Consider them other players from a random daily queue... I run into strangers all the time in other games. IMHO, the companion is better because I can control what she does.

umadbro? I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess this is your first MMO. You will get the first 30 days free, but you have to enter all of your billing information. Enter your credit card information, then cancel the billing. You will still get your 30 days. I dont know if they will offer Paypal as an option, but you can do the same thing with the recurring payments there. Alternately, the same places selling the game also sell 30 day game cards, so you can go that route if need be, but once you put the code in, you cannot take it out... so its not the best option.

Not sure what you all are talking about... Mine arrives this morning purchased from WalMart online. The only issue that occurred was the incorrect 'your order has been cancelled' e-mail, but it was followed up by a 'we messed up, your order was never cancelled' e-mail. I got my preorder code on time, and I will get my CE on time. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Are you feeling convicted of considering to play? If so, it's probably not a good idea... but if you don't think it will affect the gift you are receiving, I think it's ok. If you happen to live with the gift giver, just be prepared to say, "This is not the game you think it is. Move along."

ok, I give up... my thread keeps drowning in all of the tears of QQers.

EA has been the SOE equivalent for decades... Bioware is at the mercy of her MegaCorp. Boy, do I miss the days of independant developer companies. That's how Bioware made it's claim to fame. That said, SWTOR wouldnt be here if they had stayed independant. I had considered not buying SWTOR because of the EA involvement, but I decided that because I have always had a great experience with Bioware, I would go ahead and dive in. At this point, I see this game as a dinosaur in the sense that it will probably be the last monthly subscription type game to be released. Micro transactions and full blown F2P like GW2 is quickly becoming the standard model.

Bump from all of the nerdrage posts drowning me out... really would like to find someone with data on this.

From what I've gathered, all of the East coast servers are in one location, and all of the West coast servers are in one location. That said, I was still hoping to hear from people in CST (better yet, from Illinois) to find out what their ping times were relative to which server group was chosen. Having played MMOs since 1997, I know how much of a difference +200ms can mean... especially in a pvp environment. Not really sure why you think that the only difference would be my preferred time zone to play in.

Now that we have 5 waves of people in the game today, can anyone shed some real time light on this question? Can anyone in Illinois or the CST tell me what their ping times are to the East coast servers? The West coast servers?

To clarify in chorus with others... Walmart did not cancel the orders, and they sent out an e-mail explaining that there was an inadvertant error that said they were cancelled when they were not. Getting the version you ordered shipped out to you is irrelevant as well. Walmart will ship out two items, one of which you should already have (unless you ordered recently). I received a package in the mail with a preorder code on it. This is the code I entered in order to be eligible for the early access.

Ping times are paramount to me, and I hadnt even considered the time zone issue from a guild event perspective. Being two hours ahead could lead to some late, late nights... hehe.

My assumption is that the items are for every character you make... ever. Of course, we all know what can happen when we assume...

I should have mentioned that... I am in Illinois. What are your ping times when you use East Coast servers?

Does anyone have insight as to which servers, East coast or West coast, are better for a user in CST?