UI customisation, yes. Mods, no. Combat log, yes.

Here's what I think of them: They're far too small a sample size to be indicative of the general subscriber trend. It'd be like doing a poll of 1000 people on their political views and expecting that to be accurate across the entire population. The biggest problem isn't the sample size, though. It's the inherent lack of random sampling that comes from X-fire data. Out of the tens of millions of people who play MMOs, how many do you think use Xfire? Hell, only 15000 xfire users play WoW every day. WoW still has 10 million subscribers as of the last investor report. The only people who have the real numbers are EA Bioware. Anything else is educated speculation at best, foolishness at worst.

Yeah, the trash is infinitely harder on 16 compared to 8.

Well, somebody managed to miss the point.

TOR has one of them already on Hoth

TBH, neither mode is particularly difficult. Pre-nerf HM Soa was challenging, but post-nerf even Nightmare is a complete snoozefest. While some of the encounters show potential (mechanics wise) such as Bounty Hunters, Fabricator and Soa, nothing at all is tuned to be even remotely challenging now. Which is OK, since it's entry level raiding - but god I hope 1.2 tier is both challenging and tuned correctly for both 8 and 16. Maybe wishful thinking, remains to be seen.

I like how you dispute that 8 man mind traps have 25k HP. Have you done the fight on 8 Hard/Nightmare? The traps have 25k HP on 8 Nightmare. The traps have 25k HP on 16 Nightmare. Balls do not do extra damage on 16 Nightmare over 8 Nightmare. For proof of either of these, feel free to compare ball damage and trap health: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDmPifRtfxo (@8:11) - 16 Nightmare Mind Trap Health (@3:47-3:49) 16 Nightmare Lightning Ball Damage (Watch Dreadlich's health carefully) (@3:11) - 8 Nightmare Mind Trap Health (@3:20-3:23) - 8 Nightmare Lightning Ball Damage (Watch Meebo's health carefully) Also, your conjecture that 16 has exactly double the DPS of 8 man due to healers and tanks DPSing, is asinine. 11 pure DPS in 16 man vs 5 pure DPS in 8 man. Irrespective of healer and tank DPS, that's 120% (note 120%, not 100%) more DPS SPECCED PLAYERS than in 8 man. Notice that phase 3 doesn't require exactly 120% more damage done to Soa or traps in 16 man. This means that 16 man has an inherent advantage over 8 mans in terms of damage output. In fact, since lightning balls do not do more damage in 16 Nightmare over 8 Nightmare, you could quite feasibly run with less healers in 16 Nightmare (2-3 instead of 4, as the math assumes) and therefore push to 140-160% more DPS than 8 man, again, without the damage requirement even being double of 8 man. Your move.

Yes, we've had it happen. It's the only challenging part of the encounter since they 'fixed' it. Easy to accomodate if you've got the level of gear needed for the DPS check.

No dice. Used a mod out of a spare set of Rakata gloves and stuck it in my Rakata weapon, no change to barrel. Didn't think it would, but wanted to eliminate it as a possibility.

It's the first tier in a brand new game. It's not going to be super challenging. That's just the nature of the beast. Having said that, I got far more of a thrill out of killing Soa Hard Mode pre-nerf then I did from killing Soa Nightmare after they fixed it. But that's probably due to Soa Nightmare now being easier than pre-nerf Hard. I still got a kick out of Karagga's Palace on Nightmare, but we did have all the gear required for it since we'd been farming Hard/Nightmare EV for a few weeks. I'm really looking to the next tier of raiding providing more appropriate challenges. Nightmare KP was a step up from Nightmare EV (even though same tier), so I expect that to continue.

We had the 'no codex entry' bug this week. However, our loot was fine and he didn't respawn.

ITT: People failing at normal modes (seriously, the boss damage can be eaten by anyone.. if your healers are stressed at all by melee taking some extra damage in normal mode, you need new healers that aren't AFK/asleep) and complaining about normal mode loot distribution (pro tip: the non-LFResque raid modes have traditional loot).

So we killed Nightmare Soa tonight and did not receive either a Soa Nightmare codex achievement OR surviving Soa nightmare achievement. In fact, we didn't receive *any* codex entries for it - I was playing a toon that hadn't even killed Soa on normal and I wasn't awarded a thing. Has anyone else experienced this issue this week? Note that we did in fact kill it on Nightmare, not Hard

Ah, good to know. Good ol content patches, goofing up ****. I had a bad feeling that if we raided pre-patch, something would go awry. Glad we didn't, but I wish I'd been wrong.

So far, it looks like the patch screwed the lockouts that people had already begun, and therefore screwed the loot. Curious to see if it happens for a fresh lockout. My guild will be going in there for a full clear tonight (12 hours or so), will post back if we get loot or not.

Did you do a full clear of all 5 bosses last night, or had you previously killed 4/5 earlier in the week, pre 1.1?

Can anyone experiencing no/little loot in Soa, confirm if they did a full clear post patch, or cleared 4/5 pre-patch?

Those who are claiming their melee are getting cleaved from behind - have your melee constantly checking the range to Bonethrasher, underneath the boss portrait. Basically, even if you're behind him, you're still at 0.0m range - you have to stand quite far back to not be within his hitbox. If you're within his hitbox, you'll get owned. If you're not, you'll be fine. Makes the fight so much simpler for melee once they know to keep an eye on the rangefinder, especially on hard/nightmare.

You obviously didn't pay attention to the Emperor's servants on Belsavis, then. STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS. Particularly, they believe the Emperor will resurrect them..

Normal mode only.

SPOILER: This is dealt with ingame.

That's the design of the fight.

Cleared through 4/5 Nightmare last night, loot was fine. Terrible, but fine.

Oh for the love of God. It's a morning maintenance in the EU. OH GOD IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. Maintenance occurs at 7pm in the evening for Oceanics. That's mighty inconvenient for us, in fact, it usually screws any attempts at raiding or what have you for that evening, but it's not that big a freaking deal. Someone's always going to be inconvenienced. Bioware chose to do a global maintenance period. Get over it. Whinging about 4 hours early in the day.. entitlement attitudes never cease to amaze me. Go outside for a few hours. This comes with launch MMO territory. Get over it.

...Not in our experience this week. What the fook.