SWTOR

[kildorn]

The vocal minority are those players that see DPS parses and threat-detectors as detrimental to the game and that's really what they're against, not add-ons in general.   My response is usually, "they wouldn't care if they didn't suck at playing the PvE grouping part so very much."

Right, they didn't know what they were doing and got kicked out of a group/raid/guild, and they feel that nobody will notice how much they suck without meters. I truly and honestly believe this.

Or they PUG. PUGs are just annoying with meters. I run them and don't spam them because it helps me know what is going on with myself and others. I can find out in a click if the reason our healer is OOM constantly is they're sitting happily at 70% overheal because they keep dropping large heals on 5% damage. It lets me know if I'm fucking up my skills when I see my damage output is well below my par.

But I've seen plenty of "LOL U SUX KICK THEM" just because you're half the theoretical max dps for your spec in perfect gear, when you're not even max level. PUGs bring out all kinds. I don't blame the tools though. I blame the Tool.

[Paelos]

From a business design perspective, I'd say they are probably smart to avoid that completely. There is a game that will always beat you out there right now.

So from a business perspective, you think they would be wise to avoid fostering a competitive raid environment? Can you name a successful diku MMO that doesn't include endgame raids? What do you propose as the PvE endgame to take the place of raiding?

You sort of answer your own question. I can name one really big MMO with a raiding endgame. What you need in this scenario to beat that game is not to out-do it because I believe it already tapped a very large percentage of the player market. If the players want an endgame raiding market, you'll have to outproduce the big gorilla.

OR, you differentiate. You craft your game around storylines and smaller group content. You decrease the size of necessary players and build around that style of play. MMOs have already shown they are willing to go smaller and tighter with their encounter mechanics. The real key for SWTOR will be if they can craft stories and updates with regular certainty, and if they can continue to add value and flavor items with their smaller group content.

[kildorn]

I believe SWOTOR will live and die based on content updates after the first 6-12 months, but I wouldn't recommend they just kick raiding and large scale PVP out the airlock and go "we don't want your kind here"

I prefer small group encounters, but I won't try and pretend I haven't had a mess of fun with 10-25 guild friends fucking around in raid zones.

edit: I will say I had no fun doing 40 man raids, but a lot of it was due to only being friends with 3 of the people in said raids. Raids themselves aren't the fun part, it's being able to pull a lot of your friends together and share an experience.

[sam, an eggplant]

There are tons of successful diku MMOs, both past and present. LOTRO, EQ, EQ2, aion, allods, conan, DaoC, DCUO, Rift, RoM, etc. All of them used raiding as their PvE endgame, with varying levels of success. Trying anything different is a major risk.

SWTOR is the most expensive game of all time. EA is not trying to "go smaller". It's not a shot in the dark. They're not looking to take risks. They want to take WoW's lunch.

[Paelos]

SWTOR is the most expensive game of all time. EA is not trying to "go smaller". It's not a shot in the dark. They're not looking to take risks. They want to take WoW's lunch.

If that's their goal, they will fail. You can beat WoW eventually. You can certainly steal some of WoW's momentum, but you have to offer people something better or different. Getting more raidy than WoW? That's not going to happen.

You're not going to draw in people by being more hardcore, or getting more into competative raiding as your main focus. Cataclysm fallout has proven that's a bad idea. WoW is what it is because it initially rejected those ideals from EQ and made the game more accessible with the new idea of quests being the focus.

[Fordel]

As for hotbars, you can have two hotbars at the bottom, one on the left, and one on the right. They are not resizable, movable, scalable, and you can't adjust transparency. You can hotkey each button individually, but there are a couple reserved keys unavailable-- not a big deal. I believe one of the bottom hotbars is lost once you get a companion-- I haven't actively played SWTOR in a couple months, I just login briefly with each patch to see what changed.

You can set which hotbar the companion bar will replace and you can just minimize the companion bar with the ~ (tilde I think?) key. I move mine to the far left if I want it open, but I usually just turn everything onto autocast and let me companion sort it self out.

[Sky]

LOTRO, EQ, EQ2, aion, allods, conan, DaoC, DCUO, Rift, RoM, etc. All of them used raiding as their PvE endgame, with varying levels of success.

There are a whole lot of people who think raiding is shit gameplay and don't partake in it. And then a whole lot that do just because it's incentivized with phat lewtz, they endure shit gameplay to get them.

