It's not the same game i bought day one.  They took a ground breaking idea with their giant, seemless map, open world battlefields and tried to cater to the COD console crowds.

I didn't like depot spawns in an enemy town, but I could live with it.  But then came forced AO's and FRU's, Gaydar, Squads were killed off, DOC became a bigger jerk then when he deined the tri-wing 109 incedent, the forums started to reflect the real world censorship of 1940 Germany and people left in droves.

I wish the game would go back to a sim or just go away.

OJ.  Couldn't have said it better.  When they killed the squad play, they killed they game.  I have been away from a few years and popped back in witha few of  the old 3CD vets at Xmas.

I could stand it a week, no longer.  I miss the days of trying to sneak a large attack together and get it to target in tact or patrolling the skies looking for the enemy attacks forming up.  Alpha-Bravo town assaults with a hand full of squadies was a blast.

JEA3 still hangs around, but 3CD is dead, as is the game.  It went from bad to worse with HC, the insta army flag movement and FRU's.

We old players are pissed because we saw what the game was and what it could be, but it has lost it's way and will never find the road home.

RobHood

Well. I played for many years, starting from day 1.  Canada Corps, then we became 3CD.  I have had conversations on TS with all the RATS and private battles with DOC thru PM's.  He actually told me to take a break from the game.  I'm still on that break, going on 4 years now. (Remember DOC's years of insisting the 109 flight model was perfect?  Anyone remember the eventual discovery it had an invisible third wing that gave it super lift and performance?)

Motormouth begged me to come back, said I couold get a free t-shirt.

Back in the day, the game was awesome. Back before HC and forced AO's, when ya had to pay attention. Squads shaped the flow of the map.

It is a niche game, so why try and capture fast action players who have so much more, and better, fast action shooters out there?  You will NEVEF get them.  Go back a bunch of steps.

I personally don't like all the moble spawn-instant army mechanics.  But I could live with a compromise. Tone it down a bit.  Make it a sim again.

Draw back all the players who like stuff like coordinating the air to cover a 30 min. trek from town A to attack town B.  Draw attention with a feigned attack on town C.  Maybe an alpha-bravo attack to tie up enemy elements.

Send fighter cover to hunt bombers hunting your armor.  If only AO's are attackable, then there is not much hunting, just mindless fur balls by stat whores.  Stats (kills. K/D etc... ) are stupid in real time. It creates a game within the game. The sim part gets lost.  If ya want stats, release them after victory is decided.

The RATS fixed alot of gamy issues, with capping for example, but went too far trying to make the game more then it could be, more then a niche game.

Why is/are strat bombing gone, squads gone, AO's forced, mobile spawning too easy?

If players don't like taking the time and effort to plan and pull off an attack that takes 40 minutes to drive there, and stay alive while doing it, then a was sim is not there game. But the current game is a mix of ideas that hold no real numbers and attrack even less.

Get all the war sim fans back, stay true to your war sim roots and let the game be what it was meant to be. a niche game, a true war sim.

Brig. Gen. (Ret) Robhood, Third Canadian Division, Commanded RCAF

"Always on Target"

It's more like 10 v 50.

No keys are need for chaos chests though. Just the locked chests in dungeons.

RobbHood

Chests just laying around in the world as you explore.  Not hidden really,  just out there.

Someone may be watching it, usually not,  It will contain some goodies.  Original DF had gold, from a little to a lot, a nice weapon of some sort and at times a house deed.

When I would find a really nice one, I would be nervous as hell looking for a bank if I was a long way out from our city.  No feeling like it in any other game. The constant fear of impending gankage. 

Always travel with a buddy. Then there is a 50% chance you can escape while your buddy is being murdered and looted.

And there were locked chests in areas that a looted key would open. Also a great place to ambush. Usually around mobs or deep in a dungeon for the good ones.  And remember, dungeons are not instances in DF. Really just another part of the world where anyone could be.

RobbHood

The game is am empty shell of it's former self.  So many wrong turns, brought on, in a big part I imagine, by the arrogance of DOC.

I hope it just goes away so I can forget about it.  It was once a great thing, 10 years ago. It just never kept up with the tech, and the road map from CRS was a winding trail that led to a cliff.

Originally posted by jazz.be

Starting and playing a new character is very entertaining somehow in this game. It's easy to play diffirent characters at the same time, unlike most other mmo's where you feel forced to finish a character first.

I just made sure I finished act one on my Sorcerer before I continue the Juggernaut.

Sith Sorcerrer: 31

Sith Juggernaut: 19

Smuggler (forgot what I took): 15 or something

It's easy because that's all there is.

Not one staffer found anything wrong with this game?

Some of the articles on SWTOR seem a bit naive. "Slain by the Sith" and "The Droid I was looking for" to name two. And let's not forget Pocke'ts video on the number one reason she is playing SW.......are you ready?.........The questing has been elevated to a new level by Bioware.  Really?

Kill x of this and deliver this to that seems to have been around since the original EQ. And I question whether its really Star Wars honestly.

