Updated MMO History

Every once in a while it's time to update my personal MMO CV and I sort of get a free post out of the deal.

If you've read any of my posts, you probably realize that I spend a huge amount of my game time partnering up with my lovely bride, known here as Scooter, who is also an avid MMO gamer.

Most recently, we've been subscribed to Star Wars: The Old Republic since April of 2015. Previously, we played from the headstart in mid-December of 2011 into August of 2012, pushing to achieve 50 (max level) and finish up the story on my Imperial Agent. Despite issues I've had in the past with BioWare's customer relations, the game has a lot going for it. Since our return, we've enjoyed several class storylines, and most recently, have been loving the new Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion.

Star Trek Online is another game I return to with some regularity, playing from just after its release in February of 2010 until May of 2011. I dipped in a toe again in June of 2012, checking out the Duty Officer system and other developments to the game. With the recent Legacy of Romulus expansion, I started up a new Romulan Captain and got my Main up to max level. Most recently, I played for a few months in the winter and spring of 2015. Amongst all my MMO characters, I am still most attached to my STO crews in many ways.

Scooter and I have drifted in and out of Rift a few different times. We played regularly from the beta tests in January of 2011 through October of the same year. I cannot say enough great things about this game, or the developer, Trion Worlds. It's not perfect, but the polish and responsiveness of the game and company are things other devs should aspire to. For reasons not really clear even to me or Scooter, when our Mains hit 50 (max level at the time), the wind went out of our sails, and we really had no desire to continue playing the game. We got involved again in summer of 2013, with House Stalwart, but discovered that something about the game caused us both eye strain. We were back again in the autumn of 2014 in for the Nightmare Tide expansion, but quickly drifted off again.

We also dipped our toes into ArcheAge for a few weeks in the autumn of 2014. It's a beautiful game with an interesting class/skill system, and I'm told the open-world PvP isn't as bad as some have made it out to be. However, due to technical difficulties, we decided to drop the game before getting too far.

We played WildStar in the summer of 2014, but have not returned for the free-to-play transition. Scooter and I have two duos of Exiles, plus I have a few solo toons. It's a fun game with an engaging storyline and a delightful art style reminiscent of World of Warcraft, but some ways an even darker tone. Despite the colorful cartoony look, this is not a game for young children.

Judging from the shear number of posts tagged with The Secret World, it may be my favorite game. It's the smartest story and skill/ability system on the market, in my humble opinion, though the additions of the Augment and Aegis systems make an already complicated system unwieldy. The issues from 2013, "The Last Train to Cairo" and "A Dream to Kill," feature the most enthralling storylines I have followed in an MMO. I currently have a toon in Egypt's Scorched Desert, one in Transylvania's Carpathian Fangs, and one in Tokyo, having completed the main story through "The Venetian Agenda." I stepped into Tokyo, the new zone that opened up with the release of Issue 9, "The Black Signal," but became discouraged with the AEGIS system. I haven't logged into the game in almost a year.

Scooter and I spent a bit of time in the Landmark alpha in the spring of 2014, but the exigencies of the plot rental during early beta—plus technical difficulties with my computer—led to a sharp drop-off in our participation. We may go back someday, but that ship may have sailed without us.

Between Christmas and New Years Eve, 2013, we decided to try something a little different, after looking into a couple F2p titles, we started playing EverQuest II. Our first two characters were OK, but we chose poorly on our starting area and tired quickly of the polar tundra around New Halas. Picking up again with a Ratonga Conjurer (me) and a Half-Elf Warden (Scooter) we restarted in Greater Feydark, but are stalled in the second zone of the continent, Butcherblock Mountains.

Guild Wars 2 is a ton of fun (the most important thing in a game), easy to jump into and play for a few minutes or a few hours. The game has a good skill/progression system, great graphics, plenty of lore, and just a touch of whimsy—without going overboard. I have a human Engineer at 80, and several other characters at lower levels. I haven't actually played in a few months, though.

