would use expertise points....

-- if you would play until your character was higher level.... (gotta love that one....if you will pay to play a game you do not like long enough the game will eventually become enjoyable once your character is maxed out? what kind of game is that? "don't take time to enjoy the game (being as it isn't enjoyable anyway) but rush to the end of the game and then it will be fun" )

Odd, I hopped onto SWG in 2004 after waiting to get a graphics card that the game would work with (another funny thing about SOE...it was on the list of exceptable graphic cards and about a year later it was listed as one the game was known to have bugs with) spending that time determining what species I wanted to play and where I wanted to live (noobie me, I wanted to live on Endor with the Ewoks) and I was able to play the game with little knowledge more than what the noobie droid taught me and a few abbreviations I'd learned playing TSO (such as LOL, AFK, ....basic chat talk).  Did I get the maximum experience out of it during those first few weeks or during the entire time I played it? No, but I was able to play the game and enjoy it....and I did become a little more "hardcore" as time passed.

Now it seems that in order to enjoy the game you'd better be able to figure out how to force the game to be enjoyable in a hurry.  Don't even bother logging in for the first time until you've researched every aspect of the game and downloaded all the needed mods.

Originally posted by Camman321

 

 

Social/community: While it seems the forums are booming with activity, ingame, no so much.

 

There is no region or general chat. The only chat you EVER see is if you're standing next to some one, guildchat, group or a tell. There's no trade chat, general chat, recruit chat, NOTHING!  This is very lame and unexceptable for MMORPG.

 

You join a guild. But the only benefit of a guild is to talk to people. There is NO option fo a guildpage. You have no clue who's in your guild, you'd barely know your own guild name if it wasn't sitting above your head.

 

Chats....others may exist and need to be set up to see but there was a time they weren't needed (probably part of reason they still aren't in use today).  Between guild, tells, and local one could hardly keep up with all the chatting anyway.  And back to community, people knew where to find groups so there was no need for a "LFG" chat server or planet wide.

Groups....maximum of 20 people, no levels on players so noobs could be grouped with "completed template" with both benefitting from the grouping.

Guilds....served plenty of purpose back in the day if you had a good one.  People needed other players back then even if just to get supplies (and there was decay so it wasn't "max my character, get what I need, set for life of game" but "crap, broken weapon/armor/speeder/....need to get it fixed/replaced" and hoping it didn't happen at a bad spot) or buffs/heals.

Basically, this game was VERY different back then.  If you saw the bit with Koster and some other guy describing what the game would be like, you'd know a LOT of thought went into the game...so much that a crappy dev team can't compete with it (although a group of individuals who use to play the game....or a couple of groups...are trying...but that's something to be left out of these forums).

If SWG had started out as NGE?  At least it would be a whole lot easier to find a game that replaced it if the desire to play MMOs continued to exist after that experience.  TSO hooked me on MMOs due in part to it's social aspect.  When I started playing SWG, I thought I was playing a "traditional" style MMO.  (I knew TSO was different as it didn't have combat and was based on a single-player sim.)  I thought ALL other "traditional" MMOs would be designed like SWG.  Then the levels were added with CU along with massive grouping but for the first time I heard the words "we have enough low level people in our group."  What a change!  The second combat character I created during pre-cu, I headed straight to AH on Bria.  I had learned from my first combat toon that grouping in AH was the best way to get xp (I'd started as a noob getting xp on things outside Mos E which is the LONG way to noobie grind.)  Someone was advertising for group members but no noobs please.  Kept my mouth shut, joined the group, and was a successful member of the group with not much more than a starting profession unlocked box.  There was no big flashing "NOOB LEVEL" sign over my head that allowed people to discriminate against me.  Then came NGE and the crap that went with it (in CU people of various levels could still group, kill things of higher level as member of group, and get good xp from the group).  The NGE started out unplayable but I will admit I returned a few times....with the time I stayed getting shorter and shorter and me usually ending up dancing in the empty guild city's cantina as I chatted with the few guild members left using SWG as an expensive chat room.

BUT, post NGE I went through several other MMOs in an attempt to find one like SWG....after all remember I thought SWG followed a "traditional" MMO model.  After all, it turned a year old around a month after I started playing it so the language was in place and used like it was a common language (player cities, server cities, mission terminals, waypoints, skill boxes ...).  How was a noob to MMO worlds with combat to know that the language was fairly unique to SWG (and perhaps a few other MMOs)?  I thought it would be rather easy to find a replacement.  How wrong I was!