And as you point out ALL OF THOSE GAMES USE RAIDING as an 'endgame'.

Time for a change, because I think fans of raiding ARE COVERED BY EVERY OTHER GAME ON THE MARKET. TOR is the first mmo I've played since UO that I haven't been made to feel like a total scrub third-class citizen because 'that's just how it is, man, it's MMO lol play Skyrim'. But I would also like to see some mmo that focuses MORE on raiding and leaves off the quest-style content that just gets in the way for those folks. You can't please everyone, and continuing to try is making for an extremely mediocre genre.

There's a lot of money on the table if they don't fall into the trap of chasing the hardcore. The casual (softcore?) is the majority. Better to have 50 people who play for three months a year than 10 people subbed year 'round, with those ten bitching about class balance and rate of content release and loot tables and stat algorithms.

[Outlawedprod]

Having trouble getting on swtor.com today still.  Finally got onto the tester page a few minutes ago.  Funny enough before it finally would load I got a "you are in a queue" message.

Queue for tester signup webpage LOL

[Bunk]

They do indeed, but again, if they want to promote a competitive raiding environment, they must re-enable combatlogs.

See, now this I don't get. What the hell is a competetive Raiding environment?

So people are so concerned about being the absolute best and most efficient at raids, that they have to have an individual scoring mechanic for each participant? I guess I understand it, even though I'd have zero interest in being involved in it.

I'm all for a combat log to tell me I did Uber! - but the moment my participation is contingent on being in the top X percentile? Fuck that shit.

Well, the positive thing is, if I don't want to be involved in Call of Duty Raiding, I don't have to. If Raiding is getting balanced to provide challenge to these types of players, then its just completely outside of my interest or skill level.

[sam, an eggplant]

Without a combatlog, you can't tell why you failed. Did your tank forget to use a cooldown? Did the healers hit a lag spike? Why did the boss suddenly kill everybody, did he hit an enrage timer? If so, which of your DPS is underperforming? Why did Bobby the jedi shadow die? Did he take threat from the tank? Did he forget to hide behind the oil can? Did he stand in the fire?

Raiding is supposed to be sufficiently difficult that you can't just half-ass it and hope to win. Everybody has to understand how the fight works and fill their role correctly. Without a combatlog, you can't evaluate why you failed or individual players' performance.

Competitive raiding is substantially harder than that, with bosses tuned much harder such that only a couple guilds on each server might hope to beat it in the first couple weeks.

Also, without a combatlog, nobody understands how their character works. Which abilities should I be using? In what order? What is the best way to play? This comes back to hiding information from the player, like in the bad old everquest1 days.

[caladein]

They do indeed, but again, if they want to promote a competitive raiding environment, they must re-enable combatlogs.

See, now this I don't get. What the hell is a competetive Raiding environment?

So people are so concerned about being the absolute best and most efficient at raids, that they have to have an individual scoring mechanic for each participant? I guess I understand it, even though I'd have zero interest in being involved in it.

It depends on the use of competitive.  I took it as "competitive in the market", meaning how does SWTOR's raid game stack up to WoW's or Rift's.  Without any analytical tools, it's almost certainly DOA.

Clearly, you took it as competitive as in a scoreboard-like thing.  As long as a game is sufficiently popular and the raids aren't of trivial difficulty, you'll have that.  There's no real way around that part of how players try to organize things.

[amiable]

Honestly a game with "a competitive raiding environment" is not a game I'm interested in playing anymore.  It leads to all sorts of horribly unfun behaviors by the playerbase and incentivizes general jackassery.  LOTRO had a nice formula wherein raid loot was basically a sidegrade and you could get nice loot by crafting, running smaller dungeons etc...  There are still plenty of folks who raid but I certainly never got the hard-core poopsocking jackassery vibe that pervades WoW at almost every level.

[Shatter]

Combat logs are a sad measure of a players performance, but WOW drove it into too many people as the holy bible of measuring suck/greatness.  The biggest problems in my final months of raiding in WOW werent from bad DPS or lacking heals but from fights where if 1 person died it was a wipe and this was usually due to lack of surrouding awareness.  There were 2 people in particular, both clerics who had outstanding heals but sucked at moving or performing any other task. On specific bosses we would guarantee wipe if either of them were chosen for something as part of the boss fight that didnt involve standing around and healing.  Yes, standing in fire type of stuff.  I will take players who are situationally aware and reactive over high DPS any day.  The other problem with logs / meters were those who would DPS so hard they would pull tank aggro just to top meters.  Point is I have found meters like these to be more of a problem then a benefit.