I played World of Warcraft from June of 2006, when a friend got me hooked, until October of 2011. I have two level-80+ characters, plus many more lower-level ones. I tried the Pandaren starting area in the Mists of Pandaria expansion (in October, 2012), but got a "been there, done that" feeling from the experience.

Neverwinter is a fun third person shooter/D&D hybrid, and I love my half-Orc Great Weapon Fighter. I didn't get very far, but it was a nice diversion.

I have tried Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Defiance, and The Elder Scrolls Online, but found them not to my taste.

Please see also my character pages. Links above.

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Not Yet Ready to Retire

Even following through on my pledge to let Scooter finish out Glember's story before continuing Morrenia's, we've only made it another couple chapters (partly due to obligations IRL). Lots of great reveals that I will not spoil here, though I have seen a couple on Twitter, only a day after the world-wide launch of KotFE.

Of course, as close as we were when last I wrote, it is no surprise that both Morrenia and Glember dinged 65 last night. Again with the not being fast enough to capture something for Scooter, I only managed to get this one good-ish shot of Morrenia (below). Obviously, we are not done with the KotFE plotline, but I don't think anyone expected the story to match up directly with max level.

You may have noticed Morrenia is dual-wielding vibroblades in that shot. I kinda like them, but I'm not sure I'll keep them. They were originally Broonmark's. BioWare sent every player all their companions' original gear, but I had never used Brookmark other than as required on Hoth, so I had not upgraded him. I actually have doubles of quite a few items. In any event, the idea of vibroblades is cool, but lightsabers are flashier, for obvious reasons. I'm torn.

Tonight, I am on my own again, so I'll have to decide which of my Republic characters to run with. Someday, I'm going to be Legendary.

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Storytelling in the Fallen Empire

An Epic Tale in a Pretty Little Package

Hats off to the writing team on Knights of the Fallen Empire. Scooter and I are only up to Chapter VI, but we are thoroughly engrossed. Actually, my compliments to all the folks behind the animation and cinematic cutscenes, as well.

Both Glember and Morrenia picked up new outfits on Ziost, just in time to jump into the expansion story. While Scooter kept the original colors for Glember, I've got Morrenia in her customary black and red. I even sprang for yellow eyes to give her that Dark look, wishing that I had done so some time ago. Five years in carbonite has just made her angrier.

Scooter pointed out that she loves the strong female characters that drive so much of the plot of the game; women who can move mountains and shape galactic events. While Glember's and Morrenia's stories are somewhat similar, they do lead me to wonder, how will the non-Force users' stories differ?

The improved cinematography has led to some epic shots. None handy right now, sorry. Besides, screenshots can't effectively portray some of the angles, pans, and zooms that give KotFE its epic feel. And, true to Star Wars, there are plenty of comedic beats interspersed among the thrilling heroics. I am loving the improved facial expressions and especially the more realistic eye movements on the player characters. The new characters are both well "drawn" and fleshed out, lots of details on costumes and expressive faces to go along with great personalities and agendas, both overt and hidden. I also like that I don't have to be "nice" to people if I don't want be, or think that Morrenia would not be. Not that she's rude, per se, but she is ruthless, and I like being able to be ruthless, even if Koth or someone else doesn't approve. I'm tempted to restart a couple characters just to change how they went through their first few planets.

You Got Some Single-Player in My MMO

The one irritation in all this is how poorly the folks at BioWare have incorporated grouping into the story. On Makeb (Rise of the Hutt Cartel), pretty much every mission conversation was potentially group-based, though not really requiring a group for Main Story mission completion. With the Shadow of Revan, that changed slightly, so that doing the Story missions was similar to how it was in vanilla SWTOR when two characters were the same class. There might be some repetition in the conversations, but group members were not necessarily separated for much of the action and most particularly, the mission objectives.

