If the web developers are coding the game, then there are bigger things to be concerned about then allocation of developers.

Didn't see the sticky thread and posted this initially in what I suspect is a soon to be locked thread, so cross over: Alternative colouring is fine in itself for me personally. However there are a few readability problems I have already found myself experiencing, due to the up size of pretty much everything. On initial forum load, at 1600x900 resolution the banner header takes up most of the screen realestate, and what little I can see of the forums is a over inflated image and rather large side links to the developer tracker. I am guessing the redesign was aiming for easier accessibility... but may have gone slightly over board with the super sizing every single button, link and image humanly possible, when even typing this post requires me to scroll down the page to see the full post creation frame after the 7th line. Examples: What I see every time I access the forums: http://content.screencast.com/users/...04-17_1746.png How far I have to scroll down through the enlarged images and small handful of initial super links just to get to the forum section overview: http://content.screencast.com/users/...04-17_1747.png I am liking the new style itself.... but certain aspects of the design just feel counter intuitive from a perspective of navigation and quick access to where you need (or rather want) to go. Front page suffers the same problem, all the top news used to be expandable and collapsible and everything was available at a glance to peak your interest... now it's a whole scroll down the page affair, but with a fancy Javascript/PHP slide show at the top for marketing. http://content.screencast.com/users/Tikigod/folders/Jing/media/3b1295ae-3e98-4885-8cb1-e20c3046457f/2012-04-17_1757.png Looks impressive when you first load and go "WOW!", but then if you sit back and think about the design you realise the new design effectively isolates first page load from any at a glance news, promotions and trial detection included on the frontpage... all you see is a static slide that gradually changes every 6-7 seconds and the navigation bar to other pages which is likely what you will impulsively use rather than scrolling down and seeing "PLAY THE GAME FREE FOR 3 DAYS TRIAL!"

Examples: What I see every time I access the forums: http://content.screencast.com/users/Tikigod/folders/Jing/media/ca7568e9-6221-4ac2-9da3-61ad7fe7f24c/2012-04-17_1746.png How far I have to scroll down through the enlarged images and small handful of initial super links just to get to the forum section overview: http://content.screencast.com/users/Tikigod/folders/Jing/media/5516ff0a-c434-4328-b691-3ca56be6ee49/2012-04-17_1747.png I am liking the new style itself.... but certain aspects of the design just feel counter intuitive from a perspective of navigation and quick access to where you need (or rather want) to go. Front page suffers the same problem, all the top news uses to be expandable and collapsible... now it's a whole scroll down the page affair, but with a fancy Javascript/PHP slide show at the top for marketing.

Alternative colouring is fine in itself. However there are a few readability problems I have already found myself experiencing, due to the up size of pretty much everything. On initial forum load, at 1600x900 resolution the banner header takes up most of the screen realestate, and what little I can see of the forums is a over inflated image and rather large side links to the developer tracker. I am guessing the redesign was aiming for easier accessibility... but may have gone slightly over board with the super sizing every single button, link and image humanly possible, when even typing this post requires me to scroll down the page to see the full post creation frame.

Currently I don't think they can, no.

The idea of legacy unlocks in relation to companions in the family tree is an interesting one. Perhaps after completing all sub-missions for a specific companion it could unlock the companion in your legacy tree just like a standard player character and held to the same restrictions as PCs (So you don't have 8 vettes in your tree, married to each of your characters for example). This would allow to have one specific character to be listed as married to a companion, whilst being a rival to another, and even make characters that are children of your companion. Of course droid companions raise a whole wealth of questionable areas... I find it hard to imagine my Guardian would marry T7 and have a child with it for example. So it would perhaps require further rules and expansion of the existing legacy tree to filter out certain impossible connections before it could be practical in the game itself.

Where's the companion section placed when it's active?

I guess it's HK related as well given the hints and teases Bioware gave about familiar faces from the KOTOR series and cameo appearances back when they were still developing the game pre-retail and pre-open beta.

This has been around since beta. When you pass by NPCs in conversation with each other if you leave the area before the exchange is over, the game client actually stores the next line of dialogue for what seems to be a random period of time before it plays it... be it when you're in the middle of a quest dialogue or just wandering around in the middle of nowhere. I have noticed that since 1.2, companions will often store commentary that they were unable to play due to the combat ending, and the stored commentary will then get played when the companion tries to speak overriding what they were supposed to say, such as going on a crew skill mission, being replaced by another companion etc. I sent Doc to sell my common items and he shouted "Kolto tank incoming!" then vanished.

I'll let you know in 10 years. Anything else is just unfounded speculation on the unknown future growth of the games content, that serves no real point other than to work on our magic 8-ball impersonations.

