Neeshka

Any kind of mechanism that facilitates grouping in a multiplayer game is a good thing. Obviously such systems always need refinement to group together like-minded players with a similar skill-level. Having a mechanism operate cross server is good because a lot of servers don't always have the requisite number of people and doing this reduces queue times significantly.

The arguments against LFG appear silly because they are. People opposing easier grouping in an mmorpg are completely delusional or just nostalgic about worse systems, and believe in a false "sense of community" in servers that never really existed. In an mmorpg, if I like someone the normal practice is to add them to your friends list, do raids/dungeons/pvp with them. If you find a bunch of people sharing your interests in the game you join a guild. That's actually where the real "community" in an mmorpg lies.

However there are some people that feel that mmorpg's should be some kind of facebook socializing game, so they want failtown trade chat pugs and the absolute lowest end of guilds (levelling guilds, "family"/"friend"/"casual" type guilds) to be the end-all of community. LFG/LFR actually wrecks this lowest tier of the community since a lot of people just use LFR/LFG instead of dealing with the ineptitude and hassle in such pugs and guilds. Champion casuals of these will vigorously object to LFG/LFR, naturally.

LFG/LFR is a huge success and it doesn't affect any decent raiding guild or competant pug/gdkp. It's worse loot, from easier bosses; for casual or bad players that want to experience multiplayer raid content quickly without having to deal with the bullshit of ninjaing failpugs and drama-filled low-end guilds. Nothing wrong with that.

yes definitely finish it. remember though; games like this aren't played exclusively for the story; this isn't an RPG.

@Brendan said:

@Enigma777 said:

Sounds like your PC sucks. Get a new one and stop QQ-ing on the internet.

What does QQ mean? I assume it has to do with raging, but is it an acronym or a reference to a game?

Q apparently looks like a tear; 2 Qs for 2 eyes. So it's someone crying.

ahh forgot to mention - if you are going for a physical damage playstyle it's probably best not to bother with magic at all. There might be a case for levelling illusion for muffle (which is easy enought, just cast it ever few seconds). You *could* level restoration to heal yourself but personally I found it a lot easier to just use healing potions. Either way don't put perks into any of these trees.

Try not to dabble too much in multiple weapon types since if you level from them early on enemies will seem very hard. Initially I would advise sticking to 1 weapon type exclusively. Even if you don't 100% at least put perks in just 1 offensive weapon tree.

Bows: Good playstyle. The game engine handles bow physics rather well, so it's fun to play. A slight issue is that it becomes annoying when enemies get close (with the stagger).

dual daggers: if you go for this you will probably need to level sneak and put perks in light armor, one-handed and sneak for it to be optimal. Once you do the req. perk investments this is probably the highest damage build. However restealthing when there is a group of enemies can be a pain, and out of stealth your damage isn't spectacular.

dual swords: this goes well with heavy armor (don't even need to put in perks into this initially), one-handed with 30% crit perk. After that you're free to put perks anywhere I would go for smith/ench then maybe alchemy. Out of stealth this is the highest damage playstyle. You don't have to bother with restealthing and damage is insane. Probably the most optimal playstyle in the game.

I'll list a few reasons:

1) You cannot really create an infinite world. Using the open sea as a limit is much more natural than having a sudden invisible wall. Instead of open seas some games use mountains (skyrim and far cry 2 i think).

2) The games you listed are loosely based on cities that actually do have a lot of waterways in them.

3) If the sanbox game has some form of area based progression, opening up a new island seems more natural than invisible walls lifting.

4) It's easy to add in vehicles that go on water if there is water nearby.

5) Finally, a lot of people actually like seeing water, seasides, docks, port areas, beaches, bridges and so on. It can be aesthetically pleasing to drive over brooklyn bridge in a taxi in GTA4 under the moonlight.