However, with Knights of the Fallen Empire, there is a significant hurdle masquerading as a new feature. If I am in an instanced area, I can summon Scooter to help complete my objectives. But at the end of every chapter, she is unceremoniously dumped to Spacedock while I  get caught in a cutscene that can't be stopped without exiting story mode and also dumping out to the fleet. So when we are doing her Story, I have missed the first part of almost every chapter so far, and Scooter has to re-summon me after the introductory cutscene ends.

With both of us at essentially the same stage, Scooter and I had to go through fairly lengthy sections with one of us making significant progress while the other was just along for the ride. This got a little better about Chapter IV, when we ended up on a planet that had a few instanced areas. Similar to SoR, we'd do each instance twice, once for each of us, before moving on. I think I will let Scooter just finish out Glember's story through Chapter IX, then we'll go back and finish Morrenia's.

If either of us were going through solo or we had decided to plow through all of one character before returning to the other, I can bet we'd have seen the whole story by now. I can understand how we were already seeing folks at 65 by the end of the evening last Tuesday. They'd probably taken the day off and binged their way through. I can't blame them; as I said, the story is exciting.

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Companions of the Fallen Empire

Now, even though I still haven't gotten any KotFE storytime in, and despite the annoyances I described yesterday, I was gratified by many of the changes I did see. Contrary to the impression some people had that companion conversations might no longer be available after the jump due to insufficient Affection/Influence, they've been tied to story stages rather than affection. Scooter was able to complete all of the previously unfinished conversations with Glember's crew. I still need to finish with a couple of Silverleaf's people, but Morrenia was good to go before Yavin. Along those lines, with the retirement of gift fragments, all of the gifts previously available for purchase with said fragments have had their prices slashed and give beaucoup Influence, enabling me to jump ahead on various companions. My only dilemma now is who to have join Morrenia on her adventures, since I don't need Pierce tanking for her. (I know, I'll have new companions). It's also cool that gear previously tied to a given companion is now available for anyone, including my PCs. Strangely, everyone lost their pants in the deal, and of course, those characters whose gear didn't affect their appearance dropped everything. Now if only they would establish a vendor where we could get all the unique companion gear we dumped along the way. EDIT: As pointed out by Ravanel in the comment section, the devs have sent all the original companion costumes in today's mail.

Digging deeper into Companion Influence, I love that it increases regardless of the choices I make on the "BioWheel." Huzzah! Negative affection was a constant constraint, as I've noted in the past. BioWare seems to have come to the realization that MMO players will compromise their roleplaying if there is a metagame that encourages such compromise. Way back at launch, I assessed that the Light/Dark choices might be affected not only by the devs' collective values, but also the apparent limitations of LS/DS gear. Morally gray characters were left in the cold. In just one example, I never found relics that weren't tied to one alignment or the other until I arrived on Rishi.

During the development process, the folks at BioWare (at least the decision makers) fretted about how the choices players made would affect their companions' affection, but never considered how the companions' personalities or actions might affect the players' affection. In one famous example, during beta, many Warriors justifiably decided to toss Quinn out an airlock, only to find to their dismay that they'd lost their only healer. Rather than make Quinn less essential, they just made him impossible to dump/kill.

Two KotFE innovations that will enrich PvE-RP answer the two sides of this coin. Because every companion can fill any combat role, the player is not obligated by combat mechanics to keep a certain companion available at all times. Conversely, because Influence is always a net gain, whether the companion approves of player decisions or not, the players are free to make the choices they envision their character making without worrying about the meta-game of companion affection.

BioWare made much of the "Fourth Pillar" of Story, then hobbled the players' ability to participate fully in the storytelling through ill-conceived game mechanics. I'm happy and hoping that these changes to the mechanics will enable our stories to be properly told.

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Housekeeping in the Old Republic

Various RL factors kept me from really playing Knights of the Fallen Empire on Tuesday or Wednesday evening like I wanted and intended to. That's not to say I didn't log on, just that I didn't actually get to play, instead getting caught up on various "chores" in the game.

There was a bunch of inventory and mail to take care of because of changes to companion stats, plus items returned from the GTN because of a reset. On top of all that was the swag for having been subscribed for several months leading up to KotFE. Plus I bought a GTN node for my stronghold and ended up reconfiguring a space into my utility wall.

