RAM will outperform an SSD by 10X or so, unless the benchmark is expanded to include time spent futzing with configurations, uninstalling/reinstalling, posting cries for help here, downloading patches and extra drivers etc, etc, etc. And it turns out that it's an extra 10X you don't need for SWTOR. SATA 2.5" SSD's cost approximately a dollar per GB, they plug into any spare SATA port on your motherboard, they require no configuration (just a quick NTFS format like any disk), they run SWTOR like a dream with no alternate configurations or install directories or special launchers required, AND they run your other two or three favorite games right alongside TOR with no fuss. I would only use a RAMdrive on a seriously obsolete PC with no options for SSD expansion.

I totally support a native Mac client! We're not going to get one, but I would use it every day if we did.

It is quite easy to count players on the servers, and several of us (at minimum) do so on a semi-regular basis. That means that there is NO guesswork (on our part at least) about how many people are actually playing. Subscription figures, all that nonsense - that's guesswork. Concurrent logged-in players - that's a real number. What do the numbers tell us? First, there has indeed been a surge in players since F2P went live. I estimate a 50-75% increase in peak players on North American servers, and as much as doubled in Europe. We are back to where we were in early August, or early Summer in EU's case. Another couple of weeks will tell whether we are tailing off again or holding steady. Second, the servers seem to be able to hold somewhat more players - perhaps 4500 or even 5000, instead of the old effective limit of 4000 - but the Light/Standard/Heavy/Very Heavy/Full numeric thresholds haven't changed. What was Standard in June is still Standard today. What seems to happen is that when a server hits Full, it can keep taking players for quite a while. Queues are based on how hammered the server physically is, which can depend on a number of factors. As far as torstatus.net is concerned, they are a VERY reliable archive of the load statuses (Light/Standard/etc) that BioWare reports for the servers. If you know how to use their data correctly, they're a terrific resource.

To the best of my ability to measure it, they have not changed the load status metric since Spring at the latest. Logged-in player populations that resulted in HEAVY status in June still show HEAVY today. Of course the difference is that back then, you might have HEAVY on a few dozen servers in prime time; now you have it on seven to nine depending on whether Europe is still peaking. But yeah, heavy is still heavy. Queueing seems to based on a slightly different metric. You can log straight in to some FULL servers, and be dropped into a queue on another that only shows VERY HEAVY.

Nevertheless, there is a Suggestion Box subforum under General Discussion and that's the place for "Please make changes" threads. This forum is for discussing new PTS builds. The patch notes are stickied at the top. When and if they make Merc/Commando changes in a future build, you can play them and give feedback here.

Well, POT5 is in the lower half of server populations - you'd be unlikely to see queues there during the hour or two it spends at VH on peak nights. Most of the queues are on Bastion, Begeron or Ebon Hawk at this point.

Your feedback is naturally appreciated! I will pass your thanks on to Mommy when she returns from her Hell's Angels run this week. But the (sad and pathetic!) point remains that despite the blog announcement in September that "we have upgraded destination servers in order to support a significantly higher number of players," the servers do not -- when you get in and count players -- appear to have any increased capacity relative to, say, June. If 4500 concurrents gave you a VH/F server this summer, that's still the load you see in late November, and the queues and lag follow. This matters because, having gone through a lengthy consolidation and taken some heat for it, BioWare probably doesn't want to reverse course and add servers at this point. But if logins stay strong, they may have to, because there are enough penalties and inconveniences already for F2P players without adding a one-hour queue.

You may not have personally experienced them, but there have been queue times (tonight's was "less than 20 minutes") for The Harbinger among other top-population servers. Interestingly, The Harbinger was not even FULL, only VERY HEAVY, when it showed a queue. There are obviously other factors that come into play with queuing.

In fairness, we were told that these new "High Capacity Servers" would hold lots more players, and most of us took the phrase "hold lots more players" to mean that they'd actually be playing, not just queued waiting to enter. But so far since the Great Merge, server capacities seem to be the same as always, i.e., Very Heavy means the same number of concurrent players today that it did in August. We've certainly had an upswing in population (back to about August levels) since F2P went live, but if "High Capacity" means what it was supposed to mean, all those people should be logging straight into the game - not waiting in queues. So, I don't know what's happening. Maybe they haven't enabled High Capacity yet, or maybe it doesn't work like they thought it would.

I love threads where the OP keeps coming back in again and again and arguing with everybody. The servers have shrunk as much as they're going to shrink, except whatever they figure out for APAC. The merger collisions are over, and the "damage" (I use that word guardedly) has been done. They are unlikely at this point to make a fundamental change in the character/account system, and if they did, we'd just have some other permathreads wailing about how THAT's a game breaker. Character names are important, although you wouldn't guess it from seeing "Bobsotherbank" jumping on the mailbox. The super-special name you lose in a merger collision was also important to the player who kept it. That's MMO life. I keep a "stable" of about 20 names, all of which I enjoy, and some of which are available even on the most crowded legacy server. I take the ones I can get and move on. Anyone who absolutely cannot stand this particular reality should probably try a different game.

