+2 others here with 208 errors in the UK. Glad we're not alone...

I'm a level 60 Jedi Sage DPS spec'd who returned to game several months a go and trying to find a new home. I'm looking for a friendly no pressure guild who would find a use for an extra pair of hands for all types of Ops (even including the lvl 55 ones I missed in my break! ). I would typically be available most evenings except Wednesday and quitehappy to sit around all evenings in case of wipefests! As a player in my 30s I do appreciate a guild who is relatively organised so to minimise waiting around for things to happen! Thanks for reading.

I'm a bit confused by the hostility towards the OP as seems to make a great deal of sense to me. Subsribers know up front how much they pay per month for unlimited access (aparts from x-pacs). F2P'ers know they have to buy the "bits" that they want or make do with restricted features. Surely it benefits everyone that the F2P'ers can purchase as many items as possible to remove the restirctions. Most F2P models I know make it so restrictions can be lifted permanently but at a high premium. The F2P'er can then choose if it's better in the long run to pay each premium (even if that is permanent) or just subsribe. For subsribers it works out better for them if the F2P'ers decide to pay the Premium as that generates more revenue. Sure in theory a F2P'er could end up owning everything on permanent unlock but as long as a) they have paid a lot more than a subsriber would or b) a good F2P model would never allow a situation where isn't something in the store to purchase, then it doesn't matter. Pay 800 coins to remove currency cap on 1 character / 2600 all toons? Many F2P'ers would do that generating some decent profit for BW whilst also reinforcing to Subsribers that in the short/medium terms they get a much better deal. Sounds a good diea to me.

This is a great post by Greywatcher and sums up most of what I'd like to see added. There's a few others of my own;- Allies/Adversaries - the Pre-launch had these feature but guess it was only designed to get people on the same servers - and once they were poof they might as well have been any other guild. It would have been great if this could have been properly intergrated into the game aka the Legacy Family Tree graphics to allow cross-guild chat, in game tools and quests etc. We tried using custom channels but it is a huge pain and impossible to get all guild members to join. Guild Quests One of the things I enjoyed most about Rifts guild system was that there were Guild guests e.g. kill 100 of creature x or complete 5 x instances in a week, that boosted your guild xp which gave access to perks. It wouldn't take much tweaking of the current Legacy system to make it work for Guilds too surely?

Perhaps if they had have listened to more people, espeically the beta testers, then the game wouldn't have bled so many subs. Oh and I just re-read your Op - you really have put your own spin on the vast majority of your links you posted. Maybe re-read your Op and stick with just the facts rather than an editorial if thats's what your intentions are?

Way to go being obnoxious;) If you wanted this to be an information post you wouldn't have put your own "comments" between every link which tarnish what you claim to do. If you want to make this an information post just leave it at that and don't "interpret" things for others which have no bases in fact. On and just for the record I love SW:ToR. I actually think it is a brilliant game and DOES NOT need to go F2P but should instead have persevered with improving the game and delivering content that builds upon its strength - you know like Trion Worlds did with Rift. Rift had exactly the same problems as SW:ToR in its very early days but rather than panic they stuck to their philosophy and have created a very well respected MMO which has a solid place in the market place by providing a substantial amount of content and quality of life upgrades. Funnily enough Turbine had the same philosophy in the first years of Lotros life and received huge accolades for their commitment to free content for their subsribers. Funny how that dried up after it went F2P. F2P is BW/EA seeing the numbers, listening to a lot of negative publicity and, in my opinion, hitting the panic button by going F2P. They should have simply focused on fixing the things that were wrong and creating a buzz around upcoming content. F2P will change the game. Some won't mind, some will. I am one that will because I hate being nickle and dimed so I am voicing my concern and trying to point out that the "everythings going to my fine" view may be misplaced. Doubt it will make a difference but it might, or at least if BW are reading may stop them doing some of the more heinous things that F2P can bring.

What a pointless post Op. The official threads are not very credible sources because they don't contain all the information so at the moment they are only the "facts" that they want you to know. The omission of detail could simply be because not all the details have been confirmed or decided upon or it could be because some will be a tad unpopular. In short until we know exactly how F2P will work, the costs of everything, the *specific* types of goods on offer, the complete breakdown of what F2P are restricted to and if they have options to unlock small thing / medium things / big things then this information is just as correctly intrepeted in a good light as a bad light. And at the end of the day I can guarantte one thing. If you are a subsriber currently things will not be exactly the same. At the very minimum subsription money that players are paying currently paying is being used to develop F2P rather than content and the change to F2P will result in UI changes to incorporate the new features and there will have to be access to the Store via some means in-game. there were plenty of these types of posts when Lotro went F2P and those "official" statements were exactly like these - very scant on actual specific details. It was very handy when a lot of what was assumed by those who took the F2P move as a positive turned out to be not true. So at the end of the day just because you have interpretted the official statements in one manner does not make them so.

