What's going right/wrong with launch...

[calapine]

I am really bothered by the heavy instancing [I don't mean class or dungeon instances], especially in cities. Today Nar Shaddaa had 49 people on our server....split over 2 instances.
The world feels empty and more like a single player game.

[Phred]

I also had less negative experiences in LFD-type groups (wow, rift) than standard pugs.

This is absolutely true for me as well, particularly in leveling content.

I still look back fondly to rift for that. I had great groups.

[caladein]

I am really bothered by the heavy instancing [I don't mean class or dungeon instances], especially in cities. Today Nar Shaddaa had 49 people on our server....split over 2 instances.
The world feels empty and more like a single player game.

Is your server unbalanced in terms of population (and are you on the short end of it)?  Unless it's some carry over from when that planet had a mess of people on it and it just hasn't collapsed the instances down, that's the only reason I could think of.

I've never seen multiple instances of a planet at less than 100 Imperials on my server, Terentatek, which is very heavily tilted towards Empire.

[calapine]

Maybe that's it. I am playing on "Lord Calypho" EU-RP-PVP server, which is very heavily populated judging from queues.
I have no idea about imp/rep balance. Warzone queues seem to be rather low (1-5 minutes), so I suppose there is an Imp-glut.

[apocrypha]

8 hour maintenance tomorrow, 4th Jan.

Very much hoping that these excessively long maintenance downtimes are just a launch/patch thing and that they'll settle down to a more sensible 1-2 hours soon, especially since they're not exactly at an ideal time if you live in Europe.

Also, they have seperate EU and US servers. Why the same downtime? Have the EU servers down at the low-population point for the EU, it's not rocket science.

[Ingmar]

Second, a smaller number of accounts were warned or temporarily suspended for exploiting loot containers on Ilum.

So, people that weren't exploiting anything (..)

Not according to BioWare.

Well, that's the point.  I could understand if they were botting, or maybe even if they were abusing something that spawns them really quickly.  But from the way they wrote it, it seems more along the lines of if they had suspended people that were farming Slicing missions repeatedly before it got nerfed.  Hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Nothing at all like slicing, what they were doing pretty much any sensible person would call an exploit.

[Cyrrex]

8 hour maintenance tomorrow, 4th Jan.

Very much hoping that these excessively long maintenance downtimes are just a launch/patch thing and that they'll settle down to a more sensible 1-2 hours soon, especially since they're not exactly at an ideal time if you live in Europe.

Also, they have seperate EU and US servers. Why the same downtime? Have the EU servers down at the low-population point for the EU, it's not rocket science.

Ugh.  Thanks for the notice, though...guess I will play tonight and skip tomorrow.  Would indeed be nice if they could give us Euro Scum our own window.

[Wolf]

meh, it's kind of the same like wow, though. I don't have the game in the morning, so i don't much care if it won't be back until 6 in the afternoon or 9 in the evening, I won't get to play before I come back from work anyway.

I've turned this into a completely single player game with a built-in AH, to upgrade my barrel once I finish a planet. The zones were complete ghost towns, so any heroic I can't solo (which is most), I just skip and come back 7-8-10 levels later so I don't miss an orange with a nice model. After Alderaan I'll only need an orange belt and can upgrade everything just off of the mod vendor. I've even stoped doing the dungeons since I took a look at the fleet general once and got a scary wow 2008 vibe - "LFM 1 Healer, 1 Tank"; "DPS LFG any heroic flashpoint". Yeah, I'd rather spent that 40 mins on questing.

[fuser]

The default chat UI is

Been in groups trying to lead people to objectives in heroic area's without them noticing the chat. If your in a highly populated area the spam for people lfg or general barrens like chat of the planet easily pushes the visible buffer off of screen.

The way all the instances chatter across a whole area on a busy planet causes nothing but headaches trying to see the "guild or group" chatter. Heck trying to talk with friends who are in fleet is impossible at times if they are listening to general for groups.

[PalmTrees]

I hate the lifts so much. I always get there just as they're leaving, and if it's inside a building there's a 50-50 chance my companion's gonna bug out and not follow me. Either put in an elevator that just ports you or build some damn stairs.

[Khaldun]

So coming off a fairly intense period of play from the preorder launch till now, with a level 38 Scoundrel, heal-spec, and some just sub-10ish Jedis.

