If it's good enough for Tolkien, it's good enough for me.

The interface can cause some pretty nasty hiccups in performance. Just hold down your forward run key and repeatedly toggle any interface element (inventory, character sheet, ability list, etc) on and off quickly and suddenly you're in a slide show. It's awful. Try it out!

How is there competition for the same objectives? There are so few people running around in the zones; I can go for long stretches of time without ever running into players outside my group. There's usually only between 15-60 people from your faction on a planet depending on the time of day. The only bottlenecks are the bonus quests that culminate in the task to defeat a "tough" mob. At most you're looking at a 5-10 minute wait if you arrive and find someone else ahead of you. Even in those cases I can understand the desire not to group up. There are several reasons this might happen. Some players see these elite and champion mobs as an opportunity to participate in a fight that lasts longer than ten seconds. It's a chance for a bit of a challenge and an opportunity to find out what all those other buttons on your power tray do. Challenging encounters are so rare in this game, and the more people "helping" the less appealing the fight becomes. There are also players/small groups who don't want to share the drop. Upon their request I invited someone to my group for one of these encounters and the mob dropped an orange item that the invited player had no use for beyond selling. He rolled need on it, won it, and took off. Had I came to the forums to complain about it, I would have gotten flamed for expecting integrity in a PUG. Lesson learned. Just be patient and wait your turn. For most people this concept is taught at a very early age. For those that can't and want to turn this into a contest of who can tag the mob first, be prepared to wait a very long time if you can't out-click the other player but manage to tick them off in the process. You may find out that just being patient for a few minutes would have saved you a whole lot of time in the long run.

Well, that's a bit shortsighted. Many times a quest area filled with normal/strong mobs will have an elite or champion tucked away somewhere for players who are willing to take a bigger risk. Of course, the reward is supposed to match the risk, so usually these mobs (which are not guaranteed to drop anything other than credits) will have a chest next to them. I think it's reasonable to expect the spawn timer on those chests to be roughly on par with the spawn timer on the mobs guarding them. The fact that there seems to be a way for players to grab the chest without triggering a reaction from the mob is not a problem with the chest timers, but rather a different failure in design that needs to be corrected. Basically, the wrong problem is being fixed.

Have you tried removing the equipment with augments and reequipping it? It has been my experience that any time a mod, armoring, enhancement, augment, crystal, barrel, etc has been introduced into a piece of equipment, the effects are not represented in the UI until the item is unequipped and then reequipped. This, of course, assumes the change was made while wearing said piece of equipment.

I think you missed the point. The problem with Duke Nukem Forever is that not only was it late, it was also bad. People have an expectation that if you take the extra time to release your game, it'll show positively in the results. If it doesn't, then the fact that it took so long to get garbage out brings even more attention to the development time. Had Duke Nukem Forever been "game of the decade" (which is probably what gamers were expecting after waiting so long), the focus would have been on results and not the development time.

I think at this point all the opportunities to herald an MMO as a WoW-killer have passed, without any being able to make the claim. We've reached a point where the only game that will kill WoW is WoW. It's over 7 years old and people either have or eventually will grow tired of playing it, no matter how good it is. At some point even the most die-hard WoW fans are going to stick there heads up and wonder what else they've been missing all this time. And the next generation of gamers are likely to only see it as a very old looking game that isn't even worth investigating. I think if you've developed a game that has entertained millions of people for 7+ years, it's pretty much "job well done" and "mission accomplished". Poking fun at it while it runs that inevitable course to extinction is just petty and ridiculous. It's like trying to claim victory when your opponent dies of old age.

Were there any other MMOs released in 2011?

This problem doesn't seem to exist on body type 3 characters. Then again, it doesn't exist for body type 2 characters in the preview windows. Seems like a no-brainer that it's a bug that needs fixing, and I'm not sure how it made it through so many patches intact, to be honest. It's not like the artists are working on class balance or fixing crash bugs.