Yep it's a pain and depends how they do it. In Lotro there were times when you got a group together to do something only to find that one person was F2P and hadn't bought it. My guess is that they'll make each Op unlockable via an in-game purchase for F2P players. Mind you what I suspect to happen is that there will be raiding Guilds and non-raiding guilds with nothing in the middle so won't be a problem. Biggest worry is that if the best bit of the game is F2P (story) then there will be less raiders about. Paying a subsription to be able to access a few hours of content doesn't seem like it will be enough of a carrot to encourage players to do it. May find out there there are very few raiders about after F2P which considering that IS the end game doesn't seem very bright.

Because invariably the F2P brings the worst of the real world into my fantasy world. It might not be a "huge" deal and "I can live with it" it's the same as the difference between watching a movie with adverts to that with no adverts. Or having a sporting event cutaway for an ad-break. It breaks my immersion and enjoyment even for a little bit. If every time I turned a page in a book I was reading I was encouraged to buy something then everyone would agree that made the experience of reading a book worse. Doing so in a game for me personally is the same thing. I play games for the story and not to be thinking about my wallet in order to get the "most" out of my experience. In short if they genuninley make a subsriber model with a tick box to turn off all mention of the store, or buying cartel points, or having to unlock x y or z I would have no problem with a F2P options. However no MMO has EVER done this and nor will SW:ToR because they want to be able to generate extra income from the people that already pay them $15 a month. It encoruages the worst aspects of capatalism in an enviroment which I choose to engage with in order to escape.

Not sure where you were going with this. RoR is Lotros FOURTH Major Expansion Pack - Mines of Moria, Siege of Mirkwood, Rise of Isengard are the other three. Perhaps you didn't notice that SoM and RoI were MAJOR expansion packs (e.g. paid for ones), because they were a bit light of conent. I guess you could be saying RoR is the Second expac since going F2P but then considering that the content provided by Rise of Isengard used to be considered a free content update rather than an expansion that's hardly something to brag about! As to how you could even compare RoR content to Lotro Vanilla is mind boggling. RoR (the new expac) is one zone which although big is not that full because of the moutned combat with no new instances or raids on release. Christ even SoM was released with a raid and instance cluster as well as a new game mechanic. And if you think Lotro has had MORE content since it went F2P then you obviously weren't around between Vanilla and Launch where Turbine release 4 major zones (Evendim, Goblin Town, Forochel and Eregion), major game systems such as player owned housing and hobby system and regular Epic updates (Class quests) which often contained small pockets of new areas. Then they released MoM expansion pack which contained oodles of content. Then it all went quiet whilst they were preparing for F2P and since F2P has never come close to pushing out the same amount of new content. Even worse each expansion pack has become smaller and smaller. So Lotro even had a "golden age" under the subsription model where content was king. SW:ToR hasn't even had this!

In theory if you were a new player in a guild who already knew the content then you could actually complete all 3 Ops in 4 hours (or pretty close to that) EV HM can be done in under the hour, KP HM can be done in a little over an hour. If that new player got lucky with the Rakata drops they could walk straight into EC SM which with a group who knew the fights could easily do that within 2 hours so I don't actually think it far-fetched that you could kill all Ops bosses in about 4 hours at Rakata level without even needing a particularly good group. Even being on the slow side and allowing 90mins for EV HM. 2hours for KP HM and 3 hours for EC SM - which is being conservative but allowing for a leisuraly pace with plenty of afks then you can still clear all Ops bosses within 6-7 hours. However that was completley off topic. Back on topic yes I think it could have easily lost that many subs but I don't think its because of the lack of end-game but the lack of anything to do once you've completed the class quest for those not interested in Ops. I mean once your class quest ends in this game you might as well just switch the game off for that toon if you don't wanna raid. There's no acheivements, no crafting to grind, no deeds to solo, no places to explore so everything that made getting to level 50 fun just stops. So roll an alt or click unsub even if you loved the game. Does not help as the Levelling process to 50 is just ridiculously quick!