IF NGE had been my original SWG experience, IF I had not been turned off of MMOs by the bugginess and style of playing that was NGE in the beginning (assume the game was playable after a year on the market and I was not totally turned off by the way the game was designed which is a big stretch for the second so let's go with maybe I would not have assumed that all MMOs had the same system or me being so hooked on MMOs from TSO that I was willing to give others a try), and IF the lack of need for community (AKA the "social aspect") had not turned me off MMOs, at least there would have been other, even better, games to play.  BUT then we are assuming that I would have even picked up SWG to begin with since the description on the box that convinced me to buy it as I was standing in the store waivering back and forth was the ability to be a tailor or entertainer.  In a game designed from the beginning as NGE, would those professions have existed?  If looting starts out as the best way to get stuff, why have crafting professions at all? If kill, loot, repeat in a grindfest is the mode of a game, why have a profession based on actually taking time out of a grindfest to heal or buff?  I know I wouldn't have needed a second account because traders are straight traders with all the skills they need for trading so I wouldn't have bought a second account based on a need for vendors as my master crafter/master tailor/master musician template didn't have any extra points for getting more vendors.  And it was getting hooked on CH from the first CH/BE I met in game that caused me to turn that second account into a combat toon.

Aww, you beat me to the punch!  Saw this trailer in the movie theater tonight and was wondering what type of game would be made from it.  It has a video game look to it already.  Don't know about MMO but you know some type of game will be made to go along with it.  I doubt LucasArts would pass up the chance to make as much money from the movie as possible.  Remember the 2 major game changes to SWG were tied the new triology.  The first came around Episode 2 if I remember correctly and the second came with Episode 3.

Originally posted by thenetavenge

 

Originally posted by Arndur

 

Originally posted by rdrpappy

Most of my rewards from the paid expansions were null and void after the NGE, ie. I could no longer use or equip them.

Imagine paying for several expansions, running the quests and recieving the quest rewards and then having the game compay scrap it all, completely change the game, not tell anyone in advance and alter the characters you had been working on for 2 and a half years.

That do it for ya?

Ummm i installed a pre-nge cd even though i didnt start till after nge and i got all the rewards. I also saw alot of people using them too. Never once did i hear about someone not being able to use them.

 

Dont listen to the vets. You werent screwed over and the game in its current state is not that bad.

 

Um you don't 'get it', it has nothing to do with them not working as in broke. It has to do with them not working because they are no longer a part of the game in the NGE.   For example a great Accuracy attachment item that no longer works, or a good weapon that the NGE turned into a piece of crap.

There were 1000s of items in the game the NGE either made obsolete or simply the developers deleted them from the player's inventory or House.

This is what POed a lot of people, as they maybe played for a year to obtain Object X, and the NGE made it worthless, killing all the time they played and all the reward was gone too.

 

I see someone has already addressed this misconception.  If a person didn't play until after NGE, it wouldn't matter which CDs were used to install the game, the person would get NGE.  The items referred to by rdrpappy are no longer available...or if they are....hmm, would SOE really continue to give people something that is null and void such as objects designed for professions that no longer exist?  If using pre-NGE CDs changed the current stuff in the game, all those screaming for pre-cu would simply re-install their original disc and "oooohhh, I used the pre-NGE disc so I now have the pre-NGE stuff and it all works perfectly fine!"

Originally posted by Lateris

They are like this

"Are you Jeff Vader's brother? Can you get me his autograph?"

"Death by tray it is!"

Although, I guess in the case of NGE the "All the power of the Death Star and we can't get a dry tray?" should be turned in to "All the power of the Star Wars IP and a well known company and we can't get a decent game?"

On Chilastra -- IA (Imperial Army) use to rp.  Not sure if they still do or not.  The city (IACC) is located on Naboo.

SWG had a good balance in traveling during the portion of pre-cu I played.  There was a combination of mounts, shuttles, and vehicles by that time.  It kept you from having to spend a large amount of time walking from quest to quest at least until you had unlocked travel locations (like WoW and other MMOs I've tried) but it was not insta-travel so one met other people in common locations and often had a few minutes of exchanges with other players.  With my combination of professions, sometimes the shuttle wait was also a moment to get crafting or entertaining xp.

