I've recently come back to the game after being away around 6-8 months and I'm really disappointed to see this bug still exists. It's getting to the point where I'm avoiding grouping simply because I'm fed up with losing nameplates/and or arrows after instance switches. It really makes it much harder than it should be to run with a group. Group missions are, not surprisingly, much more chaotic than single player and attempting to run with a group with this bug is a bit like playing with one eye shut and one hand behind your back. I rely on the nameplate and arrow to give me the information I need as quickly as possible, I'm not used to having to look down at the target select icon to see who I'm aiming at. Thanks to this bug I've done everything from heal the wrong person (and watch the one I meant to heal die), to accidentally aggroing another group of enemies and causing a team wipe during a battle because I couldn't instantly tell who I had targeted. That sort of thing can give you the wrong sort of reputation among players and can be quite distressing if you are the sort of person that normally works well in a team. BTW doesn't seem to matter what brand of graphics card you have, I tried my ATI and NVIDIA and both have the issue.

Well I'm another subscribing Aussie player who will be leaving when this happens and I've been playing since the US release. I know it will mean bugger all to those in charge but this is unacceptable. You couldn't have given the Oceanic group a bigger slap in the face when all we really needed was one main server. In fact I'm so annoyed (it really hasn't been a good day) I'm wishing I hadn't already had an extra month processed on my credit card as I'd be quitting now. I don't normally do this whole melodramatic thing and normally I'm preaching calm, but for me this is finally the last straw. It has been repeatedly demonstrated time and time again that this company does not understand how to handle its community nor does it seem to listen (mind you with EA involved can I say I'm surprised?). In any case it has been obvious for a while that the focus has shifted away from the players and what they'd like to see (some major bug fixing wouldn't go astray) towards the online store. In fact as far as I can see about 80% of patches, additions etc. seem to be shop focused. I've seen this happen on subscription MMO's before when the panic sets in because subscriptions are down, money is getting tight and so they are feel as if they are being forced to a F2P model. All well and good but when suddenly the online store starts making money that they weren't getting from subscriptions it becomes the main focus and other things that should be the focus suddenly become secondary. However I'm digressing a lot here... My point is this is the last in a long, long, long line of frustrations I've had with this MMO since it was released in what was (lets face it) a pretty shoddy beta-like state and while I'm pretty undemanding when it comes to these games generally, I have no intention in hanging around to watch my 40ms ping turn into 300ms returning me to the same poor online experience I was getting back when I still played on Harbinger. I’m also not entirely happy about trying to find names for my 13 characters when they are moved to the US (which I’m sure will be pretty full up thanks to the antiquated MUD-like naming system SWTOR decided to go with as opposed to something a little more modern like the system used by Champions Online). Sure if the Oceanic servers had been merged I’d have been in the same boat (possibly) but to keep the low latency I might have put up with it. I think I’ll leave it there as to paraphrase Mr. Furious: Rage... Subsiding... I’ll just leave you with one final thought: I sure as heck hope that if you guys make the mistake of creating another MMO, you don’t stuff it up quite so badly as you did with this one. Take care and Toodle Pip. If anyone wants my gear it will be in the trash compactor, along with my subscription.

Not sure whether it's just the way the planet is designed, or whether there's something weird going on with Corso or Disappearing Act but I've died more times today than I did in my passage from 1 to 50. Almost every battle, even with most of his AE threat generators turned off, I've had Corso aggro more enemies than I can deal with. 2 spawns at a time being the norm. Fine if Disappearing Act worked but a number of times now I've had it fail -- I'm wondering if failure rate is higher if you use DoT attacks in your build ie. that if enemies have a DoT attack on them from you, they are still aggressive despite the use of Disappearing Act as they are still taking damage. Mind you that would make sense. Anyway the biggest weirdness I've had was one time I used Disappearing Act, it failed, Corso and I died. So I decide to rez where I am only to have Corso _immediately_ leap and attack a group a fair distance away that I wasn't even fighting when we died, causing a large number of enemies to suddenly descend upon us both and (not surprisingly) we died again. In another area I actually had an elite charge half way across a map to attack Corso and I while fighting a separate elite -- twice. I don't get what I'm doing wrong or what has changed since I first arrived on Ilum (I haven't played this character in 2 weeks I think it has been) because originally I didn't have any such issues. Edit: My signature is now incredibly ironic. I bet it turns out the problem is the player. ie. Me...

