Does SWTOR Suck, or is it just me?

[fulle]

Hello Everyone,
So, my friends begged me to play TOR with them, and while the launch went smoothly, the graphics seem clean, and nothing feels horribly broken per say, I can't help but get the feeling that the game sucks. For me, it feels like a WoW clone that missed a lot of the important stuff in the cloning process.

Examples of missed stuff?

"Click to move"
- I can't tell you how annoyed I was that this was left out. I can surely bind NumLock to a mouse key as a work around, but "Click to move" not making it into the game was something I found immensely annoying.

No meaningful UI customization.
- Even without Mods, WoW and Guild Wars both allowed me to change a lot of things in the UI.... and TOR just doesn't. It's a real step backwards.

No macro support.

No mods.

No taking short cuts.
- If you try to stray off the beaten path, you'll soon realize you can't.

Weak character customization.
- There will eventually come a time, when you'll wonder if you're speaking, or if it's another player in your party

Poor combat responsiveness.
- you know when you get a bad mod, and nothing in your UI responds very quick and has a lot of latency. It's a feature in TOR now.

Lifeless mob and NPC spawning.
- I'm not sure how to explain this, but picture groups of 4 mobs standing next to each other, quite obviously waiting to be killed by a player character. Served up like little dishes for you. NPCs standing at static locations, that never move. Now, think of an NPC in Skyrim going about their day, moving from their home to their job location, chatting with other NPCs along the way, and returning home at night to sleep. I know that MMOs are going to have lifeless mob and NPC spawning to an extent, but for some reason in TOR it feels really jarring in how bad it is.

Class based quests
- Yeah, you're damn right I listed that as a negative. Linear class-based story quests... basically splitting up my guild so that we can't quest together? I HATE THIS. Sure, my Jedi Knight friend can tag along while I do my Consular quests. But the entire time he's probably thinking "OMG, I want to get back to doing MY quests! This sucks!" instead of "I'm happy I can get my quests done with my friend", which would be what he'd be thinking if his objectives were the same. Plus they're horribly easy and boring if done with 2 people.... leading to us not wanting to do anything but Flash Points with groups.
- TLDR, this BS ruins incentives for people to group together, and makes the game less of a social experience, which is bad.

The Classes are all awkward hybrids.
- OK, OK. Maybe not ALL the classes are hybrid abominations.... just most of them.

PvP level brackets are broken
- Yay, a level 15 can fight a level 50 and somewhat fight back!.... wait.... why are they in the same PvP bracket? I... don't understand. The 15 is still missing a LOT of core abilities.... uh. How wasn't this seen as the most idiotic thing ever?

I don't know. I really really want to like the game, and I'm sure that's not coming across at all.... but.... it just.... sucks.

Is it just me? Or are there a lot of other people out there feeling the same way?

 

[casualcolors]

The reason click-to-move isn't included as a baseline feature is that it is obsolete in competitive MMO-style play, which star wars wants to tap into. The feeling of connectivity between player inputs and avatar-actions is part of what propelled world of warcraft to its heights.

I understand that you personally would like it, and I think it's probably an oversight that it was left out, but it doesn't seem like anything that you're going to be getting anytime soon because that feature has essentially been phased out of the mmo-style gameplay. The genre is just too developed now for the simplicity of click-to-move to be effective in a competitive environment.

As far as the rest of your concerns, I cannot address them because I don't play the game personally, but I've been a top-100 wow guild player for several years so I'm at least familiar with the format that they share in a lot of regards. Sorry that the game isn't living up to your expectations though. To be perfectly frank, I think that this is a trait of the genre. MMO-games just aren't designed to be the masterpieces that some other genres lend themselves to. They are a vehicle for financial catalyst and everyone wants a piece ASAP. So much so that games like Aion and Rift have been released with sloppy character movement that should have been resolved in the alpha-stage of testing.

I don't mean to sound sour, but the constant and egregious money-grab that the MMO-genre has developed into has actually forced me to reconsider what I consider valuable to my gaming experience. I've actually quit world of warcraft because there has been more time spent on developing the future non-combat pet combat-system than there has been constructively spent on making pvp feel relevant again, let alone some of the features that have made raiding on high-levels of difficulty more "accessible".

Sorry for the long rant. Hopefully the star wars team will be more in touch with its community and start to patch the game's shortcomings.

