Completely understand where you're coming from, Aodhhan. For what it's worth, I provided BW with six tracerts the day they first replied to me; two tracerts taken within a minute of each other at 1230, 1430 and 1630GMT. One was to the European server and the other was the IP address I obtained from carrying out a netstat. I did it this way to show an increase in latency over the course of the day and to highlight the fact that I was being routed to mainland Europe and THEN back across to Ireland (I'm in Northern England). The problem with tracerts is that they don't show the crazy random spikes up to 900 and beyond, unless you get really lucky with the timing of hitting <enter>. With that in mind, I also included a pingplotter file which showed the activity over a 10 minute period. They have a host of people here, ready to stand up and share their info on this issue. ...if only they would admit there may be a problem and ask for our assistance in focusing down the problem.

This is the response I received after spending half an hour on the phone with them (after three tickets came back with random responses which had nothing to do with the subject I ticketed): Despite telling them multiple times that I believe the issue was with Telia (with the tracerts to back it up) they STILL maintain that they do not have enough to present a case to these providers. They are aware of the multiple threads on the subject, but are refusing to proceed any further at this point. Although Gary said he would push the information to the studio, I'm not going to hold my breath on this getting fixed anytime soon.

So what it comes down to is that the issues we are seeing are perhaps a result of a bottleneck, cause by data unable to be processed fast enough by BW's hardware? That being the case, what changed in the last few weeks that caused this to become the issue it is now? 2 weeks ago I had steady and reliable connections. Now, I'm being routed away from Ireland, into Europe, before having my connection routed back to BioWare. It's not as if BW suddenly decided to downgrade their hardware. Don't misunderstand me - I totally get what you're saying. But routing tables changing are not the responsibility of BW, unless there is some part of network/traffic management that I am totally unaware of?! I'd appreciate your thoughts on that one.

You're spot on, there, mate. My ISP is BT and I'm on Infinity 1. My connection has solid performance across the board...except in swtor. A very simple tracert shows precisely where the problem lies and it's outside both mine and BTs area of responsibility. Telia is BWs ISP - BW are the customer. It is not up to anyone else other than BW to speak to that company to inform them of this issue....I know this because I may have tried! Telia is responsible for routing traffic (at least in Western Europe) from your ISP to BW's servers. The spikes don't start AT BWs servers, they start within 2 hops of leaving your ISP's main hubs. In the end, I managed to get though to one of Telia.net's techs and explained that I was simply highlighting that a problem may exist and where I believed it existed based on the evidence I had accrued. What he chose to do about it I have no clue (most likely nothing). But until BW get in touch with them and tell them that there is a problem which needs to be looked at, nothing will happen.

Getting EXACTLY the same, Stoofa. That jump you reference is in Amsterdam. This is what accounts for our hike in latency and associated packet loss. I'm seeing the same thing you are. I've sent them two customer service tickets with as detailed information as I can provide, but all I get in return is their crappy canned responses - one of them was not even on the subject that I had written to them about. Can't say I'm surprised, though :/

Can I assume you are on TRE, Stoofa? I'm only guessing because your situation appears identical to mine. I'm playing from the North East of England and my resting ping was much like yours - around 28-32ms....until recently. Now it's at 75ms, regularly resting at 120ms+, with spikes up to 900ms. Looking at the routing, Telia.net (BW's ISP) appears to be the culprit for me. The routing indicates that I am being pushed to Newcastle > London > Amsterdam > Ireland. It's that jump East then West that sees me getting spikes and packet loss.

Reply to their ticket, quoting the original ticket. This is the response... Well played, Bioware. Well played.

Submitted an in-game ticket but got the usual canned response... Glad to see they still appreciate us taking the time to explain problems in detail, to allow them to improve their paid services...

Just questing and getting increasingly bad spikes. Current record sits at 947ms for me. I can imagine how annoying it must be for people in WZs and Ops. To be clear. I KNOW this is nothing to do with my system. I KNOW it's nothing to do with my ISP and (surprisingly) I KNOW it's nothing to do with BW's servers. This is their ISP, plain and simple. Unfortunately, Telia will not speak to any of us (I may have tried!), so this is down to BW's techs to speak with Telia and friends to get this looked at.