Me, I never wanted this game to go F2P for a lot of reasons but I don't think anyone wants to read my essay on F2P systems and why I believe they are a "Bad Thing TM" -- anyway even I have to admit that the game was going down the gurgler with the massive drop in people playing on the Oceanic servers that I've witnessed the past few months. Of course I'm just one person but I'm on TOR every day and see a lot of the PvE server Dalborra thanks to the 10 characters I switch between quite regularly. Anyway if TOR is going F2P, as a lot of people claimed to have wanted, this is what we are all going to have to accept. Either we have F2P and put up with this sort of thing, ie. carrots on sticks designed to pull credit cards out of wallets/purses, or watch TOR limp along as a subscription-only game until it dies a pathetic lonely death. Not that F2P is a guaranteed save though. That relies a lot on the design of the F2P system and, to a certain extent, how aggressive they get with their carrots and sticks.

From my observations the problems are more to do with weekdays. Weekends, on Dalborra at least, seem to have reasonable population levels on both Empire and Republic sides. Sort of. In any case I'm hoping they decide to merge Oceanic rather than close it down altogether. While things are much faster on the US servers than they were before the massive upgrade and merger, I'd still prefer a latency of 40 over 2-300 (before the upgrade I used to average around 400 on The Harbinger). That's what you get when you live at the arse end of Adelaide in an area serviced by an exchange that wont allow anything faster than ADSL-1. In any case I'm just one person and so will have to put up with whatever decision Bioware makes based upon the opinion of the majority -- although it would be nice if they gave us the chance to vote on the outcome.

No, no, no this is a good thing! Seriously! By gradually making a growing number of powers/skills in the game pointless it helps free up space in the action bars of my characters. Thanks once again Bioware -- keep up the good work! PS If you could, please mess up some of my Jedi Guardians powers next as that's another one I'd like to reduce the number of skills I bother cluttering up my action bars with.

The Sith Warblade is something I've only ever seen once, and that's towards the start of the Sith Warrior class missions. I asked about this some time ago but made the mistake of not including a picture, so most people probably had no idea as to what I was talking about. At least that's my hope as I didn't get much in the way of a response. Sith Warblade

What bothers me is I have 1 character on the US server Jekk'Jekk Tarr which I would love to transfer and yet the only option available to me is to move him to another US server The Harbinger, when really I want to move him to Dalborra in the Oceanic region (I didn't have the room to move him when the Oceanic transfers were going on). Now the thing is Dalborra is listed as a destination server on the information page regarding transfers but isn't available as an option when I attempt to move my guy on Jekk'Jekk. This doesn't make any sense. Edit: Hmm, yeah reading the FAQ makes it quite clear (even though it sounds as if Jekk'Jekk is one of the servers that will be closed down, maybe) that I'll have to wait for paid server transfers. That's ok, I can wait.

Does it suck and does it piss me off? Yes as I was _really_ looking forward to playing. Is it going to change? No. So what can I do about it? Bugger all. Or, if you have a spare few hundred million sitting about, create your own top selling MMO, host it in the Oceanic region and do all your maintenance times during US prime time. Seriously though stressing out about it only "hurts" you. Just have to learn to accept it and move on. Ce la vie.

Hilarious stuff. Had only just been reading the Twitter and Forum announcement that the patch wasn't happening tonight, so was happily playing my Vanguard when *BOOM*, the server goes down. It's at that point I read that "Oh hang on sorry, no the maintenance is happening tonight". No admin message or warning in the game at all. Honestly though, I'm not fussed. Sure it's annoying but if they are so hot under the collar about getting this patch out tonight it suggests something is very broken somewhere -- so I'd rather put up with another night of inconvenience than find out the hard way that something really aint right.