 

[agentX_70]

Yea, SW:TOR sucks.
I thought I will give SWTOR a try. But after installing it, ugh, no.
Played it for 30 minutes during one of the last beta phases but I dont think it will get better later.
The first thing that struck me were the awkward controls.
Then a lot of the stuff that the OP mentioned.
I found it incredibly boring.
But then I dislike WOW types of games in general.

 

[Gamerboy]

Hopefully they make it worthy of my addiction. I haven't played it yet but I want to.

Worst thing I read on this thread - "wow clone" ugh, I didn't even make the two month mark with WoW back when it launched. I really really hope it's not as bad as you say.

 

[fulle]

@casualcolors

While "click to move" is not effective in PvP situation, I think it makes 1 handed gameplay easier while doing less intensive tasks, like turning in quests. You can hold both mouse keys at once to move forward, or hit NumLock to auto-run forward, so I'll probably get used to that eventually. Not a game breaking omission by any means.

Thank you for your input on the "click to move".

Being a little more positive, if someone was to like Star Wars lore, it was roughly a 20 gig install due to the huge amount of voice acting done in the game. Fans will probably have a lot of fun with the game.

It's the sum of the little things missing right now that's bothering me. My character plays like a Discipline Priest. Almost to a fault. So.... Why not play the real thing?

My friends and I are still having fun with the game though, and it's had a very smooth launch in my opinion. At the time of writing my post, I was just feeling overly negative, and wanted to see if anyone else had similar thoughts, or if I was being too critical of a new MMO.

 

[casualcolors]

I don't think you're being hypercritical. It's a major AAA release. The least you could expect from it is a modicum of competence. It's not like there isn't a hugely successful template and millions of feedback posts on the genre to learn from.

 

[billxlinton]

Hello Everyone,
So, my friends begged me to play TOR with them, and while the launch went smoothly, the graphics seem clean, and nothing feels horribly broken per say, I can't help but get the feeling that the game sucks. For me, it feels like a WoW clone that missed a lot of the important stuff in the cloning process.

Examples of missed stuff?

"Click to move"
- I can't tell you how annoyed I was that this was left out. I can surely bind NumLock to a mouse key as a work around, but "Click to move" not making it into the game was something I found immensely annoying.

No meaningful UI customization.
- Even without Mods, WoW and Guild Wars both allowed me to change a lot of things in the UI.... and TOR just doesn't. It's a real step backwards.

No macro support.

No mods.

No taking short cuts.
- If you try to stray off the beaten path, you'll soon realize you can't.

Weak character customization.
- There will eventually come a time, when you'll wonder if you're speaking, or if it's another player in your party

Poor combat responsiveness.
- you know when you get a bad mod, and nothing in your UI responds very quick and has a lot of latency. It's a feature in TOR now.

Lifeless mob and NPC spawning.
- I'm not sure how to explain this, but picture groups of 4 mobs standing next to each other, quite obviously waiting to be killed by a player character. Served up like little dishes for you. NPCs standing at static locations, that never move. Now, think of an NPC in Skyrim going about their day, moving from their home to their job location, chatting with other NPCs along the way, and returning home at night to sleep. I know that MMOs are going to have lifeless mob and NPC spawning to an extent, but for some reason in TOR it feels really jarring in how bad it is.

Class based quests
- Yeah, you're damn right I listed that as a negative. Linear class-based story quests... basically splitting up my guild so that we can't quest together? I HATE THIS. Sure, my Jedi Knight friend can tag along while I do my Consular quests. But the entire time he's probably thinking "OMG, I want to get back to doing MY quests! This sucks!" instead of "I'm happy I can get my quests done with my friend", which would be what he'd be thinking if his objectives were the same. Plus they're horribly easy and boring if done with 2 people.... leading to us not wanting to do anything but Flash Points with groups.
- TLDR, this BS ruins incentives for people to group together, and makes the game less of a social experience, which is bad.

The Classes are all awkward hybrids.
- OK, OK. Maybe not ALL the classes are hybrid abominations.... just most of them.

PvP level brackets are broken
- Yay, a level 15 can fight a level 50 and somewhat fight back!.... wait.... why are they in the same PvP bracket? I... don't understand. The 15 is still missing a LOT of core abilities.... uh. How wasn't this seen as the most idiotic thing ever?

I don't know. I really really want to like the game, and I'm sure that's not coming across at all.... but.... it just.... sucks.

Is it just me? Or are there a lot of other people out there feeling the same way?

No its not just you. I was sooo excited about this game, but I was really pissed when I realized I couldn't actually explore the world. The "world" as they call it, is actually just a series of WoW like instances. You can't actually go where you want. In fact, its basically one-player WoW with Star Wars skin attached, and without the free-roaming.