Add:  The meters were also typically the source of drama and bullshit 90% of the time as well. 

[caladein]

Combat logs are a sad measure of a players performance, but WOW drove it into too many people as the holy bible of measuring suck/greatness.  The biggest problems in my final months of raiding in WOW werent from bad DPS or lacking heals but from fights where if 1 person died it was a wipe and this was usually due to lack of surrouding awareness.  There were 2 people in particular, both clerics who had outstanding heals but sucked at moving or performing any other task. On specific bosses we would guarantee wipe if either of them were chosen for something as part of the boss fight that didnt involve standing around and healing.  Yes, standing in fire type of stuff.  I will take players who are situationally aware and reactive over high DPS any day.  The other problem with logs / meters were those who would DPS so hard they would pull tank aggro just to top meters.  Point is I have found meters like these to be more of a problem then a benefit.

That's just people using the tools poorly.  Moreover, without a raidwide combat log, you're going to need everyone to remember to run their own log dump and upload to the parser site and then run that through something like CompareBot just to figure out who actually was being aware if the mistakes aren't accompanied by huge graphical effects.

Most of the people in my raid run some type of parser and if we're doing anything serious, I'll feed a live report up to World of Logs.  We're not doing it to see who does more damage (there's certainly a friendly competition among the damage dealers, but they all know their own limitations anyway) we're using it to understand why something bad happened.

[Numtini]

There were 2 people in particular, both clerics who had outstanding heals but sucked at moving or performing any other task

I didn't realize I was healing for your guild 

[Paelos]

Fuck damage meters. I want "died in a fire" meters. That's my holy grail of MMOG performance.

LFM for 10m Darth Lewtz encounter, must have DIAF rating of 1500+

[caladein]

Add:  The meters were also typically the source of drama and bullshit 90% of the time as well. 

And if you didn't have them, you'd just have blind accusations as to who's fault it was that the group wiped.  Parser addons didn't create the desire to scapegoat others, it just provided another avenue for it.  (Also, I've used data to defend myself as a healer many times from players who wanted to blame me for their getting blown to bits for their own mistakes.)

This ties into the "LFD makes people into massive assholes" line of attack against it, when my experience is that a number of players were plenty good at being massive assholes before those tools existed.

Fuck damage meters. I want "died in a fire" meters. That's my holy grail of MMOG performance.

LFM for 10m Darth Lewtz encounter, must have DIAF rating of 1500+

http://raidbots.com/comparebot/

[Fordel]

We use combat logs to see HOW people are screwing up, and if we can fix it.


Like one of the most common problems we have in our groups and raids in regards to people doing low DPS, was that they simply weren't casting ENOUGH. They would be pressing the right buttons, but not often enough. Our top DPS would have 95+ percent activity, while the guys who were always lagging behind would have like 80%. So when someone asked me "How can I do more DPS?", I could tell them "Cast more!".



Without the raid parser, that is the kind of problem that is hard to identify on the fly.



-fake edit- Our raid parser had a 'who took what damage in the raid and how they died' section too. IE: Who died in the fire meter 

[Miasma]

WoW handled the combat logs just fine.  The data is there but there is nothing in the default UI that will give you threat, damage or healing meters.  If you want full blown meters and graphing you have to go get an addon.  It's a good compromise.

[Bunk]

There were 2 people in particular, both clerics who had outstanding heals but sucked at moving or performing any other task.

Just throwing this out there, but could that have been a side effect of having 45 UI windows active on screen at a time? I've seen Raiding screenshots posted for WoW where 90% of the screen real estate was filled with UI.

Someone posted earlier about how if you didn't have all the Raid UI Add-ons, you wouldn't know exactly when the Boss was about to trigger his Omegablast, and you wouldn't know when to shift watchamwahoos. To me it almost seems like playing Donkey Kong with addons running to time all Mario's jumps for you based on where the barrels were, because the player can't be expected to do that by hand! That might be inefficient!

It's too bad. The general idea of raids seems cool, doing complex scripted events with a group of buddies, but if they have to be balanced to players who are using addons that would be called blatant cheating in any other type of game environment, then I don't see the point. Balance the game to the UI of the game.

[proudft]

The (few) times I raid healed, having a 10-person Grid in the dead center of my screen was the only thing keeping me from dying in fire.  Looking over to the left at health bars and back to the middle of the screen over and over and over was not going to cut it.