I'm really with the OP on this one. Although Lotro never became pay to win there has been an erosion of immersion behind the pay wall of the store. And this is because customers take it! Relic removal scrolls for example. They used to be available in-game in a normal way. Then they were moved to store items only so even subsribers had to pay. So as people said you didn't have to use them but the alternative was to scrap hours of gameplay in order to start doing teh exact same thing again. In SW:ToR terms imagine grinding for commendation for your Mods for hours. Once you've got them you can put them in the armour you want and remove them to put in new armour whenever you have the in game cash. Now imagine if they stopped you doing that and only allowed you to remove your mods if you buy a special item from the store. So yea alll those hours spend grinding for your comms are wasted unless you buy something (subsribers too) with hard cash. Taken one by one all these things are small but they make the game worse not better. And people always say ya but you don't have to buy them! Well I don't have to wear a helm whilst doing Ops but not doing so is daft. Same principal applies with the Stat tomes which you could purchase via the store - yea +50 stats didn't allow you to fail in landscape quests but that's not the point - I could take half my armour off and still not fail at landscape quests. Point is I always think you play an RPG with the point of making your toon as powerful as possible - if there are store items that make your character even a bit more powerful by spending cash on it that's wrong. Turbine also started introducing more devious mechanisms to get subsribers into the store - they slashed the amount of commendations that could be earned in game unless you used their mess of a group finder which they introduced after 4 years! So you either grind a lot more or hit the store to buy the same items. And what's even worse is that content output declined rather than increased. From Vanilla to MoM there were a lot of FREE updates under sub only model. Then they took forever to "finish" the Moria area and there was a real lack of content whilst they prepared for F2P and teh first F2P expansion. After that was released they said new content would pick up but it never got close to where it was during the first year of launch and the expansions ahve become less and less. Rise of Isengard was a joke of an expansion at launch. And I haven't even had a grumble about potions in store being better than those in-game and on a differed timer, store bought lower level armour that was better than you could craft at that level (making crafting in 20's / 30's redundant), the constant increasing of immersion spoling advertising - cumulating in the awfulness which is the cosmetic dummies just plonked willy-nilly around the landscape. And each of these items were introduced slowly and people said "you don't have to buy them". But now I look back and ask if in the 3 years since it went to F2P if players have a "better" game and the answer is no. The first 50 levels are still the best. Moria is still by far the best expansion and since F2P the only good new feature is the Skirmish system which they keep forgetting about!

2 unsubs here. Sorry but after going from the Lotro experience for start I'm not doing that again. F2P doesn't increase content speed. You don't get anything in life for free so don't kid yourself that you will. And if you are a subsriber you gradually get less and less for your sub whilst all the time being innundated with "buy cartel points" now buttons even if you do sub. Sorry big SW:ToR fan but there is no way F2P will improve the game experience for anyone.

Definatley worth it - maybe think in terms of time rather than money? 25 BH comms is roughtly equivilant to one EC SM Op - 2-3 hours or 4 x Weekly Corellia missions e.g. 45mins (inc travel and getting 4man!) x 4 weeks. or 5 x Daily HM Flashpoint Missions 15mins - 1hour depending on FP and group. Lets say 5 x 30mins on average. So as you can see depending on what type of player you are the free gift is worth 2 1/2 - 3 hours of game time. So in my opinion well worth it!

Don't forget that the main point of running EC Story is the 30 BH comms that drop for a successful raid and the BH piece that drops off the last boss. I assume the rest drop Rakata in order to plug any holes in peoples gear.

In my opinion EC Story is A LOT harder than both EV MH and KP HM. All fights are mechanical harder than both Ops and I still find Boss 2 and Boss 4 provide good DPS checks. That being said EC Story is definatley doable in Full Columi and better so in my opinion I would view your gear as above minimum for a Guild run. Most guilds are prepared to be patient and come back another day if you get stuck on a boss and don't mind helping people learn fights. Tanks in particular have to be on their toes a lot more than in other Ops. However for a PUG run it would all depend on the rest of my group was made up. If I already knew I had some undergeared people in the group then I would know that I'd need an experienced and very well equipped tank then I'd have to make a judgement call and decide the likelihood of success. Obviously with an Op it may not jsut be about your gear but about the average gear of the whole Op.

I guess computers must cost a lot more in the US as lol at the 3000USD price. Bought my wife a Dell Laptop for 450GBP (700USD) last year - only an i5 but it runs SW:ToR fine on High settings. My tower is an older i5 put together for about 400.00GBP (650.00USD) (just the tower) and is around 2 years old now and runs on maxed out settings. Only occasional lag spikes caused by the server merges as was fine before. Biggest thing I notice with people that have good spec'd machines but crappy performance is that they tend to often have a million applciations running in the back ground and a whole bunch of clutter on their harddisks which start on startup. MSCONFIG is your friend people - you really don't need "Wallpaper Roataion Program 2010" running in the background checking to make sure it is the latest version!

