The logical response to OP is that it's going to vary on a server by server basis. I know many serves have lots of people on the Republic side at the level cap, and I know many servers have the Republic winning the majority of the warzones, not the Empire. Either way, you at least have a fair chance of winning Huttball. If you don't like your server, re-roll on one in which the Republic is dominate. Or, since you seem to enjoy the Empire more, just make an Imperial. Really, I've played both sides up to the 20's and I notice very little difference in quality. Anything that you perceive as a difference in quality is likely rather just your own tastes. I personally enjoyed leveling my Republic toons more than my Imperial ones, despite my main being Imperial. Tython, Coruscant, Taris, etc, are all fantastic and the storyline for the Jedi Knight at least is fantastic. I'm sure as the game goes on they will begin to merge a number of the servers they created at launch, assuming the player numbers don't continue to increase, and issues like this will be resolved.

Please stop posting in a troll thread. If the OP was being serious, he wouldn't have stopped posting nor would he have refused to take a screenshot of his character.

You would notice it in game, trust me. I do.

Try playing as a Twi'lek.

http://i.imgur.com/TDQHv.jpg Not sure where exactly you took yours, I tried to replicate it as best I could. I've yet to level a Trooper, so I'm not familiar with Ord Mantell. Yours seems to blur much more than mine in the distance. To everyone asking, the textures in these screenshots are medium textures. It would be much easier to tell the difference with a side-by-side shot of this, but you can tell just by looking at the pants on my character and the muddy textures on the NPC textures on both of our screenshots.

What about it?

Thank you, Stephen. You are a reasonable and intelligent man and I knew your reaction to this outcry would be to get the wheels rolling on getting it fixed. This information should have been in your original post, however, and it shows that you guys really are just making all this up as you go along. There's no other real way to do it, I suppose. I don't paint you guys as evil liars or completely incompetent as others do, I realize how stressful and confusing this process can be. That said, your first response to this issue was just ridiculous. I appreciate the solution, but I think you guys need to go ahead and put the high-res texture options in 1.1, as it cannot be that hard to just put a little warning box in to tell people about the hit to performance they may experience. Do this instead of removing the medium option in 1.1. Then you guys can work on the performance fix in the meantime, and hey, if you get it done ahead of schedule, you can release it in a smaller patch instead of 1.2, instead of having to wait for that. I don't see any reason why you cannot do what I just described, and I am sure *many* people would appreciate it, including myself. There are those of us who are willing to take the performance hit in exchange for a greater graphical experience, and as PC users, that is our decision to make, not yours.

BioWare, I voiced a reply on this issue in the past and asked that you please not put out a response to this issue that is lazy and full of excuses. This *is* a big issue, clearly, from the size of the threads about it and how fast they are growing, and you *will* lose subscribers because of it. You won't lose those subscribers because of the low-res textures, you'll lose them because this instance shows that you are not willing to fix huge problems with your game and you refuse to listen to your consumers. Obviously most people want the high-res textures in the game, so you should put them in there with a smile on your face, you put a little box that pops up and says 'Warning: High textures require very powerful computers and should only be turned on for those that can handle it.', and the problem is solved. You don't spit in the face of your consumers by saying that 'it's a UI glitch', and you don't just ignore the fact that there are hundreds of screenshots for your game, on your website, showing the high-res textures. As many people have said, that's false advertising, and your game looks a lot worse than it actually is. This is morally wrong to me. I played in beta, and I had no FPS issues whatsoever. I was *incredibly* impressed with how well the game ran, I was consistently getting over 50 FPS and had no problems. With high-res textures. Now, I get 40 FPS most the time with medium-res textures, my FPS crashes randomly at certain places down to the low 20's, and in cantinas it's like a slide-show. It's pathetic, and I just don't understand. You very clearly messed something up at some point. How hard is it to go back and figure out what you did wrong, and fix it? I expect with how much this has blown up in your face, you are going to put the high-texture options in, but seriously, get yourselves together BioWare. Hire more people if you have to, make people work overtime, it doesn't matter how much it costs, fix your game, or people will start leaving and this MMO will end up just like WAR, with tons of people playing in the first few weeks and then becoming a ghost town after a few months.