That said, yeah, the WoW addons were a bit much.  I tried to go as minimal as possible, Grid was the only one I really 'needed' because the little raid party windows you could drag around were ridiculously small and hard to click on.

[tmp]

Without a combatlog, you can't tell why you failed.

I think that points out the basic design of the game sucks donkey balls. Not to actual need for a combatlog.

[Fordel]

You could move the default raid frames to the middle too, it's what I did when healing.


The only mods I used was a threat meter and a Moonkin specific addon for eclipse in WotLK (eclipse in cata didn't require one). The default UI for WoW has had all the things people assume they need mods for, for like 2 expansions now.

[Nevermore]

The default UI for WoW has had all the things people assume they need mods for, for like 2 expansions now.

For combat maybe, but you'd have to pry Altoholic from my cold, dead hands.

[Lakov_Sanite]

bagnon, seriuosly

[waylander]

I posted a formal review over on SWTOR.com, and it got to 3 pages long before the billion NDA lifting threads blew all other discussion off of the first pages of the forum.

I am most disappointed with two things right now...........

1. The absolute lack of guild features in a modern mmo release
2. The state of the PVP content (or lack of it!)

Anyway I copied my review over here because the SWTOR forums are constantly down due to high volume messages.

Short Summary

• System Specs
  Core I-7 (930) Overlocked 3.3 Ghz
  6 Gigs of Ram
  Geforce GTX 460 Vid Card (1 gig)
  
  Total Score: 8 out of 10 Overall Rating on the Hades grading system.
  
  
  
• The Good:
  
  The game ran very well on my computer, and I had no video lag at all except when the client was streaming data to me.  The world was nice looking, and felt epic because it was so large.  The planets have a feel about them, and it allows you to experience the game while feeling like a real part of the Star Wars setting.
  
  The storyline is very interesting, and I felt like I was rising in power within the Sith Academy.  They do a good job of making you feel like a worm, and then thrive as you rise in power to throw off the shackles of apprenticeship.  As you progress through the story line, the choices you make matter..........so choose wisely.
  
  Characters feel powerful at low levels, and have a variety of interesting moves. In other games a rat, frog, bug, etc is kicking your butt at level 1 and make you feel wimpy.  TOR has the newbie feeling powerful from the start, and that is a good thing.  Running around wasting time going from point to point appears minimized in this game.
  
  The PVP instanced Warfronts are fun to play, and should provide countless hours of entertainment by themselves.
  
  Personal ships are pure awesome!
  
  Overall the game starts you out well, and sets you up for future character development.
  
  
  
• The Bad:
  
  The UI seems to be fairly limiting compared to other games.
  
  PVP does not appear to have a point in this game other than as a temporary change of pace.
  
  There are tons of boxes, crates, etc lying around the zones and within the tombs. If would be nice if there was some random treasure, as well as a random mob, that could pop out of them.
  
  The recall to your local bind point feels too long.
  
  

The Long Version


Technical Evaluation

• Required Specs: See game FAQ
  
• Recommended Specs: See game FAQ
  
• Game/Server Stability, Amount of Bugs/Crashes: Very Stable
  
• Game/Server Performance(FPS/Lag/Responsiveness):Very Stable
  
• Graphics/Art Style/Atmosphere:Good graphics, epic feel
  
• Sound/Music: Entertaining
  
• Controls: Standard MMO controls
  

Gameplay Evaluation

• Observed InGame Activities
  ---PvE:Questing
  ---PVP Warfronts
  ---Mob grinding
  ---Dungeon Exploration
  
  
  
• Classes Played:
  
  Sith Warrior-Tank
  
  The Sith Warrior is the tank of the Sith side.  The class does feel durable, well situated for mob damage, and has a variety of attacks in the lowbie evels.  The class uses rage as a buildup to open up other abilities, and the use of those abilities lowers rage. All in all, anyone who's played a tank in any game since Dark Age of Camelot would feel right at home. A Sith Warrior can be spec'd and geared for damage burst, an endurance warrior with low to moderate damage, or some hybrid.  This will all depend on gear, and other abilites available to the class that may be put in later.
  