I've noticed this myself recently, but no to the extent where I get booted to character select. I'm located in the North of England and my latency is usually around 27-33ms. Lately, I've noticed that it sits in the region of 70-120ms. While it doesn't make the game unplayable (played on worse when I used to connect to Bastion US West PvP!) it does cause the occasional hiccup. I did some research and believe the problem is with the Level 2 ISP called Telia.net - if I'm reading my tracert correctly, I'm being routed to London (normal), across to Amsterdam (not normal), THEN to Ireland. It's this jump East then back West that sees my latency hike up by almost 100ms. Anyone else seeing similar?

I'm genuinely interested in this thread as I would very much like to transfer my characters from a US server to an EU server. Long story short: - Moved from the UK to CO for 4 years during which time the launch of SWTOR occurred. - Most of my guildies were playing over here so I did the same. - US purchased client, played from within the US. - Paid for from the US with US bank account. - 4 years up, I moved home and carried on playing. - Changed my residential details and bank details for payment. When I forgot my password after taking a break, I called the helpline in Ireland, not the US. They had all my details and unlocked my account. It would seem from my encounter that your personally identifiable information is therefore available across Bioware - regardless of location. If that information is not limited to one location within their company, why should virtual characters in a virtual world be any different?

There's a thread over here where people kinda went more into the details about the possible reasons why it hasn't been implemented. I'm not gonna lie, the reasons don't make much sense to me. Not because I don't understand the reasoning, but because I don't think they are valid!

Maybe all these legal experts in this thread - ones with their degrees from Harvard, Oxford or Wikipedia - could help me understand something. Because this isn't making much sense. I'm a UK resident who was living in Colorado when this game was first released. As most of the guildies I'd played other games with for nearly ten years were all rolling on a US server, I did the same. Given that I was in the US at the time, it didn't bother me. After my 3 year tour was up, I moved home again and now am technically in the same boat as the guy who posted this thread...except I just "manned the &%$£ up" and rolled new characters on the EU realms. I mention all this due to some of the responses mentioned previously: First, as I said, I now reside in the UK and have changed my account details to reflect my new address etc. Along with that, I now pay for my existing sub from a UK bank, not Chase as I did while I was over there. I still pay the same as I did before (not taking into account exchange rate fluctuations). So, with my case as an example, does overseas revenue actually play a part in stopping these suggested transfers taking place? Second, buying your client in the US or the EU still allows you to access the servers in either zone. Given that the characters we create and the items they have acquired remain the intellectual property of EAware (despite our payment of a subscription), why is this more than just a case of transferring data within a company between two datacentres? I know this comes across as mildly sarcastic, but that's just me I sincerely would like a valid explanation to these points please Edit: I just re-re-re-read what Draqsko posted above me. While I think I get most of what they tried to explain, would that not relate specifically to transfer of personally identifiable information of the account holder? We are, after all, purely talking about virtual characters in a virtual world. Yes they are linked to our accounts, but our information is held in both datacentres anyway.

Here's hoping that, included in this maintenance, is a latency fix for Bastion / Harbinger / Begeren. Since they got taken down for emergency hotfixing last week, stability may have improved, but the lagspikes are horrendous :/

Sounds like just really bad luck. If you're Imp, I highly recommend those elite republic droids to the west of the taxi point, near the venom mines - had a few drop off them, as well as the Champ Foreman further up the path.

I'm there with a buddy right now. 6 kills, zero drops so far...

Completely understand where you're coming from with this. And you're quite right in that they can drop from anything. That said, one of the above posters mentioned the random champ mob on Corellia near the transport station. I found him and killed him twice and got the datacron both times. My aim isn't to say "YOU MUST KILL THESE MOB AND ONLY THESE MOBS TO GET THE 'CRON!!" It's more of a "Hey, people have had good success with these mobs, maybe they'll work for you too".

