I think that's probably right, and I hope that's what it is, I just found the wording very confusing.

I can't be the only one who is confused about what exactly a "new set of gear that is a sub-tier of the larger tier that started with Campaign gear" actually means. Could we get some clarification with specific item levels? For example, most of my gear from Explosive Conflict has level 61 mods, enhancements, etc., which is Campaign level. Will the new Operation continue to drop level 61 gear that is just differently itemized? That's how I am reading this post but I could definitely be reading it wrong. If so, I am very surprised that a new Operation would release with what seems to be sidegrades in terms of gear, given how long most guilds have been farming Explosive Conflict and in some cases even getting their alts into best in slot gear.

So we have now heard that we can expect new content coming in August, and we have heard that the new Operation Terror From Beyond will be "coming soon." Will Terror From Beyond be part of the content releasing in August? Will Nightmare EC be coming out instead, or at the same time? When can we expect to get on the PTS to start testing one or both of these? Hopefully it will be with the next week or so if there is going to be sufficient time to test and tune before a late August release. If not, we're still waiting for more clarity on what "coming soon" means while GW2 and Mists of Pandaria launch dates are quickly approaching.

As others have said, the problem lies in the difficulty of the existing content. We raid 2 nights a week for 3 hours each night, and we moved through the existing content really quickly. While we have solid players in our guild, nothing in the current tier really compares to some of the hardest raid bosses that we have encountered in other games. Nothing in the current tier requires hundreds of wipes and weeks of effort to master. That is somewhat to be expected, since "Hard" mode was never supposed to be the highest challenge for focused guilds. However, Nightmare should have been out much sooner and should live up to that standard. A guild that only raids 2 nights a week should be able to go against challenging progression bosses that take weeks to down, but that has just not been the case so far. We'd like to believe it is coming soon, but we just don't know. In terms of avoiding the PTS in order to stretch content out, I understand the desire there. It's something I thought about before we tested EC on the PTS. However, if every guild did that, the community would get buggy and untested Operations going live. The devs have repeatedly stated they watch PTS live streams in order to get feedback, and it's very important to them. The most fun I have had so far in this game is testing Hard mode EC on the PTS, because I really enjoy tackling new challenges as a team and learning how to defeat them. We are really looking forward to doing that again, but it has to come soon in order to have any sizeable base of progression raiders left.

There is a lot of room between "current hard mode EC" and "completely impossible" for the developers to create a meaningful challenge for motivated guilds in Nightmare modes.

New plan: everyone else stop wiping!

Thanks Kaedis, your theorycrafting has been a huge resource for this game and will definitely be missed.

Lag was pretty bad again tonight in EC. We even noticed this out on Voss killing Nightmare Pilgrim, and there were only about 40 people again on the planet.

I hadn't thought about the armor issue. I would definitely try going against an Operation Dummy, since that's why they are there.

Assuming you understand the encounters and play well your DPS should be higher, not lower, because of the group buffs you will have in an Operation.

I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like people are asking for NM EC to hit the PTS this week in this thread. We just want a timeline of when we can expect new content, and ideally a lot more information about what that content will be. We also have concerns about the overall pace of content development. None of that means we want them to launch new stuff at the wrong time.

1. Time since 1.3 is not relevant to a progression raider. The only thing 1.3 added for us was the ability to make a lot of credits if you have a profession that makes augment kits. 2. This is a thread about people interested in progression raiding. While some people interested in progression raiding may also enjoy competitive PvP, telling them to form a ranked War Zone team is not a viable substitute for the content that they enjoy. Before ranked War Zones were out would it make any sense to tell competitive PvPers to just do the raids? Not really, because that's not the content they are interested in. 3. I don't know if you "enjoy HM flash points with random PuG in your full campaign/BH gear" but enjoy is definitely not the first word I would use to describe that experience. It's certainly not a replacement for challenging raid content, no matter how much you might like to do that. 4. Many people like to level alts, but again, this is not progression raiding content. You could add Roleplaying, crafting, making a ton of credits, a real achievement system, or anything else about the game that people might enjoy, but those are not a substitute for progression raiding content. I think most of your solutions touch on things that people "might" want to do instead of progression raid, but they do not address the core issue here. There are guilds full of people formed with the express purpose of tackling challenging raid content. That is what they want to do. When that content is not there, and we don't have clear guidance on when it will get there, most guilds find it very hard to keep going. This game has already lost several high-end guilds because there is simply not enough challenging content. Others are doing their best to stay motivated and interested in the game, and we have high hopes for the future, but we'd really like some reassurance from Bioware that our hopes are justified. The amount of time this thread has been up with a phantom reply, but no actual reply, is frustrating.