XP-toggle request thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=242517

You are sorely mistaken, to the point where I'm starting to think you meant you explored a single inch of Tatooine, minus the "every" part. I think nearly all the quests from Deviad Outpost, Camp Karnori, and even a series from Anchorhead take place in the stretch of desert near the borders of the thin exhaustion zone surrounding Anchorhead. I should know, I've been questing there for the past week. Outpost Salara and the quests in the Dune Sea obviously take place on the far side of Deviad Outpost (the sole connecting speeder to Anchorhead) near where those outposts are located. Being that we're not a lazy bunch, that single forced connection between Deviad Outpost and Anchorhead is the only flightpath my friends and I actually use. Everywhere else we use our mounts to ride to, and if that exhaustion zone weren't in the way we wouldn't be using any flightpaths at all. My point stands, thanks.

I thought I explained this already, but let's just use this easy to follow diagram: FP -------------------------------- Q --- EZ -- A FP = location of flight point Q = Where I am currently questing. EZ = Exhaustion Zone A = Anchorhead ----- = distance between points Any more questions regarding why I would prefer to just drive over the exhaustion zone to Anchorhead rather than backtracking back and forth between flight points?

You maybe, but not everyone. I'm certainly not saving time by backtracking to the nearest flight point every time I want to drive across a 100 yard strip of artificial death zone.

I'm not sure how you can suggest it's hardly noticeable when I have to travel to/pay for a flight-point every time I want to train, buy crafting supplies, use the bank, or turn in a quest that sends you out and back into Anchorhead. I get the PvP concerns, but again, despite there not being an exhaustion zone around the other quest hubs I haven't seen any of them being sacked by players of the opposing faction. Maybe it has something to do with all the level 50 champion level guards standing around. Maybe they should have just surrounded Anchorhead with a knee-high wall, given it a gate packed with said guards, called it done, and let me travel in and out of the town under my own power.

And the reason a similar exhaustion zone is not surrounding every other quest hub in Tatooine is what, again? I've heard this PvP reason before. Meanwhile, all the other quest hubs in this particular shared space appear to be doing just fine without exhaustion areas protecting them. That exhaustion zone around Anchorhead could have been faction specific, effecting only Imperials and not the Republic. It could have even been done in a way that make sense, like a visible Republic cruiser in orbit raining down death on any Imperial that attempted to cross the protected strip of land into Anchorhead. There were plenty of ways to do it that didn't completely isolate Anchorhead for Republic players. They opted for the path of least effort, and it creates an abysmal first impression of Tatooine. *Not* a good decision by the developers, I would say. Nothing quite like hopping on your mount, looking at the open desert ahead of you, thinking "Ahh, finally!", and then running into an exhaustion zone within rock tossing distance of the town. It was at that point my frustrated group started talking about other MMOs that were coming out this year that offer more open-world exploration.

And the reason I can't run from Anchorhead to any other place in Tatooine is, what, again?

This really boils down to how easily fooled you are by the illusion of speed/action. For example, you press the basic shoot button on your character and the result is a stream of blaster fire that makes it look like your character attacked several times. They may even split and stagger the release of the damage numbers that pop up over your opponent's head to make it appear like several attacks were made. And if you're the type of fellow that spams keypresses and mostly jams whatever button happens to be available, then this will probably seem very action-oriented to you. I'm not saying it's worse than the alternative of seeing your character only fire once every two seconds, but let's be honest and call it what it really is. To anyone observing *you* at the keyboard, you're only pressing a single button once approximately every two seconds, and that's not going to seem very fast paced. The point others in this thread are trying to make is that there are other MMOs out there that actually keep your hands (and mind) working the controls much faster. There are even some that take it to extremes by adding semi-complex combo maneuvers, and/or eliminating stat-based avoidance actions and placing the responsibility of mitigating damage directly at your fingertips. Combat in some MMOs come across more like an arcade-style fighting game, and to people who are used to this kind of gameplay (and can see past the illusion of speed gimmicks in other MMOs) what we have here in SWTOR will seem like snail-paced slowness. Still, pressing the button once and seeing your character make a flurry of saber attacks is more entertaining than watching him slash half heartedly once.

