Wildstar doesn't actually launch until June 3, though it has started its "head start" (for subs? I haven't been following it all that closely). By hours played over the past 7 days, the stats on Raptr have been pretty consistent at 120k hours, including today as of about 5 hrs ago, so by that measure, there hasn't been the drop that the OP mentioned, at least yet. FYI, I tried WS in beta, and it was nothing special. Felt that way about TESO too...

Well, I DID go with Alienware, for the simple reason that I have had great CS from Dell over the past decade. With their accidental damage option, on a number of occasions, probably 3, I have called them for either my or my wife's laptop, and they were at the house in a day or two to replace the part (either a disk or motherboard) with essentially no fuss and no questions asked. Now, I'm not sure what their policy is about international coverage, but in my mind, their CS is worth so much in a lack of hassle that it is worth the extra money to me. That said, I have an AW17 that I bought last July with the following: Intel i7-4800MQ @2.7 GHz, 16 GB memory, 750 GB disk w/80 GB caching mSSD, 1080p 17" display, nVidia GTX 780M. It also has a BD reader/DVD-DL writer. But this is no lightweight--it weighs about 9.5 lbs. I get 50 FPS on Makeb if I turn everything up full, but since I don't really like shadows, I usually disable that, and that gets me 60-70 FPS there. I don't PvP, so I can't say what my rate is in a WZ, sorry. I haven't play all that many other action games on it, but I've had no problem playing Crysis at high settings. Even while playing such games, while the fans do spin up moderately so, I don't find it distractingly loud. And the keyboard does not get exceedingly warm either. I don't game with it much on battery, but for normal use, it has dual graphics (an integrated Intel 4600) and I think I can get around 2hrs on-battery for "light" usage (internet browsing). All-in-all, after almost a year of owning, one of the best laptops I've ever used for gaming.

I'm no expert, but looking at the OP's character in Mr Robot, I see a number of suspect areas. For one, at endgame you need to have all of your gear moddable--you have an unmoddable helm and boots. Second, you have PvP mods mixed in. If this is for PvE, dump those, with the possible exception of some PvP relics (I use PvP Focused Retribution and Serendipitous Assault because I don't raid enough to get the best PvE ones). You have 3 pieces of gear with PvP mods, and two PvP implants. Expertise does NOTHING for you outside of PvP. You also have two PvP relics, and like I said, I use a couple myself, but the ones you have are not the ones I would recommend. Also, your accuracy stat seems very low--and I noticed you only spec'ed 1/3 in the accuracy talent. You might want to read Dulfy's guides as a starting point.

IMHO, the entire F2P model is as flawed as a sub-only model. No one should be able to play a game "for free" in a way that gives them full access. Most F2P models are heavily dependent on either P2W, or funding themselves solely from cosmetics. Particularly with the latter, if that's where your money comes from, what do you think a game will spend a disproportionate amount of time developing? I think SWTOR comes closer to what I think is a fair model, though not completely. This model is more of an a la carte model, where the amount you pay is proportional to the amount you want to play, Now, I don;t mind some level of pay for cosmetics, I just don't think it's good for it to be the lion's share. And, I don't mind there being a "casual and free" option, but it should be limited in how much play per time period is allowed.

If you look at the existing servers, they are already pretty much unique with respect to location, language, and PvE/PvP/RP. You can't really combine locations, if you want to minimize ping. I suppose you could combine languages if you could somehow have a language preference so you wouldn't be grouped with someone who didn't at least say they could speak yours, but I imagine that could be dicey. And I suppose you could eliminate RP since it's not *really* a ruleset, but you'd find people would bet pretty upset.

One reason I think you won't see any change that allows a single class to pick between healer/dps/tank trees at once is that it would probably be VERY difficult to balance when people start to hybridize between them. Consider a character with Guardian-like tank abilities like Heavy armor and shield coupled with Sage-like healing. Also, for the part of the proposal that eliminates the AC, remember that the AC inherently defines a good chunk of your ability set--the skill trees usually only add 3 or 4 new abilities. So, removing the AC entirely means having to get a new way to define how you get those skills.