And here was me thinking this was going to be a reference to the fact that in hybrid (PvP/PvE) MMO's, PvE'ers tend to get the short end of the stick because design decisions often give PvP precedence over PvE. Oh well. Nothing to see here folks, move along! Don't mind me, I'm still sore over the animation changes to Project.

I had this recently on my Scoundrel and have had on other classes I've played as well (end of Chapter 1 on my Inquisitor was the first I ever ran into). Up to the mission I had extreme difficulty with, I'd been playing in haphazard way using whatever attacks I felt like using and had even just thrown points into skills without really thinking about it too much. After I reset all my skill points and put them into places that I had planned to do so originally, and worked out a workable attack cycle I breezed through the mission after having died 4-5 times prior to my deciding to take the game a little more seriously. I got nice and upset when I hit that brick wall but it will be a sad day indeed if they ever decide to pull those walls down. I saw that happen to LOTRO and it wasn't pretty...

I think its a bit like the fake gem you get during the Smuggler class quests in Chapter 1. Thats a white, non-usable object that has no real use. I'm a hoarder so just shove it in my ships cargo hold for fun.

Wow... Just.. Wow... That is terrible. I _LOVE_ the old animation (although I suspect I'm pretty much the only one if these forums are anything to go by). Oh well, better start planning a build that doesn't involve the use of Project now in preparation for 1.3. What they need to do is a poll. Edit: Actually I like Dyvims suggestion. More customization options is never a bad thing.

Does anyone know if there is a moddable/artifact version of the Sith Warblade? I'm guessing the answer is no as I can't find one anywhere, but thought I'd ask just in case. I guess part of the problem is that the Warblade is classed as a lightsaber...

Which is part of the reason why I really hate hybrid PvE/PvP games. One side is always nerfed/annoyed by changes made that are primarily for the other, but in reality affect both. The limitation of certain weapons to certain classes is still by far my biggest disappointment with the game as a long time KOTOR fan, not that I'm saying we should be able to make twin pistol wielding Jedi. Honestly, although I know PvP'ers wouldn't like this solution, I'd rather they just shoved the relevant class icon above players heads like the ones you can turn on in PvE.

F2P? You serious?!? So far I've had 3 MMO's that I loved go F2P and it ruined every single damn one -- for me at least. People who love F2P systems probably loved it, but I hated it. In all three cases it ended up costing me more money and flooded servers with complete prats. The worst of the three experiences happened after one of my old stomping grounds went F2P and overnight my credit card stopped being accepted for subscriptions. It took a whole month to get a response from their accounts department and that response was "go see your bank". I talked to my bank, heck I talked to Visa, and all agreed there was nothing wrong. Two more months later it still hadn't been sorted out and I finally woke up and realised that I'd been conned. During that time I'd been so desperate to play the game that I'd ended up buying all the content I'd had access to when I was a subscriber, which in total exceeded what a lifetimes subscription would have cost (we are talking two to three hundred dollars here at least) -- and the funniest part is that not once did they refuse my card when it came to buying points. Despite all the hours and the money I'd put into the game, both during the time it was a subscription game and after it went F2P, I ended up walking away in disgust and I've not been back since. The second MMO didn't stop me subscribing, but also managed to give you bugger all as a subscriber so that when new content came out it was pretty much a given you'd have to pull out your wallet and pay for that on top of your subscription. The third MMO also would have cost me a lot more money to keep playing it than I wanted to spend, but by this time I'd gotten pretty leery of the whole F2P model and I decided it was smarter this time around to just leave. So while for some of you might have had "good" experiences with the F2P model as applied to MMO's, mine have been exceedingly negative, and as this is now pretty much the only MMO I play, I really, really hope you are wrong in predicting it will go F2P any time soon... I must admit though that while I hate F2P with a passion, the number of MMO's I loved that are no longer with us because they were no longer financially viable actually out numbers the MMO's I've played that went F2P. I'm honestly not sure which event is worse.