Just days ago, I decided it was time to do something about the monstrosity of my action bars. There are many temporary buffs and conditional abilities that I have tended to neglect if they weren't on my main hotbar, which is tied to my Nostromo (I'm a bit of a button masher). One thing that I really like about GW2 and especially TSW is the limited ability bar; which, while requiring some tactical planning, frees me to concentrate more fully on the action taking place in the game environment, instead of what is happening on my UI.

So I changed my UI around to hopefully pick up on those situational abilities and remember to use the battle buffs. Last night, I did some further tweaking to accommodate the altered companion ability bar and take advantage of the new snap-to-grid to properly align some stuff. This led to two annoying discoveries.

First, even though the grid origin has XY axes running through the center of the screen, and many UI elements expand from their own center, they have no center anchor point, only edges. And the various elements don't match perfectly to the grid. So snap-to was not helpful for stuff I wanted centered (or some stuff at the screen edge, but that was not as critical).

Second, and even more annoying, the new Heroic Moment ability and related Legacy abilities are only situationally available at all even from the ability window (P). I am forced to mouseclick the pop-up ability bar, when I had planned to use a secondary bar and switch to those abilities on my Nostromo. Now, these abilities may be pure cheese, inferior to any regular ability, but if so, there's not much point to putting them front and center during the two-minute (for me) Heroic Moment period. And there's not a good way for me to check their effectiveness, since they are not available to even check on if Heroic Moment isn't in effect. My first request would be a permanent return of those abilities to the Ability Window (and optional hotbar placement), even if they are not active all the time.

The third UI annoyance, which I discovered later in the evening, is that the group member map icon that used to be an easily distinguishable purple figure has been recolored to a pale blue, which causes it to get lost on the overall blue of the map interface. (Thanks to Antuan of The Ebon Hawk server for his assistance getting the above screenshot.) I was only able to see Scooter's character on the Vaiken Spacedock map because she was in motion. Otherwise, it faded into the map background. all the other map legend items are a different color than the map, from Mission givers to vendors and trainers. Why did the devs change the group member icon?

I wasn't able to jump into the new content tonight (Wednesday) either, because Scooter isn't available. And I had to go back into town on an extended errand anyway. So I'll probably do more housekeeping and work on leveling some of my Republic characters. Gotta get Legendary status!

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Anticipation of the Fallen Empire

Scooter and I made it all the way through Ziost last night (it's not a long planet), and what a conclusion to the fifth chapter! I'm definitely glad I chose to level up a Sith Warrior, as much of the story seemed oriented directly at her with the Emperor betraying and toying with his former Wrath. While Morrenia, up to that point, had never renounced her title, she was able to make a clean break with Vitiate, while still demonstrating the dark brutality of the Warrior class. I'm glad Scooter and I had the time to get her and Glember through the full storyline. We almost took Silverleaf and Ginie through as well, but we decided it was getting too late in the evening. Now that we have our Sith in place, I feel less urgency to get the Bounty Hunter and Agent through the content. Don't worry, Dear Reader. We'll be getting back to them soon enough I am sure, not to mention our long neglected Trooper and Smuggler. Maybe one of these days we'll mix it up and do a force user and a tech user.

#FallenEmpire Early Access is now live, with Launch right around the corner! More info here: https://t.co/km9kYuJUqu pic.twitter.com/1nV3edhtC2

— The Old Republic (@SWTOR) October 20, 2015

While there have been games I've liked better, I don't think I've been this excited about an expansion since WoW's Wrath of the Lich King. As I write this, Early Access has gone live, and I can't wait to get home this afternoon to play with Scooter. As was pointed out by Mhorgrim yesterday, I'm sure there will be glitches. Heck, we've encountered odd glitches in almost four-year-old content. But while there are detractors of various changes to the game, I think the changed game mechanics—as described—will be big improvements over the current system, and the story, which is the real reason we're all playing, looks to be spectacular.
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The Final Hours of the Old Republic

