I think Ilum would suite your needs...

try it now guys..they just fixed something in the back-end systems.

Well, if you read your own post, you were talking about "if it were implemented". I helpfully pointed out that it has been. I'm all for improving it (make it more visible, better sorting/searching, etc)..but if people won't take the time to figure out that it even exists before QQ'ing, I'm not sure how much good the expenditure of dev time would do, honestly. Now, if you are talking about a feature which magically transports you to a waiting group somewhere because your turn came up in in some queuing mechanism..that is not a LFG tool, that is known in the vernacular as a LFD tool. I don't have an opinion one way or the other on that...though I think one has to be pretty lame and lazy to depend on such a crutch to find group interaction but that's just me /shrug.

um, there *is* a LFG tool in the game. You can flag yourself as LFG (which puts a special icon next to your nameplate that everyone can see both "in person" as well through the Social pane) and you can enter a description of the types of things you'd like to be considered for. People can sort by LFG flags to find folks on the same planet who are currently LFG. Not sure what's so hard about that. But then, I'm puzzled by a lot of the stuff people have been crying about lately so /ponder.

Yeah I'm guessing it's because the CC system (includes debit) has an additional backend hook, it's probably not going to be up until they bring up the servers...versus game card is just an internal thing so it's kinda perma-validated. Or something to that effect. Either way, if you've done all the steps and you got the check marks in the web site thing, you should be fine.

EA ended a few hours ago, retail doesn't start until midnight EST. In the middle is the "no man's land" of no active subscription. Edit: scratch that. I just launched my client and I don't get that error. Server's aren't up, but it lets me get to a "blank" server select screen. Have you guys put in a payment method? If so..what kind? I've put in game card time rather than a CC so perhaps that's the difference?

retail subscription doesn't begin until official launch...approximately 45 min from now give or take.

yes, you can use the disk to install on other computers. It's not DRM'd..and everyone else downloading from the CDN's will thank you for not consuming additional bandwidth As you noted, they'll need to provide their own codes to activate, of course

not at this time...i've heard they are working on adding a feature like that for later tho. Your best bet is to find an "orange" robe that has the hood set down, and just mod it up until the feature is implemented.

ok, if you've got a price-is-no-object-within-reason, the above recommended 570 will work great. Reason I asked about cpu is that with mid-range procs, the game can be cpu-bound so it makes no sense to buy a high-end card without a matching cpu. I think what you have should be able to drive the 570 pretty decently. The ATI 6970 would also be a good choice, but since you already have an nvidia card you might want to stick with them. Both will run the game very nicely. Make sure your power supply is up to snuff as well... edit: I assume you are running a 64-bit version of your OS to take advantage of the extra RAM? Sorry if that seems like a stupid question, but some people don't realize that.

What's your budget, and what is your cpu?

Try logging off the forums and logging back in without your fob If you were already logged on, your browser's login token is still valid. But once you log off, it is reset and you'll need your fob to get back in and post.

it's all part of one account. The forums do not exist in a vacuum...they use the same authentication back-end as the game itself. The security settings are for the whole account, so it's an all-or-nothing affair. Besides, since all pertinent account settings are accessible via the website...anyone who really cares about security should be happy that it works this way

It will run it (poorly)... the graphics card is very weak (tho the rest looks alright). I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 6670. If you don't mind running in 640x480 rez with all the details turned to minimum, you should be ok with that box as-is. Here's a link with relative performance rankings of cards for your reference: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6670

Fondor Escort is really really easy. however, I can see that it would be difficult if you haven't bought any upgrades for your ship. Before doing ANY of the space missions, go to the starship upgrade vendor at Fleet and buy all of the "class 1" upgrades. I think you have to be level 17 or 18 to get one of them. If you have all the slots available to you upgraded (think it's blaster rate, blaster damage, ship armor, ship shield, shield regenerator) the escort mission should be pretty trivial. hope that helps.

