Purely my own experience, and not from a big enough sample to be statistically significant, but I bought nine hypercrates (so, 270 packs, 540 chances at items) and got two Lightning Weapon Tunings, and four Unstable Arbiter's Lightsabres, so the tunings seem to be rarer ... Ok, so I got really lucky on the 'sabres, but seriously here's a breakdown of all the gold items I got:- Unstable Arbiter's Dualsabre - 0 Unstable Arbiter's Lightsabre - 4 Triumphant Predator's Upper - 4 Triumphant Predator's Lower - 0 Triumphant Predator's Supplementary - 1 Shadow Corsair's Upper - 4 Shadow Corsair's Lower - 4 Shadow Corsair's Supplementary - 7 Ginx Handler Licence - 2 Correlian Stardrive Spark - 5 Stormcrest Vorn Tiger - 2 Analog Load Lifter - 2 Lightning Weapon Tuning - 2 That's 37 Gold drops across 13 items, giving an average of 2.85 per item, so I should have expected 2 or 3 Lightning Weapon Tunings, I got 2 so a tad unlucky but in the expected range. Let's be generous and say the average for Tunings is 3 in 270 packs, so if you do better than 1 in 90 packs you're beating the odds They do look rather nice though, couple of short hi-res videos I made:- My normal graphics settings (no bloom) 5Mb Ultra graphics setting (with bloom) 6Mb They also make a slight crackly noise, which can be heard in the no bloom video (the second seems to have picked up some music I had playing too, sorry).

Depends, they're always adding new weapon looks (usually to the Store, but occassionally in-game too). Several times I've thought 'Oo, I love this weapon / outfit / mount, I'll never use another' and then something I like even more turns up A few years back I had 20 characters sharing about three looks, now I have 40-odd charac ters getting more unique all the time

Sorry, guess I misunderstood. Selling CCs (almost) directly could work, I guess. Use CCs to buy token that grants CCs, put token on GTN. Knowing BW though, it would cost 1000 CCs for a token that grants 750 CCs EverQuest introduced a gameplay token, which could be bought directly from their store, then sold to another player who then redeemed it for a month's gameplay, other games probably have too. It cost a little more than a normal month's sub iirc. For it to work in SWTOR though the token would have to be buyable only directly for cash (same as the digital upgrade), not with CCs as people with lots of referals could then effectively stop subbing. The gameplay token could also be a good way for some Preferred or FTP people to effectively become subs, but only if the token had a fixed price under their maximum credit limit. One 'token-subbed' they'd have no limit of course, but they'd still need to buy that first one

Buying a CM pack for real cash and selling it on the GTN for credits has the complete opposite effect on the in-game economy than directly buying credits from the Store, which is why BW will never sell credits directly. When you buy a CM pack (or unlock, or any other item to sell) and put it up on the GTN, credits that were (ideally legitimately) earned in-game by one player are transfered to another player, and it removes credits from the game, because the GTN eats 6% of the sale price. Thus if you sell a hypercrate for 20 million credits, 1.2 million credits just vanish from the game. This is pretty much the only remaining credit sink in the game, and at least keeps infaltion down a bit. If BW decided to directly sell credits however, these would be credits being magically added to the game, out of nowhere. No-one earned them in-game, they just appeared. And they would be effectively limitless, because people could just keep buying them. That item you want is 50 million, just buy more credits. Except now it's 75 million, because the seller realised there is no real upper limit now, someone will pay idiotic money for it. Which is why it's now 100 million. Oh well, best buy more credits... Sure, the companies that sell credits exist, but they are at least somewhat limited. They have to generate those credits somehow (legitimately play, spend time using exploits, sell packs bought with stolen cards (which would still result in credits being removed overall) etc), so there is a limit to how much can come in. And they're against the TOS, not to mention highly likely to steal your card info, so sensible players steer clear of them. But if BW sold credits, with no risk of a ban or card fraud, you'd best be prepared to spend hundreds of dollars a month if you want to be able to buy anything off the GTN!

I picked up six hypercrates and got one Weapon Tuning (in the first crate, in fact), so the drop rate is indeed pretty low. I did finally get an Arbiter's Unstable Lightsabre though, so that was a nice surprise I don't mind the low drop rate, rare things are good to have in a game, would have been nice for the tunings to be part of the collection system though, with them being as rare as they are. (Yes, I knew in advance they weren't, just would have been nice) Oh well, hopefully can sell the pack fillers for enough to pick up another Tuning so I can at least dual wield them

I opened 300 packs (10 Hypercrates), got everything bar the Warbot companion and the lightsabres. I was mostly after the creature mounts and pets though (see 'Zoo' in sig... ), so overall I got what I really wanted. I do rather like the Warbot and Unstable Sabres though, so I'll see if any crop up at an affordable price (at least I have loads of junk to try to flog to cover the costs ) I used to buy a few Hypercrates each time they came out, but the last couple only had a couple of things I wanted in each so I just bought the items off the GTN. That combined with the long delay since the last pack came out meant I had a fair amount of my usual Hypercrate splurge money saved up, and figured 'why not' and got 10 of this one. Not sure I'll buy the next set though if the cubes still drop so much, I said some rather rude words when I opened five packs in a row and got two cubes in each...