I've not yet gotten Treek, so maybe I'm missing something... But from what I've seen, many companions already have two stances. I hardly ever switch them around because it would take regearing in many cases. Take Doc (JK) for example. He has a healer stance (Med Watch) and... DPS, I think (only use him as a healer, so I forget). However, in general I do agree that all companions should have two stances. IMHO, one of the things I don't like about the current system is that you can only have one companion with you. I think that if you had been able to form a "trinity" with your solo group, it would open up more strategizing with team composition. As it stands, it's hard to not have a healer on your team for challenging content IMHO, and since most classes only have one companion (from the core team, not including Treek), if you're a DPS or tank, it somewhat ties your hands.

I believe that part of the reason is that gear of the same rating is roughly equivalent. With item level or rank, you have to say not only that level, but also its rariity (green, blue, purple). Plus, the level before never exactly matched the level required to use it, and post-L50, of course never was related to your actual level. Also, previously if you inspected a mod, I think it only ever said its ranking and rating, never its level. The only time you saw the level was once it was slotted.

If that was based on the comments by Smedley of SOE, he only said that it would be “dedicated” to Star wars Galaxies players, but later added that it was "completely new IP". I think I've heard speculation that it's tied in with the new EverQuest game, but not sure if that counts as "new IP" though it could if it's not really based on previous stories but just using the "EverQuest" brand.

I also don't mind lottery packs in the CM all *that* much. But neither do I buy them. "Cosmetics" don't mean a whole lot to me anyways. That said, however, what one also has to realize is whether there should be "rarity" among these items/appearances in the game at all (and if not in the CM, why should there be rarity in loot drops as well--why not have have everything sold by vendors for set and similar prices?). If you buy into the concept that rarity should be present, then there's two ways: 1) the RNG method used (by loot as well as the CM packs); or 2) by pricing. What if that rare dye/armor/whatever were to cost 10,000 CC (roughly $100)? Or maybe to get the same level of rarity, 20,000 CM? I'm sure there would be a similar clamor about how those were "rip-off" prices and how only the "rich" could afford them. With the current system, everyone has a chance (albeit a small one) to get one, and if they get one and don't want it, is willing to sell on the GTN, yes, at a high price. But can you imagine how high a price it would be if only those who paid a "straight-up" $100 set them?

As long as everything I want to play is available using the 500-700 CC you get monthly with a sub, I have no issues with having to use that stipend to get it. In fact, I have over 3000 CC right now because there really isn't anything I'm interested in. Presuming they sold expansions on the CM that I could pay with CCs rather than $$$, I'd be all for it.

And RotHC wasn't charging for content? Personally, I don't see the problem with having story content show up in the CM. If you don't want it, then you don't buy it. If I want it as a subscriber, I can use my coin stipend to buy it (which is something I can't do for full expansions like RotHC, I'll point out), thus making the purchase cost no additional money for me, since I can't see anything else to spend CC on. Plus, doing it this way for say 250 CC or so for a small series of quests produced on a frequent basis doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

Rules are not made in a vacuum. The policies against macro use are solely based on the rationale that such macros constitute an "unfair advantage" for those who have the input devices that can do them. I don't particularly agree or disagree, but from an objective POV, it is a logical basis on which to form the TOS. Extending this to chat macros, the only time such usage really gives anyone an advantage is in combat where a single keypress could put a message out to groupmates in less time than someone without a macro could do. Thus, this is the basis on which BW disallows such, which they have stated they do. From the principles, therefore, VoIP is even more of an advantage as it allows for much more flexibility in communications than a chat macro could give. So on the basis of this, BW should be "concerned" otherwise their ruling on chat macros is inconsistent and a bit capricious. Am I suggesting that VoIP be banned? No, because it's too popular and widespread. Could they? They could try. Other games have indeed written process scanners that check to see what you are running (doesn't WoW do this to some extent?) Is it feasible? Probably not, especially, as other mentioned, they could just run them on their smartphones/tablets for one, or otherwise try to hide them. The only logical avenues to me are: Ignore the issue, and don't disallow chat macros Implement a voice-chat system in the game. The former is the easiest, and frankly I wouldn't really care if I were playing against someone using them, whether or not I was using VoIP or not. The second is probably more "fair" in that it allows any players instant access to the feature without requiring them to be set up with all the possible clients people use, and a server rendezvous point to use them.