Question: Do you have any plans to provide players with an option to temporarily toggle their XP gains off so that, as individuals, we have better control over our leveling experience? Explanation: Currently, many players are out-leveling content far too easily. This results in a number of problems (the inability to gain affection points through conversations on gray quests, financial difficulties due to lower-level quest/drop rewards not keeping up with higher-level costs such as training, crafting issues due to a lack of useful resources being available on lower level worlds to provide materials for level-appropriate crafting, and an extremely non-challenging and boring combat experience when fighting gray-con mobs). This has caused some players to actively avoid parts of your game (such as PvP, space combat, and cantinas/inns) in order to avoid gaining even more unwanted XP-gains that will ultimately make a frustrating problem worse. Many MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, Everquest II, Call of Heroes, Vanguard, City of Heroes/Villains and others, provide an XP-toggle option. Other MMOs (such as Final Fantasy XI) provide players with a way of losing XP/levels through repeated deaths. The argument of twinking concerns in PvP is always brought up when discussing an XP-toggle, but as PvP in this game is largely bracket-less and twinking is already completely possible and easy to accomplish thanks to open-slot gear and mods, the concerns against an XP-toggle are unjustified. See the following thread for a larger discussion on the topic: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=242517

I've never seen any evidence of this.

Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, that's certainly possible considering Star Trek Online managed that change within ~18 months with much fewer resources. But I wouldn't count on it.

I'm going to have to completely disagree with this. I have two systems (4 GB RAM) that are exactly the same (I know this as I built them both) save for the fact that one is still running a 32-bit OS and the other has the 64-bit version. With the 64-bit OS I have control over my system within moments of exiting SWTOR. With the 32-bit OS it takes a ridiculous amount of time for my computer to reclaim resources used by SWTOR and become usable again. Friends of mine who are using a 32-bit OS have the same delay, so I know it's not anything unusual, it's just how it is for 32-bit systems. The same holds true for alt-tabbing. If you have a choice between 32-bit and 64-bit, go with the latter.

Amazon has it in stock for $150. Why would you pay $240? Anyway, no, it's not worth it. And that's from someone who gets a lot of collector's editions. If you're not getting it for the statue you're going to be very disappointed. There isn't even a physical (or electronic) game manual included in the box. There's a diary/journal that's a decent read but it's short (and probably the best item in there). The digital items are awful and, for the most part, useless. If you search the forums you'll find a lot of threads on this topic complaining about how ripped off some players feel and accusations of false advertising. I love purchasing collector's editions and felt extremely ripped off on this particular purchase. I wish I had just gotten the regular version instead and spent that extra $100 elsewhere (like on the SWTOR Razer mouse).

From what I can tell, the database sites don't seem to even be aware that there are two versions of each item icon: what Imperial players see and what Republic players see. They seem to generally use the Imperial version, making the visual component of the information useless from a Republic perspective. To be clear, I'll provide an image example of what I'm talking about: Picture of Republic and Imperial versions of the same gear. The image above shows an Imperial and Republic version of "Ancient Seeker's Headgear", and an Imperial and Republic version of "[Prototype] Visionary Headgear". As you can see, despite being exactly the same item they look completely different depending on whether you're viewing them as an Imperial player or a Republic player. Here is how they're displayed on Torhead: http://www.torhead.com/item/79bS7NQ/ancient-seekers-headgear http://www.torhead.com/item/eejaTfV/prototype-visionary-headgear Here is how they're displayed on DarthHaterDB: http://db.darthhater.com/items/36665/ancient_seekers_headgear/ http://db.darthhater.com/items/28190/%5Bprototype%5D_visionary_headgear/ So, if you're a Republic player attempting to search through those databases for a particular look, all you have to go by is the icons. And the icons being shown in the databases in these cases are Imperial icons, making the information useless (or, worse case, misleading) to a Republic player. I feel that in the case of this particular problem it's the responsibility of the database (not the players) to provide an option to view these items from both an Imperial or Republic perspective. Left as is, they're just confusing. Now, I say "responsibility" like it's the site owners purpose on this planet to show us accurate SWToR data. Clearly it's not. But, my point is, if you're going to go through the trouble of putting up a site, it makes sense for the information to be useful and accurate. Perhaps more importantly, the site that finally manages to straighten problems like the above out is going to be the one that is likely used the most, which (when coupled with advertisements and traffic) is just a smart business decision.

Hah, I laughed.