Such a morbid post title, no? Happily, instead of the slow fade to black that depicted the actual final minutes of Star Wars Galaxies, we're getting a new expansion. I am excited to see how KotFE plays against the backdrop of the shambles of the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Scooter, who has the day off tomorrow, is poised to do the patching necessary for the headstart on both of our computers as soon as it is available. I'll be rushing home at the end of the day, though *ahem—cough, cough* I feel I may be coming down with something. >,>

So after hitting 55 (and after my last post), Scooter and I realized we might speed up the leveling process by finally using some of those 25% XP boosts that BioWare occasionally tosses our way. This worked out pretty well, since Glember and Morrenia both reached level 60 before leaving Rishi, something we did not manage on Silverleaf and Ginie.

For clarity's sake, it may help in the next few paragraphs to remember that Glember and Ginie are Scooter's Agent and Inquisitor, respectively; while Silverleaf the Bounty Hunter and Morrenia the Warrior belong to me.

After a suitably epic time on the pirate haven (which I had not connected with the Rishi Maze during our first sojourn) with Torch the Mandalorian and Revan's lackies, Morrenia and Glember traveled to Yavin IV and were instrumental in dealing with the out-of control Revanite Cult. I was mildly surprised that everyone and their brother seemed to know that Morrenia is the Emperor's Wrath (more appropriately dubbed the Empire's Wrath by Darth Marr) while none of the other characters we've played receive the same instant recognition by so many different NPCs.

Glember and Morrenia each got their interlude with a new NPC, Scooter choosing Theron while I went with Lana. These romances, honestly, feel a little tacked on compared to the efforts we went to with some of our original companions. Whereas Silverleaf was loyal to Mako throughout the expansion content (who also happens to be his regular companion on away missions), Morrenia had rejected Quinn, especially after his betrayal, and therefore has been free to play the field, and done so with pretty much everyone who had a heartbeat—something I've made a character trait. Ginie was rather taken with Vector as well, but Glember had not yet sealed the deal with Andronikos, so Theron was fair game. But with no affection gain, the romances seem awkward at first and a little "out of nowhere." I am assuming in KotFE, new companions (which, in SoR, Lana and Theron were not) will have Influence bars (the new Affection), and any possible romance will develop more slowly and "naturally." I also hope there will be fewer sexual harassment liabilities among the new romancibles.

Here, Morrenia is set to rendezvous with Glember and Lana on Ziost, where we hopefully can make significant progress this evening. I am mostly including this picture because I am gratified that Vette is in the pilot's chair, not Quinn. Morrenia probably has him cleaning the Fury's head—that's a ship's bathroom for you non-military types. Besides, 2V-R8 could use a break. I hope this bodes well for the expansion story, with Quinn nowhere in sight.

And so, Morrenia's Tempest wings into the Black. Likely, when next we meet, "five years" will have passed, and Morrenia, Glember, and all their associates will have awakened from a long sleep to a new galactic order. And the battle with the Eternal Empire will begin!

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If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Leveling in the Last Days of the Old Republic

Morrenia and Glember are just about done with Makeb. While Scooter and I are zipping through the content on this second pass, there are story points we're picking up that we missed before. In an interesting quirk of the 12xXP system, though Glember was behind Morrenia (the screenie shows G hitting 53 while M dings 54), Morrenia barely got over the line to 55 by killing something, and Glember shot past her when we both turned in that particular quest. So now, Morrenia is the one trailing. I was actually disappointed to discover that Morrenia was unable to [Flirt] with Lord Cytherat. I found out doing some quick research that his is a same-gender only flirtation. (There is a female same-gender romance on the Republic side, but it will be a while before any of my Pub characters are that high.) I guess the Shadow of Revan has bisexual romance opportunities, but not Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

As is perhaps appropriate, Glember and Morrenia have very different approaches to the Dark Side, which is a subtle reflection of Scooter's and my approach to the game, as well as the devs' and the voice actors' characterizations. Morrenia is much more expressive and direct in her application of "evil." As I said to Scooter last night, Morrenia revels in all her passions.