Actually, it goes even deeper than that... I got a Chance Cube emote from my Grand Chance Cube from my Arbiter Pack from my Hypercrate...

The new limit won't magically add more resources to the game. If you had five stacks of 99 before, you still only have 495 now even if they stack together. It will take just as long to go out and gather X mats as before, they'll just take up less space as you do so. So I doubt the new stack size will have much if any effect on prices.

If it helps any, my experience from opening 10 hypercrates (300 packs, yeah I was bored...):- Gold items:- Koensayr Revolution (Monocycle Mount) : 3 Prairie Kybuck (Goat Mount) : 3 Swamp Rancor (***** Mount) : 3 Zakuulan Luxury Sidecar (Other Mount) : 1 Droid Companion : Personal Warbot : 0 Unstable Arbiter's Lightsaber : 0 Unstable Arbiter's Dualsaber : 0 Obviously everyone's mileage will vary, but at best I got a 1% hit rate on any specific Gold item per pack, and three of them I never got at all.

1 Gold item:- Kalakar Strike Fighter Simulator 6 Silver items:- Vindicator's Lightsaber Polar Exploration Armor Set CH-R1 Power Droid (Pet) Title: Enforcer Black and Dark Purple Dye Module Andronikos Revel Customisation 9 24 Bronze items:- Tarisian Head Hunter Grek (Sniper Rifle) Etched Dueler's Lightsaber Razalon FC-6 (Mount) Tirsa Victor (Mount) Ikas XK-13 (Mount) Ikas Shark (Mount) Advanced Black-Pink Color Crystal Enhanced Surveilance Armor Set Dynamic Brawler's Armor Set Emote: Angry Dance Emote: Boo Hoo Supply Pack (Regen Item) HY-G9 Vanity Chamber (Regen Item) Nefarious Blurrg (Pet) Chocolate Lobel (Pet) Rancor Holo-Replica (Toy) Andronikos Revel Customisation 10 Lieutenant Iresso Customisation 9 Treek Customisation 4 Dark Blue and Light Brown Dye Module Medium Brown and Medium Green Dye Module Title: Shadow Collector Title: Constable Title: Space Jockey 1 Decoration:- Life Day Holo-Tree (Pink) Of those, the items I was interested in and didn't already have were:- Kalakar Strike Fighter Simulator (Gold) Ikas Shark (Bronze) Rancor Holo-Replica (Bronze) Life Day Holo-Tree (Pink) As far as bronze items go, a reasonable haul (particularly as I effectively got 1 Gold and 6 Silver in place of Bronze), however it's all OLD stuff that I have very little interest in. Even the four items listed above I only had mild interest in, otherwise I'd have got them long ago. In terms of losing out on 32 chances of NEW items from the NEW pack that I was actually interested in, it was an absolute waste of time and CC.

Hi folks, Logged in today and my HK-51 Jungle Customisation had vanished. Slot was empty, nothing in my inventory, nothing in my cargo holds. Bought a new one rather than waste time with Customer Disservice, but thought I'd just mention it as an FYI.

Hi folks, There were a few things I fancied in the new packs, so despite knowing the ridiculously low odds of getting any of them, and the abundance of the new 'no new stuffs for you' chance cubes, I decided to blow some saved up CC on a hypercrate. One Hypercrate contains 30 packs Each pack has two chances at an item Therefore, in theory, I had 60 chances at getting one of the items I wanted. In fact, I got:- 19 items 32 chance cubes 9 decorations Items:- R1-H1 Astromech Droid (Silver) Classic Vibrosword x2 (Silver) Insurrectionist's Blaster (Silver) Insurrectionist's Rifle (Silver) Advanced Desert Green Hawkeye Crystal (Silver) Advanced Desert Green Eviscerating Crystal (Silver) Advanced Desert Green War Hero's Crystal (Silver) Underworld Anarchist's Upper Body Armor x2 (Gold) Zakuul Knight-Captain's Supplementary Body Armor (Gold) Resistance Fighter's Supplementary Body Armour (Gold) Darth Skotia's Lower Body Armor x2 (Silver) Exiled Knight's Lower Body Armor (Silver) Squadron Ace's Supplementary Body Armor (Silver) Mercenary Slicer's Upper Body Armor (Silver) Mercenary Slicer's Lower Body Armor (Silver) Mercenary Slicer's Supplementary Body Armor (Silver) By far the least impressive haul I have ever had from a Hypercrate!