As for whether or not there were "casual" players in pre-cu SWG....yes, there were.  Pre-cu was a great game for a casual player, IMO.  I may have spent many hours playing the game most of the time but I could also pop on and find something to do with less than an hours play time (craft a few items, perform in cantina for a few minutes, grab a couple of close missions from the nearest terminal).  Also, being as levels were not plastered all over the game, I knew people who popped in the game every few months but had no problem rejoining the same people in activities because there was no "oops, we've moved on and outleveled you so you can't do the things we are doing."  As far as buffs and armor, I played without them for the better part of my first couple of months of playing.  With the ability to have a 20 player group, I did fairly well without them until I went to more difficult planets.  As for guild activities, I guess the ones I participated in that required buffs had plans in place for the buffs and I didn't participate in them if my time was so limited.

As for Gutboy's concern about chatting up entertainers who are actually 32 year old, 240 pound men, doesn't seem to me he got the "social" aspect of pre-cu SWG.  I played entertainers and I really enjoyed the profession (wish I could find other games with a good combat/non-combat combination of professions) but it was more about meeting other people not "romancing" the customers...after all, didn't care to be even virtually flirting with "jailbait" that may have been on the other side of the computer  (where's 32 year old Bob when you need him? guessing he was single since he lived in his mother's basement     *hums Brad Paisley's "Online"*).  My entertainers opened doors for me to find good guilds which provided people to play other parts of the game with.  There was none of this getting in a random guild which is no more than another chat window and most likely not even very good for that.  Socializing was about having fun with other people while playing a game.  But then again, it seems now days people want to pay a monthly fee to solo a multiplayer game short of when they want to pvp (yes, I still remember that post nge quote of a player thinking he shouldn't even need crafted items from other players...all he wanted other players for was pvp....hmm, for $50 a year I can access XBox Live which allows me to play all my 360 games with online feature if all I want with other players is pvp).

Originally posted by hgavin9

Hi I too played SWG up till NGE and completely agree with a lot of the arguments put forward.

 

I would be interested to know whether SOE are protected by stating "Game Experience May Change DUring Online Play" on the game case

I always thought this was connected to the rating system as in "because we can not completely control what people do, the content of the game as created by the company may be rated 'T' but, upon going online, player may be exposed to 'AO' material."  Also figured it covered changes made by others: player cities come and go, new buildings get placed, the vendor you spent so much time last play session hunting down may now be gone, the group you played with last time may not be online this time, etc. (changes that would not occur during most solo games because the game saves as it was last played except in some games like "Animal Crossing" where some changes do occur between playing due to a "real time" type of system but even in games like these the change is not as major as it is in an online game).

I also saw people coming back to SWG after trying WoW.  Plus the first advertisements I saw for SWG were around the time of CU so, along with the new movies coming out, people came into the game who had never experienced pre-cu.  If SOE had tweaked the game a little rather than what became the CU, the game probably would have been in a totally different place population wise.

Originally posted by Obraik

 

 

I also think it's a bit of a delusion to think that just because it's Star Wars that it should be a game of WoW proportions.  Just because someone's a Star Wars fan doesn't mean they're a gamer.  Just because you're a Star Wars gamer doesn't mean SWG - in any form - as it breaks away from the traditional action style of most Star Wars games.

Funny thing is supposedly the NGE was suppose to make the game appeal to "casual" players but in some ways it became more "hardcore."  What is the solution for complaints made on this board about the way the game plays now?  "Well if you would read this....or change that....or contact.....then you could get the game to work just fine."  Hmmm....first day I played SWG I just hopped on the game and started playing.  Sure I may not have known what I was doing short of that annoying green newb droid that wouldn't go away and I didn't know about all the features of the game but I was able to get the game to work and play it without forcing it to work.

And it takes an hour of playing the game to realize how bad it is now?  I only lasted a few minutes in combat the last time I tried the game (umm...February?).  I did last a little longer as entertainer but even that wouldn't be enough of a draw these days to keep me playing esp. with what inflation has done to the prices of things in that game...and I WAS on Bria.

It was "star warsy" enough for me.  I even remember watching the original trio after I'd started playing SWG and commenting to someone in the game about how the game changed the way I saw the movies.  I noticed things in the movies that I had not noticed before.  Places had more meaning to me.  The names of creatures meant more. AND I noticed names (places, animals) more because I'd seen them in game.

Since pre-cu I've hoped for a game that would be a lot like pre-cu with more "polish" but just a different skin but I realize that another game will never totally measure up to pre-cu because I've tried to figure out another IP that would be as popular and have as many recognizable features....professions, places, species, clothing, armor, weapons, animals, factions.