It may be based on Star Wars, but Star Wars was Luke and company.  A light saber doth not a Star Wars make.

The game is what it is and all the hype and spin will never change the fact that it is a re-skinned (barely) KOTOR that allows up to 200 players to play a single player game in a single instance along side each other, occsionally banding together to run a flashpoint or operation.

For any progression minded players, it's very weak.  For RP'ers, it's terrible.  For explorer's it's non-exisitent.  For PvPers it's, again, terrible.  And for solo players, it's a good story once, maybe twice through.

You really don't "play" SWTOR, it "plays you" and you are basically just along fot the ride. 

Where are the critical thinkers amoung the writers?  Graphically average, except mayby the fire throught the grate in Hutt Ball, which looks worse then average,  like the original Duke Nukem graphically. Questing is as lineiar as all the rest, and maybe wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't hyped as the next gen of questing.  The choices you make have no impact, nothing changes but a few dark/light points.

Character customization?  poor.  With no housing or player cities, keeps, or the like, a player has to fall in love with their avitar. Gear them up, dress them up, show off the spoils of war.   The standard players are use to are missing, like a wardrobe option. Even Blizz  folded in this department. The companions are all the same.  The game should have been called SW: The Clone Wars.

So now, with so many players already at 50, they are asking what do we do now?   In the World of Warcraft Southpark episode when the gang power leveled up to kill the uber ganker, and did, they asked "Now what do we do?"  The answer..."Now we play the game."

But ya gotta have some kind of game to play at that point, and SWTOR is lacking.  I guess we can wait for "Time to take a second look at SWTOR".

Sorry, I call 'em like I see 'em.

Look a round, go where I wanna go.  Stumble across a situation and decide if I want to intervene.

Discover a group of players engaged in a battle. Help out and get rewarded.  Maybe we continue on or go our separate ways for the time being.

Gather some mats for crafting. Kill some things, make some new discoveries.  Randomly find some NPC's out in the world that need some things done.  Rally a few guildies to up the stakes and head back to town to shoot the breeze with some folks.

When u cut a paste it deletes the paragraphs I believe.  Ya gota go in and edit that beast or no one will read it.

  If it's not a cut and paste, well....edit any way.

I roll played while reading this compelling story.  I played the roll of a fanboi trapped by the expectation of another promise by a AAA title, struggling to self awareness that the game has been weighed and measured and has been found lacking.

So I see that zones are instanced.  Copies of each other to spread the players out.  How many players can occupy one instance?

This is why I will miss that old game:

The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.

I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.  I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet.

The Corellian plains ands the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.  The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…

The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.  The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.

Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.  Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.

Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.

I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in a camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few new I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.

Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.

Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.

You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.

New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.

You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.

Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.

For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.

Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times. 

In the beginning, when BW and LA set free the first info about their new title, SW:TOR, the community went crazy over the lack of traditional MMO tenants, like cafting and grouping and so on.

Then the answer (which is still out there in a video interview) to "what is end game" further fanned the flames. The answer, BTW, was sometning along the lines of hit level cap, roll a new toon, rinse  and repeat.

BW kicked in the PR machine to dispell these concerns by spinning the mechanics and a tweek here and there.  But upon closer review, nothing really changed

The  game was, and is, a new KOTOR with alot of people in it, occasionally forming up for flash points and raids. How many times is a player gonna have to listen to the same dialogue in the these flashpoints before they snap?  How many invisible barriers is a player gonna hit trying to walk off the set path before the have had enough?  Or look at the same face on all the players and NPCs? and so on and so on.

If you like KOTOR you will like SWTOR. And that is fine.  Just let me know when SWTOR maintains a sub base of over 2 million past 6 months.  The game will succeed. But is noting new.

If SWG launched today, as it was in the beginning, with current technology, I believe it would be a better game. If a western/old west skinned game built on the SWG model of old would launch, it would be a better game.

BW-LA-EA's SWTOR:KOTOR is was it is.  Alot of poeple will enjoy it, but please put the koolaide down and just play the game. Get back to us in 6 months or so.

Ok, that is all. These are not the droids you are looking for, and i mean that.

He longs for the same game I do.  One that got away.  The stat whores and forced AO's, insta-action, etc...killed it for me and so many others.

Trying to cater to the FPS-console crowd was, and is, a failure.

I remember you Tactics.  Robhood, 3rd canadian Div. here.  This game is a half ass FPS wanna be that drifted far away from its War combat sim roots.  It a shame.

You could snowboard down a mounatin side,  hang glide and parachute.  Fly a drake well above the clouds to mounatin peaks.

Coolest stuff ever, after that, the game sucked.  If they fixed the stuff that sucked, i'd try her again.

I spent my $40 bucks and the fun I have had up to date has already covered that.  It's less then a night at the movies.

The game needs work and is behind, but the concept is cool enough to keep me around.  I'll ride this one one out.  I've been through a few AAA title launches that were as bad.

They'll either fix or they won't.  The sun will rise tomorrow.