Then there's the space combat. Remember Starfox on the n64? Yeah, that about sums it up. I was really excited about this and expecting something like Galaxies, but much better. Instead I got the worst one-player KOTOR game Bioware has ever made.

 

[Gamerboy]

It's linear? No open world?

 

[AntiZig]

I think part of the reason why Class quests are mainly geared to 1 person doing them and only allowing parties in case the player needs help is because it's coming from Bioware. These guys specialize in single player story telling, which is why Class quests feel so much what they are - single player experience.

 

[benski]

I played the beta for about a week and had alot of the same complaints, especially about the brain dead enemies that respawn at an annoyingly high rate. It was cool to play for a while because it's starwars, and the opening cinimatic is really cool, and the voice acting is good, but in the end it just felt boring and I didn't have any motivation to continue with the game knowing I wasn't going to be willing to shell out a monthly subscription fee to play it after the beta was over.

 

[envymert]

I am having a good/great time playing it and leveling with my friends. That being said it is because I chose to play it at a casual rate. However alot of your negatives on the game are comparing it to WoW the BEST MMO and its 7 going on 8 years. Give SWTOR a few months for the modding community for addons and new UI's and the devs/bioware/EA to add stuff and tweak the game. MMO's are alot of work and they will continue to improve and add stuff.

Summary, I love the game in its current state coming from WoW, but the game needs time to develope an economy and develope as a whole. Community, mods, customizations etc. I play it for fun and the story telling aspect, and I am not a Star Wars fan.

 

[lux_13]

I am having a good/great time playing it and leveling with my friends. That being said it is because I chose to play it at a casual rate. However alot of your negatives on the game are comparing it to WoW the BEST MMO and its 7 going on 8 years. Give SWTOR a few months for the modding community for addons and new UI's and the devs/bioware/EA to add stuff and tweak the game. MMO's are alot of work and they will continue to improve and add stuff.

Summary, I love the game in its current state coming from WoW, but the game needs time to develope an economy and develope as a whole. Community, mods, customizations etc. I play it for fun and the story telling aspect, and I am not a Star Wars fan.

Right... but how much did they spend on this game? like 300 million dollars? you would think a $300 million dollar game would be developed....

 

[casualcolors]

Overall for MMO players, they should probably try to enjoy this young time in Star Wars before it inevitably becomes as mundane and routine as world of warcraft feels to anyone who plays the game at a high level.

 

[envymert]

Right... but how much did they spend on this game? like 300 million dollars? you would think a $300 million dollar game would be developed....

Things like Mods, UI's, Addons are created by players ..... yes everything you download off cursegaming for tweaks, dmg recorders (recount) etc come from and were developed by players give these things time. So 300 million means lets release 7 years worth of content (since you're comparing it to WoW) with our new game? They want to make it playable for a long time. People really need to stop comparing it to WoW.

I was in the worlds best guild , Death and Taxes from Vanilla and into BC. When WOW released there were no BGs, 2 raids with no option of difficulty, no custom UI's, the game had much less to do and content then SWTOR did at launch so please lets stop comparing the two.

Also for the sake of you bringing up another argument like SWTOR is WoW reskinned. WoW took EVERY IDEA it has , BGs, PvP rank, Raids, Quests collect/kill etc from games before it like DAoC, UO and Everquest 1/2 to name a few so please dont start an argument you cannot back up.

 

[casualcolors]

Things like Mods, UI's, Addons are created by players ..... yes everything you download off cursegaming for tweaks, dmg recorders (recount) etc come from and were developed by players give these things time. So 300 million means lets release 7 years worth of content (since you're comparing it to WoW) with our new game? They want to make it playable for a long time. People really need to stop comparing it to WoW.

I was in the worlds best guild , Death and Taxes from Vanilla and into BC. When WOW released there were no BGs, 2 raids with no option of difficulty, no custom UI's, the game had much less to do and content then SWTOR did at launch so please lets stop comparing the two.

Also for the sake of you bringing up another argument like SWTOR is WoW reskinned. WoW took EVERY IDEA it has , BGs, PvP rank, Raids, Quests collect/kill etc from games before it like DAoC, UO and Everquest 1/2 to name a few so please dont start an argument you cannot back up.

DAoC took every idea it ever had from Darkness Falls. Such a vicious cycle!