To be honest, and I hate being the typical annoying SWTOR forum poster here, I don't understand what has happened in the months since beta. I played for a few weeks and then stopped as to not spoil the experience, and the game back then was overall much better than the game I am playing now. There was a lot more armor variety, you really felt like a Sith or a Bounty Hunter, whatever, and the game looked really good graphically I felt. I understood it's not a fantastic looking MMO due to the poor technical specs of people that BioWare wants to tap into, but it sort of had that WoW-vibe of looking really good because of the work and detail and love put into the environment, armor, and characters. I very much enjoyed my time in beta. There have been many things that they have fixed and improved, including polishing combat a lot, but really, given the choice, I would rather be playing the game in its beta state versus the state it is in right now. I just don't see how BioWare made so many mistakes and poor decisions since, and how the game now has so many flaws and problems that didn't exist at all in beta. Great features such as 'match colour to chestpiece' are gone, and why? What is their justification for removing things like that? I don't understand BioWare at all and really it makes me really worried for the future of this MMO, because clearly BioWare is out of touch with what their consumers want. I'm not going to threaten to quit playing, because I view that as childish, but really, I think a lot of people are looking at whatever BioWare's response to this high-texture issue will be and BioWare needs to realize that. If your response is that you can't fix it, justified by a bunch of things that most people won't understand, that's not really acceptable. You do the impossible if it's impossible, and you fix it, because that will impress people. Doing the opposite will drive people away. There needs to be a lot more developer posts than there currently are, talking and responding to the issues that people are having and discussing the plans that are in place to tackle those issues. Because these issues DO exist, BioWare, and you will lose customers if you just ignore them or give phoned in, lazy answers to them. I'm not going to echo the sentiments of the people in this thread and mock you for getting a nice, well-developed technical answer from your staff, but this answer should've been out weeks ago, and you should have already fixed whatever the problem is with high-textures. Lots of people may say it's just a game and there's no need to take it seriously, but this is a big investment for some people, and for some people this is what they do when they come home to relax from work, or school, it's their hobby and it should be respected. If people are paying for something, their views best be respected by the developers. Those MMO's that ignore their customers and do not try as hard as they can to please them, those MMO's are the ones that fail. Don't let this become another Warhammer.

If you spec Madness, I believe the only abilities that you cannot use are the charges, Maul, and Spike. You can enable the charges via a lightsaber and then switch to an electrostaff. You are a bit gimped, but not terribly so. So, that's the temporary fix for those of us that really want to use one. Hopefully BioWare fixes it soon. Also, there's a lot of misinformation in this thread. Knights/Warriors can use vibroswords without any issues. All of their abilities work. Electrostaves are supposed to be the Assassin equivalent and they are there not just for companions, but to provide variety to the weapons so that someone can choose something other than a lightsaber. EDIT: After experimenting, this is actually not true. You cannot use Discharge with an electrostaff, and that is an integral part of Madness.

Little late to this thread, but it's what showed up when I googled the issue. This is actually pretty serious as there are many of us who don't much care for lightsabers or don't want to use them for RP reasons, that still enjoy the playstyle of an Assassin. I dropped 10k on a electrostaff off the AH and am now using it, but I cannot use Maul or my charges. The work around I've learned it to equip my old lightsaber, enable the charge, and then it stays on even with the electrostaff and works perfectly. I cannot use Maul though, but I specced Madness and you don't really need Maul that much as Madness spec. Still, it's a bug that needs to be fixed asap. In the case that it isn't a bug and is an intentional decision on the part of BioWare, please reconsider. Knights/Warriors have vibroswords that work perfectly. If we aren't supposed to be using electrostaffs, please remove the Assassin's ability to equip them.