I own a Logitech G13 gamepad and a G700 mouse, both of which support macros. However, I have rarely ever used that capability in any game, even single player. The point of these in my mind is the ability to map lots of keystrokes to buttons/keys that are more easily touch-typed, and not macro'ing. So even though I did not buy "SWTOR branded" equipment, I have similar devices and am not put out at all by any ban on macros.

The problem with a TOS that is solely based on *technical* criteria is that it can be nickeled-and-dimed/loopholed by finding some small wording/interpretation that allows certain behavior. RL legal systems are the same way, and you can see the same friction in the US between camps who differ in how the constitution should be interpreted. Personally, I would probably say the TOS intent is to disallow using a system where your input device gives you a material advantage over those without such devices. Thus spamming "1,2,3" on a single keypress to implement a simple priority rotation theoretically gives someone such an advantage. But even with a loose definition such as this, I won't claim it's easy to come up with rulings on what is/isn't allowed. By the same token, the issue around a macro for chat vs. VoIP is indeed salient if the question is one of "input fairness". True, the VoIP app is not part of the game, but as someone points out, it provides for a greater level of advantage than *any* chat macro. From a viewpoint of fairness, even allowing chat macros really doesn't even come close to leveling the playing field. While I've never been a big fan of VoIP, I think the only real solution to this for MMOs is that the game should provide a VoIP system itself that any group of people could use.

I've played since launch with about a 4-5 month gap in the middle, and I have yet to do a WZ, so it wouldn't really matter to me.

As someone said, they built class story events (quest givers and triggered scenes) into the orbital stations (as well as ship hangars for the planets without one). To remove them entirely would mean having to redo those scenes, which I think makes it unlikely to happen. As for skipping them, as people noted you can skip them leaving, though not coming to a planet, except for the daily hubs where you can shuttle directly between them all using the terminals, including the ones on fleet.

I seem to recall someone (maybe even one of the devs) saying way back at launch that the combat system uses a single roll to determine hit/crit/shield. Maybe someone can dig up that reference.

I think a lot of people would get upset at that. I often run as either a Healer/DPS hybrid when solo'ing with a companion, or even as a TK/Balance Sage hybrid even if I want to go full DPS. What they don't want to let people do is get the keystone ability + more than 10pts in other trees.

Actually, what in my mind would revolutionize all RPGs would be a sound system that could do "full range human speech" from scripted text. In other words, have a system that allows voices to be as realistic and generated dynamically as we have video. This would: lessen the time-to-produce (and perhaps cost) of games Make it less onerous to produce many more options/branches to content Perhaps even have a chat-to-voice system for RPers Kinect, no, not so much.

I wonder if it could be possible to have a "floating requirement" for the top tiers. What I mean is that to unlock the top tiers of a tree only requires 30 pts at level 50, then rises one point per level to 55? That way classes can continue to get their top tier skill at the same time as they used to, but as they rise in expanded levels, aren't free to hybridize any more than they are allowed now. This makes that system extensible for the next level cap rise, which would otherwise mean that you couldn't get your keystone ability until L50. And if the level cap goes beyond 60, then people who don't buy any expansion wouldn't be able to get them at all (unless previous level cap increases were made free---but in any case, it still changes the advanced class balancing)

The higher your level, the less you get from each point of surge, so I'm guessing your knight is higher level than the others?

I've finished the entire seeker droid chain, and never had a problem finding the seeds. I too probably didn't take more than 10 min to find each, and some of that time had more to do with dodging or fighting the mobs in the area. I've also found a number of the "special items" (the one item that closes out an area, not the "interesting items" you can find a number of, and not counting the green mods that don't even count as that) in the random areas. Usually takes me 20-30 min to do that though, and I probably will pop one of the enhancements that help narrow the search. FYI, folks do know that the direction finder you get on a miss is from the location you're standing, and not your dig point, right?

I guess you've never played Eve, where you can sit in an asteroid belt for hours mining... Eh, I don't mind the seeker droid. And it's not like they force you to do it. So do something else.

As I've been looking over the elder game vendors, I think I would vastly prefer it if they sold mods (meaning armorings, etc. too) like the Makeb vendor does for planetary comms. I don't see the point with all these pre-built shells (most of which I wouldn't want anyways) that force a specific stat distribution on you. This makes it much more player-friendly, in that one can build the character they want a bit more effiiciently, which is more important to us who don't do the grind as much as others. It also allows for more gradual improvement over time if you don't get that many comms over time.