Since we're less than 12 hours from the official launch, I'd say that the "pre-ordering" phase is probably over. Your friend should be able to purchase the retail release tonight at midnight EST.

There are many more flashpoints than just 4.

Well, when you assume you make an ....... And as far as "lose the ability to return"...um no, you can swap the crystals back if you want unless you were dumb enough to destroy the original one.

yes it will boot you to character select screen. I'm not sure if it will boot you from that point if you are afk...haven't tried it out.

Well, ideally you'd do both. But if you are trying to get the most bang for your buck then I'd say yeah upgrading your gpu at this point would be the path to follow. Your cpu is roughly equivalent on a per-core basis with mine. You might have a bit lower overall performance than I have due to only 2 cores to handle the game plus other tasks..but unless you are doing media transcoding or something I don't think the effect will be noticeable unless you were doing detailed benchmarking. For the record, as I run around Tython I'm seeing my average gpu utilization around 90% while my the utilization of the 2 swtor.exe processes runs right at the 55% I mentioned before. My overall cpu utilization with the game, task manager, and the catalyst control center runs about 80% (ie pretty much a total of 3-core's worth of work, but the added stuff is my fault for testing and not indicative of the game's needs). So, I'd say based on some rough guestimation that if you were to put in a 6870 (or the nvidia equivalent) you'd be slightly cpu-bound but not so much that you felt you had wasted money. On the other hand you could get a very powerful card (for much more $$) and be severely cpu bound..with the plan to upgrade the cpu later to unlock the full potential of it.

for me it is mostly cpu bound except in very small areas (eg the starting room after the cinematic intro when you create your character). And as I mentioned before, I have a Q9400 (2.66Ghz) and an ati 6870 (stock clocks). I can provide more detailed information later if you like.

Never said they would be "idle"...I'm saying that if your display is showing them all nearly utilized..that is erroneous output. Either that, or you have other applications running that are chewing up cpu too. The fact of the matter is this: swtor, by itself, gains *very very little* benefit from more than two cores. From my own detailed analysis, at least 90% of the workload is performed by 2 large constituents. The most I saw the swtor forked processes using in aggregate at any point was 55% of a quad-core processor..meaning that the extra cores were supporting at most 10% of the game's load. And that is suspect due to the sampling rate provided by the Resource Monitor..it might have been less (which would mean that the 2 main processes are composed of light-weight threads that cannot be farmed out to other cores thus 2 cores is a hard limit anyway). Period. Fact. Period. If you want to run more stuff at the same time as playing the game...more cores will help. G'day

Sorry if the truth hurts But looking at your G15 display is not nearly as accurate as looking at the performance tools that I mentioned for the OS (which roll up the total cpu utilization for each child process to a % that is independent of what core it has been bounced to via poor cpu affinity). I'm not blaming you..I'm blaming the tool you are using as being inadequate for the job. But yeah, since I actually spent about an hour doing this very research last night (in addition to gpu utilization under various settings and resolutions)...I obviously don't know what I'm talking about either

His g15 is likely reporting an artifact of how his OS is handling the cpu affinity (or lack thereof). When the game is playing, there are only about 2 core's worth of work..the other 2 are mostly idle. That on Windows 7 ultimate 64-bit. Other OS's may do a worse job of affinity so the load gets bounced from core to core giving the illusion that all 4 are being utilized when viewed in low-resolution reporting tools. From the task manager, you can start the Resource Monitor under the Performance tab and look real-time at the % cpu that each process is using and the rolling average over time...as well as the graphs.

I have a 6870 and I am largely cpu-bound in most "non-trivial" areas with a intel Q9400 cpu. I haven't tried overclocking but it's clear that from the cpu and the gpu utilization the cpu's holding back the graphics card in most areas. That said, I upgraded from a 3870 to the 6870 in early beta and that made a WORLD of difference (same cpu) Hope that helps as a data point.