One thing that either SOE or LA or both didn't get is one of the major features that gave the game a "star warsy" feel was the ability to "live" in the galaxy the way one wanted.  Without levels one was free to see the galaxy however one wanted and spend time in the galaxy as one wished.  There was no "oops, I've outleveled this area, no more gaining xp here, time to move on."  One of the funniest things I enjoyed was hearing the "danger" music and looking around to see what was aggroed on me to find myself looking at a jawa that I could 1 shot kill.

Star Wars in pre-cu was not about living out the role of one of the major, recognized characters in the story.  It was about living out your own story in the Star Wars galaxy....and because it was such a recognizable IP, it was easy to create your own story because you knew the "background" without having to read about it on some website and people went in with feelings about the story without trying to figure them out from reading about the different species and factions (Horde or Alliance in WoW? who is the true "good guy" and who's the "bad guy"? why do I care about either side and their "cause?).

In the past I've seen fans of NGE tell people re-trying NGE that they needed to treat it like a new game rather than going back comparing it to what it once was.  According to the challenge, people would like the current game if they did not expect it to be like the pre-cu.  So I started thinking recently:

What if the pre-cu version of the game had never existed and the game had been like its current state when I started, would I have liked the game?  Would I have continued playing it as long as I played?

I currently went back in the free trial.  I do not like combat the way it is and there was not much motivation to stand around with a level 90 entertainer so I created a new entertainer on Bria to kill time during the last week of the free period while waiting on a game that goes open beta soon.  Thinking back to when I first played SWG, my first character was not a combat character so my dislike of the current combat system would not have been a factor.  I did a combination of entertainer and crafter which would not be possible in the current system but I would have been allowed two characters on the same server so I still could have done both.  The first time I played, it took a second account before I had a combat toon.  So I thought would I have realized I wouldn't like combat before I made the mistake of buying the second account?  Actually, the second account was originally added to be a merchant for my first account but I went for CH as I had met a MCH and enjoyed the pets so merchant fell by the wayside.  With the current system, my crafter would have plenty of merchant skill as a part of the tree rather than needing extra skill points to get all the skills I wanted.

Back to whether or not I would have enjoyed the game if I'd never known the joys of pre-cu...I started the game with the entertainer skill first so lets assume I would have made an entertainer first (and my first toon was on Bria).  With my newest toon I skipped the tutorial but as a noobie, I would have done the tutorial so lets assume I land in Mos E with some knowledge of how to play the game.  As I followed the noob droid, I most likely would have followed the path the game sent me on...off to npc Gendra I go which sends me to the ME cantina a few times then introduces me to the ent mission terminal.  When the noob droid sent me to the ent terminal, I took a mission that sent me to AH.  When I arrived in AH, I wasn't quite sure how to do the mission (didn't realize how long I had to perform in order to complete the mission) but there were people around so I hung around and ended up learning about things like flourishes.  AH was also where I saw someone spamming about clothing vendor.  The first time I ventured from AH, I didn't realize upon my return that there were 2 cantinas in AH and, because the one I found was empty, I ended up moving on to Bestine and other areas of the game.  This time I also got a mission to AH (intentionally this time because I knew more about game).  The cantina in AH was empty this time of course and I did not venture on to Bestine to see what it was like.  Even assuming that after going through the tutorial, I would have known to look in my datapad and find that it took 10 minutes to complete the mission, what would I have done after that?  I know one thing, hopefully the economy wouldn't match the current one.  10k for a pair for shorts....hmmm, at little over 1k per ent mission at 10 minutes per mission plus travel time? to play in empty cantinas or cantinas full of mostly AFK players? assuming that I even figured all the game basics out as help would have been hard to come by?  Definitely would not have been as positive of an experience as my first go-round.  Add to that having to do my crafter as a second toon and never having the financial support of a combat toon......

Hmmm, not so sure I would have been around for long with that type of game experiece.

Oh, and as to the current population.... I was quite surprised...Bria was listed as "Heavy" so I was curious what "Heavy" population looked like these days.  There were quite a few people outside the Mos E spaceport and the cantina was quite full.  For a moment I thought "maybe fans of NGE are right about the population" but then Bloodfin was announced to be back up and down the population went....and looking at people's bios one warned to stay away from Theed.  Considering how full the Mos E, AH, Bestine, Theed, and Coronet cantinas use to be, a cluster of people in one cantina does not a population compared to pre-cu make.

