Yeah, only three instances of Esseles on my lowbie Jedi and I'm getting some fairly solid bouts of lag - spikes of 20K+ ms server lag.

No doubt that will have had an effect, but providing us with some kind of information is not too much to ask. An update of some form in six months is the least we should be able to expect. Especially since, as RichT points out, the cathar were meant to gauge whether they were going to introduce any other, new playable races.

The cathar were announced in the first half of June. It has been six months. It'd be really nice if we could have some additional information now. There's no information of any additional playable races with Rise of the Hutt Cartel, either. I was rather looking forward to a cathar character but this is not a situation in which no news is good news. If I roll my new character before cathar become available, then I certainly won't be spending any Cartel coins to unlock them.

Yup, such things are all on us, the players. So there's only one thing to say: Be there or be a geometric shape!

Considering how long we've been waiting for the cathar, I feel we should let them finally get the one planned new species into the game before clamoring for more. I don't care to guess why it's taking so long, but once they have that experience any additional species should hopefully come at a faster pace.

I presume that all you will have to do to become a subscriber is go to your account management page ("My Account") and sign up with a subscription option. I can't imagine that it would be more difficult than that. You needn't buy the game. As for buying extra character slots, my understanding is that there was some problem with this and it hasn't made it into the game yet. I believe subscribers were to get extra character slots as well and I, at least, haven't seen those yet.

I haven't had a chance to visit Sector X yet. Tonight! Tonight it shall be mine*! * Darth Vader smiley brought to you by the lack of an ominous laughter smiley.

I'm on board with this for all companions who have that weird skin suit instead of skin.

I went with a twi'lek for my gunslinger (dark side, no less) and it works for me. I've recently started a cyborg scoundrel because I wanted to see what scoundrel DPS is like. For my tastes I hit a sweet spot with his appearance, since I'd have to say he's probably my coolest looking Republic character. Although seeing a body type 4 smuggler rolling into cover must be quite amusing.

Honestly, whatever you've got. At those lower levels you'll be leveling so fast that trying to find a "best" is way more effort than it's worth. In the time it'd take you to put together any such armor set you'd probably be level 14 or 15. If you really want to get top of the line stuff, anyway, then your best bet is buying whatever inheritance gear you can buy and dropping in the best purple armorings, mods, and enhancements you can get at that level.

Actually I've been wondering if it will be possible to switch an existing character to a new race once it's released. I'm an altaholic but I'd still prefer not to double up on ACs just to be able to enjoy a new race. It'd be nice to know so that there'd be some certainty whether I need to hold off on a new character or if I can make it and then switch.

In a word: yes. The primary confusion no doubt arises from the fact that TOR is billed as having ranged tanks. An understandable expectation since vanguards/powertechs use blasters. The fact that they insist on calling them ranged tanks (Tactical Role(s): Ranged Tank; Close-Quarters Damage) doesn't help. It's even more confusing since they also state that the DPS is close-quarters. (Admittedly I was always a bit leery about how ranged tanking was supposed to work - why would anyone use a melee tank if you could play a ranged tank and avoid a boss' melee attacks?) Certainly, some attacks have a longer range and can allow these tanks to grab aggro (at least initially) at up to 30 meters. However, for anyone who has tanked with a vanguard or powertech there can be no question that to do so effectively one has to be within ten meters of the target.

Since updates were mentioned and this falls within the subject of updates, I'll ask about new races. Specifically, for those of us who have used up most or all of our character slots, will we have the option to change a current character to a new race? It would be disappointing if the only choice we had was between deleting an existing character or not being able to use the new race.

Your points follow my basic reasoning so I find them sound, except for the one above. As an earlier poster pointed out: There is a point at which you might as well pick up alacrity because getting more surge is not useful. Which is somewhat like saying you should stick your hand in a vat of acid rather than a bucket of coals, but there you have it.

Mmm, shiny.

The /dance emote now has a Michael Jackson-esque "tee-hee!" Vanguard rifles inexplicably become larger than commando cannons. A /Rasczak emote ("Come on you apes. You want to live forever?"). It's not a bug, it's a feature! In this case, I'd believe them.

I'd been thinking about that and made a post a little while ago in the suggestions forum. Lazy as I am, I'll copy it over: A relatively small one: ambient sounds. The birds, the bees, critters in the bush, a flutter of wings, rushing water, a howl or bleat echoing down the mountain... You get the idea. I wouldn't care if the sources of the sounds weren't visible. The important thing is that the sounds are there, indicating that something made them. This stuff was half the charm of Dagobah.

A relatively small one: ambient sounds. The birds, the bees, critters in the bush, a flutter of wings, rushing water, a howl or bleat echoing down the mountain... You get the idea. I wouldn't care if the sources of the sounds weren't visible. The important thing is that the sounds are there, indicating that something made them. This stuff was half the charm of Dagobah.