Summary of the TOR fanbase (sorry if this offends anyone that isn't my intention):

1) very casual gamers that don't particularly want to raid or participate in any serious multiplayer content. Mainly single player content; levelling multiple alts and the very very occasional group content is totally ok with them. Also there's casual gamers that are just looking for a change of setting from WoW, but are ok with very similar gameplay with lightsabers. This is probably the most reasonable demographic but also the least vocal.

2) washed out WoW raiders that harbor some kind of grudge against WoW = these are the mmo rejects; the people sick of being "treated awfully" in other mmo's; but sadly they are treated awfully because they are utterly awful at such games. They think "it's just a video game" so they don't care to or are too lazy to spend 10-15 minutes to improve themselves. You'll find that such people will be up in arms against combat logs and dps meters, and usually any kind of gearscore type addon. This subset also includes anyone that holds a grudge against WoW; since it's easy to scapegoat a video game for whatever personal problems you have.

3) Fanatically loyal star wars fans, also the leftover community from star wars galaxies - these include the extremely peculiar LARPers, the people almost at the point of practicing a jedi religion and the "lore nerd" types - people that have read EVERYTHING in the extended universe. Such people will naturally like anything with star wars in it.

4) Fanatically loyal bioware fans. I used to like bioware games but this is something else. These people absolutely adore dragon age 2, and have detailed discussions where they obsess over the romance mini-games in ME/DA, and proceed to fantasize about their waifus (sp?).

You can quite easily gauge which response is from which group of fans. Anyhow it's become a hobby of mine to look at the TOR forums on occasion to see these "biodrones" in action and they do quite often say quite amusing things. Here's a blog site on tumblr with some of the highlights : http://biodronesdarndest.tumblr.com/

If you haven't already definitely do the mage guild quest; and the daedric quests from sanguine (a night to remember) and sheogorath (the mind of madness). Also be sure to check out the smuggler's cove near solitude - it has ships in a foggy cave like the goonies.

Nah a lot of other mmo devs do it; Rift has addon support for example. I'm pretty sure lord of the rings online and Eve have some addon api support as well. Bioware just completely ignored addons/combat logs almost intentionally. It's strange that this isn't talked about that much.

OP you forgot a few really important issues with the game that cripple any kind of serious PvE end-game:

1) ZERO addon and macro support: every new mmo seems to have this nowadays; imagine how awful healing is without mouseover macros .....

2) No combat log - basically means I randomly die on a boss fight and there's no way of knowing how I died. Was it a death to a lack of heals ? was it an encounter mechanic ? was it flawed personal play ? There's just no way of knowing for sure.

3) Mainly a consequence of the above : No dps meters. There's no way to tell where your raid needs to improve; which dps is just dragging their weight and which ones are doing well.

Another major issue is the difficulty in finding groups because of the lack of a dungeon or raid finder like WoW or even Rift. Spamming a chat channel for groups is something very archaic and dated. And it simply doesn't work efficiently.

In the end, if you are looking for a competitive PvP scene or a meaningful PvE end-game centered around balanced and challenging boss encounters that are well designed and complicated; TOR is NOT a good idea. Neither is it good if you are a very casual gamer who just wants to log on, participate in multiplayer groups/raids for a bit, then log off.

If you are looking for a mainly single player experience and like the more recent bioware RPGs, you might like the levelling part of the game. But then why pay a subscription is the first place ? Perhaps if you are a washed out WoW casual raider looking for a "fresh" new setting with mostly WoW-ish gameplay TOR might be ok. Otherwise steer clear of this dung heap. Bioware seems to have attracted a large number of very loyal and sometimes downright bizarre fans; and they along with the SWG crowd will probably keep the game afloat for a few months. Any kind of criticism directed against TOR seems to be met with "go back to WoW", "but those problems don't affect me", "lol opinions", "but I'm having fun", "the game just came out it will be patched" or similar responses; so I wouldn't be worried about those.

Titanic and Hindenburg references are quite amusing; please continue.