Path of Confusion - A Sith Warrior's Story WARNING: COMPLETE SPOILERS FOR THE SITH WARRIOR STORY. IF YOU HAVEN'T RUN IT AND INTEND TO, STOP READING NOW!!! Last weekend of 12x XP, hoping to get Chapter Three done while it lasts! So, with that in mind, Back to Quesh again. Chapter Three Stumbling back onto the ship, freshly vacationed, I eventually realise that one of the twinkling lights dancing round the main deck is not like the others, and is instead the Message Waiting light on the main ship Holoterminal. Damn it, I think I lost one of the fairies in the airlock! I send Jaesa back to check, while I randomly push buttons until suddenly Darth Fatass is looming over me. Definitely not the fairy I was looking for! It might just be the nose full of Nar Shaddaa's finest, but he seems to have fewer stains down his tunic than usual. I'm so busy counting them to make sure that I miss what he says first time round, but a bit more random button mashing makes the picture break up, giving me an excuse to ask him to repeat himself. I shouldn't have bothered, the first ten minutes are him crowing about his new seat on the Dark Council, and I tune him out again. I realise he must need them custom made, but I really don't understand his obsession with chairs. The sudden glaring silence lets me know that it's time to tune back in again, and fortunately this time he repeats himself without any prompting from me. Bow to him? Right now I can manage vertical, barely, or horizontal, getting more likely by the minute, but there's absolutely no chance of both at the same time. I turn the volume down until he finishes pouting, and finally gets to the matter at hand. Now that the war is official, instead of everyone coughing and saying 'what pile of dead bodies?', I finally get to really have some fun, and apparently that fun starts back on the planet Quesh. There's a sentence I never thought I'd say! As ever, there's a down side, and this time it's that I'll have to put up with Do-Rag mooning over me yet again. I so much prefer being feared to adored. Still, one of the main advantages to war is that people get killed all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Right everyone, to action! Quinn, get this ship to Quesh. Chirps, brew up the hottest, blackest coffee this Galaxy has ever seen. Pierce, go and rescue Jaesa from the broom closet. Skidmark, sorry Fluffy, lie down outside my door and eat anyone who tries to wake me up before we arrive! Sadly, Dromund Kass to Quesh is a short journey compared to some of our recent trips, and a mere twelve hours later I'm woken by the sound of firstly Quinn banging on my door, and secondly and far more amusingly the sound of Quinn realising he'd not told Fluffy we'd arrived first. Stepping over the whimpering figure, being careful to step in neither the pool of blood nor the pool of urine, I head to the air lock. Jaesa is already there waiting for me, her bloodlust seemingly the perfect antidote to spice. My contact on Quesh is Commander Oily, who apparently also has a Granny who loves him, and thus is the first person I've met who also sports a neat little face mask. You'd think these things would be standard issue down here, but I guess the idea is that an army desperate to get back to a planet with clean air is an army who go all out to win as soon as possible. Unfortunately this tactic might have backfired: after all our troops sprinted to the front lines to get the war over and done with, the Republic troops wandered in and set up explosives everywhere. And now guess who has to go and try not to get herself redistributed around the landscape while she defuses them all. Good guess! Locating the Republic saboteurs is easy enough, as is overcoming their security forces, but their commander, Captain Try-Again, is a different kettle of fish entirely. Instead if pointlessly throwing himself on my blade like all his compatriots, he instead tries to blow the entire place up, with both of us still in it. He might be a few crystals short of a lightsaber, but you have to admire his approach. Unfortunately, he's let down by inferior Republic equipment, and much like that Rodian I picked up on Nar Shaddaa, instead of the big bang I was expecting it's just a small, non-functional unit and a lot of excuses. Still, if he wants to die, who am I to deny him his wish... With no more playmates left, there's just the matter of the explosives to disarm, but before I can make a start the holo starts beeping. People do call at the most inconvenient times! And talking of inconvenient, it's Do-Rag, finally showing his face. And his other face. Ah. Well, I guess you have to hand it to old Fatass, as far as traps go an explosive lined cavern is a pretty good one. One way out, easily sealed, and even if the explosion itself doesn't get me there's always the follow-up few dozen tons of rock landing on my head. I'm going to enjoy killing him even more than I'd thought! For his part, Do-Rag seems pretty cheerful too as he pushes the button, but like all inferior men - i.e. all men - he neither thinks things through nor sees them through. Assuming that the trap will work, he turns off his holo and goes back to whatever he does to pass the time. I'm guessing 'Communing with the Dark Side.' The cavern shakes like Fatass in a belly dancing competition, and rocks like a rancor eggs rain down, but what was it they overlooked, let me think... oh yes, Master of the Force here, hello... While Jaesa blasts half of the rocks to powder, and having the time of her life in the process, I deflect the other half away from us. It would be quite tedious, although the pitching and yawing of the ground beneath us at least added a bit of a challenge to the affair. It also proved something of a challenge to my head, not quite recovered from my vacation it seems, and in an attempt to make the room stop spinning I decided to have a little lie down once down decided exactly where it was. Rock doesn't make the most comfortable of beds, however, and in my restless state I had the weirdest dream, where two sunburned squid were leaning over me mumbling nonsense. Ok, time to find a real bed. There's bound to be one in the Imperial outpost, even if I have to tip Commander Oily out of it first. Arriving at the outpost, however, things just keep getting weirder. Firstly, it seems those sunburned squid might not have been a dream. I pinch myself just in case, and Jaesa joins in too, perhaps a little more vigorously than is really needed, but no, apparently I am indeed awake. Poodoo. Secondly, the Emperor wants me to give him a bath. I've had some strange requests over the years, but that one might just top them all. I stare at the two Sith Purebloods standing becloaked before me, and shake my head, which causes a small pebble to dislodge itself from my ear. I run a finger around the other one, and scoop out a wodge of dirt. Ok, would you mind repeating that please? Ah, the Emperor wants me to be his Wrath... nope, sorry, that still doesn't make any sense. Does he farm out all his sins, because I know the ideal candidate for Gluttony! In an attempt to clarify themselves, one of the Sith explains they are the Emperor's Hand. So, it's body parts too? Well, I know a right 'little lightsaber' if that part is up for grabs... It's at this point that the second Hand chimes in, and makes everything far less clear. Thanks, big help there number two! But finally, the one apparently not just returned from Nar Shaddaa says something that I can grasp on to: the Emperor wants Darth Fatass dead, and he thinks I'm the right woman for the job. Okay then, all hail the Emperor! Fatty, it seems, is pretending to have a direct line to the Emperor, who is on vacation at an undisclosed location, and is using that pretence to try to take over the Galaxy. So it's not just about lunch that he thinks big, then. Well, I couldn't give a lobel's backside why the Emperor wants Fatass dead, I just want to be the one to kill him, so Wrath me up and send me on my way!