Same goes for me. I've only ever encountered one healer who specifically asked for a guard, so I switched it due to the drama concern. If the healer has aggro it's usually either because I haven't picked up that mob yet or because I'm doing it wrong. Only semi-related: When it comes to healers having aggro from weak mobs, however, I put at least half the blame on the DPS. When I DPS I generally make it a point to kill the weakest enemies first, especially if they're healers, whether or not the tank has aggro on them. It takes a few seconds to kill them and will save a lot more grief than a gold or silver dying a few seconds faster. Then again, as a DPS I generally make a point to protect the healer in case the tank missed something or is busy elsewhere just then. In turn, I've typically seen the healers make it a point to keep me alive. Yeah, DPS who think they're doing the world a favor if they do more than pour damage on the biggest enemy are a bit of a peeve.

I haven't kept up on the whole alacrity thing beyond the idea of getting it because there was nothing else worth getting (unless you love your surge that much), but I do recall hearing some noise from BioWare that they weren't thrilled with alacrity. Did they ever make a change to it or is there news that a change may be coming down the line eventually? Or, to take the question in a different direction, is the difficulty with potential changes to alacrity - or to which abilities it affects - a matter of PvP vs PvE (and/or the performance of other ACs)?

You will tend to have more affection loss with Light Side choices, given that she's a Mandalorian and thus not partial to helping others, appearing weak, or seeking non-physical solutions, but I wouldn't worry about that. My preference for maxing out companion affection is to have the appropriate companion present when I pick up the daily missions. More so on Belsavis than on Ilum, for most companions. Some are really stingy with their praise on that front, but I believe with most you can easily get 100+ affection per day. If you're after gearing up that way with the HC2s and daily commendations, you'll certainly be able to max out their affection by the time you're done. Especially if you're also picking up equipment for a companion. At the very least you'll be spending less on gifts.

Got a group of fairly low geared people through a HM FP on my largely overgeared healer. No issues. Only deaths happened when the boss hit his enrage timer. One of them was mine. Overall, zero problems. The players struck me as being good people there to play the game, not stress out over it. Tanked a HM FP as well. Ended up with a DPS commando as heals, since the LFG tool was apparently up to its usual hijinks. We all overgeared the content by a considerable margin, so we decided to give it a go. Only wipe resulted in part from an ignored boss mechanic, one part bug (that made it impossible to execute the boss mechanic). Irritating, but again, no problems. Finished the rest of the FP with no issues. I suppose to be productive I should add some kind of 'moral of the story' thing such as, "Don't go in expecting a fast and perfect run. If it happens, and most of the time it likely will, be happy. If you get something unexpected, consider it a challenge or an experiment and don't get discouraged at the first wrinkle. There's nothing wrong with giving up, but if you drop out after two or three attempts be honest enough to admit, to yourself at the least, that you probably should not be in a PuG." The 'OMG WoW' anecdote: as someone who had attempted to tank in WoW and who had a healer as a main character, I now find tanking in TOR to be quite straightforward and stress free. At the beginning it was a bit harrying to get the hang of how to deal with picking up all those ranged enemies, but for me that was a rather mild learning curve. Obviously healing was familiar territory although, as always, healing is only a challenge when things start to go wrong (and with such relatively limited resource pools as one has in TOR - my experience is primarily on a scoundrel - boy can life get interesting quickly).

Most excellent. This is one of those little touches that is primarily felt through its absence. It'll be great to have it.

The idea is to have a proper hub for the various classes (e.g. military base or barracks, Jedi/Sith temple, secret handshake cantina) that would serve as gathering points and areas where people could pick up class specific missions, dailies (class specific dailies would be nice to see, but that's a different topic), and who knows what else. It'd probably make the most sense for these to be on the capital worlds. Such hubs could also serve to be a home away from home and potentially as a kind of secondary Fleet. If these areas shared a general chat with each other and Fleet there'd be no need to be concerned about spreading the player base too thin for grouping, trading, etc. They could even serve as the landing area for people of that class, or at least an alternative to landing in a cavernous, nearly abandoned spaceport. Especially with the addition of a new dailies area, I thought it would be useful to have one place to collect the dailies from the various zones, and from which they could travel to those dailies areas directly. An added benefit would be if those dailies could be picked up from mission terminals. Those who want to talk to the mission providers for social/affection points could still travel to the dailies areas and do so. In either event it'd be a nice convenience and would save a little time.

I was not aware of that. The More You Know! Still, I wouldn't skip him because I expect that people will be interested in the gear he drops, even if it's for their companions rather than themselves. I know I would be if I were on a relatively new 50. But yes, in this case I have to say that being able to skip the flashpoint's "Big Bad" is a bit much.