I've only read parts of this thread, but here's my take:

PRO

1. The storyline material is largely interesting enough to compel at least one playthrough from me on Republic and Sith sides. It's pretty much like a good Bioware game, multiplayer or not. Generally multiplayer adds some spice or extra fun to it, but less so if it's a PUG and there's an asshat who doesn't have any interest in the story and just wants to rush through for the loots. The voice acting and cinematics might be seen as a folly in the long run, depending on how long the game lasts as as subscription-based MMO, but they got quality for what they spent and a LOT of content. I feel as attached to my Scoundrel's personality as acted as I do to my Sheps. That's a big change from playing completely personality-free characters in WoW or pretty much any other MMO of this kind. Essentially even if I don't stay subbed, I'm likely to feel like I got my money's worth as I might in playing a good Bioware RPG.

2. Visually pretty good, though never mind-blowing.

3. So far fairly smooth performance. I had some weird hiccups with the launcher early on, but those were resolved with a reinstall. The game still has a bizarre habit of making my desktop background image disappear when I quit out of it. My RP-PVP server was low pop at preorder launch and is only now just starting to get full. I did have one night recently where heavy lag became a problem, but otherwise smooth.

4. I'm enjoying world PvP more than I expected to--the way that different worlds bring or separate factions is pretty smart--on Nar Shaadda and Tatooine, the populations that tend to clash are at the upper levels for each world, working on the bonus stuff. It's enough of a hassle to get into the 'backfield' for the enemy faction that you're not going to do it on a whim, but there's also a few missions that take you into those areas, and I like the heightened danger or tension of doing it at that point.

5. Speaking of which, mission design is generally good, though it completely follows the basic structure of WoW-questhubs.

6. Companions: totally works as a mechanic for an MMO of this kind. Really enjoying them, as much as I enjoy them in other Bioware games, but also just for what they add to the look of gameplay and the options in groups. Controlling the ones with AOE is hard--they probably shouldn't give any stealth-reliant class like the Scoundrel an AOE-addicted companion. (Turning it off is a nuisance as it is not a persistent toggle.)


UNDECIDED

1. Class design is, I dunno, ok. I like being a rogue healer, that's a nice twist. I'm so fucking sick of tank-heal-dps mechanics that I'm not sure there's any way to design classes that conform to that mechanic that I'd really love. I'm finding I can heal most fights pretty well, with the usual minigame of energy management being the key thing. Bioware did a pretty good job of making sure that there were enough healing trees spread among classes that healers are reasonably available for instances. Tanks, on the other hand, are in short supply and with the number of players in the game who haven't really done one of these before, there are way too many people who think they're a tank because they have a lot of +End gear on. I was trying to keep a squishy Jedi up yesterday in Cademimmu and he eventually had to confess that he didn't know what any of us meant by 'tank' but he said he was one because he wanted to do the instance. (Naturally, this is the kind of guy who keeps yelling to me to 'heal him'.)


BAD

1. Interface. I see everyone else is blasting it, so I won't reiterate the common complaints except to say that I share them. Just as one little but aggravating example: why is it a different key combination to split stacks and mod items? You don't mod stacks of crafting materials; you don't have stacks of items that can be modded. One key combo should suffice for interacting with inventory slots. There's tons of shit like that--it's an embarassingly bad UI.

2. The basic thing. Look, to repeat the common wisdom, this is a Bioware RPG with a multiplayer component, and has about the replayability of one. I tend to do maybe two, max three run-throughs of Bioware RPGs, and I'll probably do the same here and then I'm likely to be done. This just isn't what I wanted virtual worlds to be, and I'm utterly unconvinced that this is the only way to do it. This takes WoW, gives it a better lore reskinning that I personally enjoy more (though LOLore the idea that this is 3,000 years before the films, given that virtually nothing changes in between this time and that one), and patches in some characteristic Bioware touches and some quality storytelling. What this feels like is not next-generation MMO but last-generation MMO. This feels like the last silent movie, the last great opera, the end of a cultural form. It's a beautifully done mausoleum for the DikuMUD. No one is ever going to spend this kind of money again creating this kind of game, and no one should. If I were going to stay subbed to a MMO of this kind, I'd probably switch from WoW to this one. I'm finally cancelling WoW, hoping some of my good friends who've kept me there will move over to SWTOR, but what I really don't know and am increasingly doubtful about is whether I'm likely to stay subbed to anything of this kind.  I'm a bit sad and sorry that all the creative work on this game didn't get coupled to a more imaginative take on what a subscription-based online persistent world could be. Like imagine an early-stage SWG that actually fucking WORKED and had all the clownshoes stupidity of the first six months of SWG taken out. I dunno. It's just hard to get jizzed about levelling up a character in a rollercoaster world, getting stuck in a tedious endgame, etc.