This is not and will not be a Bioware bashing thread, but I will be starting on a slightly negative note, so please bear with me and read the whole post before replying. Ok here goes. When I first started playing TOR by far my biggest disappointment was the discovery that the classes on either side of the galactic divide were pretty much exact mirrors of each other. My next biggest disappointment was the discovery that all classes are locked into a highly restrictive selection of weapon choices (some more than others of course) especially after the freedom we had in KOTOR 1 and 2 -- sure this is a different beast being an MMO and with everything that means, but it still doesn't mean you have to be as restrictive as you have. I suspect that these two decisions had more to do with the PvP aspect of the game design than anything else, but what I believe or think about that matter is not important. Then the Legacy system is expanded and we get some interesting new unarmed combat powers that we can unlock. Now I know why they were added, I just think that it was somewhat short sighted to make them available just for some niche part of the PvP market, when with a bit more thought they could have been useful to both PvE and PvP'ers. So, where am I going with all this whining? I'd like to see a few more weapon types opened up eg. single bladed lightsaber for the Assassin/Shadow class (or at least let us do what Darth Maul did and turn off one blade -- could even add it as a stance), blaster rifle for the powertech class (I'll understand if you don't want to allow that for the mercenary), etc. I'd also like to see powers and skills have their limitation based more sensibly upon whatever animation is used. So a gun attack should require a gun, a knife attack should require a knife, a dart attack shouldn't require anything if it comes from something attached to your arm, and a heal that relies upon another device or a force power shouldn't require a weapon in the hand. Make skill and power limitations actually make sense. Loosened weapon restrictions combined with the new Legacy unarmed combat powers could actually result in a little more creativity and allow the game to be a little less cookie-cutter in appearance. That brings me to a costume system, but that's another matter altogether and I'm sure it's on your "To do" list anyway. Actually I have to wonder if you've already started loosening some limitations. I could swear the last time I tried punches with a low level Smuggler I couldn't even heal myself when I didn't have a weapon wielded, and yet with my brand new Agent I'm quite happily running about with no rifle, a knife attack, the thermal grenade attack and a few punch attacks -- and I'm having a ball. Edit: After all that I forgot one of my main points regarding the Legacy punch system, and that is would it be also possible to make it so that you can have a weapon equipped but when you go to use the punch you first sling/put away the weapon before punching. That way the option is there if people _really_ want to use it, but forces them to put up with weapon draw/redraw animation times if they want the best of both worlds (armed and unarmed).

Well Sage might be your thing I'm guessing. However a viable alternative might be Shadow with the Balance tree. Currently that is the path my Shadow is following, and I swear I spend more time using force powers than my lightsaber. Still you want ranged and Sage is long range, while Shadow (even with mostly force usage) is short to mid-range, although the temporary force power buff does seem to (among other things) increase the range of your pebble throwing channel power to around 30m. Personally I wish the Sage still had a melee based third tree. Shadow isn't really what I wanted, but neither is Sage. Sage with a couple more melee powers would have been it. Ahh well. Completely off-topic I know, but I do wish they'd loosen the weapon restrictions a little on some classes. Surely having distinct weapons to identify players in PvP is less important now you can turn icons above players heads on? Not that I've played PvP since that was added so don't know if that works in there...

When you are male and young you enjoy running about shooting the hell out of things and blowing crap up in the latest FPS, but as you get older you find yourself slowing down and wanting a bit more out of your games so you get into MMO’s – next thing you know you are collecting 20 flowers for Twinkles the fairy so she can hold her tea party for all her happy-time friends and wondering where it all went wrong. However SWTOR saves me from yet-another-generic-happy-time-fantasy-game and allows me to rediscover my youth (which of course is really important when you hit your 40's as a male -- especially when you can't afford a sports car) and relive those times of fast guns and loose grenades; all while playing a game my aging reflexes(*) can handle. * Yeah ok, I might still regularly kick behind in an online action PvP game, but my reflexes are slowing down. Honest.

