Player level brackets was one of Gabe's promises made pre-launch & not just the simple 10-49/50 either, but he's terrible at his job & didn't get fired, so what can we do about it?

....me up with people that are of the same skill level that I am or at best provide me a grouping list of other players that are within my own skill level range that I could choose from to join a premade team? Now I'm just, rightfully so, under the impression that RANKED Warzones are no different than any other Warzone in because it's still up to the individual player to do all the research on other player's PvP rankings & then invite them into their 8-man team. Why can't BioWare create something that collects statistics on PvP player rankings & then crunches them & then provides us with a grouping list or auto-groups us with similarly skilled players, is this a hard thing to do? Why don't they have a proper matchmatching system in place?

I understand all of that GhoXen, I really truly do, but, I really wish the pre-launch forums had not been wiped so I could provide the exact quote from the Dev about the credit sinks in this game & their relation to to the credit exploits & the possibility that the credit sinks would even out once the bulk of the exploited credits had been drained from the system. I know that MMO's need credit sinks, but it seems to me that in comparison to other triple A MMO's SWTOR has much more credit sinks & we were given an official reason for why. I just hope that server transfers & mega servers will have some kind of impact on evening out the impact on the economy so that so many expensive credit sinks are no longer needed. I'm part of that high percentage of level 50 players that does not have over 1 million credits, what were we, 90% of the overall SWTOR population, IIRC? It just doesn't make sense that Legacy perks cost so much & that credit sinks are so expensive & every other forum poster is saying how easy it is to make credits in this game when BioWare's official numbers show the exact opposite.

All these MMO robots keep telling me how easy it is to make credits in this game but I'm just not one of them. I don't raid, I get bored of repeating the same daily missions again & again & again & again & on top of that I not very good at saving the credits that I do make cause I'm an impulsive shopper. I've got tons of really nice looking orange gear & when I can I buy brand new upgraded mods to replace the low level mods in them cause it's cheaper to do that once than to pay to switch around a couple of sets of mods between a few dozen outfits...man I really wish we just had an appearance tab so that I could spend my credits on other things that I'd like to buy, like some of those really cool Legacy perks. It was a bit easier to make credits back in the day when most of my guild was still playing, but now pretty much everyone's taking a break just waiting to find out what's going to happen with server transfers, so I've got hardly anyone to run teams with on WarZones or do Heroics or whatever....I'm not even interested in that fantasy crap D3/GW2/Tera so I'm just not really doing much gaming at all lately. It's pretty sad. 30% lower cost to remove mods is a nice bone to throw my way, but I'm not all that happy with it. Like SpazCats said, we're basically playing dress-up with all this mod removal business, more so when social gear becomes adaptive, so what's the point in having this huge credit sink tied to it? My favorite part of the game right now? Level 1-49 WarZones! I've got a level 48 Powertech that I refuse to level up any further just so I can play in the WarZones & I'm happier there than anywhere else in the game cause it's the only time in the game that I can pretty much wear whatever I want & still be competitive. I was so bloody happy when BioWare finally fixed colormatch all the way.

Not the point of the thread at all, man. We were told that the reason for there being so many credit sinks was because of other players exploiting. I did not exploit credits, maybe you did, maybe that's why it's easy for you to make credits, I really don't know. I'd just like the economy to even out so that there is no need for there to have to be so many credit sinks in TOR.

Yeah, I remember. Of course I can't dig up the quote now because the old forums have been wiped clean, but once upon a time some of the Dev's used to talk to us on these forums & someone, not me, asked a question about why we have so many credit sinks in the game. They were told that it was because of the all the massive credit exploits that had happened at the start of the game & since there was no way to catch everyone that exploited credits illegally, all the credits sinks were put in place to drain those extra credits out of the system to balance out the economy. Now what I want to know is, it's nearly 6 months since launch, have enough of those exploited credits been drained out of the system so that BioWare can get rid of a large number of these credit sinks yet? If not now after nearly 6 months, then at what point in time is enough time to have drained those exploited credits out of the game so that we could finally get rid of a large number of these unnecessary credit sinks?

Before you release your new designs for any future brand new armor & clothing, can you please, please, please preview the designs to the forum community & allow us to provide input in the form of polls in what we like & do not like about those designs? Or better yet, will BioWare make a formal offer to Darkhorse Star Wars comic books artist Jan Duursema to come on board to work with you as head of the armor & clothing design department in much the same way that DC Universe Online hired on superstar comic book artist Jim Lee as lead artist for their entire MMO project?

Sure thing, Mr. Happy.

Great server & it's the home of Mando'ade! Oya!

Woah, I saw Gabe answer a question, I think I am disappoint.

...cause this message is confusing as Hell, don't ya think? Neither of those reasons even apply to me when I've accidently clicked on a thread that a forum mod has deleted yet the thread is still clickable.