 

[Jprobes]

Things like Mods, UI's, Addons are created by players ..... yes everything you download off cursegaming for tweaks, dmg recorders (recount) etc come from and were developed by players give these things time. So 300 million means lets release 7 years worth of content (since you're comparing it to WoW) with our new game? They want to make it playable for a long time. People really need to stop comparing it to WoW.

I was in the worlds best guild , Death and Taxes from Vanilla and into BC. When WOW released there were no BGs, 2 raids with no option of difficulty, no custom UI's, the game had much less to do and content then SWTOR did at launch so please lets stop comparing the two.

Also for the sake of you bringing up another argument like SWTOR is WoW reskinned. WoW took EVERY IDEA it has , BGs, PvP rank, Raids, Quests collect/kill etc from games before it like DAoC, UO and Everquest 1/2 to name a few so please dont start an argument you cannot back up.

Ugh, Death & Taxes was not the best guild.

If I do recall, you wiped on Kel'Thuzad at 2% due to ya'll getting upity because you were about to get the world first!! .... and choked!!!.

(IMO Worst choke job since the 04 Yankee's)

(Then he bugged out and did not re-spawn, therefor you didn't get the world first. Grats to Nhilium!!)

Plus, didn't you guys fall apart over a cheating girl and a 8" wang?

Just Sayin' .... <3<3<3

PS... where my Vodka....

 

[casualcolors]

Ugh, Death & Taxes was not the best guild.

PS... where my Vodka....

About 2 raid tiers ahead of your toon I'm sure.

 

[Jprobes]

About 2 raid tiers ahead of your toon I'm sure.

Not really, maybe 3-4 weeks in L60Naxx, BC Raiding was a joke until Sunwell though. We killed kael'thas before they nerfed P1,2&3 and rolled MH/BT within weeks, no more than 4 lockouts.

I actually have a lot of respect for D&T, I was hoping for them to destroy those pinko euro commies... =D

It was just a friendly jab and I agree with everything Envymert said actually.

It took WoW over year to see any reliable raid mods that helped, and until the Ace platform came I used no mods except KTM Threat which was parlayed in OMEN ect...

While I do not mind the standard UI in ToR, I cannot play WoW using a standard UI.

 

[casualcolors]

Not really, maybe 3-4 weeks in L60Naxx, BC Raiding was a joke until Sunwell though. We killed kael'thas before they nerfed P1,2&3 and rolled MH/BT within weeks, no more than 4 lockouts.

I actually have a lot of respect for D&T, I was hoping for them to destroy those pinko euro commies... =D

It was just a friendly jab and I agree with everything Envymert said actually.

It took WoW over year to see any reliable raid mods that helped, and until the Ace platform came I used no mods except KTM Threat which was parlayed in OMEN ect...

While I do not mind the standard UI in ToR, I cannot play WoW using a standard UI.

RDX before Ace but yes, RDX didn't make a real appearance until well into molten core.

 

[portal]

Every single quest is click the same generator, box or terminal and kill 30 npcs. Every single one. The "bonus" missions, are just a misnomer for a kill x quest. It's the same thing, as it's required. Bonus != Optional. A real bonus mission would be something like clicking the generators in a set amount of time, and get bonus experience.

Compaions are nice, but kind of takes away the whole fun part when everyone else has the exact same companions. There's a lot of bugs, like Mako's toggle auto abilities get reset when you mount. Ths makes her useless because she just casts a crowd control entire fight, and won't heal you. I don't really understand why we could not customize our companions. Why is there no talent tree for them? Why can't we change their names? etc

Crafting is dull and boring. Whatever happened to meaninful crafting like eve, swg and vanguard? All you do is send your companions on "missions" and they return stuff back for you.

2011 (release) and with DirectX 11 out for years now, it surprises me they did not even take the basic features of it. There's no reason this game should not have anti-aliasing built in to the client, and not forced. Texture quality is reduced on players and monsters when exploring the world, but enhanced when you talk to people. Strange.

Combat is unrepsonsive. There is a massive post, with BIoWare stating it is a known issue, about delay on certain spells. Don't even try to deny this, when bioware themselves acknowledge the bug. A lot of the spells are useless.

The only quest dialogue worth mentioning is class quest. Everything else is 2 windows of dialogue and move on to clicking generators and killing 30 guys. To be fair here, there are a FEW meaningful small quests.

Space missions are basically on-rails (Starfox) point and click. There's probably about 10-15 of them, and they become boring daily quests after doing them a few times. There's no resaon to really even do space, except to relieve yourself from the click 5 generators, kill 30 droids quest you're on. I honestly have no idea why they would not have put space pvp in. This would have been awesome. Or hell even co-op space missions?! This is an MMORPG!