Glember, meanwhile, is a much cooler cucumber. Her approach to the Dark Side is dispassionate; all her actions calculated to further her goals and ambitions. As Scooter said the other night, Glember is smoothly evil, while Morrenia is more brutal. Where Morrenia might literally spring headlong into the action, Glember is the thoughtful one, hanging back and assessing the situation before becoming involved. Much like Scooter and I, they complement each other. With Talos healing and Pierce tanking, we're quite the little squad of destruction.

Syp, over on Bio Break, is feeling a mix of nervousness and excitement over the new expansion, and wondering how other players are approaching the headstart next week. Even though I still have a few characters from Day-One Launch, two of which were in a position to run through RotHC and SoR, I am more attached to Silverleaf and especially Morrenia. And I'm looking forward to both the changes to the game mechanics and the additional story content.

DON'T FORGET: I have NYCC Cantina Codes that may still be valid. Pick up your Prinawe Union today!

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Guardians of the Galaxy (Far Far Away)

As you may have seen last night (Tuesday) if you were on Twitter, Scooter and I got Silverleaf and Ginie to max level (at least for another few days) just before finishing the Revan stuff on Yavin IV.

We still have to check out Ziost, but we're going to switch to our Sith pair, Glember and Morrenia for a bit, and hopefully get them through the expansion content before Monday. Unlike the last time I got a character to max in SWTOR, I am looking forward to the impending KotFE expansion rather than getting ready to hang up my blaster.

We spent this evening (Wednesday) with Morrenia and Glember on Makeb, each reaching 55 just before we took a break for the night. (I'll have some pics tomorrow.) I'll miss 12x XP, but Scooter and I belatedly realized that we have a ton of XP boosts (about 20 hours worth for Morrenia), so we plan to use them until we run out or reach 60 whichever comes first (the latter, more likely).

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Further Up and Further In

The (temporary) finish line looms. Silverleaf is at level 59 and 97%, and Ginie is close behind with about 70%. After quite the adventure on Rishi, we stepped out onto Yavin IV to finish off the threat Darth Revan poses to the Galaxy, hopefully. (Actually, since I know there's a bit more on Ziost, I wonder what we'll accomplish here.) It was interesting that we went through what amounted to class-specific side stories on Rishi, and how that has reversed from the main story focusing on our class and the planetary and side quests being more about the general story. As our characters become more "prominent" in galactic "current events," our own stories become the sidelights.

We're really enjoying the story, though it's gotten kind of awkward having to essentially do things twice in order to stay together. It wasn't as big a deal when the class stories were more independent of each other, but I can see where they could have done group conversations and still allowed for individual responses from the player characters. Or kept the individual conversations for classes, and added a group version for people going through together.

In any event, we're having a great time. It's been really interesting to go through new environments, and the folks down at BioWare have really stepped up their game, I think. Makeb was pretty cool and Rishi is gorgeous. Even though they just introduced the Yavin stronghold (house) a couple months ago, I think it might have been more interesting to have a place on the pirates' haven. Scooter says it's her favorite place since Nar Shaddaa. (Commenting on this now, I wish I had gotten a good picture of the place for this post.)

As soon as we finish the Shadow of Revan stuff on Silverleaf and Ginie, Scooter and I plan to return to our Sith duo, Morrenia and Glember. We want to bring them up to 60, as well, before Knights of the Fallen Empire launches. As we approach the end of the current storyline, we look forward to the exciting new stuff coming in just one week (for those with early access).