3. The community. I'll feel better if and when my WoW guildies come over to SWTOR. So far, if anything, this is a more puerile bunch than WoW's usual crowd, and that's saying something. It's also the first time I've played on an RP server since DAOC and it's kind of depressing to see that for most people who claim to be RP'ers, what that now really means is cybering each other in Goldshire and nothing else. When I was in a light-RP guild in DAOC, it was entirely about tinyplots played out in areas where other players were questing or hanging out, along with the ordinary shit that guilds do--just an extra level of fun.

[Nebu]

BAD: BUGS BUGS and more fucking BUGS.

- Ran 3 hard mode dungeons last night.  5 bugged boss chests, 4 bugged boss encounters, and some seriously pissed off players.

- Bugged class quests.  At release... really? This is the hallmark of your game.  

- Z-axis issues.  I've had several encounters end up shooting at me from under the floor.

- cover mechanic still broken.  Ambush rarely works on the first attempt and series of shots will cancel early in the first use.  

- UI issues (group chat, incorrect tool tips, etc.)

- itemization issues.  Hard mode level 50 dungeon mobs dropping level 32 green gear?  Really?

More and more...

I'm hoping that the first patch is a good one.

[Wolf]

oh if you buy the wrong gear with tokens it will sell back to the vendor for credits. I thought we sorted this like 3 years ago. 

[Threash]

My guild chat has not worked in days, this is fucking clownshoes.

[ajax34i]

Have you by chance created a character, joined a guild, then deleted and re-created with the same name?  I've had someone complain in /general chat of this issue, and the fix was to quit the guild and re-join.  A possible fix is also to delete the charactername.ini file in LocalSettings\ApplicationData\SWTOR.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I've also seen several instances get bugged in different ways. The end bosses on several have a tendency to get bugged, in particular.

[Lantyssa]

Well, that's the point.  I could understand if they were botting, or maybe even if they were abusing something that spawns them really quickly.  But from the way they wrote it, it seems more along the lines of if they had suspended people that were farming Slicing missions repeatedly before it got nerfed.  Hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

They were abusing something that spawned them really quickly.  It's standard operating procedure to not go into details about exploits.

[01101010]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6UdNwqPkhA

Still hilarious... even more so now.

[Trippy]

"Kill the grey stuff, too."

[Malakili]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=120099

Saw this on reddit....what??

...
Second, a smaller number of accounts were warned or temporarily suspended for exploiting loot containers on Ilum. To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced. ...

Is it me or is the correct response to patch your game instead of banning people?

[Ingmar]

You do both. That doesn't spell out exactly what they were doing, which was clearly exploitative. (And also disruptive to other players to boot.)

[sam, an eggplant]

I haven't played since last thursday. Am I the only one who just doesn't particularly feel like logging back in?

[tmp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6UdNwqPkhA

Still hilarious... even more so now.

"stop tk'ing" got me. But it's solid throughout

[Ingmar]

I haven't played since last thursday. Am I the only one who just doesn't particularly feel like logging back in?

Based on activity in our guild at least... yes.

The people who have played it are almost all hooked. My challenge is getting the people who haven't tried it yet to buy the box. 

[sam, an eggplant]

I'm not entirely clear on how those two sentences reconcile with one another.

Edit: Oh, my bad, I read it wrong. You meant that your guildies are playing like addicted monkeys.

[Ingmar]

Half my guild stayed in WoW and haven't tried SWTOR yet.

[Miasma]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=120099

Saw this on reddit....what??

...
Second, a smaller number of accounts were warned or temporarily suspended for exploiting loot containers on Ilum. To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced. ...

Is it me or is the correct response to patch your game instead of banning people?