I can see it being pretty common to play the same class twice to be fair. I am already considering it with the Imperial agent to have one sniper and one operative because the two are completely different playstyles... yet both would have Kaliyo. Though having Kaliyo married to multiple people is perhaps believable, having her married to her own son is slightly more iffy territory.

Can't say I noticed any engine noise in the republic fleet the 2 times I've visited it since 1.2. Nor do my companions sound like they are speaking through headsets, regular audio as per usual except now it seems when on my ship companion commentary for crew skills have their source coming from the companions physical location on my ship... where as pre-1.2 the source was localised to my location not the companions. However since 1.2 I do have frequent directional audio issues when audio will cut out completely or become intermittent when the source moves to the sides, SFX clipping where half way through combat suddenly my lightsaber hum and attack impact sounds will vanish and start up again after awhile then vanish again but gun fire effects are still played consistently and similar such things. Tried changing my sound card settings from 5.1 to stereo both with and without virtual surround simulation, also tried 'matrix mode' from the speakers themselves which takes stereo audio and simulates 5.1 (Logitech X-540) and all cases suffer from the problem.

1 companion currently already makes most of the content for most classes I've played rather easy (exception being on my sniper and the odd melee heavy encounters)... so whilst I'm not directly against having 2 active companions, the difficulty in content would have to substantially be kicked up several notches before hand. Already snoozing through on my Jedi Knight Guardian ever since I got Doc and found I could stand there dancing at 'epic' labelled NPC a level or two above me and never drop below 80% health.... so add in Kira or T7 into the mix and I'd might as well not play and just let my companions go save the galaxy for me whilst I stay in my ship.

I think there is some confusion between "Light/Dark side" and people applying a "Good/Evil" direct relationship between the two.... one Bioware have also made in places with their choices, but for this specific case they called it right and the dispute in this thread seems to be from people thinking that the dark side is the same as evil.... which is not the case at all. You can have a ambitious politician who has dreams of a peaceful unified galaxy, and to do that crosses some lines such as ignoring food shortages and having civilians die in order to better fund military in order to protect vital strongholds leading to holding the area from a foaming at the mouth army of mass murderers..... But the act of turning a blind eye on the starvation of people when something could be done, would in very basic terms be one step along the scale to the darkside (if it were to be translated into an actual scale obviously)... even though the end result is only a few die rather than keeping them alive long enough to see everyone die to the invading forces. It's not a Mass Effect Paragon/Renegade system kind of deal (or rather, it shouldn't be but often Bioware seem to fall into bad habits at times), nor is it clear cut and all about the 'greater' good. Dark/Light alignment is entirely a personal matter and is something that reflects the individual, their personality and their actions.... if you just saved a building full of orphans, by giving in to your emotions and using them to fuel uncontrolled aggression killing 3 dozen people trying to burn the building down, that's you on your merry way to the dark side, grand scheme doesn't come into it. The same with giving in to your emotions and personal interests to interfere in a political process... you may or may not end up making things better, but the conscious decision you just made to let your own interests/opinions take the lead and disrupt the ability for people to make their own decisions and for events to play out is going to leave an impression on you. Unfortunately this is slightly iffy to translate into a game in a way that people will jump on board with and grasp quickly, so for ToR it's simply depicted as a global point system.

Taken the map position style from Djalexa and made a variation of the interface: http://content.screencast.com/users/Tikigod/folders/Jing/media/eb81a100-3ba2-4cbd-9048-d01c6d3850ec/2012-04-15_0103.png Edited in a new shot. The target information on the right is lower than the player information, so as to give more vertical room for target of target and castbar display, without it intruding into the central screen area.

I believe part of the Jedi practise is to not interfere in the legitimate political process surely? If the republic as a whole vote to break ties with the jedi order, that is entirely their legitimate choice to do so. For a jedi to block the republics democratic process for the interests of their own order or their own personal opinions on what is better is most certainly not part of the Jedi mentality of not letting emotions sway you. As a general rule (but one that is all too often broken) Jedi help when asked, but in larger decisions the jedi council will often refuse to take action if they deem the help (although for a greater good perhaps) will force them to go against their teachings one way or another or if the situation is rather delicate.... just look at the mandalorian war. But remember this for starters: Jedi are not a galactic police force, flying down to other civilisations imposing their own kind of 'peace' onto other cultures.... more often than not it's more the Jedi way to not really care that much about such things.