Honestly I wouldn't go by what happens in MMO forums. You rarely get people posting when they are enjoying a game (unless they have a question they need answered) as they are too busy playing it, unlike someone who has issues with the game and wont play it despite having a paid up account -- in their case they have too much time on their hands, a chip on their shoulder and access to the forums. So the only thing negative posts in forums indicate is that there is someone unhappy about something, they certainly don't show to us what ratio there is of unhappy to happy people and should never be used to gauge how a game is doing. Why? Because there is no way of knowing (by us at least) how many people who play the game actually participate in the forums -- so any data extrapolated from here is still, at best, guesswork. To give you an example, even though it is anecdotal "evidence" at best, out of the 11 or so veteran MMO players I've known for years I am the only one who reads forums. None of them do (at least these days) because of the negativity that you typically find in MMO forums. Does that prove anything? Heck no, it's just an example but I'm sure they aren't alone in that. Disclaimer: I know I'm answering questions you haven't asked but I thought I might as well put the response I've wanted to give to this sort of thing for some time now. Sorry, you're it.

WARNING! WALL OF TEXT ALERT! The problem is that since they decided to make an all-singing, all-dancing (yeah, ok I mean all voice acted) MMO, they've kinda shot themselves in the foot from the word go. I mean this is Star Wars, a sci-fi universe chocka-block full of interesting alien races and here we have an MMO where, thanks to this design decision, we (the rabid Star Wars fans) will probably never get to play our favorite races. Instead we are limited to human-but-bald-with-tattoos, human-but-green-with-tattoos, human-with-blue-skin-and-red-eyes, human-with-two-head-tentacles, human-with-red-skin-and-some-funny-growths, human-with-horns etc. To be honest I think it's dull, dull, dull. If it wasn't for the fact that a) it's the only half-decent sci-fi MMO around at the moment (as far as I'm concerned, don't get me started on STO or that new creepy horror one), b) it's Star Wars (YAY!), c) it's the closest I'll ever get to KOTOR 3, and d) it's actually a lot of fun to play -- I'd be long gone. Probably back to one of the MMO's I used to play that allowed me more appearance customization (um no, I'm not talking about WoW which I hated BTW). While many people would call having more interesting non-human-like races "fluff", for alt-aholics like me it's what helps keep all our characters from looking the same. Anyway, despite this I'm looking forward to seeing where Bioware takes TOR. So far it has been an interesting (and fun for the most part) ride. Edit: Whoops forgot to add that for me it would be Jawa or Wookie or Selkath -- loved the surprise cameo appearance by a Selkath Jedi on Tython in one of the Jedi Knight class quests.

Heya. I'm currently struggling making up my mind about Powertech or Mercenary. I've played both up to about level 17 or so, but that was back towards when the game went live. I had a horrible time on my Mercenary taking down an elite Sith in the BH story line on DK (and a much easier time with my Powertech). If I go Mercenary, can I always expect to have trouble versus Jedi, Sith and other such melee types or does it get better in time (skills plus player experience with the class)? Or should I just go Powertech? I happen to be equally comfortable (or uncomfortable depending on how you look at it ) with either melee or ranged, I'm more concerned about how well I'm going to go soloing certain (single player) content. PS I'm mostly PvE with (very) occasional casual PvP. EDIT: Never mind. I wish there was a delete thread button...

More slots per server and Jawa Jedi's.

This. I keep forgetting this and whining to my friends about my various Jedi/Sith characters when I get my behind handed to me, but more than once I've been reminded by one of them who knows quite a bit about Star Wars canon that I've got a skewed understanding of how powerful Jedi/Sith are. The fact of the matter is most of the "big name" Jedi/Sith are unusually powerful examples and not your average Jedi/Sith. As you say the average Jedi/Sith are killed all the time in canon by relatively normal, non-uber opponents. Still... I keep thinking my Jedi/Sith are one of the "big name" powerful examples and get disappointed when they aren't.