The percentage of overall guilds who have completed HM EC is not a very relevant statistic. There are many guilds that do not focus on progression raiding and instead do PvP, roleplaying, casual raiding, etc. If they are not intending to clear hard mode EC, then it doesn't make sense to wait until a "reasonable" number of them have cleared it, because you'd be waiting forever. When we are discussing whether Bioware should release more progression raiding (i.e., hard) content, what seems much more relevant is the percentage of guilds that care about progression raiding who have completed all the existing content. If you look at The Bastion's progression thread, you can see that most organized progression guilds have completed the content. 75% of the 16 player guilds have completed HM EC. 66% have completed 8 player HM EC. This may even include some guilds who have no desire to complete hard modes, and thus are effectively "done" with the content after story mode. Progression raiders recognize that we are not a majority of the player base, but at the same time, we need challenging content to keep us interested in the game. Saying that lots of players have not completed hard mode EC (including many who have no intention to do so) doesn't really address the core concern.

Seriously though, that phantom Bioware reply icon is just kind of taunting those of us who are impatiently waiting for new and challenging raid content and some detailed information on when we can expect it to launch. We understand that there are plenty of players still working on the current content, but for those of us who have cleared it the lack of timeline on the new stuff makes it very challenging to stay engaged with the game.

I feel your pain.

Well, the quote was "solid enough" DPS and what that really means is, you can usually beat the enrage timer just fine with an extra tank. From what we have seen, a competitive tank is usually closer to half the DPS of our average DPS players, and depending on the encounter, can give you a lot more control or flexibility. Of course, you only want another tank when there is something for them to do, and that's usually the kind of fight where raw DPS is less important. You bring them to pick up adds, add another player in a taunt rotation, etc. If they ever came out with a tightly-tuned DPS check encounter (like Patchwerk or Baleroc) then yeah, you would definitely take the bare minimum numbers of tanks needed to meet the enrage. While I like those kind of fights, I think it's a good sign that most encounters we have seen so far have more interesting mechanics that support multiple strategies and group compositions.

We noticed some pretty severe lag spikes last night hitting the entire raid, and then lots of individuals having issues where they would hit a keybind but the ability would not display or go off.

The Firebrand healer can do a lot of crosshealing, so I usually do it as a DPS Sage. It doesn't hurt my DPS too much, and I can pretty easily sprint to the shields as needed.

I'd be kind of surprised if you can transfer off The Swiftsure. We are the top US West PvP server, and in the top 20 for overall population. So if you think we have it bad, imagine what it's like for some other servers. It seems more likely that we'll be a destination server, although right now it's all guesswork until Tuesday.

Also, come transfer to The Swiftsure on Tuesday if you get the chance; it's a great west coast PvP server (with active PvE and PvP guilds) and we'd love to see more people around.

Thanks Emlaeh, I appreciate the follow up and that does clarify what the plan is for the existing Nightmare raids. It all sounds great and we're excited to see it on the PTS as soon as it can reasonably get there.

I loved the questions that were asked in the Darth Hater interview, but the answers just go in circles and leave me asking the same questions. I feel like all we learned for sure is that Nightmare EC will be on the PTS before it goes live, but we don't have any idea when that will happen. It could be tomorrow, it could be 2 months from now or more. "There are a lot of guilds out there right now who cleared Hard Mode. They log in their day, they get all their stuff, they say “I’m here and I’m ready for Explosive Conflict Nightmare mode.” What do you say to those guys?" That was a perfect question and sums up how a lot of us feel. In response, I feel like Daniel Erickson danced around the issue, talking about what seem to be really basic things such as making sure your group gets into the right instance. The rest of the answer talks about adding features such as ranked warzones, but I don't see how that relates to getting Nightmare mode Operations ready to test. I understand you don't want to commit until things are close to ready, but this response really just doesn't tell us anything. To the extent it does give specifics, it sounds like there are some really basic things that need to be resolved, which makes me worry that the content is not close to being ready. Another question asked "What was the driver to revamp and redo these Nightmare Modes of the current Operations?" I feel like this question is assuming or taking as a fact that Bioware is going to go back and redesign the existing Tier 1 Nightmare mode raids (EV and KP). We have seen other sites hint at the same thing. But nowhere in the response does Daniel Erickson confirm that they will be re-doing Tier 1 heroics, which has me (and most of my guild) confused about what is actually being developed. Is Bioware just revamping their approach to new heroic content during the design process for Nightmare EC, or are they actually going back and redesigning the existing Nightmare content that we have already cleared?

I can't see a strong argument for restricting a move from PvE for PvP in this game. My understanding of the early days of leveling in WoW is that it was a much different experience on a PvP server. It probably took a little more time and patience with getting ganked, etc. Leveling on a PvP server in SWTOR, I think I probably only had about 4-5 encounters with the enemy faction, and 4 of those were on Voss. That's not enough for me to want to keep you off a PvP server if that's what you're looking for.

The nice thing about more content is that it makes people happy with the game, even if it's not the content that you personally want to play. For example, I will probably only dabble in ranked warzones. But if ranked warzones make a lot of players happy and keeps them subscribed or brings them back, then that is good for the game, and by extension my enjoyment of the game since I want an MMO to have an active, lively atmosphere. You don't have to personally like achievements or be motivated by them to accept that others might like them and that they might be a good addition to the game.

I approve of this message. People need things to do in the game if they are going to log in once the Operation is cleared or they have geared up in PvP. If more people log in, the servers feel busier, the game becomes more alive, and more people stay subscribed.