Hey guys. I've seen another post which is more of a discussion with regards to the locations of the Datacron decorations for Strongholds. I wanted to start a thread which has the info you need at a glance in the first post. I'll try to collate the information from the other threads. But please feel free to reply after this post with your findings and I'll do my best to update it regularly. Light Datacrons Aim - Hoth: (Imp) - Heroic 4 Deconstruction Efforts. Drops off Champ mobs in the area and the large loot chest towards the back. (Imp) - Heroic 2 Joint Training. Storage box from quest reward. (Rep) - Heroic 4 Prisoner Extraction. Random mobs. (Rep) - Heroic 4 Frostclaw Cunning - Quesh: (Imp) - Elite Republic Venom Processing Droids. (Imp) - Foreman Telleon (Rep) - Lord Rhexa, (357,2002) Presence - Taris: (Imp) - Heroic 4 Fathers of Taris. Quest Reward from storage box. (Rep) - Heroic 4 Fall of the Locust. Locust Guard Captain. (Rep) - Heroic 4 Total Elimination. Strength - Balmorra: (Imp) - Heroic 4 Firestar. Champ mob at the back of the first room, as you enter the instance. (Imp) - Heroic 2 Project Hexapod. Champ mobs. (Rep) - Heroic 4 Acquired Taste. Colicoid Hivemaster Willpower - Alderaan: (Imp) - Heroic 4 The Lanaar Question. Elite/Champ mobs near the silo (complete the bonus to summon a few more mobs) (Imp) - Heroic 4 Shock Doctrine. Quest reward lockbox. (Rep) - Heroic 4 Red Handed. Endurance - Voss: (Imp) - Heroic 4 The First Commando's Call. Elite mobs at the challenge phase. (Imp) - Heroic 4 Cleanse the Corrupted. Drops several times from Champ & Elite mobs throughout the instance. (Rep) - Dark Datacrons Aim - Ilum: (Imp) - Heroic 2 Poisonous Strategy. (Rep) - Heroic 2 Crystal Clear Sabotage (Both) - Crystal Eater, Champ mob near Willpower datacron. Cunning - Nar Shaddaa: (Imp) - Heroic 4 Pound of Flesh - Loot chest at the far back right of the area from the entrance. Also mobs. (Imp) - Heroic 4 Hunger of the Vrblthers. Champ mobs in the zone and the summoned Champ from doing the mission. (Imp) - Heroic 2 Terminal Injuries - trash mobs. (Rep) - Strength - Tatooine: (Imp) - Heroic 4 Blood and Sand. Chieftain mob at the end of the instance. (Rep) - Heroic 4 A Jawa's Concern. Tusken Champion. Presence - Corellia: (Imp) - (Rep) - (Both) - Jimme Weasle, named mob NW of the Imp Transport station - Business sector. Endurance - Makeb: (Imp) - (Rep) - Willpower - Belsavis: (Imp) - Heroic 4 Breakthrough. Drops off the Champ and from the Loot chest. (Rep) - As I said at the beginning, feel free to submit your findings and I will update this as frequently as time allows. Happy hunting

As a newcomer to GSF (been away for about 8 months) I found it quite daunting on my first couple of sorties. I got my butt handed to me repeatedly. Granted, I'm used to a HOTAS setup for space/flight sims. But I just felt violated! Rather than sit in Vaiken complain that it's unbalanced or just plain ragequit, I checked out a few videos on youtube and advice from Dulfy and took another shot. I'm not about to try to convince you that I went from zero to hero in 2 matches (God, I wish!). But I started to fight smarter not harder. I started racking up some semi-respectable damage and my K/D ration became slightly less embarrassing! This thread is absolutely spot-on and hits home at the continual problem that ends up rearing its head in nearly every mmo. The generation that wants everything for nothing; little to no effort put in = maximum rewards plskthx. Thanks for posting this, as a newcomer it's refreshing to read something like this. The quote from earlier that stands out to me about skill being greater than gear, until two players become almost evenly matched - THEN it becomes more about gear. That is what it boils down to. Good read - thanks guys

The replies using shroud are all valid. But the fact remains that a lot of the times I've used Cloak in PvE, I'm immediately broken out of stealth and remain in combat. On the rare occasion that my companion decides to join me in escaping a bad judgement call and actually goes in to stealth too, mobs tend to carry on chasing my him/her and fire AoE in my direction, which in turn unstealths me anyway

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This thread needs highlighting in the Customer Service forums, if it hasn't already been.

It does suck. I don't care that Jaesa is a unique little snowflake. No other class has to deal with that, so it should just be a simple "get her to 10k affection" rule and that's it. I'm hoping it's a bug and that the criteria was just "Dark at 10k 'OR' Light at 10k"...not 'AND'. ...but, yeah. I'm expecting EAWare's usual speedyness at fixing this.