A RAMdisk will usually benchmark faster than an SSD (not SDD), but the extra speed is not needed to eliminate loading delays in SWTOR. The 3x speed boost of the SSD is plenty - and you only need one launcher and one configuration. I have done this on 5 different machines and the result is the same every time - move to SSD and SWTOR runs smooth as silk.

If you format that SSD with NTFS (not FAT) and move the game there, you shouldn't need anything else.

That text wall from shava that everyone's quoting in full has problems. It's full of sour grapes about some supposed segment of players, which is only actually important if you obsess on those things. SWTOR is a perfectly fine game. The problem it has had from Day One is that there are about 350,000 people who will pay to play a well-designed and well-run Star Wars MMO. Not ten million, not one million - about a third of a million. But EA/BioWare and LucasArts conned themselves into believing they could reach WoW-sized numbers because, well, Star Wars. And they invested accordingly, and for a while sold boxes accordingly. People installed from those boxes, tried to play the game for a while - and then everybody who wasn't one of the 350,000 left. Gamers being gamers, we naturally have to listen to a hundred cockamamie theories for the "failure," that it's because Imperial Hat is bugged, because they won't let you get into a 3-way with Cedrax and Holiday, etc, etc. And of course TOR had some stumbles, like most new titles. But really the game itself is fine. It was just never going to stay much bigger than it is now - and that was not the publisher's plan. Everything follows from that. Even now, they think that Free-To-Play is going to open the floodgates and make it a huge game. Watch and see.

The Pixar and Marvel acquisitions included studio independence in the deal - Disney agreed to let them continue to run themselves. Any such commitment was conspicuously absent in the Lucasfilm deal. Disney wants those brands and those franchises - not George's management regime. How much influence? Total influence. Take nothing for granted over the next year.

There is nothing misleading about my comment. If you are experiencing game delays while data loads from a conventional hard drive, you can install an SSD drive into a free SATA port, format it NTFS, copy your game installation there and change your launch shortcut, and the delays will stop. Unleashed may be "made for people with SSD," but it should not actually be needed by people with SSD.

For about $50 you can get a quality 60-64GB SSD that will run this game (or any game) lightning fast without modifications, hacks, config files, or patch hassles. And if you shut down your PC you can take your game with you.

That's correct: we have stabilized at approximately the real audience size for this game as released - the people who are willing to pay to play SWTOR. I estimate it at about 350,000 active players across all regions, where "active player" means someone who logs in at least twice a week. I have no idea how many subscriptions are "parked" and I don't care. How much this goes up when F2P launches remains to be seen. Where it settles afterwards depends on how they build the new community of players. Let's hope they build it well.

On the Pixar and Marvel deals, Disney made a formal commitment to keep those divisions independent and they've largely lived up to it. Iger made no such commitment to Lucas. Lucas will also not sit on the Disney board even though he'll be the second largest individual shareholder at 2.2 percent. As a result, I would expect Disney to digest and dismantle the Lucas empire - slowly, like the Sarlacc. Contracts like our IP deal will likely be reviewed with a critical eye. We could get a burst of new energy and investment, or we could be shuttered in two weeks. Expect surprises ahead.

In the F2P build up on Test Server right now, space bar works normally in dialogs. If they made a comment that this'll be changed, I missed it.

When I moved SWTOR to an SSD, all fps drops and "hiccups" vanished. While a RAMdisk is faster, the SSD seems to be fast enough. And it works for all my games.

If you have 50 or 60 bucks and a free SATA port on your motherboard, get an SSD and put ALL your favorite games on it - they all run at top speed without any special utilities.

Now that the page works, I seem to have 2650 which is plenty. How many Jawa pets and podracer mounts can you buy anyway.

I don't personally believe in an across-the-board 60-70% attrition rate for MMO's in general (or OLD REPUBLIC specifically). Every game is different. The point I wanted to make here is that if EA had only sold 100,000 boxes initially, we would have spent this year heading (up!) to 350,000. If they had sold 500,000 boxes, we would have spent the year heading (slightly down) to 350,000. In point of fact they sold a little under 2.5 million boxes, so of course heading to 350,000 looks like a major failure. But that 75 million dollar (wholesale) income probably kept our doors open. The only reason I'm speaking up is that the devs deserve love, not flames. They made a good game. The rest of this is marketing and licensing and hype.

Don't blame the game or its developers for those lost players. It was never going to keep them. The stable audience for a well-run Star Wars MMO is 350,000-400,000 players. They oversold the boxes (EA is a champion box seller). Since the moment of release, we have been headed towards the game's natural size. Raging and wishing will not change the result.

Honestly - it's a very good game. Most publishers would kill to have this good of a game, even if some johnny-one-note critics like to obsess on THEIR ONE GAME BREAKING BUG. The thing that is not our fault - and cannot be undone, finessed, or papered over - is that there is only so much of a steady audience for this kind of game. STAR WARS™ is a fantastic franchise with millions of fans worldwide. But STAR WARS™ MMO games are a niche market. Every time they pitch one of these MMO's, they try to convince LucasArts that they'll get that first (big) market. Then they go out and actually get the second (niche) market. Depending on how much they overspent or overcommitted, various forms of mayhem ensue. We can't change any of this. All we can do is enjoy they games they give us. Let's enjoy this one.