Those "drunk effects" that those other MMO's have are sandbox features & as you can see, SWTOR don't have much sandbox in it. I wish we did tho, it'd be Hella fun to get drunk & be able to participate in barfights in the cantinas...I'd love any reason to hang out in any of the cantinas on any of the planets.

I was hoping Joveth or Allison was going to say something actually.

I use the screenshot of them as one of my desktop images cause they're much too expensive for me to buy for my characters ingame.

I think I speak for everybody, what do you say Community Reps? It's okay, you can hint to us on twitter if you feel more comfortable doing that, Reid used to do that back in the day. The important thing is that we just want to know if the server transfer Dev blogs are coming today.

Up in the hope that that today's Friday Update answer's very specific questions concerning server transfers.

/signed

Thanks first of all guys, all of you for fulfilling the promise that Greg Z made a week ago about how you all were going to be more active on the forum, this activity today is amazing & interaction of this type that I'm quoting here from Joveth is especially nice. You really don't understand it, or as gamers maybe you really do but just weren't allowed to talk so freely before, but to just see you guys talking on these forums like you're regular people instead of someone in authority that expects to have their demands followed unquestioningly...it's really nice. It's so impersonal having to deal with you guys when you're just acting all business-like all the time, it's feels no different than dealing with the CS droids ingame, y'know? I honestly don't know where you Devs & forum mods or other BioWare employees go when you just want to shoot some #$&+ about the game, you gave all of us registered forum users these wonderful forums here to do exactly that & we do it well, but I had always wished that when or if some of you guys from BioWare had some free time or whatever that every once in a while maybe I'd for example see a yellow name pop up in some forum discussion about "ugly class gear", and that yellow named person would give their own personal opinion on what they think of the gear that their own player character is wearing & whether they hate it or love it. Could be any subject for that matter, the point is that if you have the time, I think alot of us would just like to hear from you here on the forums, to see you join in on discussions. Maybe you'd have to add a byline saying *my personal views do not represent the company view of BioWare LLC* or something to that effect. I can't speak for everyone, but when I have asked for more interaction from Devs/yellow names on these forums, I am not only asking for information about the game, what I would like to see more of is what's been going on today. This 2-way conversation thing is very cool & I hope that you all keep it up & that once the Devs get to slow down after they put the final touches on coding for server transfers so they can go live, that they can come to the forums & interact with us a little more often too. Thanks again.

Well thanks everyone for all the informative & fun replies, it's certainly filled in my gaps in knowledge, curbed a few fears I had & put some smiles on my face. I'm glad I never made a habit of bad-mouthing this forum community. I find the constant trolling & stuff quite entertaining but I've always noticed that if help if asked in the right manner it's genuinely offered. I'm back to lurk mode then as I watch the days tick by on my still active sub as I wait for either the PTS for 1.3 to start up or server transfers to start up, whichever happens 1st. Thanks again.

Ok, that makes sense. As far as the belief that there's no reason to think that mergers are happening...am I using the wrong word? Should it be server "transfers" then cause we know for a fact that is happening, right? I was using "mergers" in relation to Erickson's talk about increasing servers capacities, the whole "super server" thing & I figure some are unsure if or when this will happen.

Oh, alright, thanks Aussies & Asians. Did those transfers works nicely without any major problems meaning that our planned server mergers should be basically worry free? I suppose they did cause if there was a massive uproar I possibly would've heard about it. Thanks for helping me understand better Shifty, much appreciated.

BioWare could ease the worry about loss of character names by one simple fix, letting our Legacy last names be our "real last names", I don't know why BioWare is so Hellbent on being against letting us have real last names in their game. I don't want to lose my character names either & just like the OP I got into early access & all that just so I could reserve my names. I won't get over the loss of them, BioWare better have a fix or so many of us will quit...I'm pretty sure BioWare knows it too so they better have a plan. /edit: I've been reminded that BioWare did encounter the name problem with the Asia/Pacific transfers & altho a bit rocky at the start, they eventually put something in place to settle it for the players, so I hope they use that plan on a larger scale so that we all can keep our character names for the big servers transfers.

It's really that simple? Dev tools to create 1000's of botted characters, basically just NPC's? Well if it works, it works. I was hoping for some kind of community involvement in the testing for server mergers, but if they don't need us, then that kinda sucks.

How do you test something like this? Would they set up a brand new live server & then send out an announcement to all the servers asking all US players to use a character transfer service to port over to it & then do the same thing at peak playtimes for EU players, like some kind of live beta test? I have no idea how it could properly be tested with the low number of players that voluntarily choose to test new content on the PTS, so I kind of foresee a massive bit of failure when the server mergers finally do reach the live servers because they just didn't have enough players to test them to capacity..but of course I am quite uneducated on what other options for testing there are so I'd be happy if anyone could help fill in my gaps of misinformation.

*Tricky likes