  Sith Inquisitor-DPS
  
  This class is a little different than others I've played in the past, but the SI  is the SWTOR equivalent of a wizard/mage class.  The difference of course is that the SI can stand toe to toe(for a short while) and melee while firing off magical attacks. In previous MMO's a wizard that doesn't kite is dead meat in about 2 seconds. The SI is fun and exciting to play, and it is certainly a class you will want in your group.  The SI can DPS, Heal, or be a hybrid that is very effective.
  
  
  
• Game Mechanics:
  Typical MMO game mechanics with hotbars, cooldowns, standard UI, radar, zone maps, etc. TOR is a class based game, with leveling as a means of advancement, and soloing seems as viable as grouping.  Obviously if you solo you may miss out on some of the content, but the game can be played however you wish.
  
  There are randomized quest bonus tasks that can be done in the course of normal leveling for a change of pace.
  
  Heroic quests are full of trash mobs, but the quest rewards are decent enough to do them.
  
  Special "Epic" instances called Flashpoints where about half require a real group to complete. They are fun, and add to the game lore.
  
  I have not completed any High level "Epic" Dungeons.
  
  
• Character Development/Leveling System:
  
  TOR features a standard leveling system, and with new powers or abilities gained every two levels or so. There are other things to look forward to each level other than just new powers because there are all sorts of cool items or gear that open up at levels where you don't get a character power.
  
  
  
• Max Level, time required to reach:
  
  Perception appears acceptable, even to a casual gamer.
  
  15 hours a week = 1.5 months to max level (tops)
  
  Rolling Alts will be fun in this game as well!
  
  
  
• Respeccing: Available
  
  
• Armor and Itemization:
  
  Armor and itemization seems varied, and other items may be obtained by quests or through NPC merchants.  There does seem to be a good initial variety in order to let a player optimize their character towards their preferred playstyle.  Early level itemization appears balanced, and does not appear to skew too high or too low.  If this holds true throughout the game, then people should not be turned down for groups or raids simply due to gear.
  
  
  
• Grind:
  
  The early levels of TOR did not feel like a grind at all.  Objectives are easy to find, finish, and there are extra bonuses here and there.
  
  There are different types of PVE and PVP content that you can do so that you are not always quest chaining, and some of the story arc missions are very entertaining.
  
  
  
• Estimated playtime needed for casual and hardcore:
  
  Hardcore: lol need I state it?
  Casual: take your time, enjoy the game
  
  The early game seems to be very casual friendly, and casual friendly games result in heavily populated servers. In my opinion the game should be targeted towards casual players for the most part, and then certain non mandatory content be added in to appease the hardcore gamers as they chew through the content.  
  
  
  
• Fighting System/Combat Mechanics:
  
  Typical MMO button mashing, but with more options available to you in the early levels than most other MMO's offer. Like some previous games, TOR features some skills or abilities that require a power up or specific situation in order to execute them.  This is good because it prevents spam attacks by skills that may be overpowered otherwise, and it provides for a certain level of tactical combat to occurr.  The user simply can't snooze through auto attacks nor are they in a situation where they just press 1111222111 all the time to win.
  
  
  
• Balance:
  
  Each class appears to have its niche, and hybrids appear to be legitimate contenders.
  
  
  
• Ladders, Statistics: None at this time, other than warfront final scores
  
  
  
• PVP, RVR, Game Mechanics:
  
  Ilum is a high level PVP planet.
  
  Typical instanced warfront PVP with victory scores, bonuses, etc, but no organized ranked ladder/competition system at this point. I hope that something is done on that issue.
  
  
  
• Guild Mechanics:
  
  I am not impressed with the guild mechanics at all.  Warhammer Online has more guild mechanics than SWTOR.  Rift had better guild mechanics than SWTOR.  In SWTOR, I feel like guild mechanics have taken a giant leap back to 2002 era MMO's.
  
  
  
• Guild Size impact/viability: Unknown for now
  
  
• Player Impact on Economy/World Design etc:Minimal
  

Conclusion

• Would a Guild play this game officially?
  
  Of course they would, it is Star Wars afterall.  In order to retain guilds there needs to be a robust end game system, opportunities for guild growth, good player/guild management systems, guild rewards and incentives, and an engaging competitive component.  Several of these features do not appear to be there for guilds at the present time.  I hope that in the not too distant future that SWTOR can bring guild systems up to the present day 2011 MMO level with benefits, guild stuff, etc.
  
  I don't think SWTOR will have a problem attracting guilds, but I do think they will have a problem retaining them without the things I've mentioned.
  