NYCC Cantina Codes: Prinawe Union

I know, I know; who cares about all that? Where's the loot? Once again, I managed to snag a Cantina Code that allowed me to now share with you, Dear Reader, if you are interested:

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/8vslh

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/cxkb9

As always, log in to your account on SWTOR.com, then click on or copy/paste one of the two links above into your browser address window. You should receive a confirmation and a new code to share with your friends. Then, the next time you log in to each character, the speeder and some other goody will be waiting in your mailbox. (I've mostly gotten dyes, but also a Power Droid pet and a couple Carbonite Chamber recovery cosmetics.) I'm not sure what the limit is on these codes, so try them with no guarantee from me or BioWare.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Another Dead Horse: "Clunky Combat" in TSW

It being the Halloween season, both Syp and Belghast (You may be able to tell how many blogs I actually manage to read on a regular basis. It isn't a long list.) have posts up today  about The Secret World. Belghast's post was a recruitment piece, promoting the virtues of the game. While Syp had some creepy screencaps. Perhaps inevitably, the topic of TSW's "clunky, slow combat" came up in the commentary, and Tanek finally offered up a possible explanation, at least from his perspective. I decided to write a rebuttal; however, Tanek did point out that TSW is one of his favorite games. But it is in spite of the combat, rather than a result of it.

Impact:
"Fighting with fist and blades I have not felt like most skills give any feel you are actually fighting anything. For most of my skills [those that don't involve knockdowns, etc.] there is no feedback beyond watching the enemy health bars tick down."

Name a game where this is not the case. None of the MMOs I have ever played effectively mimicked how a real battle with swords would play out. SWTOR, for example, makes some attempts to vary the animation to account for blocks, etc. But all too often the characters swing their lightsabers and weather blaster bolts with only a floating red number and a gap in the health bar to show for it. WoW was even worse, with dodge calculations happening entirely in the background.

Targeting:
"Some of this may come down to play style and choice of weapon, . . . the game decided that instead of your assist target being yourself or a group member, it picks the enemy or an inanimate object."

If you're trying to directly target characters in the battle area, I can see how this might be a problem. As a healer, I target using the party/raid frame (the default will do). This is an old habit I picked up playing WoW.

Mouse-look/target mode:
"I have come to like using what some call mouse-look mode. . . but it seems to only work when that was exactly where you had your cursor when you went into mouse-look. There is no easy way to temporarily use the cursor if needed to do something like click a loot roll button on screen (to be fair, the only game I have seen do this in a way I like is DDO. . .) Switching targets can seem a bit random. . ."

This seems to come down to preferred playstyle. I've never used "mouse-look" as described. (When I left-click-and-hold, the camera moves around my character. Right-click-and-hold causes my character to face the same direction as the camera. Holding both down, makes my character move. (Yes, I realize this is fairly normal behavior for MMOs post-EQ.) By default, reticle-based Target Mode in TSW is toggled by hitting "T" on your keyboard, and works consistently as far as I can tell. Toggling out in order to mouse click the UI or whatever is no more difficult than many other games where Target Mode is the norm and not just an option (e.g., The Elder Scrolls Online). As an aside, reticle targeting being the default is the reason Scooter and I never got into TESO. And if Tanek hasn't found a satisfactory toggle method outside of DDO, that's cool. But then TSW's is simply one of many combat systems he must not like.

Movement: 
"This is not always a problem specific to combat, but movement is TSW can seem somewhat 'floaty.' When fighting multiple enemies in an area that is not flat, this can lead to some interesting situations where you might have trouble avoiding environmental damage because you just… can’t… jump… on… that… ROCK!"

Again, this is not a problem unique to TSW. I've played plenty of games in which jumping and uneven surfaces were problematic at times. This is due to a discrepancy between the generally more intricate visual details of the game world vs the generally much simpler polyhedrons used to calculate collisions in the game environment ("hitboxes"). Hitbox Dissonance affects everything in this list, really.
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Overall, I would say that combat in TSW is on par with most other MMOs I have played. Having said that, I do have my issues with it. Though I still consider it one of my favorite games, I haven't played TSW in quite a while because I developed an extreme dislike of the AEGIS system the devs implemented with Issue 9 ("The Black Signal") and the Tokyo zones, making an already fairly long per-mob time-to-kill even longer.

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