Reopen all three accounts again.  One would be entertainer, one would be crafter, and one would be combat.  The combat would have to have MCH.  Not sure what I would do with the rest of skillpoints.  Did BE in CU and that was fun.  Always liked the looks of polearm attacks.  Maybe I would do different things with combat character in combination with the CH. /shrug

Toons: would need a bothan and a wookiee in the mix (but which to do for what? liked the way wookiees danced but bothan looked better playing instruments; also kind of fun to have a small toon as the combat toon.....hmmmmmmm)

-- NO PLAYER LEVELS!!! (yes, I yelled thisbut for me this has become the biggie; nothing kills a community like player levels)

-- a good combination of combat and non-combat roles; non-combat roles need to play an important part in the game and should go beyond just crafting and harvesting to others such as entertainers/ doctors/ politicans; players should not be forced to do both but should be able to do a combination if the player chooses

-- the ability to pick and choose what skills to learn and the ability to change those skills by dropping one and earning the ability to gain a different one

-- give me a reason to have multiple accounts; in SWG there was so much to do that 1 toon was not enough to do everything I wanted and there was a viable reason to have 2 toons on at the same time (or switch between toons when my desires/needs changed....tired of combat, dance/play music or craft for a bit; need a little money so I can buy more resources, switch to my combat character and finish off a few missions for some creds); with WoW, there was no need to have two toons on at the same time and I could have multiple toons on the same server on one account if I wanted to try out other professions or do more than one type of crafting)

-- allow me multiple ways to gain xp -- questing, mission terminals, random kills across various locations; one thing I would like to see added to a system like pre-cu had is the ability for players to create quests/missions (want a pair of bright pink hawtpants and can't find them on a vendor search? create a mission for them and when someone completes the mission you get the hawtpink pants and the person who accepted the mission gets the "reward" you placed; "kits" could also exist for mayor of a town to also create "scavenger hunt" type quests)

-- ease of travel without insta-travel;  I don't need to just click on some object in my inventory to "poof" to where I'm going but spending all my in-game time traveling from the location of one quest to another is not my idea of fun and having to walk to a location to "unlock" the ability to travel to it is also not my idea of fun (WoW, Ryzom); although I will admit that one of my first noobie experiences in SWG was getting an ent mission from a terminal in Mos E where I spawned/did the noobie droid thing and walking all the way to AH following that arrow and not having a clue what I was doing or where I was going

-- player cities that mean something...in SWG it was possible to have your storyline be "one who never ventured far from home" and live that, one could theoretically go all the way from noob to completed template without wandering far from their player city....other people in city crafted everything you needed, the cantina had Master Dancer/Master Musician to heal and buff you, the medical center had a doctor, the mayor could place the npc trainers or you could gain skills from your fellow townsmen, mission terminals allowed you to get xp within 1k-2k of the player city; try that storyline in WoW...as long as you don't plan on getting far beyond level 10 you might be able to stay in your homeland; one thing extra I would like to see is a combination of draws to player city and server city (give noobs a reason to go check out player cities and give vets a reason to want to hang out in server cities....have certain benefits to each....maybe the resources near a player city are better and cost less energy to harvest or combat xp is better from a player city but doc/ent buffs last longer if done in server city or the payout of missions from server cities are higher....not sure what balance of benefits would work but something to think about)

-- character customization...(not just skills/professions)...this includes the looks one chooses in creating the character but it also includes having a combination of armor and clothing with a choice of colors and styles...everything that allows me to look into a crowd of toons and be able to tell exactly which one is mine

-- (not a necessity but a nice extra that goes along with character customization) a variety of species to choose from, and not all human-like, give me a choice of things with scales or fur too

-- (another non-necessity but nice feature) do languages right; in SWG once you learned the languages, all  you ever saw was "basic" (which for me meant English), which made languages fairly useless; what would have been nice to have instead is the language spoken shown in speech bubbles and the "translation" shown in the chat window....in crazy crowds, one would have needed to focus on the chat window to know what people were saying but in less crowded places on could have easily seen the speech bubble first then looked at the chat window

-- encourage grouping without forcing grouping; there should be areas/creatures that require groups but one should not be forced into grouping in order to progress in the game; also one should always be able to kill things that are at one's ability range, be able to kill a little higher with buffs/armor, and be able to kill a lot higher when in a group; and there should always be stuff one can kill successfully and get decent xp (lets say the average xp from a kill is 100 and the only creatures I can find either give me 10 xp or kill me....not a good thing and the game becomes frustrating)