Just submit a ticket every time you want to open a chest to ask if it's okay and you'll be fine.  Politely ask other people not to open said chest until a GM responds, I'm sure they'll do the honorable thing.  Also, IT'S A TRAP!

[Sjofn]

Edit: Oh, my bad, I read it wrong. You meant that your guildies are playing like addicted monkeys.

I wouldn't go QUITE that far for some of them (I, of course, AM playing it like an addicted monkey), but yeah, most of the people in Slap seem pretty pleased with the game so far.

[Nevermore]

Half my guild stayed in WoW and haven't tried SWTOR yet.

You'll have to pry Drach's shaman from his cold, dead hands.

[Paelos]

I like it. I'm liking my story so far now that the Jedi thing gets rolling about level 30.

[trias_e]

This may be the first time the little things all add up to force me to quit an MMO.  Usually, the core game is flawed enough that I quit due to boredom or lack of interest, not pure frustration and annoyance.  However, in SWTOR, lots of little frustrations just keep piling up.  I don't understand how you can put so much work into such a massive game and get practically everything wrong other than the core gameplay experience.  

The UI, PvP, AH, economy/crafting/gearing:  All various levels of crap in their current form.  PvP could have been good, as the game plays well enough and the classes have plenty of complexity to make things interesting.  But basic oversights like not sticking level 50's in their own arena and knockbacks/cc being pretty much absurd make it more or less unplayable.  Not to mention it's ludicrous that you can't pick what specific warzone you would like to play.  I don't want to play huttball anymore.  Too bad!  Who comes up with this shit?  The UI is a constant struggle.  The AH is a bitch to use and there isn't really much interesting on it anyways.  I feel like there isn't anything to do with my credits other than unlock inventory slots, buy speeders, and repair my armor.  Boring.

No sidekicking.  No dual-speccing.  No decent LFG system.  Are you fucking kidding me?  These are easily fixable, basic issues, and have no business being in a modern MMO of this magnitude. And as far as I can tell the end-game is fairly non-existent, although I'm not there yet. It's unfortunate, because I enjoy the story, and the gameplay of my class well enough.  The core game is certainly much better than any WoW clone, and better than WoW itself.  But everything else is wrong, and there is no excuse for it considering how much time, money, and effort was put into the game.

[Sheepherder]

If you're sitting in a pvp area with a lowbie alt of the opposite faction so that you can flip the node as fast as possible and collect loot each time you flip the node it should probably occur to you that you've probably crossed the line into exploiting game mechanics.

[Wolf]

Alderaan was such a mess for me. For most of the time I was all alone, I think the phase is planet wide? So one particular zone was particularly bad as you have to "infiltrate" some house's stronghold, which took me more than 30 minutes of clearing trash before I got to where the quests were. No way to go around pulls as it was basically ramps, tunnels and bridges, you just have to clear everything. The Agent class quest kept making me go back all the way to the start and for some reasons space-gryphons haven't figured out how to fly over mountines, so it'll basically take a 5 minute round trip (excluding conversations, just the flying) after every 4-5 non-class quests. At one point the Agent quest sticks you in an enemy city or something, chock full of trash, only your quest there, I ended up just running untill I die and ressing myself a couple of times as it was actually faster then trying to clear the 20+ pulls to get to my quest. It all wrapped up nicely with some nice buggy respawning turrets during a fight with a yellow at a different agent quest. Which was ALSO located after 20-25minutes of trash in a public space. I think I'm towards the end and I think the only reason the planet was frustrating at all is that there's noone there and all the trash is calculated for there being maybe 4-5 people questing at the same time. Meh.

[Sjofn]

Half my guild stayed in WoW and haven't tried SWTOR yet.

You'll have to pry Drach's shaman from his cold, dead hands.

He is someone I feel 100% confident in saying would NOT like SWTOR. I don't think he'd like all the talky talky, plus all the fucking buttons and no mods would make his life hell, you know?

[PalmTrees]

Alderaan was such a mess for me. For most of the time I was all alone, I think the phase is planet wide? So one particular zone was particularly bad as you have to "infiltrate" some house's stronghold, which took me more than 30 minutes of clearing trash before I got to where the quests were.

Yeah, House whatsitsname is just unreasonably huge. When they sent my sorc back there a second time, ugh.