Lack of UI mods, macros and customizable interface really sets this game back to 2005. If you want a competitive hardcore raiding scene, you need to compete directly with the market contender. Otheriwse we're going back. I mean seriously, why was there no option to scale the UI or move things around ON LAUNCH.

Honestly I doubt this game will be anything specatular. It has less features overall than Warhammer had at launch, and the same balance issues as it. There are so many things this game could have done, but didn't. There are no mmo factors to the space missions. End game is basically outdated 4 mans, raiding and battlegrounds. The lack of LFD while leveling makes running dungeons painful.

Take off your honeymoon glasses people. If they wanted to copy World of Warcraft, they did it. Too bad they copied the 2005 version of it. Nobody wants to wait 7 years for a game to be where the others are now. Nobody would have bought this game if it did not have Star Wars on the front of it.

Verdict - 4 / 10

 

[fulle]

I've been slacking on this tread...

Input delay:
There's a bit of buggyness causing input delay when an action is attempted to be executed before it is off cooldown. Like, if you were mashing a key on a keyboard, rather than waiting for it to show that it was ready, and clicking the ability.
Dev's have acknowledged the issue, and I think it will be fixed soon(tm).

Something perhaps more problematic, however, are the animations, which don't properly line up with casting durations. Quite often it's impossible to react to something another player does in PvP because you simply cannot see an animation for that action start up....
I don't anticipate this sort of thing will be fixed for a long time. Since, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding on how casting animations should have been properly setup in the game.

Gamebreaking in PvP, IMHO... but not a big deal in PvE.

On the mods issue:

Yes mods are made by the community, BUT, the community needs a proper toolset to build the mods upon. When WoW was released, it had the scripting language Lua integrated into the client from the start, as well as a heavily modable ui. SWTOR released with no tools.

Implementing mods isn't going to be trivial, and it's not a "be patient, they'll release soon" situation. Meaningful mods, for normal players (who aren't going against the ToS or intentionally cheating), might never come to SWTOR.

Same goes for macros.



In response to the weird infighting:
Nobody gives a damn about the WoW guild of other posters. In the slightest.

 

[Knightomite]

Top those other things it now crashes a lot , and the combat sucks because your player has no AI and you have to click on a target first before you can do anything game lags mouse doesn't respond fast enough too many attacks
and you cant hardly get them in a quick slot. But now CRASH! CRASH CRASH.

POTCO is more fun and its Disney I'm like you guys wanted to like it but this game must have been modded by newbs.

 

[purple buzz]

oh yes. it sucks alright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd5DWNVscsU

 

[michealrp]

I am having a good/great time playing it and leveling with my friends. That being said it is because I chose to play it at a casual rate. However alot of your negatives on the game are comparing it to WoW the BEST MMO and its 7 going on 8 years. Give SWTOR a few months for the modding community for addons and new UI's and the devs/bioware/EA to add stuff and tweak the game. MMO's are alot of work and they will continue to improve and add stuff.

Summary, I love the game in its current state coming from WoW, but the game needs time to develope an economy and develope as a whole. Community, mods, customizations etc. I play it for fun and the story telling aspect, and I am not a Star Wars fan.

One would think that with WoW running for as long as it has, with the abilities that it now has, and the player base that matured through it's growing pains, would have the common sense to take those lessons and learn from them.

SWTOR has shuttles, which is nice. However if you're "hearth" is on cool down, you may literally have to take a speeder to make the trek to your uplink shuttle to get into a flash point. The only economical way to do it is to plan on doing flash points and sitting in Republic Fleet and do little else.

In WoW, you have the ability to look on the horizon and see something that interests you, be it at the end of your horizon and next to the sea, you can go there. In SWTOR, you can't. You get maybe 20 seconds off the beaten path and you start taking damage from fatugue. Tatooine is horrid about that.

Yesterday, I took a speeder to a location that was opened up to me on Corilia (sp) and I got fatigue and died as soon as I stepped off of the bloody speeder.

While I understand the class quest idea of SWTOR, some of them are a bit off level when they're presented to the player. Meaning you either have to do them 10 times to complete, burning med packs and repairs along the way, or forgo them completely until you get past the level that they are apparently intended for, in order to complete them.

WoW provides the player the ability to call on other players to assist them in even single player quests. SWTOR, for it's class quest, locks out other classes. Two jedi for example, can't do the same quest even if they're at the same position in the line.

My character is level 47, a Jedi Sentinel, I'm wondering what I'll be doing in 3 levels.