Well apart from the Lore reason mentioned above there would be many reasons why melee weapons would still be of use. 1) Stealth. All those lasers going pew pew make a lot of noise and light. 2) Limited resources. Bullets or energy supplies are often scarce - especially in most of the SW:ToR worlds we are sent to save. Being proficient in melee would make sense. 3) Since when is SW about realism? It's about things that look cool on screen and are interesting. Everyone with a blaster is not interesting. 4) Oh and as people have mentioned KOTOR had a reason which makes as much sense in a fantasy universe - the invention of personal shields narrowed the gap between the viability of blasters versus melee.

I do agree with the sentiment here - have run EV many many times since 1.3 and I can't remember any of the "old" bugs. The platforms respawn on wipe now so FIXED for me Sound issues during some fights e.g. Soa FIXED for me. Mindtraps work correctly so FIXED Soa sometimes not following down - not had happen for months so I assume FIXED. Soa bugging out when a tank gets put in a mind trap - once again hasn't happened in months so I assume it's FIXED. The difficulty with rezzing people if they fall from a platform I still encounter on the rare occasions when people fall (and lets be honest these should be awesomley rare). So all in all Soa and EV overall seems pretty well fixed to me. The despawning Phase bug though needs to be fixed asap as is a real pain for all Ops.

OP why does Styxx have to provide you with something constructive? He is not the one that has a problem with names being changed or is QQ that it would be an easy fix. From reading his posts he seems to be pointing out that making fundamental changes to the way SW:ToR (and to be frank most new MMOs) handle naming and that a solution is not an "easy" fix. I would assume on a live server making any fundamental changes to the way the database operations would take considerably time and effort and problably risk. I also cannot believe all these people who are so precious about their names were unable to come up with some creative solutions. As others have done using special characters and or seperating names with - or ' are very good, and largely unobtrusive, methods of getting the same name again. I mean I lost the name Eleena (not terribly original) so now I'm El'eena. Seriously is that kind of change so abhorrant that instead people want to waste time demanding refunds and throwing their hands in the air as if the sky is falling?

Happened 3 times now on our EC runs - all about 11:00PM which is usually when we've got up to Kaphees. 3 times now we've called it a night after getting this error message because all the logging off and resetting phases and then clearing the trash again is just a pain in the **** and as usually a work night really puts people off. Out of interest is there anyway to skip some of the trash between boss 3 and 4 in EC?

Nonsense Lotros launcher randomly bugs out and tells people the servers are full when they are not as it's so poorly designed that if the launcher can handle far less logins that the servers. So the launcher login gets full and then thinks its the actual servers that are full. This has been a known bug for many months and no-one really wants to fix it. So saying a bug where you have to click 1 more button is in anyway a big deal is ridiculous.

I must admit 8 months in having multiple down times in a week is not acceptable imo. Maintenance on a Tuesday is fine. But then coming down on the Wednesday as well - doesn't look good to me and unless there are game breaking bugs or huge exploits then surely we should expect that Tuesdays maintenance should fix what its designed for. It doesn't affect me personally as I'm always at work during maintenance BUT I definatley feel empathy for those for whom maintenance is during peak times or their game play. They are not getting what they are paying for - you wouldn't except it from your ISP / Television / Phone companies (who all deal with high volumes of concurrent users and charge a monthly fee for a service) so don't think we should except multiple disruptions to service from an MMO. They aren't quick downtimes either, nor are they staggered to releive the burden on Asiapac who I'm sure can live with one of their evenings disrupted a week but 2 or 3 is asking a bit much imo.

Reading this thread makes me glad I'm in a good guild. What's with this morale absolute that skipping trash (and even some boss fights) just to get 5 BH commendations makes people more right than those who don't? Heck some of the speed runs I've been on feel more like exploits than actual just skipping content sometimes. Anywho I rarely bother with FPs because they aren't as interesting as Ops to me and if someone wants me to help out with a HM FP then then getting a mere 5BH from the daily isn't particular high on my list of priorities (compared to trundling through EC) so I expect to be able to enjoy the experience rather than rush through it in 30mins just to go back to sitting on the fleet again. On the other hand its always funny when people ask to do a speed run and then spend longer sneaking around the landscape, falling into detection zones and other tomfoolery than it would have taken to just clear the darn mobs. Sometimes if someone will ask for a speed run and I'll say sure - but can someone just recap the Story of the FP to me so that I can spacebar though - that usually gets met with a wall of silence as no-one in the group has ever sat through the cust-scenes. Kinda depressing really.

The PvE "reasons" listed really don't sound particularly impressive - more like design decisions which I'm sure will have as many negative points as positive - hardly anything groundbreaking. The PvP features sound nice for those that like PvP. Was probably going to give it a try but after reading that list sounds like more features that would annoy me than not in the PvE arena.