  
  
• Who should and who shouldn't buy this game:
  
  If you love Star Wars, this is your game.
  If you want to feel like a hero, this is your game.
  If you want a change of pace from your current MMO, this is your game.
  If you are expecting a revolutionary MMO, this isn't your game.
  If you are playing solely for PVP purposes, this isn't your game....right now.
  
  SWTOR takes most current MMO concepts, refines them to make them better, but at the end of the day it plays like all the other MMO's out there.  SWTOR is a fine MMO product that has a lot of potential, but at this point in time it delivers a solid game in an exciting universe, and a lot of things to do while we look forward to post retail content patches.
  
  It is retail ready based on what we can see today, but they need to push out fast content patches after release.
  
  
  

[caladein]

Someone posted earlier about how if you didn't have all the Raid UI Add-ons, you wouldn't know exactly when the Boss was about to trigger his Omegablast, and you wouldn't know when to shift watchamwahoos. To me it almost seems like playing Donkey Kong with addons running to time all Mario's jumps for you based on where the barrels were, because the player can't be expected to do that by hand! That might be inefficient!

It's too bad. The general idea of raids seems cool, doing complex scripted events with a group of buddies, but if they have to be balanced to players who are using addons that would be called blatant cheating in any other type of game environment, then I don't see the point. Balance the game to the UI of the game.

That's how WoW works right now, and has for some time.  Bosses have emotes and resource bars and big effects that let you know when things are coming or when they happen.  Raid mods at this point are just about having an easy reference to what the moves are and when they're coming up.

The "discovery" aspect of raiding hasn't mattered for the vast majority of players for a long time and Blizzard's embraced that.  Everyone knows the moves, players just need to learn to handle them and their role at the same time.

[Bunk]

So, you wrote a review on an MMO whose major features to make it standout would be a deep storyline, the dialogue wheel/alignment system, and companions - and make no mention of any of them in your review?

[waylander]

So, you wrote a review on an MMO whose major features to make it standout would be a deep storyline, the dialogue wheel/alignment system, and companions - and make no mention of any of them in your review?

The voice acting is cool the first time around, but you can speed through it.  To me it is a neat feature, but having it or not really isn't a game breaker so there was no need to spend time on it.

[caladein]

It's also something everyone sort of "knows" at this point.  I'm not terribly interested in reading about the story and what not aside from "It is any good?".

But I am knee deep in mechanics stuff because that's something that they haven't talked about.

Also, waylander's a GM so that's an important perspective to hear from.

[Sjofn]

I know all of one person who healed raids in WoW without a single healing mod, and I think she's certifiably insane.

I am not. 

[Rasix]

We have proof.

[sam, an eggplant]

Without a combatlog, you can't tell why you failed.

I think that points out the basic design of the game sucks donkey balls. Not to actual need for a combatlog.

The alternative is expecting people to honestly own up to their mistakes. So....

[Fordel]

Hell put all of that aside, you need a combat log to make sure your own abilities are doing what they are supposed to. 

[Velorath]

Without a combatlog, you can't tell why you failed. Did your tank forget to use a cooldown? Did the healers hit a lag spike? Why did the boss suddenly kill everybody, did he hit an enrage timer? If so, which of your DPS is underperforming? Why did Bobby the jedi shadow die? Did he take threat from the tank? Did he forget to hide behind the oil can? Did he stand in the fire?

Raiding is supposed to be sufficiently difficult that you can't just half-ass it and hope to win. Everybody has to understand how the fight works and fill their role correctly. Without a combatlog, you can't evaluate why you failed or individual players' performance.

Competitive raiding is substantially harder than that, with bosses tuned much harder such that only a couple guilds on each server might hope to beat it in the first couple weeks.

Also, without a combatlog, nobody understands how their character works. Which abilities should I be using? In what order? What is the best way to play? This comes back to hiding information from the player, like in the bad old everquest1 days.

Fuck, that doesn't sound fun at all.  If I have to go through logs after every raid to figure out the we failed because Joe didn't do the correct shot rotation to maximize his DPS, and Bob overhealed 40%, I'd just rather not bother.  I don't want to half-ass my way through a raid, but neither do I want everybody to have to be playing at 95% efficiency or more in order to complete the content.

Also, I don't like macros and UI mods, because messing around with that stuff and researching which mods I need is time I'm not spending actually playing the game.  I don't want to spend time doing research on forums for information on what mods I need and the "correct" way to play my class.