People say that it's a new game, and yes, it is a new game. Take a moment to consider all of the other MMO's that have been out there for years now, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes, DC Universe Online, Start Trek Online, etc. If you've played them, you know the faults that they had when they were released and how they've attempted to improve since release date. One would think, that with the budget that BW had for this game, they'd at least have taken the time to investigate what players like and disliked about all of the other currently existing MMO's and adjust / develope SWTOR accordingly.

Learn from others mistakes, don't repeat them.

 

[michealrp]

Hello Everyone,
So, my friends begged me to play TOR with them, and while the launch went smoothly, the graphics seem clean, and nothing feels horribly broken per say, I can't help but get the feeling that the game sucks. For me, it feels like a WoW clone that missed a lot of the important stuff in the cloning process.

Examples of missed stuff?

"Click to move"
- I can't tell you how annoyed I was that this was left out. I can surely bind NumLock to a mouse key as a work around, but "Click to move" not making it into the game was something I found immensely annoying.

While this one isn't a game breaker, I can see where some would prefer to use it.

No meaningful UI customization.
- Even without Mods, WoW and Guild Wars both allowed me to change a lot of things in the UI.... and TOR just doesn't. It's a real step backwards.

No macro support.

No mods.

No taking short cuts.
- If you try to stray off the beaten path, you'll soon realize you can't.

These on the other hand, are serious lack of foethought in the design of the game. All, or some of these features, have been in most MMO's since the early to mid 80's.

Eve Online - UI Customization built in. Weapon Grouping on/off, hud color changes, etc. While not as detailed as those in other MMO's, the basics are covered. Taking shortcuts. Eve was built with this in mind. You can go anywhere at any level, the only limitation is your ability to survive npc's that are much stronger than you are or other players when you enter into low sec or null sec space.

World of Warcraft - Mod support, Macro support, minor UI customization built in, with additional support via add-on mods, the ability to travel anywhere on land via walking or mount, latest versions allow flight throughout most zones.

Class based quests
- Yeah, you're damn right I listed that as a negative. Linear class-based story quests... basically splitting up my guild so that we can't quest together? I HATE THIS. Sure, my Jedi Knight friend can tag along while I do my Consular quests. But the entire time he's probably thinking "OMG, I want to get back to doing MY quests! This sucks!" instead of "I'm happy I can get my quests done with my friend", which would be what he'd be thinking if his objectives were the same. Plus they're horribly easy and boring if done with 2 people.... leading to us not wanting to do anything but Flash Points with groups.

Yep, this is a problem, a somewhat large problem for an MMO. With the way that the game is set up now, it seems more like a single player, linear game, with a multi-player aspect added into the mix at the last minute. An MMO, by nature, is designed to allow multiple players interact thoughout the enviornment, PVE or PVP. This game, in my opinion, is more of a MSO with MP added. Sure, you an interact to a degree with others, but for the most part, all PVE content, with the exception of 2 - 6 missions per planet, require multiple players. You can skip these and not have much loss in revenue or gear.

PvP level brackets are broken
- Yay, a level 15 can fight a level 50 and somewhat fight back!.... wait.... why are they in the same PvP bracket? I... don't understand. The 15 is still missing a LOT of core abilities.... uh. How wasn't this seen as the most idiotic thing ever?

This is something that other MMO's have had to deal with in their lifetime. It's sad when you have a brand new game that had no one do the research and realize this. Sometimes, it makes you wonder if developers actually play other games to get the hang of what does and doesn't work well.

I don't know. I really really want to like the game, and I'm sure that's not coming across at all.... but.... it just.... sucks.

Is it just me? Or are there a lot of other people out there feeling the same way?

It's not just you, I too would like the game to be successful. However, the last two MMO's that I've played since WoW, were Star Trek Online and now this. Cryptic did the same thing with STO. Max level 35, which players were able to reach, even playing casually playing, within 2 weeks, and then there was zero end game content at release. This week, today as I recall, STO is now going F2P to try to get more subscriptions to the game.
BioWare has done pretty much the same thing. They spent so much money on the game, but seems to have missed the mark. With the time in development, folks expected more.

They wanted Jedi Knights, Multi Player, with Star Wars X-Wing / Tie Fighter combined. Instead we got given a revamped Jedi Knight: Dark Forces with a Star Fox minigame that lets you interact with players in a multi player style but prohibits groups of 2 of the same class doing the same quests. Did someone fall backwards or did they just not take a look and see that it was 2012?