Both the Malgus and Shan holostatues unlocked in the Collection for me, and were further unlockable to allow all my characters to get copies. Hope you get a nice Support Droid fresh out of an oil bath who's in a helpful mood!

From a reply I posted in a similar thread a while back... Maybe I'm just the glass half full type, or its the way I play, but I don't see the changes being a problem. When I'm leveling a character, I only ever make them Blue quality gear, never purple (three sets, L15, L27 and L39, from L47 onwards they're Bolstered on Makeb or wearing the constant gear upgrades from Forged Alliances onwards). Blue gear is the new baseline, no more crafting Greens and REing, so the fact that my Cybertech is losing Armourings to my Armourmech / Synthweaver and my Artificer is losing Enhancements to my Cybertech won't affect me in the slightest in terms of making gear for leveling characters. In fact, it'll likely be much easier now with fewer resource types and faster crafting times. As to the purples, I never craft Purple gear for a character that's leveling up, does anyone? Seems quite a waste of expensive materials for something you'll only use for a week. The only purple items I craft are for max level characters... and max level is going up! Thus even if crafting didn't change at all, and everyone (me included) kept all their existing purple schematics, I'd *still* have to learn a whole new set of max level purple schematics (and never use the existing ones again). So, in real terms, I don't think it's nearly the upheaval people are thinking it will be. I'll be making the blues with a different character, but I'll have instant access to them (even if I had to buy them, they're a few hundred credits, kill one group of mobs and you'll make that back). I'll have to learn a whole new set of purple anyway, so what does it matter if it's with a different character. Plus, the majority of the current items will be obsolete anyway, with the stats changes. Currently we have separate Armourings and Mods and Earpieces and Relics etc for every Main Stat (strength, cunning, aim and willpower). In 4.0, those are all being replaced by a single Mastery stat, and from what I've seen not on a 1-point strength = 1-point Mastery basis that would make conversion simple. Obviously that's just me, personally. I have at least one of every Crafting, usually more. I can see that someone that only has one (or perhaps a couple) of crafting skills would have issues I don't. And I only craft for myself and friends, I don't craft to sell, perhaps people do sell mid-level purples? No idea why someone would buy them, but each to their own But overall, if you already have all the crafting skills, you still have access to every Blue schematic (even ones you didn't have RE'd before), and would still have to learn all the new high end Purples regardless, so really it doesn't seem much of a disaster to me. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go smother myself in hickory sauce so I'll taste nice after all the flames...