Careful, they may also be the ones the most vocal on the forums about how disgraced they've been by making the conscious choice to focus on level 50 already knowing there was no significant content there for them, but knowing that such content was their right as level 50 is what MMOs are really about, everything else is just grind to get your money. As said in the stickied thread, to be honest we've all had to put up with equal amounts of crap and made personal choices that decided where in the mess we decided to settle in. The level 50 bracket just suffers more often from pre-existing expectations from other game experiences where apparently a game doesn't start until you hit the level cap and because there is no game at that point in ToR atm people who applied the mentality to this game and followed it through are more likely to leave now and feel more entitled due to their own entirely optional choices they have made.... No one is forced to log into a level 50 and repeat dailys or idle in fleet for hours a day, there are options available to continue to play the game through other characters or even being proactive and creating community events/content to keep things alive. At the end of the day though, we're all still putting up with the same quality crapola in places regardless to what level character we're playing, some have certain expectations from previous game experiences others are just winging it as they go along and trying to find their own little niche way of keeping interested.... but no group is really any more or less entitled or 'committed' on those grounds alone.

Very smart layout. Though I got to say... your character seems to be lacking in giant worm factor that the name would lead you to expect.

Kidding aside, would have been nice if today's patch fixed the fact that warzones are not being dropped due to population imbalances like they probably should be. Joining a civil war match with 3 republic against 8 imperials and having to all just stand there at a single point waiting for your ticker to count down to 0 so you can lose and receive no reward even though you have a few medals isn't exactly fun, regardless to your level.

Patch notes: * Added the final touches to the energy harnessing device slowly worked into the servers across the last months worth of vague "Server side improvement" patch work. * This new device is hooked up to both the forums and the game servers, and collects and stores the energy generated by our players posting into singular consolidated threads focusing the raw emotions into one place. * With this new device now fully operational we have now moved the game servers to our new EA offices located on the artificial building we have placed in orbit around the earth where the moon used to be before we relocated it. * To speed up this process, we are proud to announce that no players will be receiving any free game time. Instead anyone who does not currently have an subscription nor a registered game key will be receiving a free copy of the game, 6 months free game time, and level 50 characters of all classes with full legacy unlocks. * Feel free to post any feedback on these changes in this single stickied thread: <Link> Unlimited power!

PMSL. If that happens, then things will get very interesting indeed and EA|Bioware really would need to rethink the decision making process behind promotional events.

I've stuck with my under populated server Bao-dur throughout, but it certainly would be interesting to see just how populated it would be if those that dropped the server and flocked to the same handful of heavy populated servers came back. My first thought is that if people were to do so there would be substantially more populated servers throughout at a nice kind of level for a few days before the 1.2 buzz wears thin and people stop being so active again.

Been reasonably impressed with the 'higher resolution' texture atlas. Wasn't really expecting much of an improvement at all, and was even expecting some stretch issues where UVs were being positioned in the texture atlas in shapes that didn't reflect the geometry they were associated with, but so far the improvements has been reasonable considering all a texture atlas actually is and haven't noticed any stretch issues yet.

That's exactly what I was saying Kalfear.... everyone has put up with the same amount of crap. Level 50s are no exception, but they're also not the only ones... they're just easier to target, and Bioware I feel went into panic/knee jerk reaction mode when one thing in 1.2 didn't make the deadline, so they threw a ill-planned promotion aimed only at them and used the first thing they could find... free game time. Perhaps if so many hadn't already bought white crystals they would have just mailed all level 50 characters one of those instead... but that wouldn't have gone down well considering how many people would be calling foul play and demanding their 1mil+ credits back.

In terms of bad warzones and class problems, this problem impacts everyone, regardless to level. Level 10 onwards are in the same warzones as the level 40+, they've been dealing with the same bugs, class imbalances, dropped warzones and bugs that log them out for trying to join warzones the same as the level 50s. Yes, the level 50s suffer more in terms of lack of further progression but the option is always there for them to make new characters and play through new content in the shape of class story lines..... nothing is forcing anyone to log into their level 50s and stand around fleet doing sod all and then in some peoples case looking at this thread apparently being more entitled to compensation for their entirely optional choices of doing sod all instead of doing something than any other player not at their level. It's not like the level 1-50 path is smooth sailing either, there have been oddles of mission glitches that stop completion of missions and forcing people to reset and start the mission again, inability to find people to play with to do the extra available content apparently on offer that makes them less entitled then those that make the conscious choice to only stick to their level 50s... the lack of level brackets means those below level 50 have to put up with greater resourced characters in warzones who have countless more stuns, disrupts, DoTs and snares if they want to do any PvP at all.... the amount we have all had to put up with and accept is quite a long list, and it's something we all share. To be fair every one has been pretty much equal in terms of the amount of crap we've had to put up with since the game hit retail.... the only difference is the endgame segment of the community is the one more blatantly obvious in terms of dealing with the crap because the game released with very little in that range so its just more off putting... but at the end of the day anyone who looked into the game before rushing to 50 would have known the score from the get go in the first place. It's less that level 50s are 2nd rate citizens in terms of quality of their game I'd say, and more a question of people expecting to much to be added for the endgame content bracket in too short a time given the known poor state on release and when something got delayed Bioware went into panic mode and just went along with that expectation and threw the nearest thing they could find packaged in a nice ego stroke letter.